'Die-Heimat, verloren - . -: 'Vertreibungsliteratur' and the Younger Generation(s)

'Vertreibungsliteratur', literature dealing with the flight and expulsion of Germans from the former eastern provinces and other settlement areas at the end of World War II, has been associated largely with writers of the 'experiencing generation', which includes authors such as Günter Grass, Siegfried Lenz, Christa Wolf, Horst Bienek and Arno Surminski. With the generation who experienced these events at the end of World War II gradually dying out, it was thought that the category of 'Vertreibungsliteratur' would likewise recede as a historical phenomenon. However, in recent years there has been a marked resurgence of interest in this topic by authors who are the children and grandchildren of the experiencing generation.This article looks at two recent novels by authors of the younger generation, and seeks to analyse how they deal with the events of 'Flucht und Vertreibung', and relate these events to the overall context of World War II and the Nazi regime. Reinhard Jirgl, born in 1953, in his novel "Die Unvollendeten" (2003) describes growing up in a Sudeten German family in East Germany, where 'Vertreibung' was a taboo. Tanya Dückers was born in (West) Berlin in 1968, and her novel "Himmelskörper" (2003) seeks to uncover the past of her grandparents, and how they had managed to escape from Danzig in the last turbulent weeks of World War II. These two novels show that even after sixty years critical discussion of these events is being continued right into the younger generation.