German, Jewish, and Female: Encounters with Antisemitism in Mirna Funk's Winternähe (2015) and Deborah Feldman's Überbitten (2017)

Abstract

Abstract: Mirna Funk's novel Winternähe (2015) and Deborah Feldman's autobiography Überbitten (2017) depict iterations of antisemitism in contemporary German society, focusing on the seemingly latent antisemitism, exacerbated by their gender, that Lola, the protagonist in Winternähe , and Feldman experience frequently. Intruder figures make legible their disregard for Lola's and Feldman's position as Jewish women in Germany. Funk's Winternähe and Feldman's Überbitten call out the contradictions that Lola and Feldman identify in German society as two independent and fully autonomous Jewish women who are repeatedly told they do not belong in Germany. Funk and Feldman write against such rejections of female German-Jewish identities and toward a recuperation and reclaiming of what it means—for them, not for others—to inhabit Jewishness, Germanness, and femaleness simultaneously, on their own terms.