UC Irvine

This dissertation focuses on the postwar work of Wolfgang Koeppenspecifically, the way in which his novels, published between 1951 and 1954, occupy the interregnum between the postwar period and the early Federal Republic. The dissertation analyzes how Koeppen uses themes of sexuality and race in tandem with modernist form to explore and stage the anxieties caused by the emerging conflicts and continuities with the recent past. Therein, I locate Koeppen’s trilogy as a series of midcentury novels, that are suspended between an emergent democracy and the fascist past.