How the Past Writes the Future: Social Autobiography and the Dynamics of Discrimination in Christoph Hein's Landnahme and Other Writings (Critical Essay‪)‬

With the portrayal of local resentment towards the massive influx of Silesian refugees after WWII in the GDR in his novel Landnahme, Christoph Hein expands the literary representation of history he began earlier in Horns Ende, again using the fictional small town of Guldenberg as paradigmatic for the GDR, extended here over time to include unified Germany. Bernhard Haber's epic, but unscrupulous struggle to overcome the will of his neighbors for him to fail provides the backdrop for Hem's depiction of how the past unavoidably writes the future and how the collective process of socialization shapes meanings and values. Using five narrators, Hein applies his earlier concept of social autobiography to trace historical developments in the acquired collective attitudes of Germans towards Gypsies, Poles, the handicapped, and African and Vietnamese workers left behind after unification, all of whom were subjected to the same abusive language and discrimination directed at the refugees. **********