Published : 2024-12-31

Emotions Written in Files. On the Post-Totalitarian Search for Memory in Jürgen Fuchs’ Magdalena

Abstract

Jürgen Fuchs (1950-1999) was one of the few East German-born writers who engaged so ruthlessly with taboo subjects and the mechanisms of a totalitarian state. His writing, saturated with experience, takes the reader on a harrowing journey into the times of the second German dictatorship and exposes the confrontation with a criminal system. In his final book Magdalena (1998), Fuchs addresses several important questions for the German post-unification reality: How can the legacy of another dictatorship be accounted for? Will the German people rise to the occasion this time? By ‘opening the files’, is a confrontation with truth and emotions possible? This article aims to reflect on these questions and to draw attention to the impact of the experience of dictatorship on both the biography and the aesthetics of a literary work. To unburden himself from the past, the author chooses to describe the process of seeking truth, entering the ‘landscapes of lies’ to confront the post-totalitarian reality.

Keywords:

German literature, emotions in literature, memory, opposition in the GDR, GDR Ministry of State Security (MfS), Stasi



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Kuczyński, E. (2024). Emotions Written in Files. On the Post-Totalitarian Search for Memory in Jürgen Fuchs’ Magdalena. Facta Simonidis, 17(3), 17–36. https://doi.org/10.56583/fs.2643

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Akademia Zamojska
ul. Pereca 2, 22-400 Zamość
tel. 84 638 34 44
fax 84 638 35 00
e-mail: rektorat@akademiazamojska.edu.pl
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