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ItemFictions of memory : Christoph Hein's pre- and post-unification literature(University of Melbourne, 2016)This thesis examines the theme of memory in six novels by the East German author Christoph Hein. It analyses three works that the author published before 1990 � Der fremde Freund (1982), Horns Ende (1985) and Der Tangospieler (1989) � and three published after the Wende � Willenbrock (2000), Landnahme (2004) and In seiner fr�hen Kindheit ein Garten (2005). In doing so, it presents a longitudinal account of Hein�s treatment of memory over the course of his career, and pays particular attention to the author�s depiction of the dynamics at work in memory politics (Ged�chtnispolitik) in GDR and unified German society.Whether in history, politics, media studies or neuropsychology, recent decades have seen rapid growth in memory studies as an area of interdisciplinary scholarship and increasingly recognised, inter alia, the importance of memory in the organisation of individual and collective life. While literary accounts of the past are not isolated from other disciplines, such as history or politics, much attention has been paid to literature�s capacity to both depict the past and offer meta-commentary on what it depicts, through illustrating the processes, media and mental structures through which individuals attempt to reconstruct their past and the social, political and metaphysical limitations of these attempts. In its approach to memory, literature and the relationship between them, this study draws upon the research of Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann on collective memory, Ansgar Nunning, Vera Nunning and Astrid Erll�s work on narratology and the memory function of literature, as described by the Erinnerungskulturen project at the University of Giesen. In the context of GDR studies, the thesis considers literature as a potential �Gegen-Erinnerung� that comments on and qualifies the official memory of the East German state according to the foundational narratives of socialism and antifascism. The opportunity to use memory theory to examine Hein�s novels is particularly enticing given the recent dearth of scholarship on the author, the most recent monograph having appeared in 2002. This lack of full-length scholarly works on Hein contrasts with the author�s own productivity in this same period, during which he has published a further four novels, often to critical acclaim. In this latter respect, Hein remains one of the few authors to have experienced success both in the GDR and after German unification. The longitudinal focus of this study contributes to existing work on Hein that examines aspects of continuity and discontinuity in his body of work across the historic rupture of German Unification. More broadly, it also contributes to studies of East German authors and public intellectuals and how they adapted to the changed publication climate and political landscape of the Federal Republic, finding new topics and audiences following the collapse of the �Leseland DDR�, in which they had occupied a prominent position on account of state censorship of the public sphere. What unites Hein�s GDR novels is that they retell the East German past through the life of the individual and concentrate on figures whose experiences under socialism were at odds with the East Germany�s institutionally-supported official memory of the past. This friction between personal and official memory is shown to have produced a number of coping strategies, where individuals either refused to discuss the past entirely or repressed personal experiences in conflict with the official memory of the state for reasons of expedience. Those unwilling or unable to do so are shown to have suffered repeated political persecution. While the Wende in 1990 posited Germany�s second �Stunde Null� of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of a new democratic order, Hein�s post-unification novels similarly focus on individuals whose experiences under capitalism challenge the ideals of democracy and the foundational narrative of the �Rechtsstaat� on which the Berlin Republic is based. His three post-unification novels examined here reveal the mixed fates for individuals under global capitalism, where the state appears to have limited ability to protect the welfare of its citizens against unemployment and transnational crime. At the same time, the state, together with a capitalist media operating under a profit imperative, is shown to have an interest and the ability to control the depiction of the past to protect its own foundational narratives, official memory and political legitimacy. In such a context, literary works such as Hein�s can reveal alternate and divergent narratives of the past that might otherwise go untold. Beyond their common interest in the potential conflict between personal and collective memory, this thesis demonstrates that Hein�s pre-and post-unification novels are also united by their awareness of the social and constructive nature of memory, its subjective limitations and ultimately its status as fiction. By revealing the dynamics that govern how individuals and collectives construct and re-construct a useable past to help them navigate the challenges of the present, and by offering alternate narratives of the past to those in power, this thesis argues that Hein�s novels are in many respects �fictions of memory�, which testify to the central place of memory in individual, social and political life.