Urban Experience in the Third Reich: A Topopoetic Analysis of German-Jewish Autobiographical Literature from Breslau

This research project aims to contribute to the understanding of the representation of the German-Jewish urban experience in life writing from Breslau during the Third Reich, on a contextual and a textual level. The relation between 'Aryan' and 'Jew' in the Third Reich was structured in, and through, space. Breslau's urban space is therefore neither simply a negative constraint nor merely a passive surface onto which Nazi anti-Semitism in the city is mapped. As will be shown in this research project, spatial form and spatial strategy were an active element of segregation and destruction. Urban space should therefore be regarded as more than a social given, it is, within the context of persecution, a narrative construction in Jewish writing that incites to imaginative figurations of alternative, resisting spaces. Thus, one needs to take into account that mental processes are constructed through space, which is articulated in written and spoken language. Accordingly, informed by insights from geocriticism (Westphal), the literary analysis of the representation of German-Jewish heterotopias will shed new light on the experience of racialized segregation and the textual specificity of Jewish life writing during National Socialism.

Keywords:HOLOCAUST, GERMAN-JEWISH LITERATURE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, JEWISH STUDIES

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies