This thesis explores the memory discourse particular to Monika Maron’s Stille Zeile sechs (1991), Animal triste (1996) and Pawels Briefe (1999). The thesis reveals that for Maron, memory work is not an investigation of authenticity but a process that combines documents of memory and constructed memories in order to provide a comprehensive memory text that allows an individual to re-cast the self.
Maron’s three texts reveal a progression in the discussion about how memories might be translated into a narrative. This thesis examines the use of form and content of autobiographical writing in all three novels, all of which assist in forming a new self. In the first chapter on Stille Zeile sechs this is discussed with reference to the purpose and effect of memoir writing in the GDR in the 1980s. In the second chapter Animal triste is presented as a text that emerges out of the need to narrate a new biography in light of traumatic memories. In the third chapter I analyze how in Pawels Briefe the process of remembering is articulated through Maron’s untraditional format of autobiographical writing with emphasis on the use of photographs and letters.