Dieter Forte: Das Haus auf meinen Schultern (1999)

The article gives an account of the content of the three volumes that make up the well-known trilogy "Das Haus auf meinen Schultern" (1999) by Dieter Forte (1935-2019), to which was subsequently added the publication of a fourth volume entitled "Auf der anderen Seite der Welt "(2004) which continues the narration of the experiences of the Second World War; is set in a nursing home where the survivors of this epochal trauma relive past experiences between dream and wakefulness. The essay analyzes in detail the different narrative register of the three volumes of the trilogy, intertwining the analysis of the literary work with the personal testimonies of the author, who tells the stories of the Fontana family (of Italian origin) and Lukacz (of Polish origin) as a family saga from a semi-autobiographical perspective. We focus on the formal and poetic stylistic peculiarities of the work, which has an epic character, on Forte's role as interpreter of the "rubble" culture in the phase following the fall of the Berlin Wall and critically analyze, in the final part of the essay, the various reflections of the commentators of Forte's work.