AUTOBIOGRAFIE – METAAUTOBIOGRAFIE – AUTOSOZIOBIOGRAFIE: OSTDEUTSCHES AUTOBIOGRAFISCHES ERINNERN IM NEUEN JAHRTAUSEND

This article draws attention to the autobiographical remembrance of East German authors in their texts from the new millennium, viewing their autobiographical work through the lens of generational belonging. Using exemplary autobiographical texts, it demonstrates how they (re)construct memories of the East German past, what narrative strategies the authors use, and what their autobiographical texts bring to non-literary discourses. Generational differences are exposed mainly in the use of meta-autobiographical procedures to differing degrees or the integration of documentary media into the process of literary remembrance, as well as in the nature of auto-fiction. Generational affiliation is mainly thematised in the strongly factual texts of the youngest GDR-born authors, often associated with marketable self-staging practices. In contrast to the Aufbaugeneration (literally “build-up generation”) which constructed the new East German society from the ruins of the post-war period, as represented by the deeply self-reflexive, fictional meta-autobiography of Christa Wolf, the autobiographies of young authors rarely reflect the complexity of the processes of remembering. By dealing with one’s own origins and linking one’s individual life story to larger socio-historical and political contexts, the most recent texts of the post-reunification generation in particular come close to autosociobiographies.