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Seifener, Christoph. Schauspieler-Leben: Autobiographisches Schreiben und Exilerfahrung. Frankfurt a.M.., Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Wien. Peter Lang Europäischer Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2005. 386 p. Paperback ISBN 3-631-53828-6. Price: $62.95 € 56.50

Autobiography is a curious genre: neither fish nor fowl, a hybrid between fiction and non-fiction, it imposes narrative structure on life and attributes meaning retroactively. But what if life is disrupted so violently that the genre’s traditional pattern of growth and continuity, which it shares with the classic bildungsroman, can no longer provide coherence?

This is one of the questions that Christoph Seifner explores in Schauspieler-Leben: Autobiographisches Schreiben und Exilerfahrung,^[i] a study of more than two dozen autobiographies of actors and actresses whose life came to a halt when they had to leave Nazi Germany for racial or political reasons. At the core of Seifener’s argument is the question whether the traumatic experience of exile can be contained within the literary framework of this genre. In a concise but effective introduction, he argues that the dependence of autobiography on fictional patterns makes it a literary rather than a historical genre. Therefore, his study investigates the authors’ narrative negotiations between literary form and individual life story. His focus is on the tensions resulting from the discrepancy between the genre’s demand for coherence on the one hand, and the disruption and discontinuity of their lives through persecution and emigration on the other. In fact, Seifener anticipates certain textual breaks and incongruities which he sets out to describe circumstantially in nine chapters (Chapter One being the introduction, Eight the conclusion, and Nine the list of works cited) to demonstrate that the genre of autobiography is hardly expedient for the exiles’ reflections on their political implication, guilt and responsibility.

The Second Chapter, “Erinnerung und Gedächtnis” (recollection and memory) provides the theoretical underpinnings of Seifener’s study. He discusses the current scholarship on memory in various disciplines, including literary, social and psychological studies. In an impressive sweep through the scholarly literature--from Paul de Man to Maurice Halbwachs, Alida and Jan Assman and Stefan Granzow, to name just a few--, he carves out his own position which links memory and identity and conceives of both as socially mediated rather than individually generated. He finds pertinent theoretical support in Peter Sloterdijk’s socio-literary approach which introduces the concept of “Störerfahrung” (disruption experience) as a suitable tool to investigate the representation of exile in autobiography. For Seifener the autobiographies of the actors and actresses he selected have special historical significance: they connect the history of the Third Reich with post-war Germany from the viewpoint of the victim and thus to prevent forgetting while challenging the interpretive authority of the perpetrators (“Täter”). His carefully crafted theoretical framework provides a valuable reference point to which the reader can return whenever the argument appears submerged by the numerous examples in the following chapters.

The question to what extent the genre itself may have shaped the representation of exile is at the center of the Third Chapter. Seifener explores how much room is given to exile in each narrative, i.e. whether it is considered marginal or central to the writer’s history or, as in some cases, almost completely left out. This chapter is challenging for the reader, for Seifener keeps adding several qualifiers and categories (such as the differentiation between communist and ‘bourgeois’ positions, between Jewish and communist exile, and the writers’ ability to connect the personal story with the larger political context or not). While such subtle differentiation is laudable because inclusiveness and particularization may do justice to the complexity of the subject, it can be demanding for the reader, who might have been better served with more summarizing or exemplary case demonstrations. One may also wonder whether it would have been helpful to provide short biographies of the many actors and actresses, whose names maybe familiar to the German readers but (except for Marlene Dietrich) not to an international audience.

Seifener’s description of different patterns of identification (with collective or individual histories and with the profession) among the exiles leads over into Chapter Four, where he introduces a major premise of his study, i.e. the link between literary strategies of autobiography and the specifics of the theatrical profession. Such relationships between text and life are shown on several levels. For instance, a great number of emigrants who fled to the United States were unable to assimilate successfully because of their almost snobbish claim to high art, their own celebrity, and a professional training that did not fit the different performance styles on Broadway or in Hollywood. Professional identification also appears to be relevant as a textual strategy, since several writers use theatrical forms of representation (such as ironical distancing or alleged spontaneity) to “stage” their own lives for an audience. But, as Seifener shrewdly observes, the autobiographers’ aestheticization of their lives often prevents a critical perception of the political dimensions and, therefore, an effective analysis of the larger historical context.

In Chapter Five, Seifener modifies his investigation to ask whether the authors may still create a meaningful and continuous life story despite the fragmenting and disruptive experience of exile [“sinnhafte, individuelle Kontinuitäten bezogen auf ihr Leben als Ganzes”(211)]. Here, his differentiation between ‘bourgeois’ and communist actors proves to be helpful and relevant. It comes as a surprise to the reader that communist writers can successfully apply the traditional (‘bourgeois’) bildungsroman model to create consistent and continuous life stories. Seifener finds the reason for this in their handling of exile as part of an ongoing political engagement which began before their emigration and continued on their return to (communist) East Germany. Since these actors and actresses always understood their profession as a political mission, they are also able to unify their personal, professional and historical experience in their autobiographies under the banner of their ideology. Differently, their bourgeois colleagues (who mostly returned to West Germany), could not apply the traditional literary patterns as successfully because they could not unify their lives in coherent political or ideological terms. Thus their autobiographical texts reveal a greater number of gaps and tensions.

Seifner also dedicates a small portion of this chapter to gender differences. He basically confirms the findings of two scholars (Sabine Backhaus-Lautenschläger and Heike Klapdor) who have investigated the special situation of women in exile. As observed in the autobiographies of most actresses, Seifener claims, women tend to subordinate their own experience to that of their male partners. Granted that gender is not a major focus in this study, one may wonder, though, if a closer look at the extensive and differentiated scholarship of the female bildungsroman (which obviously uses different strategies than the male model) may have yielded more interesting results.

In the next chapter Seifener further investigates how the autobiographers’ language--or lack thereof (“Sprachlosigkeit”)--affects the evaluation of their lives in larger historical or political terms. The frequent use of mythological or even supernatural terms in reference to Hitler and Nazi Germany reveals that few actors and actresses have been able to rationalize the political side of their experience. Several of them simply avoid political issues or resolve them in individual and personal terms. But, as Seifener is ready to point out, there are also significant exceptions, such as Fritz Kortner and Walter Wicclair, whose autobiographies connect their own lives critically with larger psychological and political contexts.

Towards the end, Seifener includes a brief analysis of the authors’ experiences in their exile countries, which he sees as an important condition for their more or less successful return to Germany after the war. Because of the central role of language in their profession, the actors and actresses who emigrated to the United States had more difficulty adapting to the new culture and, especially, the theater, while those who spent their exile in Switzerland could continue their career with less interruption. It maybe interesting for most readers to learn that the return of the exiles, especially to West Germany, could be an alienating experience. Not only did they find it difficult to reconcile past and present from their émigré position, but their re-entry was further complicated when the theater community showed a certain reluctance to welcome or even give jobs to these expatriates. Therefore, several autobiographies treat the return as a continuation of exile.

Finally, Seifener pulls together the complex and sometimes lengthy case studies in a pointed and effective conclusion, which gives the reader a clear overview of the main arguments. In fact, introduction and conclusion provide the reader with the necessary framework from which to re-enter the book’s detailed descriptions with more focus and understanding. All told, Schauspieler-Leben: Autobiographisches Schreiben und Exilerfahrung is a valuable contribution to the scholarship of exile, theater, and genre that helps scholars understand yet another aspect of Germany’s relationship with its difficult past.

^[i] A rough translation of the title could be “Life of actors: autobiographical narrative and the experience of exile.”[CZ]