Community and Genre: Autobiographical Rememberings of Stasi Oppression

Abstract

When an individual writes about his or her life, he or she produces a narrative that offers not only an insight into broader historical processes, but also a particularly subjective interpretation of these events and their impact on the individual and the group. Among efforts to come to terms with the past, life writing offers the reader a sense of authenticity that is difficult to replicate in other genres. Where these narratives are produced by the victims of state violence, they gain the status of testimony; these individuals may be viewed as eyewitnesses (‘Zeitzeugen’), whose past suffering serves to legitimate both their memories and their right to be heard. As Christian Heuer (2010: 76) argues, particularly in the case of traumatic histories, the narration of experience in ego-documents seems to become proof of the authenticity of the biography: ‘These documents are thereby more than simply narrated life history. They appear as documents of fact.’²

This research was carried out as part of the project ‘Reconstructing the Stasi’, generously supported by The Leverhulme Trust.