Expulsions des Allemands des Sudètes : expressions d'une identité atrophiée dans la littérature : 'L'Heure étoilée du meurtrier' de Pavel Kohout, 'Les Inachevés' de Reinhard Jirgl

摘要

The theme of my research is identity, the transmission of History into a family and the social deconstruction of the German expellees after World War II. The expulsion of the Sudeten Germans is the historical frame in which the novels of Reinhard Jirgl and Pavel Kohout evolve. The questions that are explored in this doctoral thesis are: How can literature be the medium of their suffering? Which part did the lost homeland play on their identity and how could they pass on the History to their children or grand-children without imprisoning them in a jail of silence? Pavel Kohout’s novel, Sternstunde der Mörder, embodies the interrogations of the allied forces in 1945: are German and Czech people able to live side by side? The expulsions, the violence and the loss of the homeland gave birth to a trauma that still isn’t healed. The Rosenbach family in Reinhard Jirgl’s novel Die Unvollendenten are the victims of those expulsions and pass their trauma on to the grandchild, sick of a wound that isn’t his own. The suffering of this generation is still present in today’s Germany: can literature be part of the healing process?