Suicide in the German novel, 1945-1989

Abstract

This dissertation examines the theme of suicide in German novels published between 1945 and 1989.

Within the period defined, novels have been divided into three groups: novels published between 1945 and 1949, novels of the German Democratic Republic, and novels of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In order to facilitate discussion of the psycho-social phenomenon of suicide in the literary context, this study makes use of suicidologist Edwin Shneidman's "common characteristics of suicide" as contained in his work Definition of Suicide (1985). Each work is further examined in terms of its meaning within the literary context, and for this the study relies on the concepts of instrumental and expressive meaning as outlined in David Wood's essay "Suicide as Instrument and Expression." The parameters of the topic and an explanation of the concepts to be discussed are contained in the introduction.

Chapter 2 examines Theodor Plievier's Stalingrad and Hans Fallada's Jeder stirby fur sich allein. An examination of the novels reveals the connection of suicide in these early works to the horrors of Nazism, thereby singling out socio-political conditions as the motivating factor for suicide.

In Chapter 3, attention is focussed on four novels of the GDR: Jurek Becker's Jakob der Lugner, Ulrich Plenzdorf's Die neuen Leiden des jungen W., Christa Wolf's Kein Ort. Nirgends, and Christoph Hein's Horns Ende. The examination reveals suicide as a representation of the consequence of conflict between the individual and socialism.

The final chapter examines Walter Jen's Nein. Die Welt der Angeklagten, Wolfgang Koeppen's Das Treibhaus, Gert Heidenreich's Der Ausstieg, and Siegfried Sommer's Und keiner weint mir nach. In these novels the motication for suicide is again associated with the moral burden of Germany's past, a fact which distinguishes this depiction of suicide from that of the GDR.

The role of the intellectual in the depiction of suicide is also a recurrent theme in the novels. Whether naive and unsophisticated, as in the cases of Edgar Wibeau and Leonhard Knie, or with the learned perceptiveness of characters such as Walter Sturm, Heinrich Keetenheuve or Heinrich Bode, the protagonists demonstrate an acute awareness and sensitivity to their surroundings which ultimately prove inimical to life.

This study establishes a connection between the literary depiction of suicide and socio-political conditions of the period examined, and represents the first time that such a study has been done for this period. The theme of suicide is used by authors as an expressive tool to signify the desire for egression resulting from guilt and the conflict between individual and state.