Geschichte ist machbar: “Making” the History of 1968 and Its Terrorist Aftermath in Uwe Timm’s Rot and Bernhard Schlink’s Das Wochenende

Abstract

This article explores the role of literature in shaping the cultural memory of 1968 in the twenty-first century, as the aging of the 68ers heralds the approaching end of the communicative memory of the student revolution. Using Uwe Timm’s Rot (2001) and Bernhard Schlink’s Das Wochenende (2008) as individual expressions of a wider generational reassessment of 1968, I first analyze the novels as works of historiographic metafiction that reflect overtly on “history making” and self-reflexively and self- critically highlight the authors’ own role in the formation of a cultural memory of 1968 and the 68ers. I then go on to consider the application of this form of history making to the novels’ reassessment of 1968’s long tail of terrorist violence with a view to illuminating the role of fiction as a player in the push for control of cultural memory.