Moments of Possibility: Holocaust Postmemory, Subjunctivity and Futurity in Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) and Robert Menasse’s Die Hauptstadt (2017)

Abstract

This article examines subjunctive approaches to history and memory as a novel aesthetic and ethical mode of Holocaust (post-)memory in two prominent examples of contemporary German-Jewish fiction. I argue that Katja Petrowskaja’s Vielleicht Esther (2014) and Robert Menasse’s Die Hauptstadt (2017) develop subjunctive modes of Holocaust (post-)memory as a response to a crisis of witnessing in the post-survivor era. Faced with the dying out of the survivor generation and the increasing institutionalization and hypermediation of Holocaust memories, these two authors invoke the subjunctive to self-reflexively account for their historical positionality and critique monolithic memory discourses (Petrowskaja), while also aiming to (re-)invest a stagnant culture of Holocaust memory with political urgency and futurity (Menasse). Subjunctivity thus emerges as a central yet underexamined mode of contemporary German-Jewish writing which has the potential to transform wider cultures of Holocaust (post-)memory, by moving ‘beyond the traumatic’ (Rigney 2018) in the direction of futurity.

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“…When it comes to contemporary literary engagements with Europe and the EU, Robert Menasse’s (2017) EU novel Die Hauptstadt (The Capital) is paradigmatic. Scholars have already analysed Die Hauptstadt comparatively (Király, 2019; Seeba, 2018), have viewed it from the perspective of visionary narratives (McChesney, 2021; Von der Knapp, 2020) and through the lens of cultural memory studies (Jiang, 2022; Lizarazu, 2020). One of Menasse’s most noteworthy characters in Die Hauptstadt is the Austrian economist and Professor Alois Erhart, who is in Brussels to take part in a meeting of an EU think tank.…”

“…One of Menasse’s most noteworthy characters in Die Hauptstadt is the Austrian economist and Professor Alois Erhart, who is in Brussels to take part in a meeting of an EU think tank. Erhart becomes increasingly irritated at the lack of vision and general conservative approach of his colleagues (Lizarazu, 2020: 414; Von der Knapp, 2020: 27–28), not least as Erhart is a follower of the (fictional) economist Armand Moens, who – in the reality of the novel – had argued for a movement away from national economics and towards transnational forms. During his speech to the think tank, Erhart reiterates Moens’ ideas and shocks his audience when arguing that a new capital city of the EU should be built on the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, making sure, thus, that it is never forgotten that Auschwitz is central to any European union (Menasse, 2017: 385–395).…”