KATJA GARLOFF/AGNES MUELLER: We'd like to ask you some questions mainly about your first novel, Der Russe ist einer der Birken liebt, but also about your entire oeuvre, and about your self-perception as a writer.

In what ways does Jewish identity relate to other—ethnic— identities, in Azerbaijan, but also in Germany? What is the relationship between Azerbaijani identity and Russian identity, and how does Judaism play into this? How does Jewish identity become visible?

OLGA GRJASNOWA: The territories of the former Soviet Union and for example Western Europe are marked by great differences, because they are completely different systems. At least for the territory of the former Soviet Union everything was regulated in relatively basic terms. Judaism was considered an ethnic classification whether or not it was practiced religiously. It was written into peoples’ passports as their “nationality.” As a result, many questions never even came up. You were Jewish because your passport said so. It was determined by the birth certificate. In Germany, on the other hand, everything is a lot more complicated, also as a result of the Holocaust. There is a specifically determined image of Jews and Judaism, and that is the one of the Ashkenazi Jews. Even though this is only a small part of Judaism, it is used as a placeholder for the entirety of Judaism. People often do not want to see that the term is actually describing a much wider concept. In Germany, Judaism seems very much defined from the outside.

KG/AM: In what ways does especially Azerbaijan—a very important place in your novel—play an important role for Judaism in general?

OG: Azerbaijan was an important place during the reign of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan was important not only because of its role during World War II, but also as a result of the pogroms during Jewish settlement conflicts, because Jews considered it a safe territory. They either tried to get through to Palestine, or they went to Azerbaijan.

KG/AM: Do you think German readers of your novel are aware of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan?

OG: No, and that was one of the main reasons to write the novel the way I did.

A New German Jewish Literature?

IN 1995, MAXIM BILLER DECLARED that there is only one country in the world apart from Israel “in dem noch eine ganze Weile eine originäre, selbstbestimmte jüdische Literatur entstehen wird” (in which an original, autonomous Jewish literature will be produced for a long time to come), and that is Germany. According to Biller, this is so because the spatial proximity to the perpetrators and their offspring will not allow German Jews to forget about the Holocaust or assimilate to mainstream culture. Precisely because their situation is so atypical, German Jews are forced to think more deeply through their identity and articulate it more clearly. “Daß man als Jude in Deutschland nicht leben und schreiben sollte, ist logischerweise der erste und triftigste Grund dafür, warum man ausgerechnet als Jude in Deutschland besonders bewußt jüdisch lebt und schreibt.” (That one should not live and write as a Jew in Germany is naturally the first and most compelling reason why, precisely as a Jew in Germany, one lives and writes particularly consciously Jewish.) Biller's statement captures something important about German-language Jewish literature since the 1980s, and especially after German unification. This period saw the emergence of a new generation of German-speaking authors who self-identify as Jewish in interviews and other public forums, including Katja Behrens, Maxim Biller, Esther Dischereit, and Rafael Seligmann in Germany, Ruth Beckermann, Doron Rabinovici, Robert Menasse, and Robert Schindel in Austria, Chaim Noll in Israel, and Barbara Honigmann in France. The writers themselves are highly aware of the novel, collective, and precarious character of their literature; several of them reflect on their position vis-àvis German-language culture and society in nonfictional forms such as essays. The concomitant development of new German Jewish public spheres—marked, for instance, by the founding of the journal Babylon: Beiträge zur jüdischen Gegenwart, which began publication in 1986—also indicates a fundamental shift in the literary-cultural field.

The young German Jewish writers quickly drew the attention of critics and scholars, especially in the English-speaking world. Scholars who analyzed their works often spoke of the “reemergence,” “rebirth,” or “renaissance” of German Jewish literature, terms that signal both the novelty of the literature and its connectedness with an earlier period of cultural vibrancy and artistic innovation, presumably German Jewish culture before the Holocaust.

HUNGARIAN NOBEL LAUREATE and Shoah survivor Imre Kertész's 1990 work Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (Kaddish for a Child Not Born, 1992) engages the themes of religion and Holocaust memory. In his Kaddish, mourning —and prayer—is a prominent theme, but the mourning does not seem to be directed at a child, real or imagined, born or unborn. The mourning on display in the text itself is also not evocative of religious practice or ritual, or even of a more personal faith. Rather, the lamentation is about the narrator's past, his emotional detachment and estrangement from his wife, his lack of success as a writer, and the alienation he feels from religion as an institution, and, to a large extent, from Jewish culture and history. The text might be titled Kaddish for a Judaism Not Lived, since the absence of both religion and faith, and with this, the frailty of Jewish cultural identity, is a main theme throughout the book. Yet, the clearly Jewish and clearly religious ritual of the Kaddish prayer is still invoked. Of course, by 1990, “Kaddish” as a literary form could take on multiple determined meanings, specifically in view of literary history, including secular ones (such as, for example, in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem “Kaddish,” also known as “Kaddish for Naomi Ginsberg [1894– 1956]).” Yet, Ginsberg's “Kaddish” is, even though written as a poem, and obviously secular in its thematic and empathetic engagement, a mourner's appeal, dedicated to the memory of his mother, tenderly remembering her life—as would be expected also in a traditional and religious Kaddish. Kertész's text, on the other hand, is not reminiscent of a prayer, and the mourning that takes place seems rather truncated, even remote, as it mostly remains in the realm of a personal confession: “In this manner, just as I was a bad boy and a bad student, I was an equally bad Jew, I told my wife. My Jewishness remained a vague circumstance of my birth, just another fault among many, […].

KATJA GARLOFF/AGNES MUELLER: We would like to ask you a few questions, starting with a question about your first novel, Winternähe, but also about your self-perception as a writer. We found it interesting that Lola, the protagonist in Winternähe, splits German society in two: into the “The Holocaust is so over” side and the “We cannot forget what has happened” side (Winternähe, 21). Do you see it that way as well? MIRNA FUNK: Yes, I see it that way too. I did not see it quite so clearly at

first, however, while I was writing the novel. But now, having published the novel and having spent two years grappling with the topic, I can say with certainty that there are these two sides: a side that can very emphatically feel the pain of the Holocaust, and a side that has no emotional access to it at all. During the past twelve months, I have seen that there are major differences between generations regarding this topic. Interestingly, those over sixty are much, much more empathetic, which I did not expect. I thought that the older people would be more defensive, because they were so close to it—but they are not that way at all. They are the ones who can actually handle the novel.

KG/AM: Perhaps this is because their closer proximity to the Holocaust makes them feel as though it remains an important topic?

MF: Yes, it's almost as though they think to themselves: “Well, she's right… .” I cannot explain why this is so, I can just empirically say that the older readers handle the novel much better, that they are much more able to communicate with me.

KG/AM: What function does literary writing have for you? Do you see writing against forgetting as one of the roles of your texts? Is writing a form of remembrance for you?

MF: I think so. It reminded me of the many forms of remembrance, and I think that literature can do that, yes, that it indeed should do that. I just wrote an essay about how biography can help us get away from this narcissistic writing. Because the biographical is always already political.

“ THE INABILITY TO LOVE” is an allusion to Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich’s groundbreaking study of 1967, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (English, 1975, The Inability to Mourn). The Mitscherlichs’ innovative psychoanalytical approach to explaining German attitudes and behavior after the Second World War is still significant to understanding how and why transferred trauma affects contemporary Germans despite ongoing public Holocaust memorial culture. According to the Mitscherlichs, the Germans’ over-identification with Adolf Hitler and enthusiastic support of National Socialism resulted, after the fall of the Third Reich, in an intense defense against guilt, shame, and anxiety, which in turn led to the absence of mourning and perpetual melancholia. In accordance with this early attempt to explain the results of transgenerational guilt and shame, Vamik Volkan recently contended that traumatic memories cannot be handed down intergenerationally; what is instead “deposited” to the next generation are “the scarred self-images of the parents who have been unable to mourn the damage done to their individual and group selves.” Consequently, today, we deal with “children’s reactions to parents.” A. Dirk Moses has emphasized that such reactions can be broken down into two separate groups of German identities: the “non-German” Germans who deny their unbearable past, and the “German” Germans who use displacement strategies to make their national past bearable and affirmable.

While historians and sociologists, especially in contemporary antisemitism studies, often regard this nexus of transgenerational guilt among Germans as an “either/or” paradigm, and much of the debate on contemporary antisemitism in Germany seems to follow this dualistic pattern, my literary analysis explores the tensions between these two extremes.