Echoes of Silence: The Politics of Generational Memory in East Germany's Literary Intelligentsia.

This article analyzes family memoirs and novels written after German reunification by children and grandchildren of East Germany's literary founding generation, focusing on their reflections on family life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). These works portray a distinct milieu within the East German Communist elite, shaped by intersecting histories of Nazism, Jewish identity, and Communism, and marked by intense generational conflict arising from parental silence about the Nazi past and socialist present. The founding generation, largely Jewish and Communist émigrés who endured Nazi and Stalinist persecution, upheld a heroic anti-fascist narrative that often omitted traumatic experiences, prompting their descendants to question and complicate these silences. The article situates this generational dissonance within broader political and social contexts, noting parallels with the 1968 youth rebellions in Europe and highlighting how these literary works contribute to a nuanced counter-narrative to official GDR memory.