The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia in German-Language Literature about Former Yugoslavia3 2 5 The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia in German-Language Literature about Former Yugoslavia Maria Mayr Memorial University of Newfoundland Abstract: This article details how Marina Achenbach’s Ein Krokodil für Zagreb (2017) and Marica Bodrožić’s Mein weißer Frieden (2014) reintroduce the legacy of socialism into European memory and thereby put the spotlight on a common European past that has often been sidelined both after WII and after the end of the Cold War� Engaging in a form of postsocialist nostalgia that is firmly oriented towards the future, both prose works invoke memories of the potentials, the exclusions, the dreams and possibilities of the Yugoslav socialist project in order to critique the capitalist present and to make suggestions for a better European future� Rather than providing some kind of political blueprint for a better Europe, however, the crux of their future-oriented nostalgic representations of the past lies in a more abstract commitment to hope and the ability to think beyond the capitalist status quo� That is, both authors turn to the socialist past in order to affirm the utopian spirit more generally and to insist on the possibility of radical social, economic, and political change� Keywords: Marina Achenbach, Marica Bodrožić, postsocialist nostalgia, memories of the future, German-language literature about former Yugoslavia The past decade has witnessed not only multiple crises across Europe, but a crisis of Europe itself, which continues to struggle to define itself as a collective� Concerned about what could foster a cohesive collective identity for Europe able to withstand economic and political turmoil, the European Parliament has expended considerable efforts in strengthening Europe’s collective identity by attempting to consolidate a collective memory� Passed in 2009, the European 326 Maria Mayr Parliament Resolution on European Conscience and Totalitarianism, for instance, asserts that: Europe will not be united unless it is able to form a common view of its history, recognizes Nazism, Stalinism and fascist and Communist regimes as a common legacy [… and b]elieves that appropriate preservation of historical memory, a comprehensive reassessment of European history and Europe-wide recognition of all historical aspects of modern Europe will strengthen European integration� (K and 10) Due to the Eastern expansion of the European Union, the challenge to engage with the legacy of former communist regimes and socialism has become a pressing task in recent years� Over the course of the Eastern Enlargement, eleven postsocialist countries joined the EU, i�e�, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004, followed by Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, and by Croatia in 2013� As numerous scholars point out, one of the many challenges brought about by the Enlargement is how to integrate the memory discourses of these postsocialist countries with Western European ones� 1 While the majority of post-WWII memory discourses in Western Europe have the Holocaust at its center (Leggewie and Lang 14), most of the countries that joined the EU in the past one and a half decades bring with them additional relevant memories such as those of socialism, the gulag, or the secret police, as well as different perspectives on WWII, the Cold War, and the fall of the Iron Curtain that have yet to be told and heard� Literature can play an important part in telling these (hi)stories and both support as well as subvert the “elite” project of forming a common European memory (Borodziej 146)� This is particularly the case for German-language literature written by writers from the countries that joined the EU as part of the Enlargement� Their works can - and often do - articulate the histories and pasts of the authors’ countries of origin� Having lived in both the East and the West, these writers are able to tell Eastern European histories and memories in such a way that they can resonate with an audience that is, by and large, relatively unfamiliar with the history of the countries that were once behind the Iron Curtain� These writers therefore create what one can call, expanding on Anne Rigney’s term, “subtitled memories�” Rigney maintains that translated works in Europe can create “‘subtitled memories’ - memories that cross borders while retaining their alterity” (Rigney 354)� Authors with an immigrant background writing in German, I would argue, create a similar kind of subtitled literature, one which mediates not only between multiple languages but also between different cultural, historical, and socioeconomic contexts, making it accessible to a German-speaking audience� Given the relative dearth of translations of literature from Eastern into Western European languages (Navracsics 5, Hamm The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 327 4), the role to be played by writers with an immigrant background in ‘subtitling’ Eastern European memories for Western European readers deserves our attention and investigation� In this article, I focus on the subtitled European memories that are articulated in literature written by authors with a background in the countries that once made up Yugoslavia� Former Yugoslavia is a particularly illuminating example when it comes to questions of a collective European memory� The twentieth-century history of what was once Yugoslavia arguably is one of the most emblematic of that of all European countries: Citizens of today’s Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, and the Kosovo have been subjected to - and sometimes have embraced - past and present identities fashioned by fascism, socialism, and capitalism, as well as transnational, ethnic, and nationalist movements� They have witnessed two World Wars and the 1990s Balkan wars; and they have lived under dictatorships replete with genocides, concentration camps, and gulags� On a more positive note, to many left-leaning European intellectuals, Yugoslavia was also exemplary for having taken the “third way” between Western capitalism and Eastern socialism after Yugoslavia’s Tito parted ways with Stalin in 1948 and Tito became one of the founders of the Non-Alignment Movement in 1961� Tito’s Yugoslavia, in the minds of many, thus served as a model for the socialist alternative (Previšić 141)� The history of the former “multinational state” (Kolstø 764) of Yugoslavia is nowadays also often invoked as a structural example for today’s European Union and as a potential warning sign for what can happen due to misled economic and ethnic policies (Petrović 12)� In addition, Yugoslavia was also exemplary for Europe due to its multiethnic and multireligious character: Tito managed to unite Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, Bosnian Muslims, Slovenes, Albanians, Macedonians, and Hungarians for several decades under the umbrella of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, continuing the region’s “historical legacy of ethnic multiplicity and co-existence” (Todorova, “Nostalgia” 67)� Finally, Yugoslavia also takes on a special significance for Europe due to the Balkan wars of the 1990s that followed right on the heels of, and were in part due to, the fall of the Iron Curtain� These wars, their attendant nationalisms, ethnic tensions, and crimes against humanity, such as the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, did not leave Western European countries untouched� The conflicts were covered extensively by media outlets in Western European countries; countries such as Germany were directly confronted by the consequences of the war due to a substantial influx of refugees; and political and ethical questions surrounding international and NATO interventions, as well as the lack thereof, yet remained to be fully addressed� Moreover, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yu- 328 Maria Mayr goslavia, whose mandate lasted from 1993 to 2017, kept the war crimes of the 1990s in the public eye� Given these factors, it is not surprising that the topic of former Yugoslavia as well as its violent breakup in the 1990s have received much literary attention in Western European countries, including in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland� One can point here to works by established German-language authors such as Peter Handke, Juli Zeh, Norbert Gestrein, or Martin Mosebach, as well as by several German-language authors with an immigrant background from countries outside of former Yugoslavia, including Hungarian-German writer Terézia Mora, Israeli-Austrian writer Doron Rabinowich, South Korean-German writer Anna Kim, and Russian-German writer Lena Gorelik� The most sustained engagement with former Yugoslavia as well as the 1990s wars, however, can be found in the work of German-language authors with a background in one of the countries that once made up Yugoslavia� - Melinda Nadj Abonji (Serbia, Hungarian minority) - Sanja Abramović (Croatia) - Marina Achenbach (Croatia, former East Germany) - Adriana Altaras (Croatia) - Melica Bešlija (Bosnia-Herzegowina) - Ana Bilić (Croatia) - Marica Bodrožić (Croatia) - Alida Bremer (Croatia) - Mascha Dabić (Bosnia-Herzegowina) - Nataša Dragnić (Croatia) - Alma Hadžibeganovič (Bosnia-Herzegovina) - Ivan Ivanji (Serbia) - Viktorija Kocman (Serbia) - Meral Kureyshi (Kosovo) - Nicol Ljubić (Croatia) - Jagoda Marinić (Croatian parents) - Barbi Marković (Serbia) - Danijela Pilic (Serbian-Croatian) - Danko Rabrenović (Croatia) - Saša Stanišić (Bosnia-Herzegovina) - Ana Tajder (Croatia) Fig� 1: German-language authors from territories of former Yugoslavia As one can see in Fig� 1 above, there are more than twenty authors writing and publishing in German on the topic today� 2 While some of these writers’ works are lesser known, several have been met with considerable critical acclaim� 3 Given the sheer number of publications as well as the favorable public reception of a fair number of these works, this corpus’s contribution to European memory deserves further analysis� The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 329 In the following, I will focus on how some of the works in this corpus reintroduce the legacy of socialism into European memory and thereby put the spotlight on a common European past that has often been sidelined both after WWII and after the end of the Cold War� More specifically, I will take a closer look at literary commemorations of positive aspects of this memory, which are often dismissed as expressions of what has been termed “red nostalgia�” This alleged nostalgia for socialism spans many postsocialist countries, whether one turns to post-Yugoslav states and Yugonostalgia, to former East Germany and the phenomenon of Ostalgie, or to Soviet nostalgia in Russia (Velikonja, Titostalgia 33)� While the phenomenon apparently enjoys considerable popularity in former Yugoslavia’s successor states, any official memories of socialism have been deliberately sidelined in post-Yugoslav society� There are several complex reasons for this “coerced oblivion of the socialist legacy” (Demiragić 129), only some of which can be mentioned here� For cultural theorist Jasmina Husanović, the sidelining of the socialist past is a deliberate political strategy aimed at “inducing the kind of historical amnesia that the political elites rely upon to distract ordinary people from their misuse of power’” (qdt� in Demiragić 129—30)� Similarly attributing the phenomenon to political self-interest by “the ruling nationalist political and cultural elites” (Beronja and Vervaet 6), Vlad Beronja and Stijn Vervaet argue that bracketing the socialist past allows the new post-Yugoslav nation states, which continue to be built around the ethnopolitics that drove the violent disintegration of former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, to consolidate “their new grammars of national memory” by constructing an “uninterrupted continuity with pre-communist national histories” (5), effectively denying close to fifty years of interethnic coexistence� Ignoring the existence of a previously functioning Yugoslav state also furthers the politically sanctioned view that the more than seventy-year existence of the supranational and religiously as well as ethnically integrative Yugoslavia was forced upon the various national identities, rendering Yugoslavia an unwelcome reminder of “das Scheitern einer schiffbrüchigen und im Bürgerkrieg versenkten Idee und Ideologie” (Ristović 105)� Putting the silencing of the socialist past in a European context, Tanja Petrović furthermore argues that a predominantly negative evaluation of the socialist past is also supported on the European level due to the prevailing notion that freeing oneself from the socialist legacy is a precondition for the successful Europeanization of postsocialist countries (13)� The latter implicitly suggests that socialism has no place in a contemporary liberal and democratic Europe, which gestures towards another important context for the sidelining of the socialist past, namely global capitalism� As Maria Todorova usefully reminds us, the other side of the coin of socialism is capitalism� Thus, Todorova con- 330 Maria Mayr textualizes postsocialist nostalgia - for her “a specific legacy of the socialist period” - in view of the larger history of what is variably called “the capitalist world economy, the capitalist mode of production, the ‘iron cage’ of capitalist modernity, the age of industrialism, urbanism, modernization, or globalization” (“Nostalgia” 68)� This context casts doubt on what Todorova sees as the prevailing practice of continually mentioning the socialist legacy in tandem with fascism or Nazism, which can also be observed in the EU Parliament Resolution quoted at the beginning of this article, where “Nazism, Stalinism and fascist and Communist regimes” are grouped together as one sinister cluster of Europe’s shared totalitarian legacy� In foregrounding the modern origins of socialism as the counterpart of capitalism, Todorova argues instead that one should rather be juxtaposing “capitalism and communism; or liberalism (including neo-liberalism) and communism” (“Nostalgia” 68—69)� This reframing of how we remember Europe’s socialist past in the context of the post-Cold War consolidation of neoliberal capitalism in Europe is crucial when trying to assess the phenomenon of postsocialist nostalgia because it allows us to read it in the context of, and in reaction to, neoliberal capitalist practices that are part and parcel of the ‘Europeanization’ of post-Yugoslav states� In his empirically informed study of nostalgia in several postsocialist countries, Mitja Velikonja observes that Titostalgia, i�e�, a contemporary fascination with Tito in post-Yugoslav countries, does not only serve “the industry of nostalgia” as escapism, a legitimizing tool of the ruling class, or as dissident discourse� Rather, an ahistorical image of Tito mostly functions as what the anchor calls a “retrospective utopia,” revealing postsocialist nostalgia to be mainly “a wish and a hope” for a better world (Velikonja, “Lost in Transition” 548)� Rather than being concerned with Tito as a historical figure and with his Yugoslavia as an authoritarian dictatorship, let alone with returning to socialism as a political system, postsocialist nostalgia is thus utopian in nature� In people’s nostalgic recollections, socialist Yugoslavia figures “as a social experiment that worked for some time” and despite all of its serious imperfections, it is as close to the realization of the “utopian ideals of a just society” (emphasis in original) as it gets (Velinkonja, Titostalgia 130—31)� In Velinkonja’s analysis, Tito and his socialist Yugoslavia thus provide building blocks that can be selectively recombined into a bricolage of contemporary constructions of retrospective utopias (131)� As Velikonja asserts, young people in particular use Titostalgia in this way in order to offer a sharp critique of present social and economic injustice, political arrogance, nationalism, and “other exclusivisms, because examples from the past prove that it was possible to live together” (131)� In her interview-based study of postsocialist nostalgia in Bulgaria, Daniela Koleva similarly points to both the bricolage-like nature of postsocialist nostalgia and its critical and utopian The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 331 import for the present� As she argues, her interviewees’ representations of the past are not in the spirit of a testimony or truth-seeking mission but rather selective and fictional, creating “an idealized past from selected fragments of the actual one” (Koleva 425)� Like Velenkonja, Koleva observes that the way in which these fragments are assembled focuses on the “promises of the past” and is utopian in spirit since it “transcends the present actively seeking for a better world” (Koleva 425)� As I argue below, both Marina Achenbach’s and Marcia Bodrožić’s texts engage in such selective postsocialist nostalgic commemorations, foregrounding the utopian spirit permeating the socialist past� Commemorating this utopian impulse constitutes an important corrective to the present moment, due to its potential to help us think the future beyond a seemingly unchangeable global neoliberal capitalist present, which seems to have petrified after 1989 - Francis Fukuyama’s (in)famous declaration of the end of history comes to mind here� 4 As Eric Cazdyn and Imre Szeman argue in After Globalization, the pronounced lack of imagination of a better alternative future is intrinsic to our current reality marked by global capitalism� Even though the 2008 financial crisis and its effects have drawn renewed attention to issues such as capitalism and class, alternative visions for what comes after have yet to be formulated� According to Cazdyn and Szeman, this process is impeded by the fact that, by its very nature, “[g]lobalization involves a certain configuration of time - one that cannot imagine an ‘after’” (2)� In this light, postsocialist nostalgia in its utopian guise figures as a way to think beyond or outside of the current global capitalist system 5 and speaks to the fact that, as Leslie Adelson asserts, imaging the future is “one of the most pressing topics of our time” (213)� As Andreas Huyssen points out, turning to the past in order to mobilize it for the future in this manner, fits with a more general shift in utopian thinking from being oriented towards the future to being oriented towards the past, due to a loss of faith in modern narratives of progress in light of the failures of the often antagonistic political visions promising a better future throughout the twentieth century (8)� Rather, impulses for the future are now sought in a turn to remembrance, including in its nostalgic forms where “the exploration of the no-places, the exclusions, the blind spots on the maps of the past is often invested with utopian energies very much oriented toward the future” (88)� 6 In the following, I turn to two prose works by writers with a background from former Yugoslavia, i�e�, Marina Achenbach and Marcia Bodrožić, who both invoke memories of the potentials, the exclusions, the dreams and possibilities of the Yugoslav socialist project in order to critique the capitalist present and to make suggestions for a better European future� As I will show, both texts gesture towards the potential of some of the ideals of Yugoslav socialism, such 332 Maria Mayr as solidarity, economic justice, or alternatives to exclusive nationalism, drawing due attention to what Todorova recently called “the things that were recklessly washed away in the shock-therapy shower” of the end of the Cold War (Todorova, “Intimate Explorations” 117)� However, the crux of their nostalgic representations of the past lies in a more abstract commitment to hope and the ability to think beyond the capitalist status quo more generally� That is, both authors turn to the socialist past in order to affirm the utopian spirit more generally and to insist on the possibility that things could have been and can be different and better� Before turning to these texts, it is worth pointing out that they form part of a small but noticeable trend in recent literature published on the topic of former Yugoslavia to address and critique neoliberal capitalism, attributable to a generally growing awareness of its human cost post-2008� 7 As Anja Zeltner argues, Martin Mosebach’s 2014 Blutbuchenfest, for example, focuses attention on issues of social injustice and disparity in the capitalist system� The novel deals with the Bosnian cleaning lady Ivana, who is part of Europe’s “Söldner- und Lohnarbeitertums” (Mosebach 303), and it provides a scathing critique of Frankfurt’s high society at the outbreak of the 1990s wars (Zeltner 200—02)� A similar shift towards foregrounding economic questions can be found in Melinda Nadj Abonji’s 2017 novel Schildkrötensoldat� Like Mosebach’s, this novel is concerned with the 1990s wars, but rather than focusing on questions of ethnic conflict, as many previous works on the topic have done, Abonji here concerns herself with the impact of these wars on members of the economic underclass� The novel deals with the “Schicksal” of a mentally challenged young man who dies in the army (Abonji 11)� His cousin, whose first-person narrative frames the novel, questions if the course of his life can, however, truly be called his “fate” given that his plight has in large part to be attributed to the fact that “Armut nie folgenlos blieb” (11), making an economic argument, rather than a political one� Barbi Marković’s 2016 novel Superheldinnen provides another example� The novel’s plot revolves around three women who immigrated from former Yugoslavia to Vienna� As the narrator states, their story is typical for many immigrants from “ärmere[n] benachbarte[n] Länder[n]” who struggle to survive while continuing to hope that they could become part of the “bürgerlichen Mittelschicht […], der wir uns zugehörig fühlten, mit dem Herzen jedenfalls, nicht jedoch mit unserem Budget” (34)� Despite working multiple jobs, “relative Armut” was their “kleiner Fluch” (8)� However, two of the women are also blessed with magical powers which they eventually use to help their group by channeling their powers to win at a casino� The novel’s happy ending, however, oozes with irony given that the vicious circle of precarious work and poverty is not a “curse” but the result of growing structural economic inequalities, and that for the majority The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 333 of women like the ones described here, happy endings in the form of economic success truly would require supernatural intervention� Finally, Alida Bremer’s 2013 novel Olivas Garten focuses on a Croatian-German woman who returns to Croatia in order to deal with the restitution of family property in a corrupt Croatia of the early aughts� Like the just mentioned novels, it also can be read as a critique of the effects of the spread of neoliberal capitalism insofar as it provides a commentary on Croatia’s embrace of neoliberalism in the process of joining the European Union� It is within the context of this general move towards critical literary views of neoliberal capitalism in contemporary Europe that we can read Achenbach’s and Bodrožić’s texts as part of a larger effort by writers to engage with former Yugoslavia to mine the former federation’s socialist past for impulses towards a better future� As mentioned above, Marina Achenbach’s 2017 novel Ein Krokodil für Zagreb invokes specific socialist ideals and practices such as the value of the common good, social justice, and the transcending of national borders� 8 However, the novel is more effective in providing a more abstract commemoration of the spirit of hope and optimism of the early period of GDR and Yugoslav socialism, focusing on the mobilizing potential of what Achenbach calls “Zeitenwenden” (Achenbach, “Sommer nach dem Krieg” 73)� In a 2018 essay, Achenbach argues that today, disappointment in the failures of socialism as a political reality eclipses those other moments enabled by the socialist project, in which a better future was in fact a real possibility� As she argues, “[d]ie Enttäuschung ist zum vorherrschenden Topos geworden� Seltsam ist, wie ihm die hellen Momente geopfert werden, als seien sie ohne Bedeutung” (73)� According to Achenbach, the historical traces of these ‘brighter moments,’ some of which will be further discussed below, are in danger of becoming invisible “[a]ls hätte es das alles nicht gegeben� Als könnte es so etwas gar nicht geben” (73)� Commemorating and preserving the “Wissen über das Wesen von Zeitenwenden,” however, is crucial for Achenbach since it reminds us of “die Möglichkeit des Neuen” (73), of the fact that things could have been different in the past and therefore could be different today, thus allowing us to question the inevitability of the status quo� Achenbach’s novel Ein Krokodil für Zagreb can be read as an attempt to follow the traces of such brighter moments of hope for a better future in Europe’s twentieth-century history of socialism. Achenbach’s novel is a fictionalized account of her family’s history and begins with the birth of her mother Seka in Bosnia in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, and ends with her death in 2007� Seka, a young Bosnian journalist in Zagreb, falls in love with and marries the much older German émigré and socialist Ado von Achenbach� Forced to flee Zagreb as the Wehrmacht takes the city, the couple and their children are, by way of a bureaucratic twist, able to flee to Berlin� There, they find refuge with 334 Maria Mayr Ado’s mother, whose Jewish roots lead to her being disowned by the Nazis and to her eventual deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp� Seka is able to flee war-ravaged Berlin with her children to Ahrenshoop, a village on the peninsula of Fischland-Darß-Zingst on the Baltic Sea, where they are able to survive the war� Ado, who had to stay in Berlin, is eventually also deported as a forced laborer to Leuna but is able to escape during the Allied bombing of the city and to join his family towards the end of the war� With the arrival of the Russians in Ahrenshoop and the eventual establishment of the German Democratic Republic, the Achenbachs pick up on their prewar political commitment to the worker’s movement and dedicate their lives to the socialist cause, pouring their energies into building what they hope to become a more just and equal society in East Germany� However, Seka’s situation becomes increasingly precarious since as a Yugoslav, she becomes a suspect after Tito’s break with Stalin� After being harassed and imprisoned, she eventually leaves the GDR in 1957 for West Berlin with her children, in hopes of returning to Yugoslavia and building the socialist state there� However, she is eventually also disillusioned with Yugoslavia after she learns of Tito’s political prison on the island of Goli Otok, is herself harassed by the Yugoslav secret police, and told to leave Yugoslavia as a suspected spy for the GDR� She then settles in West Germany where she continues to be politically active in unions and protests until her death in 2007� As becomes obvious in this plot summary, Seka and her family were directly and painfully afflicted by the oppressive sides of European socialism as a political reality� In addition, the novel is replete with characters who fled the former GDR due to disillusionment or political oppression (see, e�g�, 172)� However, even though Seka is deeply disappointed by the ways in which socialism was implemented as a political system in Europe, she still believes in the message of socialism until her death: “Trotz aller Enttäuschungen, ich sehe im Sozialismus die ganz andere Vorstellung vom Leben - was der Mensch sein könnte - das war doch alles erst am Anfang - war noch ein Versuch - der durfte nicht sein� - Es ist die Welt nicht friedlicher geworden durch das Ende des Sozialismus” (208)� While neither Achenbach’s essay nor her novel explicitly spell out the political content of the socialist vision Seka keeps believing in, the novel does provide glimpses of what Achenbach means in various episodes alluding to historical moments of socialist activities throughout the twentieth century� For instance, the narrator briefly recounts her father Ado’s involvement in the 1918 November Revolution, specifically in the short-lived socialist Bavarian Räterepublik and the councils of workers, soldiers, and artists that were formed after the assassination of Kurt Eisner� The narrator does not provide any details as to what the political demands of the Räterepublik and councils were - which initially had the goal of a radical transformation of state and society in the socialist spirit The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 335 (Bischel)� Rather, the episode draws attention to the general feeling of hope that seemed palpable everywhere at the time, quoting Rainer Maria Rilke, who was one of the councils’ members, as having said: “So viel Wichtiges geschieht jetzt, so viel Hoffnung ist überall” (Achenbach, Krokodil 50)� Similarly, the novel sidelines concrete historical details in an episode recounting Seka’s stay in Zambia, where she befriended refuge anti-apartheid and resistance fighters from South Africa, Namibia and South Rhodesia who were involved in the South African liberation movements� Thus, the novel does not mention the prominent role that socialism - of the African, Soviet, Chinese, or scientific type - played on the African continent between the 1950s to the 1980s, when thirty-five out of fifty-three African nations self-identified as socialist at some point in their history (Pitcher and Askew 1—2)� Rather, the narrator once more highlights the hopeful quality of this historical moment marked by communal political action that united members from many nations, proclaiming: “So viele abgründige Erfahrungen, Hoffnungen, Mut und Solidarität, Schicksale, Wissensdurst” (Achenbach, Krokodil 187)� A similar celebration of an optimistic solidarity across borders can be found in the episode narrating the third annual World Festival of Youth in 1951 in East Berlin� The festival gathered around 26,000 youths from all over the world with diverse political, religious, and ethnic backgrounds, who were joined by many more youths from Germany, both East and West� 9 Rather than commenting on the ways in which the festival became part of the battle ground of the Cold War (Kotek 170), the narrator focuses on her own positive experience of this event, which she participated in as a child: “In diesen Wochen ist alles auf ihrer Seite, die Sommersonne, das Chaos, das Singen, die Nächte, das Marschieren, die Solidaritätsschwüre […] eine Pionierrepublik� Wir sitzen am Rand mit rumänischen, französischen, finnischen Mädchen, üben uns in Zeichensprache und großen Gefühlen” (Achenbach, Krokodil 123)� While the positive recollection of the youth festival is also negatively tinged by an ensuing description of how the narrator was reprimanded for breaking the ranks of her pioneer group, the passage overall celebrates “great emotions,” hope, community, and solidarity beyond national borders, ethnicities, and languages, which are also invoked in the episodes recounting the November Revolution, the South African liberation movements, and many other episodes recounting moments in the twentieth-century history of socialism� It follows that Achenbach’s novel can be read as an attempt to rewrite the socialist history of twentieth-century Europe (and Africa) as a history of hope and solidarity� Rather than focusing on the proclaimed wholesale failure of the socialist project, Achenbach provides a history of those ‘brighter moments’ when individuals joined together to form a movement, often beyond national borders, with the goal of creating a more just future� Her novel commemorates 336 Maria Mayr these individual initiatives, which took place besides - and sometimes despite - top-down governmental efforts to implement socialism in authoritarian and ultimately oppressive ways� In light of the above outlined future-oriented nature of socialist nostalgia, it should be clear that the fact that the future, which these individuals dreamt of and worked towards, never came to be, does not diminish the politically mobilizing potential of commemorating that which could have come about to be� Recalling the hope and concomitant solidarity of this socialist history opens up a window through which to glimpse a future outside of the logic of capitalism, given that it illustrates that change is possible� The novel’s goal to allow the past’s potential futures to inform the present is also furthered by the choice of tense� Its plot proceeds more or less chronologically over the course of 120 brief, descriptively titled episodic chapters� However, almost all events, whether they happened in 1917 or 2000, including the occasional flashbacks within the chronology, are told using the present tense� As Achenbach comments in an interview, the use of the present tense lets the narrated situation come into existence in the moment of being told and thereby allows the readers to fully empathize with the unfamiliar that is presented (Achenbach, “Schriftstellerin” n� pag�)� I would furthermore suggest that the use of the present tense also allows the hopes for the future embedded in the past to echo and resonate in the present and for the future� Using the present tense, the author can let the positive past experiences stand on their own, untouched by the hindsight of how history played itself out� Like Achenbach, Marica Bodrožić’s text Mein weißer Frieden (2014) foregrounds the socialist past as a reservoir for hope and as a reminder that thinking and acting otherwise remains a viable option for Europe� 10 In the text, the author recounts her travels through parts of postwar and post-Tuđman Croatia and Bosnia� The travelogue encompasses visits and conversations with family members and old friends, meetings with several war veterans, and conversations with rural and urban Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks from all walks of life, all packed into a pastiche of interviews, recollections, citations, and contemplative philosophical passages� Like Achenbach’s text, Bodrožić’s points to specific elements of the socialist vision that could inform today’s Europe, such as interethnic and nonexclusive national identities, solidarity, and a rejection of capitalist values� As with Achenbach, however, Bodrožić’s text shines in those moments when it foregrounds the socialist vision in a more abstract way as a twentieth-century legacy of hope� For example, the Partisan star on her pioneer’s hat figured as a “Botschafter zwischen Himmel und Erde,” which allowed her and others access to the “Land der neuen Träume! Das Land der gerechten Räume! ” (Bodrožić 321)� Although former Yugoslavia ultimately failed to become this envisioned The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 337 country of justice, Bodrožić points out that her childhood associations with the pioneer star survived in her thinking, and as such continue to build “Brücken zur Hoffnung und zu Utopien von einer besseren Welt” (321)� This celebration of the utopian spirit, of the ability to dream of and hope for a better world, of course does not constitute a defense of real existing Yugoslav socialism� In all of her writing, Bodrožić thematizes historical facts such as Tito’s labor camp on Goli Otok, the brutal oppression of any national sentiments, or the authoritarian and patriarchal regime (Mayr, “‘Überwältigende Vergangenheit’”; “Berlin’s Futurity”)� Reflecting on the ethnic nationalist causes for the 1990s wars and drawing parallels to her grandfather’s stories about WWII, Bodrožić explicitly cautions against the grand ideologies of the twentieth century, be it on the left or right� Contemplating a war-ravaged and mostly deserted Serb village in the Krajina, for example, she observes that “die verbrannten und aus den Regalen gerissenen Bücher der Dorfschule (die Tausende von Köpfen in Räume und Träume eingewiesen hatten)” are indicative of a world shaped by those who thought themselves in the possession of some truth, and that “[e]inmal so gefundene Wahrheiten sind tragischer als alle Lügen” (Bodrožić 322)� Rather, Bodrožić’s text invokes elements of the socialist past in order to guide us in thinking beyond the current status quo, commemorating Tito’s Yugoslavia as a moment in history when the hope and dreams that things could in fact be otherwise, was well and alive� As Bodrožić notes: Das alte Land, in dem ich stolze Pionierin war, gab es nicht mehr, aber in mir überlebte trotzdem das visionäre Wir, von dem ich lernte, dass es ein Wert an sich war� Es machte in der Kindheit einen starken Eindruck auf mich, dass die Erde, auf der wir lebten, nicht käuflich war und uns allen gehörte, was uns von den gierigen Kapitalisten unterschied, die immer noch mehr haben und besitzen wollten� Auch bin ich bis heute dankbar, in einem Land geboren zu sein, in dem ich nicht wie die meisten Menschen eine sich eindimensional auswirkende nationale Identität für selbstverständlich halten musste� Die zu Beginn anspruchsvolle Vision der Föderativen Republik wurde zwar nicht dauerhaft tragbare Wirklichkeit, veränderte jedoch das Denken vieler Menschen� (126) Having grown up in socialist Yugoslavia, Bodrožić internalized a set of values that keeps informing her thinking despite the fact that the vision of what the federal republic could have been, did not come to fruition� Her nostalgic memories of socialist Yugoslavia are thus primarily what Paolo Jedlowski calls “memories of the future,” which basically are “recollections of what individuals and groups expected [of the future] in the past” (121)� Rather than conceiving of these unrealized expectations or envisioned futures as failures if they did not come to pass, Jedlowski points out that for an individual, these possibilities and 338 Maria Mayr potentials nevertheless became part of his or her identity (124) and thus continue to influence them� In the same way, having once firmly believed in the values of the solidarity of the visionary “We,” having seen the anti-capitalist message implemented when the means of production were in the hands of workers, and having experienced a multidimensional national identity continue to influence what individuals who were raised in socialist Yugoslavia are able to conceive of as being valuable and possible today� That the socialist ideals of solidarity, anti-capitalist thinking, and multiethnic and multidimensional national identities invoked by Bodrožić are not merely naïve longings, a “Luxus der Freiheit” (Bodrožić 134) or “ein Privileg des Friedens” (288), becomes especially apparent in Bodrožić’s meeting with three women in postwar Sarajevo� All three women lived through the 1990s wars, survived and/ or eventually escaped the siege of Sarajevo, and returned to or continued to live in the city� With their different ethnicities, nationalities, and religions, or lack thereof, Bodrožić and the three women represent “der kleine Kern von dem, was Jugoslawien einmal war” (242)� Reflecting on the almost four-year long siege of Sarajevo (1992—1996), the women recount the spirit of solidarity during the siege, which was enabled by what one could call Yugoslav values� For example, the women cherish moments of interethnic solidarity, such as when a Muslim shares his few apples and flour with an Orthodox family by making them an apple strudel (251)� Faced with the violent consequences of exclusive nationalisms, the women draw attention to the many acts of solidarity across ethnic and national differences in besieged Sarajevo, celebrating the survival of the early Yugoslav model of multidimensional identities, where being a Yugoslav and a Croat, a convinced Catholic and a pioneer, were not seen as being mutually exclusive (127)� Similarly holding on to core values of socialism, the women, when asked about the most important lesson they took away from the war, point to their experiences of sharing and the unimportance of money� Vedrana, for instance, foregrounds the fact that people in Sarajevo shared absolutely everything during the war as having been her most important lesson (249—50) and Ismeta asserts that the most important thing she learned was that money is not life� The saying “Geld ist nicht Leben” is in fact repeated verbatim several times throughout Bodrozic’s work (159, 206, 259) and critically juxtaposed to the present moment “[i]m ehemaligen Jugoslawien wie in Europa,” where everything turns “wieder nur um die sichtbare und materielle Welt, in der nur das Geld wertvoll ist” (156)� Rewriting the “Sarajevo moment,” Bodrožić shows that the Sarajevo of the 1990s siege therefore actually did not signal the undoing of the dream of a Europe of peaceful coexistence and economic justice, which Tito’s socialist vision of a postcapitalist society based on solidarity and multidimensional national The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 339 identities represented for many� As she asserts, “Europa ist in diesem Sinne keineswegs in Sarajevo zu Grabe getragen worden, vielmehr hat es eine Lehr- und Sternstunde in Humanität gerade von jenen erhalten, die vor unser aller Augen ermordet werden sollten” (269)� Under the pressure of the siege, Sarajevo’s inhabitants once more crystalized the values that were at the core of former socialist Yugoslavia - and which are part and parcel of the repertoire of Europe’s past, available for building visions for a better future� For Bodrožić, this could be a future in which the ideal of Yugoslavia, the “Kern des hohen Ideals,” is carried forward by the “Idee eines vereinten Europas, in dem, genau wie im sozialistischen Vielvölkerstaat, verschiedene Sprachen, Religionen und Kulturen im Miteinander bestehen und gemeinsam wachsen sollen” (92)� 11 By highlighting some of the ideals that were driving the socialist project in former Yugoslavia and in their efforts to trace the outlines of a twentieth-century history of hope and utopian desire that inspired action towards building more just and equal societies, Achenbach’s and Bodrožić’s texts give the legacy of twentieth-century European socialism its due� They give voice and thus do justice to the often-sidelined lived and formative experiences of many of today’s citizens of Europe in all of its facets and therefore help shape a more ‘common’ common European memory� Equally important, they also suggest that this legacy should be mobilized for building a more equal and just European future that embraces different national, religious, or ethnic identities� After all, to conclude with one of Tanja Petrović’s insightful observations regarding the futurity of Yugonostalgia, the values of the socialist epoch, such as “Antifaschismus, Solidarität, Menschenrechte und soziale Sicherheit” are not only universal but also quintessentially European, they are the very values “auf denen das Narrativ der europäischen Aufklärung beruht” (162)� Notes 1 For a variety of positions on this issue, see Assmann; Eder and Spohn; Felski; Mälksoo; Neumayer; Pakier and Stråth; Saunders; Wawrzyniak and Pakier; Zombory� 2 This list is based in part on my research in the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach and the Literaturhaus Wien, which was in part supported by funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada� 3 For example, Marica Bodrožić won the European Union Prize for Literature for Germany (2013) and the Literaturpreis der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (2015); Saša Stanišić’s work was on the long-list and short-list of the Deutscher Buchpreis (2006, 2014), and won the Preis der Leipziger 340 Maria Mayr Buchmesse (2014); and Melinda Nadj Abonji won the Deutscher and the Schweizer Buchpreis (both in 2010)� 4 Todorova points out that the end of communism as utopia actually can be dated well before 1989 to the failed revolutions of 1957 and then 1968, when it “in the words of one of its greatest analysts, the late Polish philosopher Lezsek Kalonkowski, ‘seized to be an intellectual issue and was transformed into a power problem’” (Todorova 10)� 5 In his study of contemporary American utopian fiction Hope Isn’t Stupid (2017), informed amongst others by Fredric Jameson, Grattan asserts that this is the task of contemporary utopian fiction more generally, arguing that today “one of the fundamental tasks of utopian writing and thinking is to chart the emergence of the possibility to think alternatives, […] while its continued existence as a form acts as a repudiation of the lack of alternatives to global capitalism” (14)� 6 Svetlana Boym also argues that some forms of nostalgia are “for the unrealized dreams of the past and visions of the future that became obsolete” (The Future of Nostalgia xvi), which is echoed by Silke Arnold-de Simine who argues that nostalgia often constitutes “a yearning for the dreams and possibilities that never became reality” and can provide “an impetus for future change” (56)� 7 I rely here on David Harvey’s often-cited definition of neo-liberalism as a “theory of political economic practices proposing that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property rights, individual liberty, unencumbered markets, and free trade� The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices� […] But beyond these tasks the state should not venture” (Harvey 22—23)� 8 Marina Achenbach was born in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1939, and grew up in the former German Democratic Republic� She is a translator from Russian and Serbo-Croatian, a documentary maker, and a co-founder and journalist for the Berlin weekly der Freitag� 9 Achenbach does not draw any attention to the fact that this gathering was accused of being mere socialist propaganda and resulted in violent clashes between the youth and West Berlin police� 10 Bodrožić was born in 1973 in Svib, in today’s Croatia, and immigrated to Germany in 1983� Her highly poetic and philosophical work includes translations, documentaries, newspaper articles, poetry, short stories, and novels, and has gathered numerous literary prizes and honours, including the The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 341 European Union Prize for Literature� For an updated list, see her website at http: / / www�marica-bodrozic�de/ auszeichnungen/ >� 11 While a discussion of this issue is unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper, it is important to point out that for Bodrožić, the realization of this future Europe, her “weißer Frieden,” is only possible via a radical rethinking of the role of the individual in its relationship to the past� As she writes: “Nicht das jugoslawische Ideal war der Denkfehler im System, sondern der grundlegende Fehlschluss, dass dieses Ideal im Kollektiv durchführbar ist� Nur im Einzelnen wird es zur Möglichkeit� Solange die Vergangenheit ins uns spricht und schreibt und denkt, kann kein Ideal verwirklicht werden” (146)� Works Cited Abonji, Melinda Nadj� Schildkrötensoldat: Roman� Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2017� Achenbach, Marina� Ein Krokodil für Zagreb: Roman� Hamburg: Edition Nautilus GmbH, 2017� —� “Der Sommer nach dem Krieg�” Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte 12�2 (2018): 67—73� Achenbach, Marina� Interview by Benjamin Grau� Blog: Klassik Stiftung Weimar� Klassik Stiftung Weimar, 6 Nov� 2017� Web� 4 April 2018� Adelson, Leslie A� “Futurity Now: An Introduction�” Germanic Review 88�3 (2013): 213—18� Arnold-de Simine, Silke� Mediating Memory in the Museum: Trauma, Empathy, Nostalgia� Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013� Assmann, Aleida� “Europe’s Divided Memory�” Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe� Ed� Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind and Julie Fedor� New York: Palgrave, 2013� 25—42� Beronja, Vlad, and Stijn Vervaet� “Introduction�” Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian Literature and Culture� Ed� Vlad Beronja and Stijn Vervaet� Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016� 1—20� Bischel, Matthias� “Räterepublik Baiern (1919)�” Historisches Lexikon Bayerns� Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 22 Mar� 2019� Web� 9 May 2019� Bodrožić, Marica� Mein weißer Frieden� Munich: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 2014� Borodziej, Wlodzimierz� “Das Haus der europäischen Geschichte: Ein Erinnerungskonzept mit dem Mut zur Lücke�” Arbeit am europäischen Gedächtnis: Diktaturerfahrung und Demokratieentwicklung� Ed� Hans-Joachim Knigge, Volkhard Mählert and Ulrich Veen� Cologne: Böhlau, 2011� 139—46� Boym, Svetlana� The Future of Nostalgia� New York: Basic Books, 2002� Bremer, Alida� Olivas Garten: Roman� Cologne: Eichborn Verlag, 2013� Cazdyn, Eric, and Imre Szeman� After Globalization� West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011� 342 Maria Mayr Demiragić, Ajla� “What Remains of Mostar? : Archive and Witness in Marsela Sunjić’s Goodnight, City�” Post-Yugoslav Constellations: Archive, Memory, and Trauma in Contemporary Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian Literature and Culture� Ed� Vladislav Beronja and Stijn Vervaet� Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016� 129—48� Eder, Klaus, and Willfried Spohn� Collective Memory and European Identity: The Effects of Integration and Enlargement� Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005� European Parliament� “European Parliament Resolution of 2 April 2009 on European Conscience and Totalitarianism�” 8 Dec� 2009� Web� 30 Jan� 2019� Felski, Rita� “Introduction: A New Europe�” New Literary History 43�4 (2012): v—xv� Grattan, Sean Austin� Hope Isn’t Stupid: Utopian Affects in Contemporary American Literature� Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 2017� Hamm, Ingrid� “Vorwort: Erlesenes Europa�” Europa liest - Literatur in Europa� Kulturreport: Fortschritt Europa 3 (2010): 4� Harvey, David� “Neoliberalism as Creative Destruction�” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 610�1 (2007): 22—44� Husanovic, Jasmina� Između Traume, Imaginacije i Nade: Kritički Ogledi o Kulturnoj Produkciji i Emandpativnoj Politici [Between Trauma, Imagination and Hope: Critical Reflections on Cultural Production and Emancipatory Politics]� Belgrade: Fabrika knjiga, 2009� Huyssen, Andreas� Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia� New York, NY: Routledge, 1995� Jedlowski, Paolo� “Memories of the Future�” Routledge International Handbook of Memory Studies� Ed� Trever Hagen and Anna Lisa Tota� London: Routledge, 2016� 121—30� Koleva, Daniela� “Hope for the Past? Postsocialist Nostalgia 20 Years Later�” 20 Years after the Collapse of Communism: Expectations, Achievements and Disillusions of 1989� Ed� Nicolas Hayoz, Leszek Jesien and Daniela Koleva� Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011� Kolstø, Pål� “Identifying with the Old or the New State: Nation-Building vs� Yugonostalgia in the Yugoslav Successor States�” Nations & Nationalism 20�4 (2014): 760—81� Kotek, Joel� “Youth Organizations as a Battlefield in the Cold War�” The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945—60� Ed� Hans Krabbendam and Giles Scott-Smith� London: Frank Cass, 2003� 168—91� Leggewie, Claus, and Anne Lang� Der Kampf um die europäische Erinnerung: Ein Schlachtfeld wird besichtigt� Munich: C�H� Beck, 2011� Mälksoo, Maria� “Nesting Orientalisms at War: World War II and the ‘Memory War’ in Eastern Europe�” Orientalism and War� Ed� Tarak Barkawi and Keith Stanski� New York, NY: Columbia UP, 2013� 177—96� Marković, Barbi� Superheldinnen: Roman� Salzburg: Residenz, 2016� Mayr, Maria� “Berlin’s Futurity in Zafer Şenocak’s Gefährliche Verwandtschaft (1998) and Marica Bodrožić’s Kirschholz und alte Gefühle (2012)�” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 51�4 (2015): 357—77� —� “‘Überwältigende Vergangenheit’: Questioning European Identity in Contemporary German-Language Literature about the Former Yugoslavia�” Re-Forming the Nation in Literature and Film� Ed� Julian Preece� Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014� 229—48� The European Future of Postsocialist Nostalgia 343 Messner, Elena� “Postjugoslawische Exil- und Migrationserzählungen�” Mehrsprachigkeit in Zentraleuropa: Zur Geschichte einer literarischen und kulturellen Chance� Ed� András Balogh and Christoph Leitgeb� Vienna: Praesens Verlag, 2012� 305—19� Mora, Terézia� Alle Tage: Roman� Munich: Luchterhand Literaturverlag, 2004� Mosebach, Martin� Das Blutbuchenfest: Roman� Munich: Carl Hanser, 2014� Navracsics, Tibor� “Foreword�” European Union Prize for Literature: Twelve Winning Authors 2017� euprizeliterature.eu� The European Commission, n�d� Web� 30 Jan� 2019� Neumayer, Laure� “Integrating the Central European Past into a Common Narrative: The Mobilizations Around the ‘Crimes of Communism’ in the European Parliament�” Journal of Contemporary European Studies 23�3 (2015): 344—63� Pakier, Małgorzata, and Bo Stråth� A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance� New York: Berghahn Books, 2010� Pitcher, M� Anne, and Kelly M� Askew� “African Socialisms and Postsocialisms�” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 76�1 (2006): 1—14� Petrović, Tanja� Yuropa: Das jugoslawische Erbe und Zukunftsstrategien in postjugoslawischen Gesellschaften� Trans� Aleksandra Bajazetov� Berlin: Verbrecher, 2015� Previšić, Boris� Literatur topographiert: Der Balkan und die postjugoslawischen Kriege im Fadenkreuz des Erzählens� Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2014� Rigney, Ann� “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts Between Monumentality and Morphing�” Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook� Ed� Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning� Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008� 345—56� Ristović, Milan� “Wem gehört Geschichte? Konkurrierende Erinnerungen an Jugoslawien�” Europa und sein Osten: Geschichtskulturelle Herausforderungen� Ed� Wlodzimierz Borodziej and Joachim von Puttkamer� Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2012� 105—15� Saunders, Anna� “Towards a European Mode of Cultural Imaginary? ” Essence and Margin: National Identities and Collective Memories in Contemporary European Culture� Ed� Laura Rorato and Anna Saunders� Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009� 9—20� Todorova, Maria� “Intimate Explorations of Postsocialist Lives�” Current History 117 (2018): 117—19� —� “Nostalgia - The Reverse Side of Balkanism�” Europa und sein Osten: Geschichtskulturelle Herausforderungen� Ed� Wlodzimierz Borodziej and Joachim von Puttkamer� Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2012� 61—74� Velikonja, Mitja� “Lost in Transition: Nostalgia for Socialism in Post-Socialist Countries�” East European Politics & Societies 23�4 (2009): 535—51� —� Titostalgia: A Study of Nostalgia for Josip Broz� Trans� Olga Vuković� Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2008� Wawrzyniak, Joanna, and Małgorzata Pakier� “Memory Studies in Eastern Europe: Key Issues and Future Perspectives�” Polish Sociological Review 183 (2013): 257—79� Zeltner, Anja� “Wem gehört die Geschichte des Krieges? Die Darstellung der postjugoslawischen Kriege in deutsch- und schwedischsprachiger Literatur�” Diss� FAU, 2017� Web� 30 Jan� 2019� Zombory, Máté� “The Birth of the Memory of Communism: Memorial Museums in Europe�” Nationalities Papers 45�6 (2017): 1028—46�