Kindheitsmuster
(Patterns of Childhood)
'Where is the child that I was; is it still within me or gone?'
Pablo Neruda, The Book of Questions
'What is past is not dead; it is not even past. We cut ourselves off from it; we pretend to be strangers.' With these words, Christa Wolf begins her loosely autobiographical work Patterns of Childhood. In 1971, the narrator undertook a journey to her home town, now in Poland, on a quest for the repressed memories of her childhood under the Nazis, which ended when her family fled from the Soviet army. The other authors' memoirs of their childhood and youth follow the same pattern. They not only provide deep insights into the respective biographies but also into 20th century Germany's ever-changing political systems, from Imperial Germany to the Weimar Republic and the 'Third Reich', and the two German countries, East and West Germany, post-1945. A tour d'horizon with texts written by East and West German authors.
