Uwe Timm In My Brother's Shadow Chapter Summary

Harald Welzer identifies the divergence between official, public cultures of remembrance in Germany (the history of the Third Reich taught in schools, the establishing of Holocaust memorials, etc.) and private cultures of remembrance in Germany (multigenerational histories situated within family storytelling), evolving from his study of Western and Eastern German families through interviews, individually and collectively, regarding contextual, historical knowledge of the Third Reich and their family history within that period. Uwe Timm’s memoir, In My Brother’s Shadow functions as both personal and historical in nature, chronicling Timm’s exploration of his family history and memory. In particular, Timm investigates Karl-Heinz’s actions during …show more content…
As Timm laments, his parents treat subjective descriptions like “that brave boy” as “word-for-word statements of fact.” In order to craft a whitewashed image of their son, his father and mother provide inconsistent, even contradictory descriptions of his character. While Timm states overall, “They told stories about him, little tales of situations that were always similar, showing how brave and decent he was,” he also mentions portrayals of Karl-Heinz as “weak” and, contrary to the wholly obedient, decent image presented, often disappearing without a word and frightening his mother with his absence. Baker discusses the discrepancies present in this idealized version of Karl-Heinz as irreconcilable, sickly and “weak” yet “a physical match for the Nazi elite tank division.” Timm also notes how heroizing Karl-Heinz’s image performs the dual purpose of exonerating both Karl-Heinz and his father: “My brother’s very absence preserved his very admiration of our father, and thus also preserved the image our father once had of himself.” Notably, Timm speculates that his father even improves Karl-Heinz’s drawings, “add[ing] some lines and shadings,” a physical representation of the retrospective improvements on