“History of Participation” or Victim Discourse: Women as Authors of War Literature

Abstract

Cordula Mahr’s examination of 70 autobiographies of German women provides insight into the “home front,” insight that till now has been neglected in male-dominated war literature, which defines war first and foremost as an experience of the front. The author concentrates on passages in autobiographies that refer to the World War II directly and takes into account only those texts that appeared before 1960. Self-images as the marred and the suffering woman with respect to war and to National Socialism dominate the descriptions. Only seven women include their own “history of participation” in their autobiographies. Mahr’s study also incites a consideration of the formal structural features of the autobiography, for example, whether the structures may potentially aid the construction of a self-portrait as victim.