Ästhetische Darstellungsformen der kommunistischen Vergangenheit in Carmen Francesca Bancius Lebt Wohl, Ihr Genossen und Geliebten! (2018)

Carmen Francesca Bancius trilogy that includes the novels Vaterflucht (1998), Das Lied der traurigen Mutter (2007) und Lebt Wohl, Ihr Genossen und Geliebten! (2018) make from a cultural-historical perspective individual and collective memory processes in post-communist Romania visible. Her last work shows most clearly what shifts the culture of remembrance underwent in post-communist Romania, and how the tone of remembrance changed from a radical criticism of the system in the 1990s to a conciliatory narrative in the 2000s. Considering the dominant memory discourses in non-literary spaces, the present contribution analyses the aesthetic possibilities that Banciu explores in order to humanize the image of the unscrupulous communist official that dominated her narrative in Vaterflucht (1998), and Das Lied der traurigen Mutter (2007).