Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? JENNIFER REDMANN K ALAMAZOO C OLLEGE When the anonymous diary Eine Frau in Berlin. Tagebuch-Aufzeichnungen vom 20. April bis 22. Juni 1945 (2003) was published by the Eichborn publishing house as part of Hans-Magnus Enzensberger’s series «Die Andere Bibliothek,» it met with immediate critical acclaim. «Eine Frau in Berlin ist ein unglaubliches Buch,» writes Renée Zucker in Die Tageszeitung. «Wer das Alphabet gelernt hat, darf und muss es jetzt lesen! » («Es klingt»). A critic for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung agrees: «Es ist müßig, dieses ungeheuerliche Buch mit anderen Aufzeichnungen jener Zeit […] zu vergleichen: Es ist einzigartig» (Lovenberg, «Wenn weiter»). A quote from Der Spiegel reprinted on the cover of the paperback edition of the book pronounces it «ein menschlich berührendes und literarisch gewichtiges Dokument» (Kronsbein 182). The book held a spot on the Spiegel bestseller list for a number of months, and the film version of the diary, directed by Max Färberböck and starring Nina Hoss, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2008, followed by an October 2008 release in Germany. In spite of glowing reviews, however, Eine Frau in Berlin has sparked controversy since its publication in 2003. In this essay, I will begin by tracing the lines of debate over the authorship and authenticity of the diary. The questions of when, why, and by whom the diary was written have a bearing on the politics of memory in Germany today, given that a major theme of the book is the rape of German women by Russian soldiers. However, as I will discuss in the second half of the essay, regardless of the status of Eine Frau in Berlin as a historical document, when read as an autobiographical text, the diary reveals much about the power of language to create selves in response and in resistance to violence, chaos, and trauma. The anonymous author of the diary, a well-educated woman in her thirties who had worked as a journalist, recorded her experiences in three notebooks and on various bits of paper during and after the 1945 Battle of Berlin. The first entry, dated April 20, 1945, describes the diarist’s living situation just prior to the Battle of Berlin. She has taken up residence in the attic apartment of a former colleague. Her days consist of scraping together her meals and her evenings of waiting out bombing raids with other residents in the cellar of 194 Jennifer Redmann her building. Eventually, Berlin falls to the Russians, and on April 27, 1945, a day she terms «Tag der Katastrophe» (53), 1 enemy soldiers arrive in the cellar. The diarist, who knows a little Russian, convinces the soldiers to leave, but when she goes out into the corridor to check whether they have indeed gone, two of them grab her. «Ich schreie, schreie…» she writes in the diary. «Hinter mir klappt dumpf die Kellertür zu» (62). Abandoned by her neighbors, she is raped by both soldiers. This event marks the beginning of a horrific period for all female residents of Berlin, as thousands are raped repeatedly, anywhere, at any time. Realizing that she needs a protector, the diarist sets out to tame one of the «wolves,» as she calls them, «damit er mir den Rest des Rudels fernhalte» (96). She takes up with a Russian major who is educated and gentle. More important, he provides the whole building with luxury food items and, to a certain degree, keeps the other soldiers at bay. Over the course of the next weeks, the diarist struggles to bring normalcy to her life in ruined and occupied Berlin. The last entry of the diary, dated Saturday, June 16 to Friday, June 22, 1945, opens with the lines «Nichts mehr notiert. Und ich werde nichts mehr aufschreiben, die Zeit ist vorbei» (278). The diarist recounts the return of her fiancé Gerd from the Eastern front, including her disappointment over the fact that he is so alien to her. After she is unable to summon any passion for him, she notes laconically, «Bin erst mal für den Mann verdorben» (279). She however does give him her diary to read in the hope that he might understand what she has suffered. He asks her what the abbreviation «Schdg.» in the diary stands for. «Ich mußte lachen,» she writes. «‹Na, doch natürlich Schändung.› Er sah mich an, als ob ich verrückt sei, sagte nichts mehr» (281). The next day he is gone. On the final page of the diary, the author wonders whether he will come back, but in any case, she is determined to carry on, declaring: «Ich weiß nur, dass ich überleben will - ganz gegen Sinn und Verstand, einfach wie ein Tier» (283). Immediately after concluding the diary, which was initially written mostly in shorthand and her own personal code, the diarist typed the entries for «einen Menschen, der ihr nahestand» (5), probably revising and adding to them as she did so. A few years later, her friend Kurt W. Marek read the 121-page typescript and convinced her to publish it. Marek wrote the afterword to the first edition, which appeared in English translation in the United States in 1954. A British edition followed in 1955, and the diary was soon translated into Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, Italian, Japanese, French, Spanish, and Finnish. In 1959, the Swiss publisher Kossodo finally released the book in German, but it received little notice. After photocopies of the 1959 edition circulated among feminist circles in the 1980s, the author agreed to allow Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 195 publication of a new German edition - but only after her death and on condition that her anonymity be maintained. She died in 2001, which led to the 2003 publication of the diary in a new edition. In 2005, a new English translation of the diary by Philip Boehm, titled A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in a Conquered City, generated a great deal of positive critical attention in the English-speaking world. Joseph Kanon, writing in the New York Times, echoes German critics in declaring the diary «one of the most important documents to emerge from World War II.» Ursula Hegi, in a Washington Post review, agrees. «A Woman in Berlin is an amazing and essential book,» she asserts. «[I]t is so deeply personal that it becomes universal, evoking not only the rapes of countless German women in 1945 but also the rape of every anonymous woman throughout war history - the notion of women as booty.» Although Hegi remarks positively on the diarist’s desire for anonymity, certainly many might wonder why she refused to be named, even decades after the end of the war. In response, the 2003 edition opens with an anonymous foreword that reads, in part, [d]aß die Schreiberin anonym zu bleiben wünscht, ist wohl jedem Leser begreiflich. Ihre Person ist ohnehin belanglos, da hier kein interessanter Einzelfall geschildert wird, sondern ein graues Massenschicksal ungezählter Frauen. Ohne ihre Aussage wäre die Chronik unserer Zeit, die bisher fast ausschließlich von Männern geschrieben wurde, einseitig und unvollständig. (5-6) This statement on the author’s choice to remain anonymous prompts a number of key questions that arise when a personal diary becomes a public record of a historic moment. Who is authorized to speak for all? Can a diarist represent the experience of anyone beyond herself? Does a diary count as history when the «facts» it contains cannot be verified because the diarist’s identity is unknown? These questions become even more pressing - and more complicated - when the diary’s subject matter is rape and the diarist is a rape victim. Today, the trauma suffered by rape victims is often considered shameful and kept hidden from the world, but the massive scale of the rapes committed by Russian soldiers in the weeks following the fall of Berlin in April 1945 transformed rape into an experience shared by thousands of women. 2 In a time of crisis, rape became a new kind of public event, as the diarist herself notes when discussing the rape of a young acquaintance: Eines ist klar: Wäre an dem Mädel irgendwann in Friedenszeiten durch einen herumstreunenden Kerl die Notzucht verübt worden, wäre hinterher das übliche Friedensbrimborium von Anzeige, Protokoll, Vernehmung, ja von Verhaftung und Gegenüberstellung, Zeitungsbericht und Nachbarngetue gewesen - das Mädel hät- 196 Jennifer Redmann te anders reagiert, hätte einen anderen Schock davongetragen. Hier aber handelt es sich um ein Kollektiv-Erlebnis vorausgewußt, viele Male vorausbefürchtet, um etwas, das den Frauen links und rechts und nebenan zustieß, das gewissermaßen dazugehörte. Diese kollektive Massenform der Vergewaltigung wird auch kollektiv überwunden werden. Jede hilft jeder, indem sie darüber spricht, sich Luft macht, der anderen Gelegenheit gibt, sich Luft zu machen, das Erlittene auszuspeien. (164-65) As in the above passage, the diarist traces over the course of her journal entries a process in which old attitudes about rape were transformed once Berlin fell. «Was heißt Schändung? » she writes on May 1, four days after the Russians’ arrival in her neighborhood. «Als ich das Wort zum ersten Mal laut aussprach, Freitag abend im Keller, lief es mir eisig den Rücken herunter. Jetzt kann ich es schon denken, schon hinschreiben mit kalter Hand, ich spreche es vor mich hin, um mich an die Laute zu gewöhnen» (73). Rape carries no shame for women; instead, it becomes the first question they ask, even when meeting for the first time - it is not if, but how often they had been raped (153, 178). The stress endured by women in occupied Berlin leads to new topics of conversation in the once-proper «Damenkränzchen.» «Bloß Kaffee und Kuchen fehlten, ich hatte nichts anzubieten,» writes the diarist. «Trotzdem waren wir alle drei recht lustig, übertrafen einander in puncto Schändungshumor» (258). The idea that women could joke about being raped is certainly disorienting for contemporary readers; given today’s view of rape, we would assume that talking about the rapes was taboo for German women in 1945. The diary, however, reveals that not only did women discuss the rapes, they helped and protected each other from the aggressors. Historian Atina Grossman confirms this, noting that in the months following the fall of Berlin, rape was part of the public discourse, as were the means of dealing with any resulting pregnancies. «Rape was experienced as a collective event in a situation of general crisis,» Grossman explains. «While frightful and horrific, it seemed to provoke no guilt; if anything it confirmed their expectations and reinforced preexisting convictions of cultural superiority» (53). Indeed, there are a number of instances in the diary where the author echoes Nazi propaganda in referring to the Russians as «Primitivlinge» (77), a people «auf einer niedrigeren Entwicklungsstufe, als Volk jünger, noch näher ihren Ursprüngen als wir» (90). 3 Only in the 1950s, with the return of German men from prison camps, did rape become a shameful subject, reminding men of their own fall from the heights of racist pride to the depths of defeat. The diarist herself views the few men on the streets of Berlin in 1945 as poor, demasculinized creatures, «so gar keine Männer mehr. Man kann sie nur bemitleiden. Man erhofft oder er- Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 197 wartet auch gar nichts mehr von ihnen. Schon jetzt wirken sie geschlagen und gefangen» (27). It is no wonder, then, that the first German-language edition of the diary received so little attention; at that time, Germans did not want to think about the dark past, only their bright future fueled by the economic miracle. In his foreword to the new English translation of the diary, Enzensberger notes that in 1959, German readers were obviously not ready to face some uncomfortable truths, and the book was met with either hostility or silence. One of the few critics who reviewed it complained about the author’s «shameless immortality.» German women were not supposed to talk about the reality of rape; and German men preferred not to be seen as impotent onlookers when the Russians claimed their spoils of war. (Foreword xi) Because it thematizes the rapes of German women in the aftermath of the Second World War, any critical discussion of Eine Frau in Berlin necessarily invokes debates among historians over the status of Germans as victims of National Socialism. As Grossman explains, when dealing with historical discussions of the mass rapes, one finds two highly developed discourses that continually intersect and block each other. […] On the one hand, the feminist discourse on rape, its representation and construction, while not trusting every single story, validates and publicizes the voices of women who speak of sexual violation, and tries to integrate rape into its analysis of «normal» heterosexual relations. On the other hand, the historical discourse on Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) tends to distrust any narrative that might support postwar Germans’ self-perception as victims insofar as it might participate in a dangerous revival of German nationalism, whitewash the Nazi past, and normalize a genocidal war. (45) Here Grossmann describes the feminist discourse on which the positive critical attention bestowed on Eine Frau in Berlin in Germany and abroad frequently draws. In contrast, controversy over the diary’s authorship and authenticity clearly stems from the historical discourse that takes a skeptical view of any account of German victimhood. Thus in a sense, the negative reception of Eine Frau in Berlin is but one more entry in the series of recent public debates over works that portray Germans as victims, foremost among them Jörg Friedrich’s Der Brand (2002) and Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film Der Untergang (2004). In addition, I would argue that one reason for the discomfort experienced by some readers of Eine Frau in Berlin lies in the shifting boundaries between public and private that govern both the diary as a text and the context of its reception. The diarist records numerous public acts of rape, and yet because she also describes her own very private experiences as a rape victim, readers are 198 Jennifer Redmann told that her identity must be shielded from the public, as would be the case in the press coverage of any rape committed today. «Selbst die ‹Bild›-Zeitung,» asserts Enzensberger in an interview with Der Spiegel, «würde vermutlich das Gesicht einer vergewaltigten Frau unkenntlich machen» (147). Yet, this presents the question whether readers of a historical account should not be allowed to interpret two months of an author’s life within the context of her entire biography. Enzensberger’s interview with Der Spiegel came in response to an article published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung in September 2003 following the release of the Eichborn edition of the diary in the spring of that year. In a piece titled «Wenn Männer Weltgeschichte spielen, haben Frauen stumme Rollen,» journalist Jens Bisky reveals the name and biography of the diary’s author and uses that information to call the diary’s authorship and its historical authenticity into question. According to Bisky, the probable author of the diary was an educated woman in her thirties named Marta Hillers. Hillers was born in 1911 in Krefeld. After completing her education in 1930 (which included five years at a Realgymnasium), Hillers worked for a short time as a secretary. In the early 1930s, she traveled extensively through eastern and southern Europe as a photographer and spent a year studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. In the summer of 1934, Hillers moved to Berlin, where she worked as a freelance journalist, living for a time with her cousin Hans Wolfgang Hillers, the author of several screenplays for Nazi propaganda films. Marta Hillers was friends with Kurt Marek, who wrote the afterword to the original English edition of A Woman in Berlin, and both were members of the Reichsverband Deutscher Schriftsteller. In summarizing Hillers’ career during the Third Reich, Bisky describes her as a «Kleinpropagandistin» for the Nazis. In 1935, Hillers celebrated National Socialist ideals in a piece she co-wrote for the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger called «Heimat Landstraße. Zwei Mädel mit Fernfahren unterwegs.» During the war she wrote brochures and pamphlets for the Verlag der Deutschen Arbeiterfront and the NS-Lehrerbund. She was a member of the youth group connected to the NS-Frauenschaft but was never a party member. After the war, she wrote for youth magazines, including the Illustrierte Jugendzeitschrift, whose goal was the reeducation of German youth. In the 1950s, Hillers married a Swiss man and moved to Switzerland, where she lived until her death in 2001. In describing the education and career of the diary’s probable author, Bisky questions the role played by Kurt Marek in bringing Eine Frau in Berlin to a public readership. In Marek’s afterword to the first edition of the diary (which is reprinted in the new version of the text), Marek admits that it took him over Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 199 five years to convince the author to allow it to be published. In his article, however, Bisky questions whether Marek might have played a more active role in preparing the manuscript for publication, or perhaps even written it himself. «Wer hat eine ‹Frau in Berlin› geschrieben, dieses Buch, das Marta Hillers offenkundig viel verdankt? Es handelt sich um ein literarisches Sachbuch, herausgegeben von dem Autor, der das Genre des literarischen Sachbuchs in Deutschland durchgesetzt hat.» Here Bisky is referring to Marek’s fictionalized account of the heroic deeds of the Wehrmacht, Wir hielten Narvik (1941), which was based on actual soldiers’ diaries. Bisky sees further evidence for the fictionalized nature of Eine Frau in Berlin in its language, such as the opening lines of the text, which he describes as «drehbuchreif»: «Ja, der Krieg rollt auf Berlin zu. Was gestern noch fernes Murren war, ist heute Dauergetrommel. Man atmet Geschützlärm ein» (9). 4 In casting doubt on the authorship and origins of the diary, Bisky criticizes the editorial practices of Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who, citing a desire to maintain the diarist’s anonymity, has not allowed public access to the original diary or the typed manuscript, making it impossible for scholars to verify the diary’s authenticity. In his article, Bisky points to a number of minor differences between the 1959 and 2003 editions of the diary which lead him to a provocative series of questions: «Wo ist das Typoskript? Wer hat in ihm rumgestrichen? Marta Hillers vor ihrem Tod? Ein Eichborn-Mitarbeiter? Was ist dokumentarisch belegt an diesem Dokument? » The mere fact that these questions are open leads Bisky to reject the diary completely, claiming it has no value as a record of the past. «‹Eine Frau in Berlin,›» he writes, «will als zeithistorisches Dokument gelesen werden, zwingt uns, dies auf Treu und Glauben zu tun, verlangt, dass wird [sic] die Aura des Authentischen für den Beweis der Echtheit nehmen. Verlag und Herausgeber tun alles, uns in dieser Lesehaltung zu belassen. Dabei ist das Buch als zeithistorisches Dokument wertlos.» 5 In his interview with Der Spiegel, Enzensberger dismisses Jens Bisky’s attempts to call the diary into question, stating: «Ich glaube kaum, dass es Bisky gelingen wird, mit seinen Enthüllungen und Verdächtigungen einer Autorin zu schaden, deren Mut ich ebenso bewundere wie ihren Stil» (147). Nevertheless, extensive press coverage of the controversy led Kurt Marek’s widow Hannelore Marek (who holds the rights to the diary) to invite the late Walter Kempowski, author and noted expert on the diary genre, to view the original diary and verify its status as an historical document. In a two-page report (published in the FAZ in January, 2004), Kempowski confirmed the diary’s authenticity. «Die von mir eingesehenen drei Originalhefte,» Kempowski writes, «tragen alle Merkmale des Authentischen: verschiedenartiges Schreib- 200 Jennifer Redmann gerät - zum überwiegenden Teil Tinte, zum Teil Bleistift, zum Teil Rotstift - und die immer wieder vom Ordentlichen ins Flüchtige übergehende Schrift zeigen alle Anzeichen von Spontaneität.» After comparing the handwritten notebooks to the diarist’s 121-page typed manuscript, however, Kempowski noted that not only did the diarist change some names and places, «der Text [wurde] aus dem gerade zu Ende gegangenen Erleben heraus ‹erfüllt.›» Kempowski defends this «filling out» of the original text by quoting Ernst Jünger: «Der Tee muß aufgegossen werden, sonst kann man ihn nicht trinken.» Still, Kempowski admits that it may have been preferable had «der Verlag sich mit der Veröffentlichung des Schreibhefttagebuchs begnügt,» although he acknowledges that the diarist’s desire to maintain her anonymity had precluded that possibility. The press reaction to Kempowski’s letter proved mixed. The FAZ saw in Kempowski’s analysis clear, unequivocal answers to Bisky’s questions: «Wer hat darin herumgestrichen? » Niemand hat in den Aufzeichnungen herumgestrichen. Die Verfasserin hat ihre Korrekturen in einem Exemplar der deutschsprachigen Ausgabe von 1959 vermerkt. Es handelt sich dabei zumeist um Verbesserungen von Orthographie und Grammatik sowie minimale stilistische Korrekturen. Das beantwortet auch Biskys nächste Frage: ‹Drei Schulhefte, 121 Schreibmaschinenseiten, die Druckvorlage der Erstausgabe wie viele Fassungen gibt es noch? › Nur eine: das jetzige Buch, an dessen Rang als Dokument von eminentem historischem und literarischem Wert kein Zweifel besteht. (Lovenberg, «Kein Zweifel») Not surprisingly, the Süddeutsche Zeitung expressed continued scepticism regarding the provenance of the typed version of the diary, although previous insinuations that Marek fabricated the diary were withdrawn (Seibt). According to critic Gustav Seibt, because Kempowski did not have an opportunity to compare the typed manuscript to the published diary, the extent to which the diarist (or someone else, possibly Marek) revised, edited, and expanded upon her original handwritten diary entries remains unresolved. Clearly, this controversy will not be laid to rest until a critical edition of Eine Frau in Berlin is published; until then, we cannot know for certain the status of the published diary as a historical document. Nevertheless, literary and historical analyses of diaries written over the past centuries reveal that it is not uncommon for diarists to revise their diary entries retrospectively. In fact, Anne Frank, arguably the most famous diarist of all time, did just that. 6 After having kept a diary for nearly two years, Frank heard a radio report on March 28, 1944 in which the Dutch Minister of Education, Art, and Science called on ordinary citizens to record their wartime experiences. Inspired by thoughts of becoming a published author, Frank began rewriting her diary on loose sheets of paper; in addition to assigning pseudonyms to the occupants Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 201 of the secret annex, «she changed, rearranged, sometimes combined entries of various dates, expanded and abbreviated» (van der Stroom 61). Following the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl in 1947 and the tremendous public response it received, the existence of different versions of the diary (including her father Otto Frank’s edited version), caused some to question its authenticity. In particular, right-wing extremists and Holocaust deniers sought to discredit the diary; only in the 1980s - following exhaustive research by forensic scientists and handwriting experts and the publication of a 712-page critical edition - were persistent rumors that the diary was a hoax finally silenced (see Lipstadt). Debates over the authenticity of a revised or, to use Kempowski’s term, a «filled out» diary reveal a persistent belief that a «true» diary is a spontaneous outpouring of one’s innermost thoughts and feelings - feelings never to be shared, much less published. Prior to the nineteenth century, however, diaries frequently functioned as semi-public documents in which a diarist recorded significant life events for family members and future generations. Even after the diary came to be seen as a feminine arena for secret reflection, many diarists continued to write for an audience, if only an imaginary one (Culley 3-4). Lynn Z. Bloom draws a distinction between the standard «private» diary and a «public» one, explaining that [c]ontrary to popular perception, not all diaries are written - ultimately or exclusively - for private consumption. […] Indeed, it is the audience hovering at the edge of the page that for the sophisticated diarist facilitates the work’s ultimate focus, providing the impetus either for the initial writing or for transforming what might have been casual, fragmented jottings into a more carefully crafted, contextually coherent work. (23) An entirely private diary, Bloom explains, usually lacks development and detail and is impossible for an outside reader to make sense of without a great deal of contextual information. Information about the original diary on which Eine Frau in Berlin is based indicates that the diarist initially used her diary as a private outlet but later revised her entries for public consumption. Although we cannot know for certain, it is possible that because the diarist was a journalist (as she herself indicates in the text), she always intended to make the diary public, since, to quote Bloom once again, «for a professional writer there are no private writings» (24). In one of the first entries of her diary, the author reflects on her mixed feelings about participating in the public conversations of the women standing in line for rations: «Zwiespalt zwischen der hochmütigen Vereinzelung, in der mein Privatleben für gewöhnlich abläuft, und dem Trieb, wie die anderen zu sein, zum Volk zu gehören, Geschichte zu erleiden» (26). This 202 Jennifer Redmann telling ambivalence characterizes the entire diary, a place where the author records her private traumas and fears alongside coolly ironic observations on the maelstrom of historic events in which she finds herself. The controversy surrounding the reception of Eine Frau in Berlin demonstrates the extent to which scholars and readers have relied on diaries for historical information about the life and times of a private individual. It is on this score that Bisky and other critics have objected to the diary: the anonymity of the author and the fact that she may have revised her original entries after the fact call the status of the diary as a source of factual information into question. But that point of view fails to acknowledge that the transformation of lived experience into text always involves a subjective interpretation of past experience. As Margo Culley explains, «The reader’s instinctive suspicion of the process [of revising a diary] is grounded in the sense of the immediacy and verisimilitude claimed by the genre. But the reader should remember that the original record is itself a reconstruction of reality and not ‹truth› in any absolute sense» (16-17). Ironically, among the many reviewers of Eine Frau in Berlin, it is a historian, Constanze Jaiser, who speculates that «dieses Unbehagen auf der Rezeptionsebene» may simply be rooted in the nature of the diary itself, «da selbstverständlich auch die Gattung Tagebuch niemals unmittelbares Abbild von Realität und das Schreiben in der Situation immer ein individueller Bewältigungsversuch ist.» Eine Frau in Berlin certainly provides a wealth of historical information about the situation of ordinary German women during the fall of Berlin in the spring of 1945. But apart from its status as a historical document, the diary also offers insight into how language can be used to construct and reconstruct a self in times of crisis. Those readers who reject Eine Frau in Berlin on historical grounds do the text an injustice by failing to acknowledge the rhetorical skill with which the diarist shores up her own identity in the face of violence and loss. 7 As Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson explain, [w]hen life narrators write to chronicle an event, to explore a certain time period, they are making «history» in a sense. But they are also performing several rhetorical acts: justifying their own perceptions, upholding their reputations, disputing the accounts of others, settling scores, conveying cultural information, and inventing desirable futures, among others. The complexity of autobiographical texts requires reading practices that reflect on the narrative tropes, sociocultural contexts, rhetorical aims, and narrative shifts within the historical or chronological trajectory of the text. (10) Although doing justice to all of this diarist’s «rhetorical acts» would require a book-length study, in the remainder of this essay I will focus on how she transforms her material experience of life in conquered Berlin into language. Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 203 As I will show, the linguistic construction of an embodied identity is the diarist’s central preoccupation; multiple, often contradictory bodies emerge in the text, including a hungry (and satiated) body, a fearful (and fearless) body, a hunted body, and a dirty, fragmented body. These various embodied selves do not exist separately from the diarist’s intact interior (writing) self, but rather, the ever-changing embodied selves are the diarist - in all of their heterogeneity, fragmentation and chaos. In an essay on the performative nature of autobiographical practice, Sidonie Smith writes, «[i]nteriority became an effect, and not a cause, of the cultural regulation of always already identified bodies, bodies that were sexed and gendered, bodies that were racialized, bodies that were located in specific socioeconomic spaces, bodies that were deemed unruly or grotesque» (109). As I discuss below, it is through a language of the body that the diarist describes the destructive effects of hunger, fear, and repeated sexual violations, and it is through a language of the body that she projects a strong, linguistically reintegrated self into an unknown future. The hungry (and satiated) body. In her first diary entry, the author sets the stage for the story of her life. After being bombed out of her own apartment, she is living in the unoccupied attic flat once rented by one of her colleagues. Rather than bemoan the loss of her own possessions, however, she views the situation positively, as a physical freedom from the weight of ownership: «Jetzt, wo alles weg ist und mir nur ein Handkoffer mit Kleiderkram bleibt, fühle ich mich nackt und leicht. Weil ich nichts mehr habe, gehört mir alles» (10). The diarist spends most of her time scraping together meals and her stomach dominates her thoughts. After finding a love letter addressed to the former occupant of the apartment, she reflects on the now seemingly distant past when such «finer» feelings had a place in life: «Herz, Schmerz, Liebe, Triebe. Was für ferne, fremde Wörter. Offenbar setzt ein verfeinertes, wählerisches Liebesleben regelmäßige, ausreichende Mahlzeiten voraus. Mein Zentrum ist, während ich dies schreibe, der Bauch. Alles Denken, Fühlen, Wünschen und Hoffen beginnt beim Essen» (11). Understandably, this preoccupation with meals leads the diarist to write extensively about food, as in the following passage in which she writes of her body as if it were an object, a vessel to be filled: «Füllte mir daheim den Magen mit Griesbrei und schickte einen Brotkanten nach. Theoretisch bin ich so satt wie lange nicht. Praktisch quält mich tierischer Hunger. Vom Essen bin ich erst richtig hungrig geworden» (11-12). The narrative trajectory of the diary begins and ends with the hungry body. In between, however, two Russian officers (first Andrej, then the major) provide a plentiful supply of food and drink in exchange for sex. Since the diarist’s 204 Jennifer Redmann body functions as a form of currency in these relationships, it is not surprising that the body itself receives generous payment. Hab soeben eine Pfanne voll Speckgrieben vertilgt, streiche mir die Butter fingerdick, während die Witwe finstere Prophezeiungen auf mich häuft. Ich höre nicht darauf. Was morgen sein wird, ist mir egal. Jetzt will ich so gut leben, wie ich irgend kann, sonst falle ich bei so viel Lebenswandel wie ein nasser Lappen zusammen. Das Gesicht schaut mir wieder rund aus dem Spiegel. (145) The satiated body demands that the diarist live in the moment, not thinking of the future; the diarist marvels at the sight of her own round face looking back at her in the mirror. In fact, it is only the satiated body that can withstand «so viel Lebenswandel» - a life in which a woman sells her body to the enemy in exchange for food and protection. After the Russians leave the city, however, the days of meat and butter come to an end. Once again, the diarist must struggle to find enough to eat and her body begins to fail her: «Unterwegs zupfte ich mein Brennesselquantum. Ich war sehr matt, das Fett fehlt. Immer wogende Schleier vor den Augen und ein Gefühl des Schwebens und Leichterwerdens» (272). Here the diarist draws on metaphors of death to give shape to her description of the hungry body. The fearful (fearless) body. Fearful anticipation fills the days before the arrival of the Russians. After a night waiting out an air raid in the cellar, the diarist describes in precise physical terms her experience of fear: Seit ich ausgebombt bin und in der gleichen Nacht beim Bergen Verschütteter half, laboriere ich an meiner Todesangst. Es sind immer die gleichen Symptome. Zuerst Schweiß ums Haar, Bohren im Rückenmark, im Hals sticht es, der Gaumen dörrt aus, und das Herz klopft Synkopen. Die Augen stieren auf das Stuhlbein gegenüber und prägen sich seine gedrechselten Wulste und Knorpel ein. Jetzt beten können. (18-19) The body’s fear of impending death drives out all thought, even of God or the afterlife. The diarist’s choice of verb and prepositional object («ich laboriere an meiner Todesangst»), however, indicates that she will not let fear consume her. By describing the «symptoms» of fear, the diarist uses her writing as a form of therapy; in naming and describing the illness «fear,» she actively seeks a cure. Fear often arises from a sense of powerlessness, and throughout Eine Frau in Berlin we find examples of how the diarist seeks to overcome fear by seizing control of her circumstances. Before the arrival of the Russians, she joins a marauding crowd of plunderers at an army barracks and snatches bread, bottles of wine, and cans of food. Unfazed by the collapse of civil order in the city, the diarist finds the experience exhilarating, in spite of the toll it takes on her body: Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 205 Gleich will ich schlafen. Ich freue mich darauf. Randvoller Tag. Bilanz: bin gesund, frisch und frech, die Angst ist im Augenblick so ziemlich fort. Im Hirn heftige Eindrücke von Gier und Wut. Lahmer Rücken, müde Füße, ein Daumennagel abgebrochen, die zerscherbte Lippe brennt. Es stimmt doch: «Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.» (53) The diarist’s survival instinct emerges in images of a greedy, enraged, masculinized body, a body freed of moral niceties, beyond good and evil. Unfortunately, with the arrival of the Russians, the diarist’s body is transformed from subject to object of plunder. The hunted body. The second time the diarist is raped, the aggressor breaks into her apartment in search of «Beute» (which can be translated as both «booty» and «prey») and hunts her down. She describes the scene in the present tense and her own self (initially) in the third person. Er scheint die Beute gar nicht zu sehen. Um so erschreckender sein Stoß, der sie zum Lager treibt. Augen zu, Zähne fest zusammengebissen. Kein Laut. Bloß als das Unterzeug krachend zerreißt, knirschen unwillkürlich die Zähne. Die letzten heilen Sachen. Auf einmal Finger an meinem Mund. Gestank von Gaul und Tabak. Ich reiße die Augen auf. Geschickt klemmen die fremden Hände mir die Kiefer auseinander. Aug in Auge. Dann läßt der über mir aus seinem Mund bedächtig den angesammelten Speichel in meinen Mund fallen. Erstarrung. Nicht Ekel, bloß Kälte. Das Rückgrat gefriert, eisige Schwindel kreisen um den Hinterkopf. Ich fühle mich gleiten und fallen, tief, durch die Kissen und die Dielen hindurch. In den Boden versinken - so ist das also. (74) This experience marks a moment of destructive interruption in the story of the diarist’s life. In using the third person, the diarist as narrator indicates an emotional distance from the aggressor, until he recalls her to herself through the horrific insult of spitting into her mouth. By naming this act, the diarist puts into words a transformation: once a self-confident, educated, independent German career woman, she has become an object of disdain, a member of a defeated and humiliated race, a mere nothing to be spit upon. This dramatic shift in the author’s self-image is written on the body; as «Beute,» she is cold, frozen, emotionless. She later extends this metaphor in describing herself as «eine fühllose Puppe» with no will of its own, «geschüttelt, herumgeschoben, ein Ding aus Holz» (82). Yet, once she has decided to take hold of the situation by choosing an officer to sleep with, the diarist recovers a degree of agency, which has an immediate effect on her physical condition: «Fühlte mich körperlich wieder besser, nun, da ich etwas tat, plante und wollte, nicht mehr nur stumme Beute war» (75). Eventually, the diarist is even able to find a place for these experiences in the continuing story of her own sexuality: 206 Jennifer Redmann Hab darüber nachdenken müssen, wie gut ich es bisher gehabt, daß mir in meinem Leben die Liebe niemals zur Last und immer zur Lust war. Bin nie gezwungen worden, hab mich niemals zwingen müssen. So wie es war, war es gut. Es ist nicht das Allzuviel, was mich jetzt so elend gemacht hat. Es ist der mißbrauchte, wider seinen Willen genommene Körper, der mit Schmerzen antwortet. […] Ich will tot und gefühllos bleiben, solange ich Beute bin. (104) In writing «solange ich Beute bin,» the diarist shows that she can imagine a future body which will once again take pleasure in sex. The dirty, fragmented body. Although the diarist tries to make the best of an untenable situation, the emotional damage wrought by rape finds expression in descriptions of her own body as broken and unclean. In the account of one rape, she writes of the «half» of her body that remains as an object: «Mir ist taumelig, ich bin nur noch halb da, und diese Hälfte wehrt sich nicht mehr, sie fällt gegen den harten, nach Kernseife riechenden Leib» (68). The aggressor’s body smells like soap, but she feels «so klebrig, ich mag gar nichts mehr anfassen, mag die eigene Haut nicht anrühren» (71). This sense of her own dirtiness is both physical, given the lack of soap and water, and emotional as she struggles to come to terms with her situation. 88 In response, the diarist imagines a pure, clean self that can escape the dirty body and float away: Es war mir, als läge ich flach auf meinem Bett und sähe mich gleichzeitig selber daliegen, während sich aus meinem Leib ein leuchtendweißes Wesen erhob; eine Art Engel, doch ohne Flügel, der steil aufwärts schwebte. Ich spüre noch, während ich dies schreibe, das hochziehende, schwebende Gefühl. Natürlich ein Wunschtraum und Fluchttraum. Mein Ich läßt den Leib, den armen, verdreckten, mißbrauchten, einfach liegen. Es entfernt sich von ihm und entschwebt rein in weiße Fernen. Es soll nicht mein «Ich» sein, dem dies geschieht. Ich schiebe all das aus mir hinaus. (71-72) Here the self stands apart to view the self, and the act of writing serves as an act of self-recovery, an attempt to salvage what seems lost, destroyed. In a later entry, the diarist reiterates this sense of alienation from her dirty body, even reflecting on how she was once a beautiful, clean baby: «Muß daran denken, was mir die Mutter so oft erzählt hat von dem kleinen Kind, das ich einmal war. Ein Baby so weiß und rosa, wie es stolze Eltern freut. […] So viel Liebe, so viel Aufwand mit Häubchen, Badethermometern und Abendgebet für den Unflat, der ich jetzt bin» (87). In spite of the desperation and selfhatred in these words, they serve to connect the diarist to her past. In this context, Margo Culley’s description of the importance of the diary as a life record seems particularly valid: «I was that, now I am this; I was there, now I am here. Keeping a life record can be an attempt to preserve continuity seemingly broken or lost» (8). Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 207 Regardless of when the published diary was composed, we find evidence throughout of how it may have served its author in coping with traumatic events. Confronted everywhere with destruction and the violation of her own body, it makes sense that the author should turn to the diary as a form of «scriptotherapy.» In defining this term, Smith and Watson describe how «speaking or writing about trauma becomes a process through which the narrator finds words to give voice to what was previously unspeakable. And that process can be, though it is not necessarily, cathartic» (22). In an early entry, the diarist describes her writing as a way to pass the time: «Es hat keinen Wert. Bloß privates Gekritzel, damit ich etwas zu tun habe» (19). Later on, however, she takes pen in hand in an effort to write «allen Wirrsinn aus dem Kopf und Herz» (71). In between, as she puts words to the experience of being raped, her writing helps her survive the most desperate of situations, even under circumstances that would seem to preclude quiet reflection. In the end, the diarist herself testifies to the importance of writing in dealing with trauma. «Schon dies Aufschreiben jetzt ist eine Anstrengung, ist mir aber ein Trost in meiner Einsamkeit, eine Art Gespräch, ein Herzausschütten. Die Witwe hat mir von wilden Russenträumen erzählt, die sie jetzt noch träumt. Bei mir nichts dergleichen, wohl weil ich alles aufs Papier gespien habe» (272). Through her journal entries, the diarist attempts to shape her reality, to hold on to her past, to cope with her present, and to shape her future. This is part and parcel of the diary-writing process, as Kagel and Gramegna explain in their study of fictionalization in early American women’s diaries: Not only does the very process of writing a diary, the conversion of experience into language, alter events as they are recorded; it alters memory and with it behaviors based on that memory. Each entry, colored by the subjective impressions and conception of the moment, becomes «fact» as it is fixed on paper. In this way diarists become mythmakers, creating enduring records that will affect not only interpretations of past and present situations, but also future decisions. (39) The diarist creates a world in which she is the main actor, and in spite of the fact that she is a conquered woman in a conquered city, she is able to use the diary to project an image of her future life. Sometimes she appears supremely confident: «Immerhin hab ich allerlei gelernt; ich werde schon irgendwo unterkommen. Bange ist mir nicht. Ich vertraue mein Schifflein blindlings den Zeitläuften an. Mich trug es bisher stets an grüne Ufer» (146). At other times, however, a sense of uncertainty reveals itself, as in this entry, recorded at a time when the diarist had returned to a kind of normalcy in her life: Zu Hause wohlige Körperwäsche, nettes Kleid, stiller Abend. Ich muß nachdenken. Groß ist unsere geistige Not. Wir warten auf ein Herzenswort, das uns anspricht und uns zurückholt ins Leben. Unsere Herzen sind leer gelaufen, es hungert uns 208 Jennifer Redmann nach Speise, nach dem, was die katholische Kirche «Manna Seelenbrot» nennt. […] Die Zukunft liegt bleiern auf uns. Ich stemme mich dagegen, versuche, die Flamme in mir brennend zu erhalten. Wozu? Wofür? Was ist mir aufgegeben? Bin so hoffnungslos allein mit alldem. (246) Here again the diarist uses bodily metaphors to describe herself and her place in history: she intends to use all of her physical power to push her way forward through a «leaden» future. We do not have a first-person record of the diarist’s life after June 22, 1945, but given the power of her account of eight weeks in war-torn Berlin, there could be little doubt that she survived whatever life could bring. Notes 1 All quotes from Eine Frau in Berlin refer to the 2003 edition published by Eichborn. 2 Statistics documenting exactly how many women were raped during this time are unavailable. Historian Atina Grossman writes that «[t]he numbers cited for Berlin vary wildly; from 20,000 to 100,000, to almost one million, with the actual number of rapes higher because many women were attacked repeatedly» (46). 3 The diarist also mentions a number of instances where the great works of German music and literature comfort her, as in this passage: «Besinnlicher Vormittag bei Sonne und Musik. Ich las in Rilke, Goethe, Hauptmann. Tröstlich, daß auch die zu uns gehören und von unserer Art sind» (264). 4 A letter to the editor of the New York Times in response to Joseph Kanon’s positive review of A Woman in Berlin brings Bisky’s argument to an American readership; its author, Christoph Gottesmann of Vienna, points to the improbability that the first diary entry, written on April 20, 1945, would make no mention of Hitler’s birthday. In a published response to Gottesmann’s letter which also appeared in the New York Times, Antony Beevor comments: «[T]he single concrete detail with which Gottesmann finds fault is the diarist’s failure, as he sees it, to mention Hitler’s birthday. Yet it is clearly there in the April 21 entry, along with the diarist’s observation that the date had slipped everyone’s mind.» The diary entry in question reads: «Fräulein Behn trat mit dem Zeitungsblatt vor und las die Goebbelsrede zum Geburtstag des Führers (ein Datum, an das die meisten überhaupt nicht mehr gedacht hatten)» (19). 5 It appears, however, that scholars disagree with him on this point. British historian Antony Beevor quotes the diary extensively in his book The Fall of Berlin 1945, as does Atina Grossman in an article on the mass rapes of German woman by Russian soldiers. Although Grossman admits to «uncertainty about authorship and authenticity» of the diary, «the language used and the experiences reported are consistent with other reports» (55). 6 There are a number of striking similarities between the anonymous diary Eine Frau in Berlin and Anne Frank’s work. Writing in a diary initially served the diarists as a private emotional outlet during times of great crisis and stress, but both women later came to consider public audiences for their diaries. Interestingly, in the case of both diaries, attempts to dismiss their authenticity were rooted in the tremendous commercial success they enjoyed, although the political motivations behind the accusations could hardly Eine Frau in Berlin: Diary as History or Fiction of the Self? 209 be more different. One of the right-wing extremists who in the 1950s claimed that the Anne Frank diary was a hoax railed against the fact that the diary had earned «millions for the profiteers from Germany’s defeat» (qtd. in Lipstadt 193). Bisky sees a profit motive behind the Eichborn publishing company’s supposedly sloppy editorial practices: «Solange das Buch in so nachlässiger Edition verkauft und als historisches Zeugnis vermarktet wird, profitieren Verlag und Herausgeber schamlos von der gutwilligen Leichtgläubigkeit der Leser.» 7 Some reviewers of Eine Frau in Berlin questioned the diarist’s seemingly remarkable ability to write coherently about the experience of being raped, and her laconic tone has been taken as evidence that the diary must have been written, or at least significantly revised, after the fact. For example, Ina Hartwig, in a critical response to Kempowski’s letter, asks: «Kann eine Frau überhaupt so kühl und zugleich so einfühlsam über die Triebdurchbrüche der Soldaten, über die erlittene Vergewaltigung berichten? » Another reviewer, however, comments that the diarist’s voice reminds her of that of her own mother: Es ist der Ton, den ich von meiner eigenen Mutter kenne und von Frauen ihrer Generation - und war und ist diese Generation nicht auch kühl und anästhesiert? Dieses ständige Aussparen, das angebliche Nichtwissen oder Nichterinnern. Diese betonte Unsentimentalität. Das Grobe und Abrupte. […] Insofern würde ich «Eine Frau in Berlin», von wem auch immer sie unter welchen Umständen geschrieben wurde, immer wieder verteidigen wollen: als einen Text, der mich erschüttert und beeindruckt hat über das hinaus, was er beschreibt - und der mir die Erfahrung einer Generation sehr deutlich gezeigt hat, die ich in dieser Klarheit vorher nicht gesehen habe. (Zucker, «Erfahrung») 8 The diarist also uses metaphors of «dirt» to describe the situation of the Germans as a defeated people, for example: «Wir sind im Dreck, tief, tief» (71) and «Rechtlos sind wir. Beute. Dreck. Unsere Wut entlädt sich auf Adolf. Bange Fragen: Wo steht die Front? Wann wird Friede? » (90). Works Cited Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin. Dir. Max Färberböck. Perf. Nina Hoss, Yevgeni Sidikhin and Juliane Köhler. Constantin, 2008. Barnouw, David, and Gerrold van der Stroom, ed. The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition. New York: Doubleday, 1989. Beevor, Antony. Letter. New York Times 25 Sep. 2005, late ed., sec. 7: 6. -. The Fall of Berlin 1945. New York: Viking, 2002. Bisky, Jens. «Wenn Jungen Weltgeschichte spielen, haben Mädchen stumme Rollen.» Süddeutsche Zeitung [Munich] 24 Sep. 2003. Web. 9 Sep. 2008. Bloom, Lynn Z. «‹I Write for Myself and Strangers›: Private Diaries as Public Documents.» Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women’s Diaries. Ed. Suzanne L. 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