Die intertextuelle Arbeit am Thema der Schuld. W.G. Sebald und Günter Grass

Taking its cue from reflections upon art of memory, considered by Peter Stocker (1998) as one of the most important functions used to enhance intertextual work in literary experience, this essay takes into account both W.G. Sebald's ethic-anthropologic perspective, conceived of as commemoration of the dead, as well as Grass' socio-cultural venue in the form of a cultural attention toward potentials of memory in the German community. Its aim is to define their influence on post-war debates on issues on guilt. While intertextual interferences in Sebald are dialogic and end up in the endeavour to restore a voice, threatened by oblivion in his texts, Grass' intertextuality is more self-referential, as it plays with the gradual recovery of motivs and characters belonging to his past works. However, in Grass' latest, mainly autobiographical production a need for catching up with Adorno's insights of "damaged life" surfaces as an antidote to be deployed against his ever ambivalent relationship to German society.