Literary testimony, transnational memories: The politics of transmission of Holocaust testimony in the German cultural field

This project is the first to work out a systematic account of how Holocaust survivors bore witness to their experience in literature written in the German language. It asks the following questions: How was a canon of German-language Holocaust testimony formed throughout the 1940s and 1950s? What impact has this hitherto unrecognised canon has had on subsequent German-language literature about the Holocaust? How and why have German-speaking literary witnesses to the Holocaust challenged this canon?

This study proposes that in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, an unacknowledged canon of Holocaust literature was formed in Germany. This project aims to create an innovative methodology, drawing on sociology as well as on close literary analysis, to account for the mechanisms that 'canonised' some writers of German-language testimonial literature about the Holocaust and, more importantly, 'excluded' others. The project looks at a series of nine case studies, selected for their exemplary status as excluded writers from the canon of Holocaust literature over the course of the period 1945-2012, and argues that the nine writers were excluded due variously to their their exile status, aesthetic practice, political affiliation and gender. It addresses the following research questions:

1. How was a canon of German-language Holocaust literature first formed in the 1950s, subsequently challenged in the 1960s and rediscovered and/or remediated in the decades that followed? What rules governed the process by which certain German-language authors had their Holocaust literature or literary testimony canonized, whereas other authors were excluded?
2. What influence has this canon had on later Holocaust literature in German, and how has it been remediated in other, German-or English-language literatures? How has this canon of German Holocaust testimony been remediated as a way to 'read' and 'come to terms with' other traumas in different, often transnational contexts?

This project is intended to benefit scholars working in German studies as well as the wider community of scholars working on Holocaust literature, trauma, testimony and cultural memory. The outcomes include a monograph, an edited volume, and two conference papers. In addition, the project will establish a network of scholars concerned with canon-formation in Holocaust literature and its remediation. The project will also establish a Holocaust Memorial Day project based both in the University of Leeds and the wider Leeds community. It will establish links with the University of the Free State in South Africa also, sharing insights into the role of literature and the literary canon in mediating testimony and trauma in post-Apartheid South Africa. It is planned to establish contact both with the Institute for Studies in Race, Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State, and with the Holocaust and Genocide Foundation in South Africa, to establish an ongoing dialogue between UK and South African Holocaust researchers and educators.

I have some experience in building links in knowledge exchange with local partners in Leeds. Most notably, I have successfully bid for internal Leeds funding for an impact project building links to publishers putting out German literature in translation, local translators and German-language writers. This has led to the foundation of a new initiative, 'International Writers at Leeds', a partnership between the University of Leeds and the Leeds Central Library. I have also contributed talks to local community groups (Anglo-German Societies).

Support for all of my impact activities will be provided by the Arts Engaged transformation fund, underwritten with £850k from the University of Leeds. As part of this project, I intend to establish an annual Leeds University Holocaust Remembrance Day event, bringing together voices from the Leeds University Library Liddell collection of wartime testimony, Holocaust literary testimony, and local Leeds-based community writing initiatives (already started by colleagues at the University of Leeds, particularly Dr. Raphael Hallett). The event will provide a space and resources for local community writing initiatives to reflect on the ongoing connections between Holocaust testimony, the war narratives contained in the Liddell collection.

A second set of beneficiaries will be the educators and clients of the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation. In collaboration with Dr. Cilliers van den Berg of the University of the Free State of South Africa, I am aiming to build a partnership with this institution. I will be travelling to South Africa in 2013 in the context of an international network on post-trauma cultural studies, and aim to build on his existing contacts with the Foundation to establish a knowledge exchange partnership. I envisage that my research into Holocaust literature and its remediation will enable me to bring insights to the Foundation as to how its work engages with literary and testimonial texts, and how these can be challenged and remediated in the post-Apartheid context of South Africa. At the same time, I hope to learn from the Foundation how they have used testimonial literature in a public educational context. Between 2013 and 2015, I thus hope to build a lasting partnership that will enable researcher mobility and knowledge exchange between Leeds and South Africa.