caa a22 4500 378936034 CHVBK 20180305123640.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161128e20040904xx s 000 0 ger 10.1515/IASL.2004.1.84 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)gruyter-10.1515/IASL.2004.1.84 Wolff Lynn The Mare of Majdanek. Intersections of History and Fiction in Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser [Elektronische Daten] [Lynn Wolff] Bernhard Schlink's novel Der Vorleser (1995; The Reader [1997]), won international attention and success, no doubt in part for its enthralling, intergenerational love story and its discussion of the particular questions facing and posed by >>die Nachgeborenen<<, the generation born after World War II. Even more notable, however, is Schlink's literary representation of the women who worked as guards in Nazi concentration and extermination camps, a group of women who have not been the focus of literary texts and are practically absent in historical or sociological research, especially in English-speaking sources. This essay provides a historical background to these women: their numbers, training, considerable power, and violent use of force, just to name a few aspects under consideration. In addition, a particular focus is placed on one such guard, Hermine Braunsteiner- Ryan, due to the similarities between this historical individual and Schlink's fictional character of Hanna Schmitz. The elucidation of the female guards' duties and responsibilities within the camps, moreover, calls into question the problem of illiteracy at the crux of Schlink's novel. © Max Niemeyer Verlag GmbH, Tübingen 2004 Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG 29/1(2004-09-04), 84-117 0340-4528 29:1<84 2004 29 IASL https://doi.org/10.1515/IASL.2004.1.84 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1515/IASL.2004.1.84 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Wolff Lynn NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG 29/1(2004-09-04), 84-117 0340-4528 29:1<84 2004 29 IASL CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-gruyter