Die Zuckerbäckerin, Die Glasbläserin, Die
Transcrição
Die Zuckerbäckerin, Die Glasbläserin, Die
The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 Die Zuckerbäckerin, Die Glasbläserin, Die Totenwäscherin: Nineteenth-Century Women in Contemporary German Historical Fiction By Katya Skow-Obenaus The Citadel Reading is a favorite pastime in Germany. The popularity of television shows discussing books such Elke Heidenreich’s Lesen! (ZDF 2003-present) and the notorious, although no longer running, Literarisches Quartett (ZDF 1988-2001), the proliferation of new book series such as those sponsored by the Süddeutche, Bild, and Brigitte,1 and the presence of a variety of book stores in all but the smallest town reflect a healthy interest in books. Germans are reading more than ever, and judging by the displays in book stores, or a glance at the weekly Spiegel bestseller list, historical fiction is one of the more popular genres in Germany right now. In this paper I explore a specific trend in historical fiction that I call the “woman-in-trade” novel and examine possible reasons for its striking popularity. The proliferation of such fiction reflects an avid interest in working-class women, and signals perhaps a new way of looking at history. Die Totenwäscherin, Die Zuckerbäckerin, Die Glasbläserin: these novels are the nineteenth-century component of a much larger group of similarly titled works that includes Die Safranhändlerin, Die Rechenkünstlerin, Die Raubritterin, Die Pelzhändlerin, Die Goldhändlerin, and Die Wagenlenkerin, to name just a few. The books all fall into the very loosely defined category of historical fiction, meaning only that they are fictions set in the past. Although the works I examine are all novels, I avoid the term historical novel, because in German the designation “historischer Roman” is 28 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 used sparingly. These particular novels were first published between 1997 and 2005, written by women, and have all undergone several printings. That most are available in multiple editions as well further attests to their popularity with readers. The volumes are generally prominently displayed on the low tables that greet customers as they walk into bookstores in Germany and Austria. They target the somewhat serious reader, for according to Martha Tuck Rozett in her study on postmodern historical fiction, Eco’s 1980 The Name of the Rose “invited its readers to view historical fiction as an academically respectable genre” (145). The covers of these books pick up where Umberto Eco’s critically acclaimed medieval mystery leaves off, lending even more respectability to the novels. They all showcase paintings. My copy of Die Safranhändlerin, for example, has the Salome portion of Titian’s Salome (c.1550), and Die Glasbläserin shows a detail of Hugo von Habermann’s 1889 Bildnis einer jungen Dame. The cover design points of course to the gender of the protagonist, but also gives the books the elegant and respectful look that beckons the somewhat discerning reader. In his article on the postmodern historical novel, Ansgar Nünning comments on the recent popularity of historical fiction: In einer Zeit, in der die Grenzen zwischen Realität und Fiktion allein durch den wachsenden Einfluß der Medien immer mehr verschwimmen, in der Narrativität wieder eine große Bedeutung für die Darstellung von Geschichte zugemessen wird und in der herkömmliche Vorstellungen vom Verhältnis zwischen Literatur und Historiographie ihre Gültigkeit verloren haben, liegt der zeitgenössische historische Roman plötzlich wieder ganz im Trend (36). Although Nünning concentrates his analysis on the English novel, and discusses works that perhaps represent a higher literary standard, what he says pertains for German historical fiction as well. Cleo McNelly Kearns also remarks on the popularity of this 29 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 genre in her study “Dubious Pleasures: Dorothy Dunnett and the Historical Novel,” commenting that “only historical novels, after all, offer […] slightly gender-determined, comfortable, rather middle-brow pleasures” (47). The reader of such a novel expects to be educated as well as entertained, is familiar with “good” literature, and is looking for some lighter reading with the veneer of respectability. Striking about the group of novels listed above are the titles. Each consists of the feminine definite article followed by a noun. The noun refers to a trade of sorts, and is the feminine variant of the practitioner’s title. The proliferation such books is too striking to have gone unnoticed in the German fiction market, and the phenomenon has already given rise to at least one printed response. The writer and critic Rainer Moritz notes the trend, writing in the Boersenblatt Online that publishing houses are so desperate to secure their female readership, that they incessantly throw “Romantitel mit exotischen Frauenberufen” on the market. He ridicules the trend, suggesting several additional titles for future use. Among them are “Die Mittelfeldstrategin,” “Die Eierfärberin,” and “Die Hartwurstspezialistin.” Ironically, this trend in recent German historical fiction emphasizes the profession, occupation, or position at the expense of the individual. While the feminine grammatical markers indicate that the protagonist is indeed a woman, they also imply that the occupation and gender of the practitioner is more interesting than the individual. The female protagonists are in a sense playing second fiddle to their own jobs. I have only listed a fraction of similar titles I came across, for not all of them can be characterized as historical fiction, and not all of them refer to professions—the combination of which I study in this paper. The three I examine here—Petra Durst-Benning’s two novels Die 30 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 Zuckerbäckerin (1997) and Die Glasbläserin (2000), and Helga Hegewisch’s Die Totenwäscherin (2000)—do of course foreground professions and are historical fiction. Furthermore they are all set in the nineteenth-century. The early decades of industrialization in Europe seem an inviting setting for the modern reader. Female readers, especially, are interested in the beginnings of women’s legitimacy in the arts, in the work force, and in the business world, to name just a few areas where their rights expanded in the nineteenth century. The popularity of the “women-in-trade” novel, as I shall term it, reflects a shift in interest from historical fiction about the rich and titled—be they historical personages or fictional characters—to a new fascination, bordering on voyeurism, with how ordinary people lived in previous centuries. Gone is the “nostalgie de la cour,” described by Kearns as “a form in which royal blood, aristocratic manners, and the shenanigans of kings and queens take precedence over the cultivation of sheep and cabbages or even, for the most part, the solid laudable accumulations of investment capital” (37). Kearns continues by pointing out that “no one wants to fantasize herself powerless and a peasant, or plump and middle class, even if ever so beautiful and good” (37). One would think the logic of Kearn’s observation beyond dispute, but the recent titles of historical fiction—at least in Germany—indicate otherwise. Readers are now interested in the daily lives of their historical counterparts. The attraction lies in the detail, and these novels provide plenty, sometimes even too much. In addition to the quotidian aspect, there is the focus on the role of women. Both Die Zuckerbäckerin and Die Glasbläserin portray women pioneering in male trades, and Die Totenwäscherin reflects the family tree of a line of “strong-charactered” women who eventually found a successful chain of funeral parlors. 31 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 The first of the novels historically and chronologically is Petra Durst-Benning’s Die Zuckerbäckerin. Set in early nineteenth-century Stuttgart at the court of Queen Katharina of Württemberg, the book is billed on its back cover as “ein großer historischer Roman aus dem Württemberg des 19. Jahrhunderts.” The novel simultaneously follows the rather unlikely transformation of Eleonore from pick-pocket to head confectioner of the court, and the efforts of the new Queen Katharina to better the social conditions she finds in Württemberg upon her arrival from Russia. Their respective tenures coincide and their lives proceed for the most part parallel to one another, except for when they intersect to provide impetus to the plot. The book combines a fair number of interesting but disparate historical facts with an inviting portrayal of the two feminine protagonists. The reader learns for example that a pick-pocket was once called a “Sackgreiferin” (15), and a few pages later, that Katharina of Württemberg made a habit of appearing in public in the last stages of her pregnancies, which was for “eine Dame von solch hohem Rang [. . .] an und für sich schon ein Skandal . . . (21). The dire conditions of the Württemberg peasantry in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, along with the exodus of many of them to Russia at the invitation of Tsar Alexander are juxtaposed with descriptions of Katharina’s efforts to pinch pennies at court. “Auch wurden statt der sonst üblichen sieben und mehr Speisefolgen höchstens fünf Gänge pro Mal aufgetischt . . . . (41). The novel is filled with such historical tidbits—including even recipes of sorts—woven in to the stories of the “Zuckerbäckerin” and her queen. The unusually progressive roles of both feminine protagonists are detailed, but their femininity is by no means sacrificed. Eleonore’s quick rise to head confectioner, her 32 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 innovation and creativity in the kitchen, and her modern suggestions for reform are presented to the reader along with her physical appearance (beautiful), womanly character traits (calm, obedient, caring, loyal), and her traditional value system. On the one hand, Eleonore is credited with the invention of fried ice-cream. On the other hand, her deepest wish—“ein Mann, der sich um sie kümmert, eine Familie, eigener Grund und Boden, den ihr niemand wegnehmen konnte” (97)—is granted in the end, but not before she gives up her career in the court kitchen to follow her man. Queen Katharina also comes across as a mix of preindustrial feminist and traditional wife and mother. When her mother visits from Russia, she is astonished at what her daughter has accomplished in such a short time. While Queen Katharina meddles in Würtemberg’s affairs by founding institutes to employ poor women and children to save them from poverty, and shocks her subjects by appearing in public in an advanced stage of pregnancy, she is at the same time portrayed as a loving wife and mother and a great beauty. Despite her innovative charity work and her many pregnancies, Queen Katherina “ging [. . .] ihrer Arbeit nach, spielte mit den Buben und mit Marie und begleitete Wilhelm bei allen möglichen offiziellen Anlässen” (235). When she appeared with her husband at official functions, “waren ihre Haare [. . .] zu einer perfekt aufgetürmten, dunkelbraun-glänzenden Krone hergerichtet worden, durch die sich unzählige silberne Bänder schlängelten” (71). Unfortunately Queen Katharina dies young, and the implication is that the court cannot sustain the momentum of reform without her. The second novel is Die Glasbläserin, also by Petra Durst-Benning, published in 2000. The plot centers around three sisters who are left alone when their father dies. With 33 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 no means of support, the three must either marry or take subsistence-level jobs in the local glass industry. The book chronicles the sisters’ successful efforts to rise above these limited choices through sheer determination. Although one sister opts for marriage, she soon sees her mistake, for she is exploited by her new family. The remaining sisters decide to produce glass in their father’s workshop. While the one concentrates on the business end, the other becomes a talented glass-blower, who, once discovered by none other than Mr. Franklin Woolworth, goes on to manufacture Christmas tree decorations for the American market. Again the plot of the novel is liberally sprinkled with historical trivia. In addition to the precarious social conditions in Lauscha, a small Thuringian glass manufacturing town at the end of the nineteenth century, the reader learns quite a bit about nineteenthcentury glass-blowing. Interspersed with the specific terms for glass-blowing tools, such as “Balg”and “Rohling,” are long, technical passages, describing the production of glass (131). At the same time that the reader is presented with trade-specific vocabulary, we learn of the local custom “Waldvögel zu fangen und zu hoffen, dass deren Gesang die Werkstätten erfüllte, . . . ” (59). Like Die Zuckerbäckerin, this novel is so persistent in its use of trade-specific vocabulary and description, that it runs the danger of becoming pedantic. Lukács warns of this in The Historical Novel (first published in Russia in 1937), writing: The ever more furious ransacking of technical dictionaries which goes on in the contemporary novel in order on the one hand to reproduce each object with professional accuracy and on the other to render it in an appropriate specialist jargon must in the historical novel lead to archaeologism (198). 34 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 The requirement of modern historical fiction to include the “prodesse” along with the “delectare” as part of its justification goes back centuries. The idea that an education, however limited in scope, may be had from these novels, makes up for the hum-drum plot and legitimizes its reading. Alongside realia there is also the fiction. While the youngest sister struggles in secret to learn how to blow glass, another is battered by her husband, and the third encounters a devotee of de Sade, who hands her one of the Marquis’s books commenting, “Du erinnerst dich—unser Gespräch über dominante Frauen und über Männer, die das lieben” (241). The reaction of the town to the knowledge that Marie and her sisters are manufacturing glass is energetic at first. “Manche sprachen von dunklen Machenschaften und einige sogar von Teufelswerk. Wochenlang war Maries Einbruch in die Männerwelt Gesprächsthema in vielen Häusern und im Schwarzen Adler” (391). After the initial shock, however, tempers cool, and the townspeople seem to accept the inevitable. Although two of the sisters eventually find their ideal counterparts, the glass-blowing sister, Marie, does not, implying, as in the previously discussed novel, the incompatibility of family and career, or at least of family and talent. The third novel under discussion is Helga Hegewisch’s Die Totenwäscherin also first published in 2000. Starting mid-century, this novel tells the story of Magdalena, a “Totenwäscherin,” and her female descendants. The line between fiction and fact becomes blurred by means of a narrative frame. Upon the death of her mother, Antonia, in 1970, Barbara Köppermann, the director of a successful chain of funeral parlors, traces her family back to early nineteenth-century rural Mecklenburg and Magdalena 35 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 Winkelmann, the first of a long line of “Totenwäscherinnen and Totenkleidnerinnen [. . .] die Toten schöner zu machen, als sie im Leben je waren” (25). Again, the historical background of the novel is presented to the reader through the reporting of facts and events and the portrayal of the social and economic conditions of the various historic periods. The family of the “Totenwäscherin” is entwined with that of the local nobility, a family called von Siggelow—through some sort of droit du seigneur one presumes. The main occupation of the “Volk” in this novel is cloth-making, and an offhand comment by one of the characters about the revolt of the Silesian weavers seven years ago, locates the plot squarely within an historical context and gives the reader some idea of the predominate conditions. The reader is also given a glimpse of household life, as it were. The drunkenness, incest, and ignorance of the poverty-stricken weavers contrasts nicely with the ruthlessness of the better-off cloth merchants and their patronizing but slightly worse-off allies in the nobility. Against this setting the novel presents the profession of “Totenwaschen.” From the washing and dressing of the corpse and the molding of the features by the nineteenth-century practitioners to the more elaborate procedures of their twentieth-century descendants, the novel portrays the women lovingly working at their art. Barbara Köppermann, the main figure in the narrative frame, describes the preparation of her own mother’s corpse: “Also ging ich an die Arbeit, und sie wurde unter meinen Händen jung und schön. So etwas kann ich, das habe ich ja von Mama gelernt” (12). Barbara, the twentieth-century descendent of the original “Totenwäscherin,” Magdalena Winckelmann, represents the culmination of two hundred years of steady work that has successfully raised this family from peasantry to affluence. 36 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 As in the two other novels, the “Totenwäscherinnen”—all of them in fact—have difficult and often unfulfilling relationships with men, and again it would be difficult to miss the implication that career and family do not mix. At times the determined women of these three novels seem a bit anachronistic, resembling too closely the casually independent woman of today in their thoughts and deliberations. Perhaps the fact that the profession is emphasized at the expense of the individual in the titles is meant to bring things back into perspective, to silence the women to whom they have just given voice. It is no accident that the private happiness of the protagonists defers to their ambitions, or in the case of Die Zuckerbäckerin, that Eleonore must abandon her craft to have the husband she wants. So why the new fascination with the working class and specifically with its women. This paper focused on novels set in the nineteenth century, but the list of titles with which I started attests the breadth of readers’ curiosity. From ancient Greece, through the Middle Ages and on into the twentieth century, woman’s experiences in the working world of men serve as a backdrop for countless historical novels. The thrust of Uwe Baumann’s fairly recent article (1998) on the historical detective novel, another success story in the book world, is that the recent growth in the European public’s interest in history in general as reflected by the large number of visitors at historical exhibits and the high sales of history books has lead to a general reawakening of the historical novel since the early 1980s. This trend in fiction follows a trend in research that started long ago with the “annales” school in the 1920s and developed throughout the century. Moreover, the novels that I have presented here fall squarely within this trend and combine it with another: that of research about women. The seventies, eighties, and early 37 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 nineties saw a renewed interest in historical research on Alltag and on women, specifically non-aristocratic women. Scholarly investigations like Carlo Ginzburg’s 1976 Il formaggio e il vermi (engl. The Cheese and the Worms, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1980) and Steven Ozment’s 1986 Magdalena and Balthazar (New Haven: Yale UP) drew attention to the life of farmers and burghers, respectively. Scholars such as Barbara Hanawalt, Merry Wiesner, Susan Mosher Stuard, and Natalie Zemon Davis focused their research on the French, German, and English women who had until then been nameless.2 Instead of Eleanor of Aquitane and her four kings, they researched women in trade, women in cities, and women as wives and mothers. The subjects of these studies did not live in castles or palaces, but rather in hovels, in smelly townhouses, or in brothels. This research about “real, everyday” people has clearly lead to the current trends in fiction about pre- and early industrial Europe. The best-selling German historical fiction writer Tanja Kinkel, for example, followed her first success, the well-received Die Löwin von Aquitanien, about the ubiquitous Eleanor, with her 1993 novel Die Puppenspieler, set in late-fifteenth-century Augsburg, a novel dealing with banking and commerce, with a little bit of witch-hunting thrown in. Ansgar Nünning discusses this tendency to shift the emphasis from the public to the private sphere, calling it a “revisionist conception of history.” “Diese [revisionistische Geschichtsauffassungen] verlagern den Akzent vom Öffentlichen auf das Private, messen der Wahrnehmung des historischen Geschehens im Bewußtsein durchschnittlicher Figuren Bedeutung bei und dezentrieren das große historische Geschehen” (21). Medieval who-done-its no longer attempt to uncover the murderer of the little princes in the tower. Their new protagonists reflect modern research and the previously 38 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 silent are given voices as “die Safranhändlerin,” or “die Rechenkünstlerin,” their professions reflecting the knowledge that women were active in trades. Likewise, historical novels no longer dwell on royalty, and Isabella d’Este, Elizabeth I, and Marie Antoinette have made way for “die Glasbläserin,” “die Zuckerbäckerin,” and of course “die Totenwäscherin.” In The Historical Novel Georg Lukács links “real mass movements” with the “experience of history to broad masses” (25) and cites events such as the Napoleonic wars as giving rise to the historical novel as interpreted by Sir Walter Scott. Lukács writes: “Thus in this mass experience of history the national is linked on the one hand with problems of social transformation; and on the other, more and more people become aware of the connection between national and world history” (25). It would be convenient to see in the tumultuous changes to the structure of Germany’s social, political, and economic fabric of the seventies, eighties, and nineties the inspiration for the present boom in historical fiction. Could the reader be looking for direction or possibly parallels by perusing these works? Does the ultimate failure of the “Zuckerbäckerin” to combine her profession with family life subtly signal a problem in modern society, or does the failure of several generations of “Totenwäscherinnen” to sustain relationships with men draw attention to the struggle of twentieth-century women to have it all—career and family? Perhaps the description of the social conditions of the Lauscha Glasbläser (or Glasbläserinnen) and the effects of industrialization and exploitation on the region are a silent affirmation to preunification Germany. And does the deference of the novels’ main figures to their profession as reflected in the titles mirror the sacrifice of the individual to society? 39 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 None of the three novels I have presented here truly succeeds in establishing a link, however tenuous, between past and present, and as Lukács notes, “the severance of the present from history creates an historical novel which drops to the level of light entertainment” (183). This by no means lessens the phenomenon. The popularity of historical fiction about the lower and middle classes and specifically the “women-intrade” novel, reflects, as I mentioned earlier, an eagerness to “see” the most mundane aspects of every day life in the past. Kearns cites a 1967 essay by Roland Barthes, “Historical Discourse,” where Barthes stresses the importance of the it happened: Our civilization has a taste for the realistic effect, as can be seen in the development of specific genres like the realist novel, the private diary, documentary literature, news items, historical museums, exhibitions of old objects and especially in the massive development of photography, whose sole distinctive trait (by comparison with drawing) is precisely that it signifies that the event represented has really taken place (154). Mirrored in the ever-popular sitcoms, television dramas, docudramas, and news shows à la 60 Minutes about “real people,” this sort of historical novel entertains and informs with little effort required on the part of the reader. Just as the new television phenomenon of reality television takes the danger and action out of romance (shows like “Girlscamp” and “House of Love”), adventure (shows like “Big Brother” or “Taxi Orange”), and even time travel (Schwarzwaldhaus 1902), and encourages the audience to “experience” vicariously from an armchair, so do these novels supply passive entertainment and instruction with no strings attached, no feeling of guilt, and no realization of social responsibility.3 For of course the events and social conditions depicted in the novels happened decades if not centuries ago and cannot be changed. Although the three novels I have discussed here are not perhaps “great” historical novels à la Heinrich Mann, people, especially women it would seem, read them.4 I argue, 40 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 therefore, that these novels nonetheless play an important role in re-shaping history, and by extension, influencing the present and future. While unable to change an actual event, the proliferation of such “revisionist conceptions of history,” (as Nünning terms them), certainly changes the way people look at history. First, as discussed, the new trend in historical fiction as represented by the three novels reflects two legitimate trends in historical research and writing: that of the history of daily life and that of women’s history. Through this type of fiction the image of the past is re-cast in the popular imagination. Second, if present and future actions and events are influenced by our understanding of the past, then surely the new awareness of the every-day of history, and of course the role women played, will influence, albeit indirectly, the shaping of our future. 41 The South Carolina Modern Language Review 1 Volume 6, Number 1 The Süddeutsche Zeitung publishes several book series, including the SZ-Bibliothek, the SZ-Krimibibliothek, and the SZ-Bibliothek der Erzähler. Bild puts out the Bild-BestsellerBibliothek, and Brigitte has two audio-book series, Starke Stimmen für starke Frauen (I and II), and a printed literature series called the Brigitte-Buch-Edition. 2 A selection of scholarly works about women and Alltag. Merry Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993), Beatrice Gottlieb, The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993), Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe. Private and Public Worlds, ed. Sherrin Marshall (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1989), Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, eds. Jusith M. Bennett, Elizabeth A. Clark, Jean F. O’Barr, B. Anne Vilen, and Sarah Westphal-Wihl (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1989), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, ed. Barbara Hanawalt (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986). 3 The television shows listed above are a fairly random sampling and have all been shown on German and Austrian television stations. I indicate the month and year of the first airing of the first (if there was more than one) season of the series. Girlscamp, SAT 1, May 2001, House of Love, RTL, January 2001, Big Brother, RTL2, March 2000, Taxi Orange, ORF, September 2000, Schwarzwaldhaus 1902, ARD, December 2002. 4 There is evidence suggesting that publishers are deliberately marketing their books towards women, because women buy (and presumably read) more books than men. For example, in a talk given to the Fulbright German Studies Seminar on 24 June 2005, Gunnar Cynybulk, editor and program director of the Kiepenheuer publishing house 42 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 described their typical buyer as female, mid-40s, and university educated. In a recent interview with Spiegel, the editor-in-chief of Brigitte Andreas Lebert recognized the significance of women readers to both his magazine and to literature in general: “Without them [women] there would be no market for books and also no market for magazines.” 43 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 Works Cited Barthes, Roland. “Historical Discourse.” Social Science Information 6(4) August 1967. Trans. Peter Wexler. Reprinted in Introduction to Structuralism. Ed. Michael Lane. New York: Basic Books, 1970. 145-56. Baumann, Uwe. “Die historischen Kriminalromane von Paul Doherty.” Unterhaltungsliteratur der achtziger und neunziger Jahre. Eds. Dieter Petzold and Eberhard Späth. Erlanger Forschungen. Reihe A. Geisteswissenschafter. Band 81. Erlangen: Universitätsbund Erlangen-Nürnberg, 1998: 7-27. Cynybulk, Gunnar. “Wie verlegt man junge Autoren?” Fulbright German Studies Seminar. Berlin. 24 June 2005. Durst-Benning, Petra. Die Glasbläserin. München: Econ Ullstein List Verlag, 2000. - - - . Die Zuckerbäckerin. Düsseldorf und München: Econ & List Verlag, 1997. Glaesener, Helga. Die Rechenkünstlerin. München: Paul List Verlag, 1998. - - - . Die Safranhändlerin. München: Paul List Verlag, 1997. Hegewisch, Helga. Die Totenwäscherin. München: Econ Ullstein List Verlag, 2000. Kearns, Cleo McNelly. “Dubious Pleasures: Dorothy Dunnett and the Historical Novel.” Critical Quarterly 32.1 (1990): 36-48. Kinkel, Tanja. Die Löwin von Aquitanien. München: Goldmann, 1991. - - - . Die Puppenspieler. München: Blanvalet, 1993. Köster-Lösche, Kari. Die Raubritterin. München: Econ Ullstein Verlag, 2000. - - - . Die Wagenlenkerin. München: Econ Ullstein Verlag, 2000. Lebert, Andreas. Interview. “Der Refrain des Lebens.” By Claudia Voigt and 44 The South Carolina Modern Language Review Volume 6, Number 1 Marianne Wellershoff. Spiegel 3 May 2004. Retrieved 2 Dec. 2005. <http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,297980,00.html>. Lorentz, Iny. Die Goldhändlerin. München: Knaur Taschenbuch, 2004. Lukacs, Georg. The Historical Novel. Trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell. Intro. Fredric Jameson. Lincoln and London: U Nebraska P, 1962. Moritz, Rainer. “Wanderhure und Almwiesenfrau. Unendlich viele Kreationen.” Börsenblatt Online 21 July 2005. Retrieved 13. Oct. 2006. http://boersenblatt.net/92987/template/b3_tpl_suche_detail/. Nünning, Ansgar. “’Beyond the Great Story’: Der postmoderne historische Roman als Medium revisionistischer Geschichtsdarstellung, kultureller Erinnerung und metahistoriographischer Reflexion.” Anglia 117.1 (1999): 15-48. Rozett, Martha Tuck. ”Constructing a World: How Postmodern Historical Fiction Reimagines the Past.” CLIO 25.2 (1995): 145-64. Thorn, Ines. Die Pelzhändlerin. Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag, 2005. 45