Diyalog Interkulturelle Zeitschrift Für Germanistik

Abstract

It is not possible to ignore the effects of the concept of politics, which is a form of organizing and regulating our social and therefore individual lives, in the art of literature where all kinds of emotions, thoughts and values ​​are discussed as a social phenomenon. As political/ideological criticism suggests, literary works shaped within the framework of social form and human life present a section of political and ideological history. Writers who live in a historical process shaped by the social and political conditions of the period in which they live, contribute to human beings' understanding of their history and gain awareness by including these problems that affect their lives with a critical approach in their works. Jenny Erpenbeck, who has an important place in contemporary German literature, examines the history of her own country and reckons with it through her responsibilities as a writer, in her novels Heimsuchung, Aller Tage Abend, and Kairos. Erpenbeck reveals how social and political events, decisions and reality that took place in the 20th century, such as the First World War, the Nazi ideology, the Jewish Holocaust, Germany being divided in two by the Berlin Wall as a result of the Second World War, and the unification of the two blocs with the destruction of the wall, are reflected in the private sphere of the individual and how they affect her/his life. In all three works, the spiritual void that emerges with the loss of the concept of homeland draws attention. Born in East Berlin in 1967, the author herself, like Katharina, the main character of Kairos, witnessed the change of her country and the entire social and ideological system she was accustomed to, and the sudden upheaval of her own life and the others’ lives. This situation, which is a major turning point for Germany, is handled in the work with all its historical, political, ideological, social, and individual reality. Based on this social, historical and ideological parallelism, the historical-political and individual-social documentary value of the work analyzed in the light of the eclectic method that blends criticism towards the outside world and society with criticism towards the author and the text has been revealed.