Postmemory Interpretations of Second World War Love Affairs in Twenty-First-Century Norwegian Literature

Abstract

Love and intimate relations between German men and Norwegian women were a widespread phenomenon during WWII. Like in many other European countries, these women were stigmatized and humiliated both by the authorities and by the civilian population. In this article, I discuss four postmemory literary works that address this issue: Edvard Hoem’s novel Mors og fars historie (The Story of My Mother and Father, 2005), Lene Ask’s graphic novel Hitler, Jesus og farfar (Hitler, Jesus, and Grandfather, 2006), Randi Crott and Lillian Crott Berthung’s autobiography Ikke si det til noen! (Don’t tell anyone!, 2013), and Atle Næss’s novel Blindgjengere (Duds, 2019). I explore how the narratives create a living connection between then and now and how they deal with unresolved questions and knowledge gaps. Furthermore, I discuss common themes such as the fate and identity of war children, national responsibilities versus individual choice, and norms connected to gender and sexuality. I argue that these postmemory interpretations of wartime love affairs not only aim to retell the past but to investigate the normative frameworks within which these relationships took place. My contention is that the postmemory gaze pays primary attention to the power of cultural constructions—of nationality, identity, and gender—as well as their context-related historical changes.

1. Introduction

Intimate relations between Norwegian women and German men were a widespread phenomenon during the Second World War (WWII). Exactly how many women this pertains to is uncertain; estimates vary from 30,000 to 120,000. More certain is that the relationships resulted in the birth of about 10–12,000 children (Olsen 1998). In Norway as in many other European countries, these women, derogatively called “whores of Germans” (tyskertøser), were stigmatized and humiliated both by the authorities and by the civilian population. In 2018 the Norwegian government issued a public apology to these women for the violation of the law and human rights by the authorities.

Postmemory fiction and life writing on this issue confirm the impression of a nation’s regret and willingness to excuse. This body of literature reveals the pain and the problems that the war generation had to endure, as well as the social and emotional consequences its descendants faced. Yet, postmemory literature is produced at a distance, and past experiences are necessarily transferred as memories intertwined with present concerns. The postmemory concept, as elaborated by Marianne Hirsch in several works, denotes exactly a tie between past and present that she calls a “living connection” (Hirsch 2008, p. 104). Hirsch’s primary aim is to describe the transference of traumatic memories within the family (“familial”), but she even includes works by artists without a familiar connection (“affiliate”). Most importantly, the postmemory concept indicates a dynamic trans- and inter-generational process that sheds light on the ways in which war memories affect the descendants.1

Wartime events are not only difficult to experience and painful to commemorate, but they also reveal a close connection between individual lives and collective frames. In war, national enemies are prohibited from becoming personal friends by adopted laws or public opinion, national belonging comes into conflict with ethnic affiliation, and women’s bodies are symbolic bearers of the nation’s honor. These aspects of the wartime love affairs are highlighted in this postmemory literature, even at the expense of the amorous side of the relationships described. An important aim and contribution of my research is to show how these connections are narrated and interpreted in the selected texts and how the authors relate to the changing norms and attitudes they observe. Postmemory literature is a relevant medium for interpreting how the “tyskertøser” issue is publicly negotiated and understanding the shifting attitudes it signifies.

Four books will be scrutinized: Edvard Hoem’s novel Mors og fars historie (The Story of My Mother and Father, Hoem 2005), Lene Ask’s graphic novel Hitler, Jesus og farfar (Hitler, Jesus, and Grandfather, Ask 2006), Randi Crott and Lillian Crott Berthung’s autobiography Ikke si det til noen! (Don’t tell anyone!, Crott and Berthung 2013), and Atle Næss’s novel Blindgjengere (Duds, Næss 2019).2 These postmemory literary works are esthetically diverse, but they have essential themes in common. To varying degrees, and in different ways, they illuminate and explicitly discuss how postmemory narratives create a living connection between then and now, and in what ways they deal with unresolved questions and knowledge gaps. Three of them are familial postmemory texts (Hoem, Ask, and Crott), while Næss’s novel is affiliative—his story is fully invented. However, all four of them are concerned with the fate and identity of “krigsbarn” (children with Norwegian mothers and German fathers);3 they include questions of national responsibilities versus individual choice; and they critically address norms connected to gender and sexuality. In addition, they all compellingly thematize discursive frames and verbal and visual elements from the memory culture of WWII.

In the following, I address the above-mentioned topics and will use two of the works as examples in each case. I argue that these interpretations of wartime love affairs not only aim to retell the past but to investigate and highlight the normative frameworks within which these relationships took place. My contention is that the postmemory gaze on the wartime love affairs pays primary attention to the power of cultural constructions—of nationality, identity, and gender—as well as their context-related historical changes.

2. Historical Background

The Norwegian legal settlement after the war was extensive and remains controversial. After the liberation, arrests were made immediately, and 92,805 trials were conducted. In these proceedings, 46,085 people were punished. Criticism has focused on whether ordinary NS members were punished too harshly, whether it was contrary to the Constitution to introduce temporary measures, and whether war profiteers were treated too leniently. The reintroduction of the death penalty and the treatment of women who were then called “whores of Germans” (tyskertøser)—now the more neutral “girls of Germans” (tyskerjenter) —were also much discussed (Nøkleby 2004).

The “girls of Germans” were not among the persons who appeared before the court. Instead, it was decided that they should be separated from the rest of the population, and between 3000 and 5000 were detained in internment camps (Drolshagen 2009; Pedersen 2012). The official stance of the Norwegian government was that the internment camps were intended to protect the women from lynchings and prevent sexually transmitted diseases from spreading. However, most of the women detained had not broken Norwegian law since sexual relations with German soldiers were not considered treason, and as such they had not seen trial. The women were also prohibited from receiving assistance from attorneys, and they had no right to appeal.

The provisional laws used to justify the camps included one law created in June 1945 authorizing preventative measures against sexually transmitted diseases, and another from 1943 that gave the police the authority to detain people without trial. To justify forced unpaid labor in the camp, the camp management cited a law created under the Norwegian Nazi government that allowed “immoral” women to be put to work, even though all laws enacted during wartime were immediately repealed after the occupation ended. Moreover, women who were employed by public institutions were forced to leave, with no consideration of whether or not their so called “anti-national” behavior had taken place before the provisional legislation was adopted in 1943. In addition, there was no system in place to assess whether such behaviors could be corroborated by something more substantial than rumors.

In August 1945, the Norwegian authorities changed the law to legally expel women who had married German men after 9 April 1940. This law was given retroactive force, contrary to the rights laid down in the constitution. About 3500 Norwegian women who had married German soldiers were deported to Germany. The law did not include Norwegian men who had married German women. Aside from a brief period between 1950 and 1955, these women were not allowed to reapply for citizenship for almost 45 years, when the deportation was reevaluated by the parliament in 1989.4

In her public speech on 17 October 2018, prime minister Erna Solberg apologized for the injustice done by Norwegian authorities. She stated that it had taken too long a time to recognize this failure but took the opportunity to give thanks to people who have contributed to the changed atmosphere: “There is therefore reason to thank those who have brought knowledge about this group to light: individuals who have had the courage to speak, journalists, writers, politicians and researchers. But most of all, those who have shared their own stories: the women involved and their children.”5 The pre-2018 texts that I shall discuss here, must be considered receivers of this expressed gratitude.

3. Esthetic Form and Living Connections

Authenticating elements such as testimonies, photographs, quotations, and non-fiction references are common characteristics of postmemory literature.6 They serve the essential purpose of conveying the truth about past events, but they are also regularly accompanied by metafictive comments, thus addressing the question of how an impression of reality can be created. Esthetics of this kind necessarily rely on well-known tropes and images, but the effect may vary. In the following, I show that the use of verbal or visual conventions in the two works of Hoem and Ask have a specific although different postmemorial meaning.

Edvard Hoem’s biographic novel Mors og fars historie (Hoem 2005)7 is a classic example of this postmemory tendency. It has a first-person narrator who is close to the novel’s author but whose often-omniscient abilities also disclose his literary status. The narrator tries to find out about events in the past and thematizes the challenges of writing about forgotten events. He uses the metaphor “a door to the unknown”8 (Hoem 2005, p. 7) as an entrance to a story that could have been told differently and a text in which his own memory and methods of storytelling are discussed. The novel features his deeply religious father Knut, who was working as a preacher in Gudbrandsdalen, and his mother Kristine, who, before their marriage, had a child with a German soldier.

Hoem explicitly thematizes a tension between open spaces in the story (past events) and connecting elements in the narrative (the present text). Statements that point to the open spaces are “a story that no one can or will tell anymore”9 (Hoem 2005, p. 93) and “history lies in darkness”10 (Hoem 2005, p. 120). The narrator’s strategy is to fill the openings with a mixture of fictional elements and discursive echoes, thus making the narrative coherent but still open. Marianne Hirsch maintains that postmemory fiction “risks falling back on familiar, and unexamined, cultural images that facilitate its generation by tapping into what Aby Warburg saw as a broad cultural ‘storehouse of pre-established expressive forms’” (Hirsch 2008, p. 108). She emphasizes pre-established and well-rehearsed forms as prevalent idioms of remembrance in postmemorial writing, art, and display, and is especially interested in photography as a medium with potential to reanimate the past. Following this line of thought, it is interesting to observe how Hoem meets the challenge of an unretrievable past in a similar way. He thoroughly tries to restore an affective connection between past and present by creating a social environment for the story, using references to its contemporary culture.

Thus, the novel is replete with italicized quotations, including Bible quotations, song stanzas, quotations from the father’s exam answers, and excerpts from newspapers, letters, diaries, and legal documents. This textual collage reflects a distinct implementation of different discourses, that is, the established use of language in specific social contexts. We can identify a war history discourse, a religious discourse, a psychiatric discourse (linked to Edvard’s mentally ill uncle), an agricultural discourse, and a romantic discourse. They contribute in the narrative to culturally and ideologically contextualizing the individual destinies that emerge and to filling in the gaps in the story that the narrator faces.

One example of how such implemented texts function is the use of the romantic discourse to convey the mother’s relationship with a German soldier. References to German popular music and film suggest how she could fall in love with the enemy. Kristine Nylund is a young woman from a farm in Gudbrandsdalen, and, in her free time, she often cycles to Lillehammer:

“She went to the cinema and watched German romantic films. In the dark she sat with her senses wide open, and she daydreamed away. Back home in the girls’ room at Holbø’s, she couldn’t sleep, she lay thinking about the crucial lines that fell between the lovers, and which she could understand because of the Norwegian subtitles: Ich liebe dich. Ich will dich nie verlassen”.11

(“I love you. I will never leave you”, Hoem 2005, p. 86)

The quotation ironically foreshadows the love story to come, which ends with the German soldier leaving her. Both the relationship and the breakup are prefigured in the italicized German words. Similarly, the film The Sinking of the Titanic is used to place the relationship between Kristine Nylund and Wilhelm Schaeper in the context of romance and disaster.12 It is while they are watching this film that their fate is sealed, we learn. However, their story lies in darkness. “I don’t know”,13 the narrator says repeatedly while reconstructing Kristine’s thoughts and feelings and substantiating them with quotations from German hits.

In Hoem’s novel, the living connection is primarily produced with the implementation of numerous quotations from authentic sources. This technique helps to create a narrative context and coherence that makes the reader imagine how the circumstances could have been. Yet, the narrator does not conceal the fact that these esthetic measures represent superficial and inadequate access to the past.

In her graphic novel Hitler, Jesus og farfar (Ask 2006),14 Lene Ask implements visual as well as verbal quotes in her postmemory esthetics.15 As the title indicates, with the designation of three men, there are some gendered power structures that frame the main character’s life. Hitler represents Nazism, Jesus Christianity, and the grandfather the family bond. The framing theme is reflected on the cover as a series of framed pictures on a living room wall, both photographs and drawings. In this mixed media expression, there are strong hints about the power of overarching ideological discourses over the individual human being’s life.

One story presented in the narrative deals with Ask’s grandfather, who, on the second page of the book, is shown in a photograph of a man in a German uniform. Lene’s grandparents had a love affair during the war, and her grandmother had a child, Lene’s father, but the soldier left without a trace. An important plot component in the book is Lene’s effort to track down her grandfather and restore a familial relationship. She hopes this will help her understand herself better, but this endeavor fails because the grandfather is dead, and his brother is completely unknown to her.

In a flashback to the events of 1941, the grandmother is portrayed as a farm girl with yellow braids and red flowers on her white dress. This image connotes something typically Norwegian (a pattern of red clover on milk cartons); at the same time, it can be read as signifying defiled purity.16 The German soldier carries a swastika flag in his hand, and their affectionate connection is emphasized by the bright red color that ties together his German regalia and her Norwegian dress. Red is normally tied to love, but here, the author emphasizes connotations that throw shadows over the relationship, although in a slightly humorous manner.

Both the grandmother’s and the father’s behavior arouse the need for reflection, and Ask presents various hypotheses. In front of the drawing of a huge swastika stand the grandmother and grandfather, while the text above asks, “How could she fall in love with the enemy?”17 (Ask 2006, unpaginated). Above the drawing of some razor-thin people in prison uniforms annotated with an excerpt from the text “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work sets you free”), she asks, “Can you love a Nazi?”18 (Ask 2006, unpaginated). She relates the questions to her own situation and concludes that maybe grandma just needed a boyfriend. She wonders why her father never tried to find his father and hypothesizes that his identity as a “krigsbarn” (child of a German) and the idea of his father as a Nazi scared him away from the attempt.

Lene Ask’s drawings quote well-known cultural discourses and are utilized to frame the individual’s destiny within larger ideological frames. However, they are also characterized by a conventionality that underpins the melancholic atmosphere in her story. Some of the drawings refer to well-known wartime and Holocaust photographs, such as images of Hitler, Heidegger, and victims in Auschwitz. A possible interpretation of this iconography is to relate it to the disappointing search for her grandfather, which signifies a blocked family history. The well-established iconic forms may represent a superficial memory situation which reflects the unsuccessful attempt at reconnecting with the past. Hirsch discusses this kind of imagery as “screen memories”.19 They “project present or timeless needs and desires and […] mask other images and concerns” (Hirsch 2008, p. 120). Seen from this angle, we can read the canonized and conventional images in Hitler, Jesus og morfar as a powerful collective screen which makes it hard to create an intimate, familial postmemory.

In Lene Ask’s graphic novel Hitler, Jesus og farfar, the references to overarching ideological structures work as frames for the main character’s search for insight into her individual history. At the same time, their conventional qualities also seem to impede a deeper establishment of familial connections.

4. The Fate and Identity of War Children

A decisive moment and point of no return in the narratives of pregnancy and birth resulting from wartime relationships is the question that the woman must ask herself: What is she supposed to do with the child? Although this question and its various answers appear in all four works I am examining, an even more urgent question concerns the fate and identity of the “krigsbarn” (children of German soldiers) themselves. The authors of these texts recurrently ask: How does my family history influence my identity? In this part of my analysis, I will take a closer look at Ask and Crott as the ones who most thoroughly delve into this problem.

Lene Ask sketches the choices that her grandmother faces when she is left with a child without a father. One option is to let the German organization Lebensborn take care of the child.20 Ask inserts a photo from this institution, which was an expression of the Nazis’ belief in the superiority of the Aryan race, and which therefore had a positive view of the children of Norwegian women. Her grandmother, however, chooses the second option, which is to keep the child, despite the stigma that this decision entails. A sign of the shame in the family is that the grandmother never says anything about her German ex-lover; Lene and her twin sister do not learn anything about their father’s history until he dies when they are twelve years old.

However, her grandmother’s secret also affects Lene herself, and she starts investigating her family background. As we have seen, the meeting with her grandfather’s brother is fruitless, but it leads Lene to reflect on what genes and lineage really mean. On a black book page with white writing, that is, a page that resembles a blackboard with chalk marks, a teacher stands with a cane and explains genes. Lene’s own experience, however, is that this theory, as expressed here as a biological discourse, is mistaken. As a genetic descendant of her grandfather, she has now stood face to face with a man for whom she feels nothing. The outcome of this ancestral research is for Lene a new insight into the many aspects of the construction of identity.

Her investigation into family history results in a conviction of the unimportance of genetic heritage, and this biological theme is connected to the strong influence of religion in her life. As a child and young adult in a conservative Christian environment, she was taught a restrictive view of the body and sexuality, and, in a number of comic passages, we gain insight into a message that in its essence creates a taboo around erotic acts. Sex before marriage is a sin, and, in ritualized confessional settings, one character after another must come to terms with what they have thought, felt, and done. It is an exhibition of human needs set against inhuman law.

The question that gradually arises for the young Lene is whether sexuality exists only for the sake of reproduction. Despite having distanced herself from Christianity, she is still influenced by its ideas about sin and punishment. The pastor has taught the girls that their bodies are a gift to be opened by the right man on their wedding night, but she has neglected this rule. After initially caring little about “being reproduced”21 (Ask 2006, unpaginated), she now slowly but surely feels the biological clock ticking. She becomes pregnant but has an abortion, and then it is the old thoughts about God’s judgment that reappear. Moreover, the abortion experience is placed in a context where a memory from when she was ten years old becomes brutally relevant. She and other children in the Bible group are presented with a horror film with anti-abortion propaganda, illustrated by a segment with small fetus corpses in two buckets. This situation is combined with a reflection on what her grandmother may have been thinking when she became pregnant. Was she happy, or did she want to get rid of the child?

The body’s ability to reproduce and experience sexual pleasure are thematized as biology, but it is the social discourses around these phenomena that are at the center of Ask’s book. Between the prohibition of erotic behavior, on the one hand, and its consequences, on the other, both her grandmother and Lene have their experiences. The grandmother has a child with a German soldier and breaks the informal laws. Lene is socialized into a mindset that condemns erotic expression. One is punished by her surroundings; the other is tormented by her upbringing. In both cases, patriarchal structures are also responsible for the use of power, as the book’s title and cover emphasize. We see a telling sign at the top of the cover in the form of a photograph of around ten women, where only shoes, calves, and the lower part of their dresses are visible. Identifiable faces are located beyond the page, as if they have lost their identity and language. Even though their identity is not mentioned, they undoubtedly suggest the “girls of Germans” theme.

Lene Ask relates the grandmother’s experiences to her own life and upbringing. In the school, as well as in the conservative Christian environment, she has been taught lessons about the body and genetic inheritance which the engagement with family history makes her distrust. Hence, in Ask’s case, the postmemory project is described and visualized as an educational journey—a kind of “Bildungsroman”—in which she finds support for new ideas and a consolidated self-understanding.

In contrast to the other children in the texts examined here, Randi Crott was born after the war by parents who stayed together. Even though her upbringing in postwar Germany was very different from the experiences of the branded “krigsbarn” in Norway, her book, Ikke si det til noen!,22 nevertheless reveals how the war affects her life and identity in profound ways.

Randi Crott begins by telling us that shortly before her eighteenth birthday in 1969, her mother revealed that Randi’s paternal grandmother was Jewish and was sent to Theresienstadt. She also learns that her grandfather lost his job because he was married to a Jew, that her father was kicked out of the sports team and was barely allowed to study, and that her great-aunt Henriette was killed in a concentration camp. Her father, Helmut Crott, is therefore half-Jewish, but he has always refused to talk about this background. He even becomes angry when the mother insists that her daughter must know this.

Why is it impossible to talk about such an experience? The question is presented as a driving force behind Randi Crott’s book about family history, which she must gather the strength to start working on: “It wasn’t until two years after my father’s death that I was able to unravel it”23 (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 12). Using her own refusal as a starting point, she airs various hypotheses for the lack of willingness to delve into the subject. Perhaps she wanted to be spared for future disappointments. Perhaps silence would protect her from being hurt, and perhaps it was best not to be distracted by what her mother had told her. Referring to others in a similar situation, she points out that there is still both fear and shame among survivors of the exterminations of the Jews.

The paradoxical identity of the “krigsbarn” is easy to formulate: “Without Hitler’s campaign, I wouldn’t have existed” (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 15). However, it is also difficult to acknowledge: “What are you supposed to feel when you know something like that?” (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 15). On the one hand, Randi must be happy that this campaign led to her parents meeting each other and giving birth to her, but on the other hand, it also brought with it an infinite amount of suffering. Living with this double certainty, which can never be undone, only endured, creates an existential tension that cannot be met with answers, but tentatively with narrative and reflection.

The book illustrates how different identities constantly clash and lead the characters into insurmountable dilemmas. The discovery of her father’s ethnic origin as half-Jewish, for example, means that Randi must change her self-understanding and write herself into a history that is past: “If the Nazis had still been in power, I would have been a “Vierteljüdin”, a “quarter Jew””,24 she acknowledges (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 35). However, the history is not over. When she visits the university archives in Cologne to investigate whether she can find traces of her father, she notices that her Jewish identity guides her thinking and behavior in the present. Her father’s name is registered on a list of non-Aryan students who matriculated in the winter semester of 1934–1935, and Randi reacts with fury against those who have placed her father and his fellow students on “such shameful lists”25 (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 35). At the same time, there is “something more here, something very strange”26 (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 35), and the strange thing is that she feels shame: “Shame to be on a list like this, since my name, Crott, is on this damned list, printed on yellowed paper”27 (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 35). When she emerges from the archive, she must come to terms with the fact that she herself has been—and still is—cautious about talking about her family, and that she carefully considers to whom she reveals their story.

In the case of Randi Crott, the work on her parents’ history shows that her background as the child of a Norwegian woman and a half-Jewish German soldier left a strong mark on her adult identity. She must struggle to process the transgenerational transmission of shame and silence, but precisely by seeking recognition in her parents’ past, she succeeds in creating an increased understanding of both their emotions and her own.

5. National Responsibilities Versus Individual Choice

In war, a love affair between enemies puts the conflict between national responsibilities and individual choice at the forefront. The “girls of Germans” case is especially revealing because it triggered almost unanimous negative reactions to what was considered unpatriotic behavior. This response is generally explained by norms for female sexuality and reproduction capacity, which historically has been closely tied to the nation (see next subsection), but such love affairs also reveal other dilemmas and contradictions. This issue is primarily raised by Crott and Næss, which I will highlight in the following.

As Randi Crott describes in her book, her father Helmut Crott’s life is full of identity conflicts relating to national and ethnic frames. He trains as a lawyer and is a seconded employee of the Vereinigte Stahlwerke in Düsseldorf to their office in London when he receives a summons to a six-week course for conscripts. As he is half-Jewish, he speculates, according to Randi, what consequences military service will have. In any case, he is forced into a situation where he will have to fight on the same side as the Nazis who are restricting his rights and persecuting his Jewish family members.

In April 1940, he finds himself in the Polish city of Gdynia on the Baltic Sea, where four companies are taken aboard the former freighter Wigbert, heading for Norway. However, they are fired upon by an English submarine, and the ship sinks. Helmut is barely rescued from the water. Randi’s reflection after she has talked about this incident clarifies the dilemma related to national identity when she admits that she naturally wishes that the English torpedo had not hit the German boat and almost killed her father. At the same time, however, “the Norwegian and moral side”28 (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 52) of her sides with the English. Nevertheless, it gives her a certain satisfaction to find out that the commander of the submarine died 25 years before her father. In other words, this historical discovery also leads Randi here and now to be affected by very ambivalent feelings.

The strange combination of half-Jewish citizen and German soldier functions as a plot-driving theme in Randi Crott’s book. Helmut Crott’s call to military service occurs after the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Race Laws have been passed, and, when he chooses to join the Wehrmacht, he is fully aware that German aggression cannot be defended in any way. His status as half-Jewish is called “Mischling” by the authorities, and, from 1940 onwards, the Nazi regime initiates measures to remove all Mischlings from the military. Since Helmut works in an office in the Wehrmacht, he manages to avoid signing the declaration of his racial affiliation. This allows him to keep his Jewish identity hidden, and military service thus becomes a rescue from a—in the worst case—fatal destiny.

In order to survive, Helmut must hide the fact that he is half-Jewish, and this creates a strong tension in the story about him and Lillian. This begins when Helmut is stationed in Harstad and, together with a colleague, is invited to the Berthung family cabin. Lillian’s dilemmas quickly arise when the Allies have to withdraw from the city and the Germans begin bombing while people she knows are suffering and even killed. When she repeatedly confronts Helmut about the brutal behavior of the Germans, he remains passive and silent for a long time. The carefully crafted climax comes in the chapter that gives the book its title: “Don’t tell anyone!”29 (Crott and Berthung 2013, pp. 111–15). Here, Helmut reveals to her that he is half-Jewish. The confession in the text takes on a character of anagnorisis (critical discovery) because it discloses a hidden identity, while, at the same time, it is also a peripety (turning point) because it seals Lillian and Helmut’s love forever.

Lillian’s family is necessarily kept unaware of Helmut’s background and thus has no way of easing his burden as an enemy. As the hostility of the Harstad population towards the Germans increases in step with information about arrests, deportations, and executions throughout the country, so does their dislike of Helmut. When Hitler launches “Operation Nordlicht” and the Germans initiate the forced evacuation and burning of Finnmark and North Troms in October and November 1944, it is no longer possible for the family to have a friendly attitude towards the German soldier, and the father, John, refuses to accept him into their home. In the text, the threads of the conflict are tightened by Lillian telling Helmut about her father’s ban at the same time as Helmut tells her that his mother Carola has been deported (Crott and Berthung 2013, p. 182).

Exemplified by her father’s impossible options, Randi Crott focuses sharply on the problems that surface when national and ethnic belongings collide. Helmut Crott’s different identities must be negotiated according to the various acute situations he is confronted with, and he is severely troubled by his war experiences for the rest of his life. Randi’s mother Lillian loses her Norwegian citizenship when she marries a German man, and Randi herself is deeply affected by the contradicting narratives that describe her own affiliation.

Also, Atle Næss’s novel Blindgjengere30 sheds a sharp light on conflicts and dilemmas due to national identity and legal frames. It features the Norwegian girl Marit and the German soldier Sepp, who fall in love during his military service in her local community. After their marriage Mait moves to his family, Bräuer, in Erfurt. By setting the plot in both Norway and Germany, this theme takes on a more complex character than it would in a story with a one-sided national focus. In the initial phase, it is only a kind of theoretical problem that the young Norwegian woman’s lover is German, but, as he has to participate in aggressive intelligence, the conflict between Sepp as friend and Sepp as enemy becomes visible. A marriage between the two is also a process fraught with obstacles because the German racial laws impose strict requirements for the documentation of the bride’s genetic origin. This, in turn, leads to Sepp’s choice to monitor Marit’s brother Jon. The result of this is, on the one hand, that the marriage goes well, but the price is, on the other hand, that Jon is caught and killed.

From a contemporary perspective, Næss’s intention is probably to see both the Norwegian woman and the German man as victims of nationally conditioned processes and ideological structures. They are both placed in systems where they can either only choose something at the expense of something else or they can make a fatally incorrect choice. The responsibility and blame for the war lie with the Germans, but, initially, Sepp is portrayed as an innocent person who has only been sent out on command from his authorities. When he then has to choose a side in the fight and is faced with the dilemma that love has brought him into, he makes the wrong choice. The alternative to cooperation with the Gestapo could have been to refrain from marriage, or it could have been to keep information about Jon hidden even though it would put him in danger.

Marit gets pregnant and is taken care of in a maternity home run by the Germans, clearly a Lebensborn institution. Here, she hears ugly stories about how other “girls of Germans” have been treated and understands that she is lucky after all to have both a husband and a family who support her. Sepp also comes to visit with the news that they have been allowed to marry. The child and the marriage mean, however, that she must move to Germany and stay with Sepp’s family in Erfurt.

There, she embarks on a new life in a country where the war is completely different from how it was in Norway. Not only is there a shortage of food and other necessary goods, but most people are called up for various kinds of labor service. Large contingents of homeless people and refugees must be housed, the injured must be treated, and the city is increasingly exposed to bombing raids. For various reasons, discussed at greater length below, her relationship with Sepp must end, and the isolation in Erfurt becomes more and more unbearable.

In Marit’s case, Næss carefully describes the dilemmas and injustices she is confronted with. She believes and hopes that she can return home to Norway, but the Norwegian laws put an end to her plans. The country will not accept a woman who is a German citizen and married to a German man. In the end, Marit acknowledges that she must stay in Germany and consoles herself with the fact that her son has never had any other home.

In Blindgjengere, the German soldier is unable to maintain his duty as just an “ordinary” soldier, largely because he chooses to maintain the relationship with Marit. The ideological and legal frames that govern his actions make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to combine national responsibility and personal desire. In the case of the Norwegian woman, it is instead the victim role that is reinforced. Both as a Norwegian and as a woman, she ends up in a situation where she is not left with much choice once she has decided on love. The national identity means that she is subjected to racial checks by the Germans and that she loses her Norwegian citizenship and is expelled from the country.

6. Gender and Sexual Norms

Behind the massive condemnations of the “girls of Germans” there is a strong symbolic tie, a moral bond, between female bodies, sexuality, and the nation—a bond that George L. Mosse has convincingly demonstrated is a shared characteristic of modern European societies (Mosse 1985). Two different effects of this bond are especially evident in my material. On the one hand, in Hoem, a clear tendency is manifested in the patriarchal “care” for the woman which her future husband and his religious leader and supervisor arrange after she has broken this symbolic tie. On the other hand, in Næss, the novel demonstrates the woman’s vulnerability exactly because she is a bearer of the nation’s pride and interests. He stages a rape scene which undoubtedly fits into the notion of a warfare strategy by means of sexual abuse.

In Edvard Hoem’s novel, gendered and sexual norms are closely connected to religious frameworks and practices. To underpin the portrait of his father as a humble, Christian man, Edvard Hoem quotes an excerpt from Knut’s exam answer at the Bible School, dated 30 November 1940:

“The Song of Songs was written by Solomon, King of Israel. It tells of a beautiful love affair between Solomon and Shulamite. These two came from different backgrounds. He was born in high birth. He was not only a king, but also a king’s son. Despite his high position, he loved Shulamite, the young, insignificant woman. She is the most beautiful and best woman in the world. Solomon loves the young Shulamite with all his heart, and she returns his love. Because of this love affair, Shulamite is raised from her humble position to become Solomon’s wife and queen of Israel”.31

(Hoem 2005, pp. 38–39)

The quotation conveys the impression of a young, sensitive man who would rather devote his life to God than take over his home farm. His reverence for what is written in the scriptures is clear, but the text is also a love story that points to his own. Kristine Nylund can be read as a Shulamite, a woman with a subordinate position in relation to Hoem. His attitude to Kristine’s pregnancy is in line with this Christian guidance. His calling in life is mercy, not condemnation: “He who is pure, let him cast the first stone”32 (Hoem 2005, pp. 144–45). The line is repeated in her memory when, as punishment, she has to wash up “after the German pigs at the municipal building”33 (Hoem 2005, p. 149), and the Bible verse becomes a symbol of Knut’s humane and Christian ethics, a comfort for Kristine in her humiliation, and a successful courtship.

However, the Christian discourse is ambiguous. On the one hand, it consists of a series of positive inclusions since not only the father but also his spiritual superior, Professor Ole Hallesby at Menighetsfakultetet (the Faculty of Theology), agree on this matter. “You must marry the girl!”34 (Hoem 2005, p. 171), says Hallesby. On the other hand, goodwill implies the patriarchal exercise of power. That the two gentlemen, by performing their deed as good Samaritans, also depict the woman as an object and victim, between Knut’s “I can take her”35 (Hoem 2005, p. 171) and Hallesby’s “You must marry the girl!”, is probably a way of understanding that lies beyond their horizon. However, because of the constant repetition of these speech acts, the structure of this gender and power relationship becomes clear to the reader. After her unfortunate deviation from the norm, Kristine is brought back into the paternalistic fold, while Knut is the one who is put in charge of implementing the normalization. In Hoem’s literary analysis, we are told how the religious and patriarchal structures treat the woman after the child is born and the German has run away and how she must then submit to her father-in-law’s regime on the farm.

In Blindgjengere, the difficulties that Marit and Sepp encounter as a Norwegian–German wartime couple are supplemented by the issue of rape as part of a warfare strategy. In the last phase of the war, the inhabitants of Erfurt must surrender to the Americans before withdrawing and handing over the territory to the Soviets as part of the Allied peace agreement. It is now that the fatal event occurs, for the Soviets search the Bräuer family villa and find a jewel with a crucifix motif that Sepp has sent Marit from the Eastern front. “Of course, the jewelry had hung around a neck, the neck of a Russian, God-fearing woman, a woman who was a mother, sister, wife…”36 (Næss 2019, p. 265). Thus, Marit is subjected to reprisals in the form of rape.

Næss plays out this abuse from Marit’s point of view and with an element of dissociation. While she lies on the dirty floor in the shed and is being raped, she tries to distance herself from the experience here and now. A memory from her childhood and the thought of those at home are supposed to help her reduce the pain and the offense, but it only works partially. She is quickly back in the inexorable moment of the crime, which is both an extreme physical and sensory strain, and fears what will happen to her son, who is standing outside and screaming.

The consequences of the assault are first conveyed by typical post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, such as flashbacks, insomnia, and heightened sensitivity. The fear of meeting soldiers on the street, not least the Russian officer who gave the order for the assault and the man who carried it out, forces her to try to stay at home. Second, Marit, the stranger from Norway who has gradually managed to be positively integrated into the family and the local community in Erfurt, has once again become a stranger. She is met by the people around her with kindness and empathy but is now stigmatized:

“She was soiled, unclean, defiled. No one would in any way claim that what had happened was her own fault, far from it, but this was something that was above guilt or innocence, it was a finger of hell that had pointed her out and marked her”.37

(Næss 2019, p. 271)

This leads to the relationship with Sepp becoming not only difficult but impossible. The rape adds to the distance that her brother Jon’s fate has created between them. Marit interprets those around her as feeling sorrier for him than for her because the norms dictate that he cannot return “and live with her as if nothing had happened”38 (Næss 2019, p. 272). She herself has internalized the same norms, feels “infected”39 (Næss 2019, p. 272) and states that the relationship with Sepp must be over. In other words, the Soviets’ rape strategy has worked as intended and caused irreparable damage to the enemy’s families.

Rape as warfare strategy is arguably an unexpected element in a novel on a wartime love affair and its implications. Its historical veracity cannot be refuted, but Næss certainly decided to include quite a few violations against a woman’s mental and bodily integrity in his fictional account. One reason for this multidimensional staging of a human being’s victimization concerns esthetic density. Through a common girl, he puts several injustices and cruelties at the forefront, thus enabling a literary text to play a part in more formal discussions about wartime norms and legislations. Moreover, we should not forget that Marit is an invention and not a real person, thus making the graphic representations of sexual violence viable in the light of ethical considerations.

Another reason relates to the political context of the novel, which draws attention to current debates. Sexual violence was utilized as a strategy during WWII in several countries, including by the Soviets who, in 1945, occupied the East German territories. However, when the reports from the Bosnian War (1992–1995) on systematic sexual abuse reached international media, they caused a radical awakening in terms of the public and academic response (Skjelsbæk 2012). A heightened awareness of this sexual and gendered aspect of modern warfare constitutes a reasonable backdrop for Næss’s inclusion of the problem in his narrative.

Atle Næss underlines prevailing sexuality and gender norms in relation to several aspects of Marit and Sepp’s relationship, but the most extreme expression of these powerful mechanisms is the brutal rape scene. Important to note is how he depicts the rape as an effectuation of a command and a revenge, hence a sort of logically explained misconduct, but it simultaneously stresses the national—and religious—symbolism that motivates the crime.

7. Conclusions

The aim of this article has been to show how postmemory fiction and life writing describe wartime love affairs and their transgenerational impacts. An esthetic challenge that my authors are facing is to reanimate the past and create a living connection between then and now. I have discussed how Edvard Hoem and Lene Ask incorporate references from WWII memory culture to authenticate a past which they both openly refer to as unknown and irretrievable. By means of verbal and visual quotations, they intend to narrow the gap between past and present while recirculating what Hirsch (2008) calls “pre-established forms”. The effect of this strategy is on the one hand that these forms are openly negotiated as a vital part of today’s remembrance resources and help restore an impression of past lives. On the other hand, they can be interpreted as “screen memories” (Hirsch 2008) because they merely manage to scrape the surface of a deeper affiliation.

A consistent theme in the works considered is the significance of the past for the identity of children and grandchildren. Lene Ask’s research into her grandparents’ concealed love affair and the unknown grandfather ends without answers. Instead, it inspires a reflection on the implications of biology and genetic inheritance, which makes her doubt the lessons she has learned in school and her religious upbringing. Insight into her own history supports a stronger belief in the idea of a socially and culturally constructed framework around her existence. Randi Crott, who grew up with her biological parents, does not take a similar approach but instead questions the impact of a past, where racist ideology decisively governed the life of her father. She does not suggest any innate characteristics regarding herself but realizes that the consequences of his contradicting identities firmly affect her own self-understanding.

The “girls of Germans” issue reveals the problems that occur because national affiliation has dramatic significance in times of war. The selected postmemory works demonstrate the conflict between national responsibility and individual choice and include aspects other than emotions. Crott puts emphasis on the consequences of being half-Jewish in Hitler’s Nazi Germany and be forced to fight on the side of one’s own enemies. Falling in love with a Norwegian woman aggravates her father’s troubles when he faces hostility from people he wants to befriend and legal barriers from two separate nations. Atle Næss describes the conflicts of loyalty that his German soldier runs into when he tries to legalize his relationship with the Norwegian woman. Her choice to marry him means not only that she is subjected to inspection of her racial purity but also that she must become a German citizen and is denied return to Norway.

Gender and sexuality are essential elements in these narratives. To the postmemory gaze it is a clear preference to highlight norms, and all the four works critically explore laws and attitudes that regulate and judge male and female behavior. Hoem underscores the religious framework of his mother’s life and describes the well-meant care she receives when his father is allowed to marry the fallen woman. Simultaneously, he clearly demonstrates the gendered hierarchy that governs this apparently human deed. Næss includes a rape in his story, but this act of sexual violence is framed by characteristics that assign it to the political logic of war strategy. National and religious interests are highlighted as the motivation behind the rape, which nevertheless is an effective crime exactly because of the implied gender and sexuality norms.

A shared characteristic of my four examples is their modest interest in understanding why and how a romantic relationship could occur. They place greater emphasis on the existential consequences that the affairs had for the people involved and the ways in which these consequences were profoundly tied to overarching cultural constructions regarding nationality, identity, and gender.