Abstract
Schallié explores how Lukas Bärfuss’s Hundert Tage and Daniel Goetsch’s Herz aus Sand employ the transnational space of the international aid community in Africa to unpack misconstrued conceptions of Swiss neutrality during World War II. The novels reveal that Switzerland’s humanitarian engagement and aid work in Rwanda and Western Sahara was inextricably interwoven with the tarnished legacies of European colonialism. The novels thus challenge Switzerland’s post-war memory culture and question the established canonical narrative of Switzerland—and, by extension, Europe—as a defender of international human rights and democratic values. Both texts negotiate a multidirectional memory perspective: they interlink disparate violent histories and human rights violations in Europe as well as Africa and highlight how the memory of the Holocaust and the legacy of European colonialism influence and cross-reference one another over time.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Lukas Bärfuss, Hundert Tage (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2008); Lukas Bärfuss, One Hundred Days, trans. Tess Lewis (London: Granta Books, 2012). All translations from the original German are my own.
- 2.
Daniel Goetsch, Herz aus Sand (Zurich: Bilgerverlag, 2009). All translations from the original German are my own.
- 3.
Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax 17, no. 4 (2011): 4–18.
- 4.
As Ann Rigney argues, the “Holocaust as a negative benchmark for European identity has also generated variations on a neo-Enlightenment narrative identifying Europe as a global defender of democratic values whose present and future investment in universal human rights is, and should continue to be, all the greater precisely because of the extent to which it had violated them in the past.” Ann Rigney, “Ongoing: Changing Memory and the European Project,” in Transnational Memory, Circulation, Articulation, Scales, ed. Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 339–59. 344.
- 5.
European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, “Human Rights Education at Holocaust Memorial Sites across the European Union: An Overview of Practices” (Publications Office of the European Union, 2011), http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/1790-FRA-2011-Holocaust-education-overview-practices_EN.pdf. European Union, ‘Human Rights’, Human Rights, accessed 20 December 2015, http://europa.eu/pol/rights/index_en.htm.
- 6.
I am borrowing this term from Michael Rothberg, who argues that the “model of multidirectional memory posits collective memory as partially disengaged from exclusive versions of cultural identity and acknowledges how remembrance both cuts across and binds together diverse spatial, temporal, and cultural sites.” Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 11. Similarly, Andreas Huyssen has argued that Holocaust memory and colonialism discourse should be examined within a shared theoretical framework. Andreas Huyssen, “Transnationale Verwertungen von Holocaust und Kolonialismus,” in VerWertungen von Vergangenheit, ed. Elisabeth Wagner and Wolf Burkhardt (Berlin: Vorwerk 8, 2009), 30–51.
- 7.
Andreas Huyssen, “International Human Rights and the Politics of Memory: Limits and Challenges,” Criticism 53, no. 4 (2011): 607–24. 621.
- 8.
Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, 3.
- 9.
“Genocide in Rwanda,” United Human Rights Council, accessed December 20, 2015, http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm.
- 10.
“During the nineteenth century while European States were building colonial empires the Swiss Confederation abstained from taking part in this territorial expansion. However, the Swiss positioned themselves in the wake of the colonial powers. Traders, industrialists, bankers and farmers participated in the colonization process.” Marc Perrenoud, “Switzerland’s Relationship with Africa During Decolonisation and the Beginnings of Development Cooperation,” trans. Sarah Jordan, International Development Policy 1 (2010): 77–93. See also: Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Auch die Schweiz profitierte von den Kolonien,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, December 23, 2014, http://www.nzz.ch/meinung/debatte/auch-die-schweiz-profitierte-von-den-kolonien-1.18449650.
- 11.
Thomas David and Bouda Etemad, “Gibt es einen schweizerischen Imperialismus?,” trans. Beatrice Schumacher, Traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte - Revue d’histoire 14, no. 2 (1998).
- 12.
Ricardo Roque and Kim A. Wagner, eds., Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 7.
- 13.
Regula Ludi, “What Is so Special about Switzerland? Wartime Memory as a National Ideology in the Cold War Era,” in The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, ed. Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner, and Claudio Fogu (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 210–248. 237.
- 14.
Georg Kreis, Switzerland and South Africa: Final Report of the Nfp 42+ Commissioned by the Swiss Federal Council (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 254.
- 15.
I am using Mary Kaldor’s theoretical term “new war,” which she defines, among other criteria, as wars that “take place in the context of failing states.” Mary Kaldor, “The ‘New’ War in Iraq,” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 109 (2006): 1–27. 1.
- 16.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 8.
- 17.
Christian P. Scherrer, Genocide and Crisis in Central Africa: Conflict Roots, Mass Violence, and Regional War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002), 73.
- 18.
Lukas Zürcher, Die Schweiz in Ruanda: Mission, Entwicklungshilfe und nationale Selbstbestätigung (1900–1975) (Zurich: Chronos, 2014), 89.
- 19.
Wehrli, “Ein Musterpartner, der zum Genozid-Staat wurde,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 5, 2014, http://www.nzz.ch/schweiz/ein-musterpartner-der-zum-genozid-staat-wurde-1.18278011; Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000).
- 20.
Philip Rosin, “Wilhem Tell in Afrika?,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 1, 2014, http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/politische-buecher/die-schweiz-in-ruanda-wilhelm-tell-in-afrika-13283762.html.
- 21.
Direktion für Entwicklungszusammenarbeit und humanitäre Hilfe (DEH). It was renamed Direktion für Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit (DEZA) in 1996. DEZA, “Geschichte der DEZA,” Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft: Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, December 20, 2015, https://www.eda.admin.ch/deza/de/home/deza/portraet/geschichte.html.
- 22.
According to historian Lukas Zürcher, Switzerland invested 290 million dollars in Rwandan-based projects between 1963 and 1993.
- 23.
Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998).
- 24.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 46.
- 25.
Lukas Bärfuss, qtd. in Stefan von Bergen, “Zwischen Not und Gutgläubigkeit,” Berner Zeitung 1 March 2008: 6.
- 26.
Carlotta von Maltzan, “Development Aid and the Genocide in Rwanda: Lukas Bärfuss’ Novel Hundert Tage,” in Hospitality and Hostility in the Multilingual Global Village, ed. Kathleen Thorpe (Stellenbosch: Sun Media, 2014), 225–42.
- 27.
Katharina Arni-Howald, “Von hundert schlimmen Tagen,” Berner Rundschau, April 14, 2009.
- 28.
Qtd. in Markus Mathis, “Bilder vom Paradies und der Hölle stimmen nicht,” Neue Luzerner Zeitung, September 24, 2008, 3.
- 29.
Coming under fire, several representatives of the current Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) explained the agency’s rationale for supporting the corrupt Rwandan leadership. Martin Fässler, vice president of SDC, contended that Switzerland only supported moderate forces during 1991 and 1994. He failed to acknowledge that prior to the 1990s Switzerland had been pouring aid funds into Rwanda for almost a quarter of a century. Other SDC representatives were upfront about the fact that “mistakes have been made” and that the agency had learned its lessons. To date, Swiss aid continues to send aid money to Rwanda, although it stresses that it only supports local communities and organizations bypassing the government. See von Bergen, “Zwischen Not und Gutgläubigkeit”; Barbara Basting and Christof Münger, “Das Engagement war von Beginn an falsch,” Tages-Anzeiger, April 8, 2008; Fabian Urech, “Fortschritt mit eiserner Faust,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, June 13, 2013, http://www.nzz.ch/fortschritt-mit-eiserner-faust-1.18097935.
- 30.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 184.
- 31.
“The directorate” is a placeholder name for the Swiss Directorate of Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid.
- 32.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 51.
- 33.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 50.
- 34.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 15, 6.
- 35.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 19–20.
- 36.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 118.
- 37.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 53.
- 38.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 46.
- 39.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 145.
- 40.
Franco de Masi, The Sadomasochistic Perversion: The Entity and the Theories (London: Karnac Books, 2003), xii.
- 41.
Neel Burton, “The Psychology of Sadomasochism,” Psychology Today, August 17, 2014, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201408/the-psychology-sadomasochism.
- 42.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 126.
- 43.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 160.
- 44.
Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York, NY: Norton, 1978), 74.
- 45.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 196.
- 46.
Bärfuss, Hundert Tage, 197.
- 47.
Qtd. in von Bergen, “Zwischen Not und Gutgläubigkeit,” 41.
- 48.
Ludi, “What Is so Special about Switzerland?,” 237.
- 49.
Ludi, “What Is so Special about Switzerland?,” 237.
- 50.
Ludi, “What Is so Special about Switzerland?,” 233.
- 51.
Some of the colonial tropes in Heart Made Out Of Sand emerged in Goetsch’s second novel Ben Kader (2006) in which he juxtaposes the assaults of freedom fighters in colonial Algeria with the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
- 52.
John Merriman and Jay Winter, “Geneva,” in Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction (Detroit, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006), 1192–93.
- 53.
Goetsch, Herz aus Sand, 25.
- 54.
“Western Sahara Profile,” BBC News Africa, January 7, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14115273.
- 55.
Laurent Goetschel, “Neutrality,” in International Encyclopedia of Political Science, ed. Bertrand Badie, Dirk Berg-Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2011).
- 56.
Goetsch, Herz aus Sand, 23.
- 57.
Goetsch, Herz aus Sand, 36.
- 58.
Goetsch, Herz aus Sand, 57.
- 59.
Goetsch, Herz aus Sand, 137.
- 60.
Goetsch, Herz aus Sand, 203.
- 61.
Christian Walther, “Herz aus Sand: Daniel Goetschs Roman über ohnmächtige UNO-Helfer in der West-Sahara,” Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, July 22, 2009.
- 62.
Historians have pointed out that Switzerland’s long-established tradition of asylum policy was largely mythified. The Swiss policy favored “an elite and privileged class” and continued to remain restrictive after the founding of the Swiss national state in 1848. Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland–Second World War, “Switzerland and Refugees in the Nazi Era” (BBL/EDMZ, 1999), 43, https://www.uek.ch/en/publikationen1997-2000/fb-e.pdf.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schallié, C. (2017). A Place in the Sun: Colonial Entanglements in Lukas Bärfuss’s Hundert Tage and Daniel Goetsch’s Herz Aus Sand . In: Kraenzle, C., Mayr, M. (eds) The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39152-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39152-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39151-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39152-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)