Whose story is it anyway? British memory narratives and the paratextual framing of 'A Woman in Berlin'

The anonymous diary Eine Frau in Berlin [A Woman in Berlin] recounts its protagonist’s experience of Red Army rape in 1945 and thus performed a very specific role within German memory debates about World War II on its publication in German in 1959 and 2003. As a depiction of German defeat, however, it also intersects with a memory narrative that is central to British, especially English, identities, and it was published in English-language editions in the 1950s and in 2005. This article analyses paratextual materials, including cover images, publisher’s blurbs and newspaper reviews, to show how the translated text was positioned for English-speaking audiences fifty years apart. It argues that peritextual materials were crucial in enabling a text that recounts a primarily German / Russian story to resonate with specific British memory narratives of the Blitz in the 1950s. It further argues that the paratextual materials for subsequent English-language editions in the 2000s appeal to more deeply embedded memory narratives of British victory against all odds, but also to the memory of more recent conflicts and to broader cultural templates of war and of war’s impact specifically on women. It is this complex combination of paratextual appeals that enables this ostensibly very German story to continue resonating through time and space.