Befreiung aus den Fesseln der Vergangenheit: Ausgewaehlte Romane von Anja Lundholm (German text)

As a young woman coming to maturity in the Third Reich, the novelist Anja Lundholm experienced two different kinds of hell, first as the daughter of a domineering, deceitful and abusive father, and then as a concentration camp inmate. In an examination of the seven of her fourteen novels based on her life between 1932 and 1946 I attempt to show that these must be viewed not only as a portrayal of the father-daughter relationship in the private world of the home but also in relation to the political history of Germany at the time. The father-figure represents the totalitarian dictatorship, the daughter its victims.; The seven novels examined are: Well-Ordered Circumstances (1983) [Geordnete Verhältnisse: childhood memories], Half And Half (1966) [Halb und Halb: experiences of being the only child of a Christian father and a Jewish mother], Those Days In Rome (1982) [Jene Tage in Rom: life as a resistance fighter in Italy], In The Net (1991) [ Im Netz: incarceration in Innsbruck], Hells' Gate (1988) [Das Höllentor: surviving Ravensbrück concentration camp], At Dawn (1970) [Im Morgengrauen] and The Utmost Limit (1988) [Die äußerste Grenze: surviving after Ravensbrück]. In addition to these, I examine An Honorable Citizen (1994) [Ein ehrenhafter Bürger; published 1972 as Der Grüne], which is an essential connecting link to Well-Ordered Circumstances , because one particular childhood memory in the earlier book, the protagonist's relationship with her father, is pointedly revisited this time from the daughter's perspective after the father's death in 1961.; My dissertation is divided into three parts. Part one commences with a psychoanalytical introduction to father-daughter relationships and then attempts a detailed analysis of Lundholm's father figures as representatives of a patriarchal society brutally oblivious of a daughter's emotional needs. Part two gives an historical survey of the position of the woman and the mother in Nazi Germany and then treats the mother-daughter relationship, complicated here by the fact that as Jews, the mother-figures of the author are outsiders. Part three relates psychoanalytical and sociological identity theories to the personality development of the various protagonists representing the author and draws upon women's studies for clarification and support.; Anja Lundholm's autobiographical novels are consciously geared to the female reader, who is challenged to come to grips with the gruesome realities of the Third Reich and to make the discovery that the fate of the protagonists depicted in them could very well have been her own.