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1 results

  • Chapter 3 - Literary Restitution

  • Laura Petersen, University of Lucerne
  • Book:
    Practices of Restitution
    Published online:
    19 December 2025
    Print publication:
    22 January 2026, pp 71-124
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  • Summary

    This chapter contends that writing is a practice of taking responsibility for restitution. I focus on works by W. G. Sebald, Alexander Kluge and Heimrad Bäcker. In his last speech before his death, Sebald stated ‘only in literature […] can there be a form of restitution’. I look at the way two of his novels, The Emigrants (1992) and Austerlitz (2001), are literally put together and examine how they correspond to this restitutive obligation. In addition, I examine short stories by Alexander Kluge from 1962 and 2013 and the form of their response to the NS regime. I also show how the concrete poetry of Heimrad Bäcker in his work transcript (1986) demonstrates a writing practice of fragmentation and citation in its confrontation with the NS legal archives. The works in this chapter span three different literary genres and all show a struggle with the persona of the author and the practice of writing – its possibilities and its responsibilities – in the aftermath of the NS regime and the Holocaust.