„Alle lebten von Fluchtgedanken“. Gedächtnis und Identität in Herta Müllers Herztier
Everyone wished to flee...’.Memory and Identity in Herta Müller’s Herztier

Summary/Abstract: The paper argues that Herta Müller’s novel Herztier (1994) can be regarded in a certain intercultural sense as an “erratic block” (term used by Kimmerle also 1994), as the historic period constituting the background of the novel, namely, the Ceauşescu-dictatorship in Romania before 1989, may appear from the perspective of today’s reader as strange as an African culture, or that of mediaeval Europe. Müller’s novel also proves how different the history and culture of certain European regions can be from one another. Moreover, cultural and mental divergences can prevail and endure also after crossing political borders as experienced by Herta Müller when leaving Romania for Germany in 1987. Finally, the paper discusses questions of cultural memory and space, looking for traces of a poetics of memory (also expressed in the motif of flight) in Herztier.

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