Abstract
The German Democratic Republic, or Eastern Germany, disappeared in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, ending the Cold-War era that divided Eastern and Western Europe. This paper focuses on the flight of East Germans across the Baltic Sea to West Germany and Denmark in the second half of the 20th century, underlining their disappearance in this highly surveilled body of water. Examining literary and documentary representations of Baltic Sea escapes, especially in Lutz Seiler’s 2014 novel Kruso, I argue that seafaring nightmares (Helmreich) need to be considered in the contexts of both geopolitical borders and water’s ecological worlds. The paper discusses why the memory of the GDR’s Baltic Sea victims has long remained invisible, and how it can emerge.
Presenters
Anke PinkertProfessor/Department Head, Germanic Language and Literatures , University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Baltic Sea, Collective Memory, Literary Mediation, Geopolitical Borders, Water Ecologies
