Meissgeier:Die deutschsprachige Literatu

The publication deals with texts predominantly written by women about the Ravensbrück concentration camp from 1945 to 1989. It particularly focuses on East German narratives as important counter-narratives to the predominantly West German-shaped culture of remembrance. Sina Meissgeier demonstrates that Holocaust literature is more diverse than assumed and highlights moral ambiguities in the portrayal of female political prisoners in roles as so-called functional prisoners. In early Ravensbrück literature and in unpublished texts, it becomes clear that the binary distinction between victimhood and perpetration in National Socialism in the canonized Holocaust literature relies on categorizing individuals as either good or evil. The study examines texts from the GDR era that adhere to the propagated ideal of the communist prisoner and the antifascist myth, but it also reveals fractures in this antifascist narrative, notably through the example of the critically loyal author Hedda Zinner. Through its extensive corpus, the study provides a comprehensive overview of German-language literature on the Ravensbrück concentration camp and contributes to the storytelling of women about concentration camp imprisonment.