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© 2020 by Lina Jakob
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Meinen Eltern, in Liebe und Dankbarkeit
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1. Between “Mastering” and “Silencing” the Past: Public Commemorations of World War II
2. “Why Do You Have to Dig Around in the Past?”: Conversations about World War II in German Families
3. Better “Sick” Than “Strange”: The Kriegsenkel Movement and the Desire to Legitimize Suffering
4. “Hooray, I Am a Kriegsenkel!”: Suffering and Liberation in the Age of Therapy
5. The Invisible Wounds of War: Kriegsenkel Accounts of Transgenerational Transmission
6. The Losses and the Shame of War: Absence in Kriegsenkel Narratives
Appendix: Interview Structure and Sample Questions
Bibliography
Index
I HAD AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT of support in researching and writing this book. I am incredibly grateful in particular to the following:
To all my German Kriegsenkel interview partners for spending time with me and for trusting me with your stories. I hope I did them justice.
To the anthropologists at the Australian National University, in particular to Francesca Merlan for her unwavering enthusiasm and intellectual support from the very first to the very last minute, and to Ana Dragojlovic and Carly Schuster for taking the time to comment on my work.
To Jennika Baines and Allison Chaplin from Indiana University Press for their encouragement and expert guidance through the publication process, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their kind and constructive comments, which greatly helped to improve the final manuscript.
To Ben Hillman for convincing me that giving up a steady job to pursue a PhD was a good idea, and to Lee-Anne Henfry, Soraya, and Lucia for distracting me with pedicures and Peppa Pig stories when I desperately needed a break.
To my meditation friends Catherine Sinclair, Wilhelmina von Buellen, Karen O’Connell, and Anne Beyers for reminding me that there was a higher inspiration behind my quest; and to Eva-Marie Matuschka and Verena Flück for faithfully cheering me on from a distance.
To Louisa Cass for proofreading my draft thesis and for caring enough to challenge some of my views.
To my parents, Katrin and Richard Jakob, and my brothers, Jens and Lars, for sharing this journey with love, curiosity, and interest; and my sister Micha, for making this time into so much more of an adventure than I could ever have imagined.
To my husband, Luigi Tomba, for the encouragement, patience, and enormous emotional, financial, and practical support, and for taking me out for peppermint tea to reassure me that all my ups and downs were “perfectly normal” for an insecure scholar; to Jack, the cat, for keeping me company on lonely winter days; and to Tom Cliff, Lina Tan, and later Abraham for looking after Jack—and us.
Lastly, to my grandparents, Hedwig and Sigismund Jakob and Hilde and Josef Schaefer, for inspiring me to start this quest with your stories as much as with your silences and secrets. Grandpa Jupp, I know you would have loved to talk to me about my research over a glass of grappa—or two.
GRANDPA JUPP AND THE BLIND SPOTS IN THE FAMILY HISTORY
On April 25, 2011, I stumbled into the Anzac parade in Sydney, the annual commemoration for Australian and New Zealand soldiers who served their country in wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations since World War I.1 It was not something I had ever considered watching before, not even after becoming an Australian citizen in 2007. There they were, hundreds of veterans of all the recent and not so recent wars Australia had participated in, proudly marching past a cheering crowd. They were mostly men, of all ages, some in uniforms, their chests decorated with medals, grouped behind the banner of their respective army units. The younger ones had recently returned from assignments in Iraq or Afghanistan. The older ones, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam war veterans, were on crutches or in wheelchairs pushed along by their families, still smiling and shaking hands all around. There were groups of army nurses on vans waving at the spectators, and classes of schoolchildren playing the national anthem with brass instruments and bagpipes, enticing the crowd to sing along. Witnessing this celebration of patriotism and war, I felt extremely uncomfortable. In my mind I cannot associate war with anything other than senseless violence, death, and destruction. How could this be such a cheerful event? What struck me the most were the young people—the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of veterans—who took part in the parade. Many of them were carrying photos and wearing the medals of their ancestors, their youthful faces lit up with pride. I could not help but wonder what it would have been like for me, as a little girl in Germany, to proudly march in a parade commemorating World War II, carrying a photo of my grandfather in the uniform of the German Wehrmacht, my chest decorated with the Iron Cross Second Class he received in 1941 for personal bravery in the battle against the Soviet Union. As for many Germans of my generation, for me this is inconceivable. There were no parades, of course. If I had walked the streets like that in the city where