Erzählen vom Widerstand als Erzählen von Gemeinschaft

After the Second World War, resistance against the Nazis quickly became a popular literary topic. By 1989, around twenty novels, plays and short stories had been published in West Germany. The author shows that these (at first glance) quite different texts contribute to the imagination and reflection of major societal groups. They achieve this by delineating the national socialist “Other” on the one hand and by the “narrative draft” of an oppositional continuity on the other. From constructivist concepts of community and collective identity arises a typology distinguishing three diverse literary community designs: the rehabilitation of the national community, the destabilization of established communities and the modification of the anti-fascist community.