The Search for Memories: Concepts of Memory in Eine Art Liebe by Katharina Hacker

Abstract

This article analyses Katharina Hacker’s novel Eine Art Liebe [A Kind of Love] from the perspective of postmemory, as postulated by Marianne Hirsch. Although the interpreted work does not deal with traditional family relationships, in which the descendants have to deal with the traumas of their parents, certain narrative techniques refer to the attempts of future generations to face up to the trauma of the Holocaust. The protagonist of the novel is a young German woman who meets Moshe Fein in Israel and attempts to write down his story. Upon listening to the story of her Jewish friend, who survived the Holocaust in a French boarding school, she tries to lend credence to her narrative by quoting Moshe Fein’s notes and describing his family memorabilia and photographs.