Benjamin Steins Die Leinwand: Rückkehr jüdischer Religiosität im Zeichen einer prekär gewordenen Erinnerung an die Shoah
Benjamin Stein’s Novel The Canvas: The Return of Jewish Religiosity under the Shadow of the Uncertain Memory of the Shoah

Summary/Abstract: Benjamin Stein’s novel The Canvas fictionalises the literary scandal around Binjamin Wilkomirski, whose supposed testimony of the Shoah proved to be fiction. The Canvas thereby provocatively questions the reliability of memories, as well as the differences between autobiographies and fiction in general. This paper argues that those aesthetic strategies have to be interpreted in the context of the passing of the last witnesses and thus of the necessary medialisation of the memory of the Shoah. In the light of those transformations, it is the religious aspect of Jewish identity which is foregrounded in the novel. The Canvas’s critical view of the cultural memory discourse is based in particular on a literary reflection of postmodern theorising.

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