Berlin’s Futurity in Zafer Şenocak’s Gefährliche Verwandtschaft (1998) and Marica Bodrožić’s Kirschholz und alte Gefühle (2012)

Abstract

This article traces and compares the use of Berlin as a site through which to renegotiate memories of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia in Zafer S¸enocak’s Gefährliche Verwandtschaft (1998) and Marica Bodrožic´’s Kirschholz und alte Gefühle (2012). The author argues that both novels experiment with narrative and stylistic devices, such as ellipsis and allusion, in order to leave the represented past open for present and future renegotiation to safeguard the past from becoming co-opted by identity politics. The author concludes by showing that, next to all of their similarities, the novels’ differ in their depiction of Berlin. Whereas S¸enocak’s post-Wende Berlin is ultimately still located within a Germany determined by its past, Bodrožic´’s Berlin gestures towards the city’s European present and future.