THE POSTUNIFICATION ERA has seen a surge in melancholy sentiment and a renewed interest in the melancholy tradition and melancholy discourse, particularly in Germany. This essay will analyze the melancholy evident in a number of narratives by former East German authors in conjunction with the notion of historical loss that has become dominant since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The texts — Christoph Hein’s novel Frau Paula Trousseau (2007), Monika Maron’s novels Endmoränen (2002) and Ach Glück (2007), and Christa Wolf’s diary publication Ein Tag im Jahr (2003) — deal with both the pre- and postunification periods in East Germany either directly or indirectly. I will examine the protagonists’ response to the changes brought about by unification (including Wolf’s own reaction in Ein Tag im Jahr), as well as the effect these changes have had on their lives. Along with the melancholy subjectivity of the individual, a prevailing atmosphere of melancholy is evoked in these texts. However, the dominance of melancholy sentiments is not a phenomenon that has suddenly emerged in the postunification period; it was also in evidence in the former East Germany. Left-wing intellectuals, especially those in western Germany, some of whom retained an idealistic view of the GDR, lamented the loss of ideology following the fall of Communism. This loss of ideology has been accompanied by the concept of the end of history. The critical attention that has focused on this phenomenon is significant to our understanding of the aforementioned texts, but in an analysis of both Hein’s and Wolf’s narratives one must also take into account the sense of disillusionment and despair engendered by the lack of social and political progress in the GDR.

A brief examination of theoretical approaches to melancholy as it relates to historical experience will help to elucidate its manifestations in each of the texts under discussion. A changed relationship to historical time and an adherence to the idea of historical loss define the modern era. As Ludger Heidbrink suggests, the melancholy of the modern age following the French Revolution resulted from the emptiness engendered by a lack of control over historical time: