Sina Meissgeier (Doctoral candidate in Transcultural German Studies) will present her Dissertation Proposal "Erzähltes Leben im geteilten Deutschland nach dem Holocaust: Frauenfiguren in der Erinnerungsliteratur zum KZ Ravensbrück zwischen 1945 und 1989." The event will begin with a ca. 30-minute presentation by the candidate, then 10-15 minutes for audience questions. At that point, the committee (Jacobs, Nagelschmidt, Kosta, Burdorf) will deliberate without the candidate, and then provide feedback for the last 20 minutes. The public portion lasts from 9AM to approximately 9:45AM and will take place in German.
In her dissertation project on the representation of female characters in literature about Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, Sina Meissgeier is examining how German-speaking communist, German Jewish, and so-called "asocial" and "criminal" prisoners are portrayed. The autofictional texts at the heart of her project were written between 1945 and 1989 by Ravensbrück survivors and secondary witnesses. The project argues that these Holocaust texts do not portray the camp prisoners as mere victims in a binary of "Nazi perpetrator vs. victims," nor as a group of women who showed absolute solidarity towards each other. Rather, hegemonic relationships developed within the prisoner community, which excluded some individuals and groups, while others gained privileges and power. These tensions were suppressed in the anti-fascist narrative surrounding Ravensbrück in the GDR, which aimed to show communist resistance and solidarity above all. Based on sources from the Ravensbrück archive, Sina's project includes both texts that support the GDR narrative and others that subvert it. The dissertation will contribute to the discussion about women's literature and the Holocaust, antifascism past and present, and the discourse on Nazi concentration camps.
