Patterns of Childhood

Christa Wolf was a prominent East German novelist known for works such as Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven) and Kassandra.

The novel explores themes of memory, Nazism, and guilt, thus providing insight into the upbringings of children under totalitarian regimes, and problems that arise from such a childhood.

At the end of the war, the German-speaking population, including the narrator and her family, were forced to leave due to the invading Soviet army, and the area became Polish territory as a part of the Potsdam settlement.

The narrator then lived the socialist German Democratic Republic, from where, thirty years later, she returned with her husband, brother and daughter to visit her childhood haunts.

Nelly is therefore the narrator as a young girl, coming of age in an area of Nazi Germany that fell to Poland at the end of the war.

The daughter's responses often prompt the narrator to reflect on her youth and how it was so unlike what young people of the current day experience.

Wolf has stated that her decision not to frame the novel as a first-person narrative reflects her estrangement from her childhood in the period of National Socialism.

Anyone believing that he detects a similarity between a character in the narrative and either himself or anyone else should consider the strange lack of individuality in the behavior of many contemporaries.”[8]The German word Vergangenheitsbewältigung (from Vergangenheit, 'the past', and bewältigen, 'to manage', 'cope with', 'overcome'), refers to the psychological process of working through the trauma of historical events.

[9] This idea encompasses both literary and political efforts in post-war Germany to understand and acknowledge the horrors of the NS period, where possible to apologize and make reparation for them, and so to move forward to a healthier future based on honesty about the past.

Remembering a normal childhood is difficult for the simple fact that we forget over time, but when disturbing and violent events shadow memory it is obscured even further.

[12] She states that she and her contemporaries had to forget to “continue functioning.”[13] The narrator's former role in Nazi society as a member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel, or League of German Girls in English, was one aspect of her childhood she had to come to terms with.

She reflects upon her leadership position in the girl's branch of the Hitler Youth, ascribing it to her desire for the “loftier kind of life” that it promised.

She says that, “where Nelly’s participation was deepest, where she showed devotion, where she gave herself, all relevant details have been obliterated.”[15] She goes on to explain how this loss may have been as a response to the painfulness of the memories.

Scholars have described this process in terms of “Heimat [home/land] and Heimweh [homesickness].”[20] The Nazis widely invoked rhetoric of the homeland to justify policies such as annexation of land.

Some scholars argue that this troubled relationship with the homeland because of Nazism caused Christa Wolf - or at least her narrator persona - to repress her positive thoughts towards her childhood home.

[3] The English translation by Ursule Molinaro and Hedwig Rappolt was published as A Model Childhood in 1980 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and later by Virago.

The question of whether the narrator in Patterns of Childhood successfully reconciled her troubled past has been debated by different critics.

Some scholars have argued that Patterns of Childhood represents a successful endeavor in this process of working through one's history.

She describes the difficulty of this process when she says that “The closer she gets to you in time, the less familiar she becomes.”[32] This sense of uncertainty towards understanding herself has led some to criticize her efforts.

She says that this is a paradox because “revealing the past prevents integration of the self.”[34] In addition to the judgements of its success, different writers have taken stances on the manner in which this process was undertaken.

The work was also criticized around the time of its release by German writers who believed it left out other interpretations of the fall of Nazism, for example the liberation it presented.