Judith Hermann

Judith Hermann (born Berlin 1970) studied German and Philosophy and trained as a journalist. She was acclaimed as part of the ‘Fräuleinwunder’ (‘girl miracle’) – a contentious, possibly condescending title given by Volker Hage in 1999 to a rising group of young women writers. She has attracted both commercial success and critical acclaim.

That acclaim has come for Hermann’s portrayal of a post-reunification generation in a state of unease. According to Monika Shafi, characters in Hermann’s stories ‘are supremely uncomfortable in their quarters’. The tension between seeking a settled place in the world and the restless wish for flexibility and ‘Abstand’ (‘distance’) from others’ influence is central to Hermann’s work.  

This first arises in her debut collection of stories, Sommerhaus, später (1998) [Summerhouse, Later, 2003]. In the title story, Berlin-based bohemians buy a rundown property near the Polish border, aspiring to re-live past excesses. Mistakenly, they conflate space and time; renovating the summerhouse will not reawaken the past. Expectations stifle pleasure: ‘Glück ist immer der Moment davor’ (‘happiness is always the moment beforehand’).

Twenty-five years later, in Wir hätten uns alles gesagt (2023) [We Would Have Told Each Other Everything, 2025], a volume of lectures about writing, Hermann revises this motto: ‘Glück ist immer der Moment danach – der Moment, in dem du das vermeintliche Glück überstanden hast’ (‘happiness is always the moment after – the moment when you overcame what you perceived as happiness’). 

In between, Hermann’s writing tracks the path to that sober conclusion. Her second short-story collection Nichts als Gespenster (2003) [Nothing But Ghosts, 2005] is set in Europe and America. The hankering after roots sits alongside – and incites – the restless wish to change location. Mania ensues. In ‘Kaltblau’, Magnus’s maddeningly perfectionist approach when renovating their flat drives partner Jonina temporarily away; in ‘Ruth (Freundinnen)’, the narrator’s obsessive wanderlust befuddles even her: ‘was um Himmels willen wollte ich eigentlich in Paris?’ (‘what on earth was I actually doing in Paris?’).

The eponymous character in the collection Alice (2009) [Alice, 2010] finds her movements constrained – each section handles a male friend’s or relative’s death – but she discovers no compensating stability. She clears up after others, for example, storing a deceased ex-lover’s belongings in ‘Micha’. The closing story ‘Raymond’ finds Alice jettisoning her late partner’s possessions. Alice seeks more numinous tokens of recollection and envies Conrad’s wife a note she has found from her late husband: ‘Alice suchte etwas Ähnliches für sich und Raymond. Sie fand es nicht, war trotzdem sicher, dass es das gab.’ (‘Alice was looking for something similar for herself and Raymond. She couldn’t find it, but she was sure it existed.’) Alice feels poised nervously, waiting for resolution and an understanding of what has passed – not coiled hedonistically (as in Sommerhaus, später), anticipating future pleasure. 

Contrastingly, the scenario in Hermann’s first novel Aller Liebe Anfang (2014) [Where Love Begins, 2016] is domesticated – but suspiciously neat. Nurse Stella, construction worker Jason and daughter Ava live in a suburban ‘Haus für eine Familie’ (‘house for a family’). But Jason constructs other people’s dwellings, not his own domestic space. This is left to Stella; the activity becomes suffocating. Appositely, a neighbour comments that ‘Orte machen etwas mit dir, aber du machst nichts mit ihnen’ (‘places do things to you, but you do nothing to them’). Stella feels all the more imprisoned when a stalker, Mister Pfister, appears. He lives nearby; she reflects ‘dass in ihrem Leben alles zu nah beinander liegt’ (‘that everything in her life is too close together’). Stella wants psychogeographical leeway (i.e., ‘Abstand’): ‘sie wünscht sich Entfernungen, zurückzulegende Wege’ (‘she wishes for distances, paths you can put behind you’). Finally, Jason beats up Pfister; but is he protecting family or house, people or space?

The unnamed narrator of Hermann’s second novel Daheim (2021) [Home] finds space, leaves the city, retreats to the North German coast, works in her brother’s bar – but eschews family life (she and partner Otis parted when daughter Ann was old enough to leave home). Intuition and passion – not experience – drive this mid-life change. Ann’s trenchant attack on the generation before her actually encapsulates her mother’s ethos: ‘Ihr denkt, ihr hättet eine Bibliothek in euch, eine Sammlung, Bilder und Erinnerungen, die euch zu dem machen, was ihr seid. […] Aber diese Bibliothek ist eine Erfindung.’ (‘You think you have a library inside you, a collection, images and memories that make you who you are. […] But this library is an invention.’) However, Hermann’s narrator also realises she must assess whether some rootedness is indispensable: ‘Was brauchen wir und worauf können wir verzichten.’ (‘What do we need and what can we do without.’) 

Such stock-taking is developed in Wir hätten uns alles gesagt. Earlier works portrayed a post-reunification generation paralysed over decisions about work, life and love. Wir hätten … plots a way forward by looking back: Hermann interrogates her family history for the first time. She claims greater control over such life-stories than her own invented ones. Family stories ‘sind andere als die, die ich schreibe, was auch daran liegt, dass eine Geschichte sich an ihrem Ende, was immer ich anfangs gewollt habe, schlicht verselbständigt’ (‘are different from the ones I write, one of the reasons being that a story simply takes on a life of its own at the end, whatever I wanted at the beginning’). Wir hätten … is an autofictional departure. Hermann comments on the sources for previous ‘literary’ stories and thereby tentatively enters centre stage herself. 

Thus far, Hermann had often portrayed people of her own age – but with no autobiographical intent (the distance Stella had craved in Aller Liebe Anfang was Hermann’s too). Hermann asks in Wir hätten …: ‘Mache ich auf, wenn ich eine Geschichte schreibe. Oder mache ich zu.’ (‘When I write a story, am I opening up. Or am I closing things down.’) The answer had previously been the latter. Hermann speculates that her only veiled references to her childhood resulted from a ‘Geheimniskrämerei’ (‘secretiveness’) absorbed from her family life and related to the stigma of relatives’ mental illness. 

This background subsequently drew Hermann towards a ‘Wahlfamilie’ (‘elective family’) composed of friends and contemporaries. While the drawbacks of such collaborative living surface in ‘Sommerhaus, später’, its robustness is evoked in Wir hätten … Hermann’s advocacy of this lifestyle is the nearest she gets to a political statement.

Wir hätten … has, following Hermann’s self-characterisation, encouraged her to open up. She is determined ‘die Dinge alleine zu ordnen, erwachsen zu werden, loszulassen’ (‘to sort things out on my own, to grow up, to let go’). This formulation surfaces during the first lecture/chapter. Hermann has unexpectedly met her former analyst. Speaking to him freely constitutes a caesura: Hermann feels encouraged to process her past more openly, whereas hitherto the ‘closed’ fictional mode had suited her preference for self-presentation without self-revelation. We await developments: will elliptical fiction or more overt self-exploration characterise Hermann’s future writing?  

Judith Hermann has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Hugo-Ball-Förderpreis (1999) and the Kleist-Preis (2001) for Sommerhaus, später, the Friedrich-Hölderlin-Preis (2009) for Alice, the Erich-Fried-Preis (2014) for Aller Liebe Anfang, the Bremer Literaturpreis (2022) for Daheim, and the Wilhelm Raabe-Literaturpreis (2023) in part for Wir hätten un salles gesagt. 

Compiled by Geoffrey Plow (London)