The grandmother in recent Austrian literature: Peter Henisch, Eine sehr kleine Frau (2007) and Melitta Breznik, Das Umstellformat (2002)

Abstract

In this paper I explore two examples of ‘Grossmütterliteratur’: Peter Henisch’s novel Eine sehr kleine Frau (2007), and Melitta Breznik's Das Umstellformat (2002). Both authors have also written earlier novels, Henisch's Die kleine Figur meines Vaters (1980) and Breznik's debut novel Nachtdienst (1995) which provide a starting point for comparison of third-generation family novels centred on the narrator's grandmother with the earlier genre of Väterliteratur. Henisch's Eine sehr kleine Frau tells of the secrecy surrounding the grandmother's Jewish descent, maintained also long after the end of the war; Breznik centres on the fate of the narrator's grandmother who was murdered in the Nazi euthanasia programme. These texts exemplify an emergent trend which takes into account the ever-growing distance from the Nazi period and both present the grandmothers not as victims, but as powerful figures whom the narrators bring back into memory by uncovering family secrets and revealing truth