Martin Modlinger (University of Cambridge)
'You can't change names and
feel the same': Other people's pain in W.
G. Sebald's Austerlitz
You can't change names and feel the same: We find this sentence in a set of notes that W. G. Sebald hastily scribbled down in preparation for his Austerlitz manuscript, in a set of notes that describe the life of Susi Bechhöfer. Bechhöfer had come to England on one of the Kindertransports from Nazi Germany in the wake of WWII, this part of her past, however, had been withheld from her by her foster parents, leaving her with memories that could not be accounted for and propelling her towards a late but profound identity crisis when she discovers her real name and history as a Jewish child whose mother was murdered in Auschwitz.
This true story of childhood in wartime Germany and Britain, of searching for identity through childhood memories later in life, this reflection on pain, trauma, and individual and collective memory, all this is taken up in W. G. Sebald's fictional account of Jaques Austerlitz, who, in the lauded novel of the same title, experiences a very similar fate and so becomes the focus of even more general mediations on the nature of memory, history, and pain.
My talk therefore shall track Sebald's use of Bechhöfer's
traumatic story and other instances of other people's pain, and thereby explore
the evolution of history into narrative and the devolution of fact into
fiction. Building on the texts Sebald read in preparation for his manuscript
and the notes and marginalia in his personal library (at the Literaturarchiv
Marbach), I will argue that for Sebald the representation of history and pain
is a question of narrative ethics which demands continual returns to the places
of trauma. It is the relationship between story and history, between other
people's pain and narrative, so I will argue, that is ultimately at the heart
of Sebald's short note on Bechhöfer and Austerlitz: You can't change names and
feel the same.
Martin Modlinger studied English and History as well as Ethics of Textual Cultures in Munich, Perth, and Erlangen-Nuremberg. His interests lie in German and English literature, especially Holocaust literature, and the history of terror and catastrophe.
He is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of German at the University of Cambridge and writing his thesis on the history and literature of the Terezín Ghetto.
