A Transgenerational Narrative: Bianca Schaalburg’s Der Duft der Kiefern (The Scent of the Pines)

Abstract

This article presents a reading of Bianca Schaalburg's Der Duft der Kiefern (2021) as a transgenerational narrative. Based on her own family history, Schaalburg explores how her grandparents’ generation kept quiet about their own role under the Nazi regime. The book, which might be classified as a graphic memoir, shows how the ripple effects of their silence spread from generation to generation. Thus the book is also a relevant contribution to German commemorative culture. Der Duft der Kiefern shows how memory work may take place through a meta-poetological level: The book can be read as an artistic contribution about how memory work occurs, using the visual medium of the graphic novel.