German Life and Letters 60:2 April 2007 00168777 (print); 14680483 (online)

A NEW KIND OF CREATIVE ENERGY: YADE KARAS SELAM BERLIN AND FATIH AKINS KURZ UND SCHMERZLOS AND GEGEN DIE WAND Petra Fachinger
ABSTRACT

This article argues that recent Turkish-German writing and film reflect a new selfunderstanding and present a new perspective on things Turkish within mainstream German society. A comparative/contrastive analysis of Akif Pirin cis Tr nen sind c a immer das Ende (1980), the first Turkish-German novel by a second-generation writer, and Yad Karas Selam Berlin (2003) demonstrates how the Turkish-German selfe representation has changed over the last two decades. In Selam Berlin the portrayal of the young Turkish-German males identity crisis not only takes on a different shape while Pirin cis Akif remains entrenched in the Turkish/German divide, c Karas Hasan is not burdened by his dual cultural heritage but the novel also participates in a new literary discourse that is closely associated with the rise of the Berlin Republic. Like Selam Berlin, Fatih Akins films Kurz und schmerzlos (1997) and Gegen die Wand (2004) are imbued with a new energy that manifests itself in a new Turkish-German self-definition. The article shows how Akin rewrites the strategies and objectives of the New German Cinema, particularly those of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, by playfully undermining persisting stereotypes of Turks as well as of what ethnic filmmaking is supposed to be about, by reversing character roles, using space subversively, and undercutting audience expectations and genre conventions. Ultimately, both Kara and Akin offer a complex representation of things Turkish in Germany by demonstrating that there are more than two different value systems, one Turkish and one German, set against each other.

THE NEW GERMANS

Maxim Biller, in Die Dritte Ethnie: Warum die Kinder der Ausl nder die a besseren Deutschen sind, refers to second and third-generation immigrants to Germany as dritte Ethnie, whereby Germans constitute the first Ethnie and first-generation immigrants the second. 1 Biller is well known for his polemical and provocative statements, and I do not intend to adopt his observations uncritically as the interpretive frame of this essay. However, the argument that Biller makes in his article can certainly be supported by textual evidence, i.e. a proliferation of novels, autobiographies, 2 and
1 Maxim Biller, Die dritte Ethnie: Warum die Kinder der Ausl nder die besseren Deutschen sind, a in Helge Malchow (ed.), Fatih Akin: Gegen die Wand. Das Buch zum Film mit Dokumenten, Materialien, Interviews, Cologne 2004, pp. 26768 (here p. 267). 2 See, for example, Hatice Akyun, Einmal Hans mit scharfer Soe. Leben in zwei Welten, Munich 2005; and Hilal Sezgin, Typisch T rkin? Portr t einer neuen Generation, Freiburg 2006. u a
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films by Turkish-German writers and directors that express the kind of selfunderstanding and self-positioning that he addresses. Biller claims that the common experience of members of dritte Ethnie in Germany is that, as non-Germans, they are more German than they would like to admit, and that, in spite of this fact, they are not always accepted as Germans. 3 This paradoxical situation, according to Biller, creates a bond among the writers of this generation. It also keeps their language passionate and fresh and charges them with a specific kind of energy, the energy of those who are at the margin and are either attempting to make it to the centre, or, in an oppositional move, proclaim the margin as the centre. The fact that they are moving back and forth between these two positions makes their lives exciting, accounts for their successes, and for the appeal of their creative work. 4 It is this special energy that Fatih Akin holds accountable for the recent development in Turkish-German film: Scorsese und die anderen Italoamerikaner haben 70 Jahre gebraucht, bis sie anfingen, ihre Filme zu machen. Die Algerienfranzosen haben 30 Jahre f ihr cinma beur gebraucht. Wir ur e sind schneller. Wir legen jetzt schon los. 5 Akin, who refuses to identify himself as an ethnic filmmaker, and his Turkish-German actors express their vision of their role in the German film industry in the following way: We are brought up in two cultures, we are the new Germans. 6 Ten years ago Feridun Zaimo lu claimed in his definition of the Kanake: die Kanaken suchen g keine kulturelle Verankerung. Sie m chten sich weder im Supermarkt der o Identit ten bedienen, noch in einer egalit ren Herde von Heimatvertriea a benen aufgehen. 7 More recently, he has claimed: Ich bin orientalischer Deutscher, 8 thus redefining his own position from that of defiant subversion to self-confident rewriting of what it means to be German. Biller, Akin, and Zaimo lu have no doubts that members of dritte Ethnie belong in g Germany. As a matter of fact they humorously and self-assuredly refer to this generation as neue or bessere Deutsche, i.e. all three argue that second and third-generation writers and filmmakers contribute in a unique way to German culture. Judging by the extraordinary success of Turkish writing in Germany as well as Turkish film both inside and outside of Germany, many cultural critics as well as the media seem to agree. Akins Gegen die Wand not only received the Deutscher Filmpreis for best film in 2004, but in the same year also garnered both the Goldener B r and a
Biller, p. 268. Ibid. 5 Cited in Katja Nicodemus, Ankunft in der Wirklichkeit, in Malchow (ed.), pp. 22125 (here p. 222). 6 Cited in Lale Yal in-Heckmann, Negotiating Identities: Media Representations of Different Genec rations of Turkish Migrants in Germany, in Deniz Kandiyoti (ed.), Fragments of Culture. The Everyday of Modern Turkey, London 2002, pp. 30922 (here p. 309). 7 Feridun Zaimo lu, Kanak Sprak. 24 Mitne vom Rande der Gesellschaft, Hamburg 2000, p. 12. g o 8 Cited in Olaf Neumann, Ich bezeichne mich nicht als Europ er (Interview with Feridun Zaimo lu), a g Jungle World, 11, 3 March 2004 (http://www.jungle-world.com/seiten/2004/10/2699.php).
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the European Film Award. Zaimo lu and other Turkish-German writers no g longer are exclusively presented with literary prizes reserved for those of non-German background such as the Adelbert-von-Chamisso-Preis. While not even a decade ago reviews of texts by writers of non-German background often focused on the foreignness of their language implying that this effect was not intended but a product of their authors somewhat limited command of German several reviews of Zaimo lus Zwlf Gramm Gluck g o (2004) refer to its author as a language virtuoso. 9 Asked in an interview if he has finally been inducted into the community of German authors, Zaimo lu g answers in the affirmative: Vorher habe ich zwei Jahre lang rechts und links eine geschallert bekommen. Dann wurde mir der Titel der deutsche Dichter zugeschrieben. 10 It has even been argued that the new German film is Turkish and that Turkish cultural production has the potential of salvaging German culture. 11 Far from claiming that Turkish-German writers and filmmakers no longer have to struggle in order to be acknowledged and to gain equal access to publishing houses and distribution venues, I argue that both TurkishGerman writing and Turkish-German film have broken free of their respective niches and have been revitalising Germanys cultural scene. Over the last few years, a considerable change has taken place in both the selfperception of Turkish-German writers and filmmakers and both the popular and academic reception of their works. This change goes beyond choice of subject matter 12 and has brought about a break with the patterns that have dominated the Turkish-German literary and cinematic discourses of the last two decades. It is part of what Leslie Adelson refers to as the Turkish turn in contemporary literature. As she points out, this turn began to acquire critical mass in German-language fiction in the 1990s as well, when ethnic signifiers, memory cultures, and tectonic shifts in transnational conflicts loomed disorientingly large, not only in Germany but on a global stage in
9 See, for example, Nils Minkmar in FAZ , 3 April 2004; and Kristina Maidt-Zinke in S ddeutsche Zeitung , u 22 March 2004. 10 Cited in Volker Behrens, Ohne Marmelade geht gar nichts. Lesung. Feridun Zaimo lu g uber seine besten Ideen, uber Turken und Deutsche und warum er eine Aversion hat gegen alles, was siegen gelernt hat, Hamburger Abendblatt, 9 November 2004 (http://www.abendblatt.de/daten/ 2004/11/09/361984.html). 11 These claims have been made by Tun ay Kulao lu in Der neue deutsche Film ist turkisch? c g Eine neue Generation bringt Leben in die Filmlandschaft, in Filmforum. Zeitschrift f r Film und andere u K nste, 16 (1999), 811; Yasemin Yildiz in Critically Kanak. A Reimagination of German Culture, u in Andreas Gardt and Bernd H ppauf (eds), Globalization and the Future of German, Berlin 2004, u pp. 31940; and Georg Diez in Der Halbmond ist aufgegangen, in Helge Malchow (ed.), Fatih Akin: Gegen die Wand. Das Buch zum Film mit Dokumenten, Materialien, Interviews, Cologne 2004, pp. 2538. 12 See Yuksel Pazarkaya, Generationswechsel Themenwandel, in Manfred Durzak and Nil fer u Kuruyazici (eds), Die andere deutsche Literatur. Istanbuler Vortr ge, W a urzburg 2004, pp. 14853. Pazarkaya argues that the term Migrantenliteratur has lost its validity when referring to the texts of the second and third generations of Turkish-German writers because the issues and topics about which these authors write have changed.
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dramatic transition. 13 Moreover, she argues that Turkish-German narratives have increasingly been interacting and becoming part of discourses in German history, culture, and politics, such as those about coming to terms with the Holocaust and cultural conflicts in the wake of unification. For reasons of space as well as the fact that these works have received much public and critical acclaim, I will limit my discussion to Yad Karas novel Selam Berlin e (2003) 14 and Fatih Akins films Kurz und schmerzlos (1997) and Gegen die Wand (2004). More importantly, Karas novel and Akins films are also driven by and infused with the new energy that the above quotations address in a more obvious way than some of the other recent works.
BERLIN AND COMING OF AGE: TRANEN SIND IMMER DAS ENDE VERSUS SELAM BERLIN

In Kein Ort Uberall. Die Einschreibung von Berlin in die deutsche Literatur der neunziger Jahre (2002), Phil C. Langer notes that at the time no members of the younger generation of Turkish-German writers had chosen Berlin as a setting. 15 Langer believes that the irrelevance of the Mythos Berlin, a Diskurskontext marked as German, 16 for these writers is the reason for this alleged lack of interest in a city that over the last decade has become the focus of dozens of novels by established and emerging writers from both East and West. This reductive interpretation of the Turkish-German position as that of always already being outside or Other stands out in Langers otherwise perceptive reading of Berlin novels of the 1990s. The literary interest in Berlin that several second-generation Turkish-German writers, including Zafer Senocak in Gefahrliche Verwandtschaft (1998), Feridun Zaimo lu in German g Amok (2002), and Kara have recently expressed shows that in the imagination of these writers post-unification Berlin is certainly not interchangeable with Frankfurt, Kassel, or Bielefeld as Langer suggests. This interest also confirms that Germans and Turks in Germany share more culture (as an ongoing imaginative project) than is often presumed when one speaks of two discrete worlds encountering each other across a civilisational divide. 17 To demonstrate how recent Turkish-German writing participates in the
Leslie Adelson, The Turkish Turn in Contemporary German Literature: Toward a New Critical Grammar of Migration, New York 2005, p. 15. 14 Another text that I could have chosen to support my argument is Zaimo lus collection of short g narratives Zwlf Gramm Gl ck (2004). Zaimo lus oeuvre in itself could readily serve to illustrate shifts o u g in both (male) Turkish-German (self)-representation and the reception of Turkish-German writing as well as the interplay of self-representation and reception. Emine Sevgi Ozdamars Seltsame Sterne starren zur Erde (2003) is yet another innovative text that, although it contains Turkish subject matter, is not written from a fringe position. 15 Interestingly, Berlin has always figured prominently in Turkish-German film. 16 Phil C.Langer, Kein Ort Uberall. Die Einschreibung von Berlin in die deutsche Literatur der neunziger Jahre, Berlin 2002, p. 194. 17 Adelson, p. 20.
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Mythos Berlin, I read Karas Selam Berlin, whose action spans the time between the day of the opening of the Berlin Wall and the day of German unification, against Akif Pirin cis Tranen sind immer das Ende (1980), a novel c set in 1978 Cologne. The fictional treatment of Berlin in Karas text is symptomatic of the new ways in which Turkish-German writing has developed. The fact that the two debut novels hold a unique position within Turkish-German writing adds to the importance of reading them in tandem. Pirin cis novel was the first text by a migrant writer in Germany to adopt c literary strategies that dramatically differ from the authentic and realistic discursive practices that characterise the Literatur der Betroffenheit prevalent at the time of its publication. 18 The significance of Karas text as the first Turkish-German Wenderoman 19 is the focus of my discussion. Whereas Tranen sind immer das Ende might just as well take place in any other German city with a sizeable Turkish community, in Selam Berlin Berlin signifies more than mere geographical setting. At the centre of these two novels are the identity quests of their young male Turkish-German protagonists, who fall unhappily in love with women who prove to be unsuitable partners. Both Karas Hasan and Pirin cis Akif leave c home to begin anew: Akif moves from a small German town to Cologne and Hasan from Istanbul to Berlin. While they are forced to take on odd jobs in order to survive, they continue to dream of careers in the film industry. Both protagonists are also confronted with xenophobia and racism. The stories are told in humorous and colloquial language in the first person by a likeable protagonist whose outsiders point of view permits him to express a critical attitude toward mainstream society. Within this context, ethnic stereotyping and issues of Turkish masculinity are also addressed. And finally, the two novels borrow elements from both the picaresque narrative primarily the humorous aspect, the outcasts first-person narration, as well as the focus on social change and the K unstlerroman. Unlike the true pcaro, who usually does not change his ways during the course of the narrative, Akif and Hasan reach a point where they are forced to re-consider their values and attitudes. Tranen sind immer das Ende takes place five years after the Anwerbestopp when a shift from a transitional stay of Turkish guest workers to long-term residence was just under way. The members of the second generation, that
Franco Biondi, Rafik Schami as well as Jusuf Naoum and Suleman Taufiq coined this term in their frequently quoted essay Literatur der Betroffenheit: Bemerkungen zur Gastarbeiterliteratur, in Christian Schaffernicht (ed.), Zu Hause in der Fremde. Ein bundesdeutsches Ausl nder-Lesebuch, Fischera hude bei Hamburg 1981, pp. 12436. In this essay they describe Gastarbeiterliteratur as concerned with feelings of alienation and displacement, unfair treatment at the work place, and ethnic/racial discrimination in general. The essay also encourages solidarity among the various ethnic groups of guest workers in the FRG. 19 I define the term Wenderoman more narrowly than Leslie Adelson in The Turkish Turn in Contemporary Germany Literature and Memory Work, GR, 77.4 (2002), 32638, as a text concerned with the immediate phenomenon of the fall of the Wall and its ramifications for the protagonists life. Unlike Adelson, I consequently would not read Ozdamars Mutterzunge as a Wenderoman.
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is, those born in Germany or those, who like Akif, emigrated with their parents to Germany when they were children, experienced a unique identity crisis. German rather than Turkish became the language in which they were fluent, and German culture was the culture with which they were most familiar. Yet, because Germany was not prepared to view itself as an Einwanderungsland, few attempts were made by the government during the late 1970s and the early 1980s to facilitate integration. Because of this political failure this generation also faced the challenge of succeeding in an educational system that was not prepared for them. When Akif first meets the law student Christa with whom he is falling in love, she asks him if he has his Abitur. Akif, whose education seems to be more well rounded than Christas, explains that he was demoted from the Gymnasium to the Realschule and finally to the Volksschule. 20 Akif blames both the outdated teaching methods and his teachers and fellow students intolerance towards difference for his lack of scholastic achievement. Ultimately it is the class difference between Akif and Christa that is responsible for the failure of their relationship. Akif is fully aware of the unbridgeable social, rather than cultural, gap between himself and his girlfriend. Frustrated because his job as a stagehand does not leave him enough time for writing he wonders: War das das Ende? Dumme, schwere, vernichtende Arbeit? Gleichzeitig wute ich, da es auch mit Christa nicht mehr so weitergehen w urde, wenn es tats chlich so weiterging. Sie eines Tages Richterin oder Anw ltin und ich a a ein bekloppter Holzkopf von einem Buhnenarbeiter. 21 The text suggests that as the son of a Turkish guest worker in Germany, Akif is predestined to spend the rest of his life in menial employment. Akif and Christa are clearly portrayed as victims of their circumstances. At the same time Akif knows that the advice of a well-meaning older colleague to return to Turkey is no alternative for him. While the doomed relationship serves Pirin ci as the main vehicle in his portrayal of the identity crisis of c a Turkish-German youth, the function of Cologne, although it is clearly identifiable through street names and landmarks, largely remains that of backdrop to the action. Furthermore, whereas Germany is portrayed as an urban society, the images of Turkey in this novel are those of an idyllic countryside. Akifs fatherly colleague attempts to make rural life in Turkey attractive to him by suggesting that he marry his fifteen-year-old daughter and take care of his goats. Rather than reinforce the stereotype of Turkey as a culturally and economically backward country, the humorous invocation of rural Turkey in this context serves to subvert this very stereotype. Although most Turkish guest workers hailed from Anatolia and other rural areas, they raised their children in German cities. It is obvious to the reader that rural
20 Akif Pirin ci, Tr nen sind immer das Ende. Roman, Munich 1991, pp. 389. Subsequent references c a appear in the text. For discussion of this text compare my chapter on Biondi and Pirin ci in Rewriting c Germany from the Margins, Montreal 2001, pp. 1932. 21 Pirin ci, p. 149. c
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Turkey is just as alien to Akif as it would be to any of his urbanised German peers. In Selam Berlin, which takes place ten years later and was written more than two decades after Tranen sind immer das Ende, the portrayal of the young Turkish-German males identity crisis takes a different shape. Hasan and his peers have grown up in the shadow of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, have witnessed globalisation and the explosion of the new media industry, issues that Akifs generation did not have to face when coming of age. The description of Hasan also anticipates the influence of the Kanaksta, whose attitude expresses opposition to the mainstream and who advocates the idea of a transnational and trans-ethnic identity, as a role model for Turkish men of Hasans age. All these social, historical, and cultural changes have played a major role in the socialisation of Hasans generation and, more relevant to my argument, in the creation of a new Turkish-German self-image and a new literary discourse, a development that is closely associated with the rise of the Berlin Republic. Rather than using Berlin as a backdrop, Selam Berlin engages in several emerging literary discourses and paradigms: Berlin as a city in transition, Berlin as play zone, 22 and Berlin as the Other city. The novel opens with the image of Hasan watching his parents transfixed by the TV images of the opening of the Berlin Wall, which they are witnessing from their living room in Istanbul. Later in the novel it becomes clear why the opening of the Wall is shocking news to Hasans father: he has an illegitimate son with an East German woman whom he still sees regularly during his business trips to East Berlin. To ensure that his second family remains his secret, he decides to leave immediately for Berlin where he runs a travel agency and where the family has a second apartment. Having recently graduated from the German high school in Istanbul, Hasan returns to Berlin with his father to join the Berlin-Party. 23 Upon his arrival and during the following days, Hasan traverses the city on foot and by S-Bahn taking stock of the changes. The S-Bahn, because of its political significance of connecting the two halves of the city, has always played an important role in Berlin literature in evoking the citys past. Journeys on the S-Bahn, particularly between Bahnhof Zoo and Friedrichstrae, representing the gulf between East and West, are a common motif in post-War Berlin literature. 24 Hasan is particularly fascinated by the masses of East Germans crowding the S-Bahn stations on their shopping tours. In an ironic reversal of Western
22

I borrow this term from Katharina Gerstenberger, Play Zones. The Erotics of the New Berlin, GQ , 76.3 (2003), 25972. Gerstenberger argues that united Germanys capital has inspired numerous city texts that probe the New Berlin through the topos of sex and sexuality (p. 259). She makes playful reference in the title of her article to the title of one of the novels that she includes in her discussion: Tanja Duckers Spielzone (1999). 23 Yad Kara, Selam Berlin, Zurich 2003, p. 9. Further references appear in the text. e 24 See Keith Bullivant, The Divided City: Berlin in Post-War German Literature, in Derek Glass et al. (eds.), Berlin. Literary Images of a City. Eine Grostadt im Spiegel der Literatur , Berlin 1989, pp. 16277 (here p. 173).
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colonisation of the East that took place in the wake of the fall of the Wall, Hasan portrays East Germans as invading the West. As Mary Beth Stein puts it: The arrival of the Other German upset essentialised categories of East/West; us/them; here/there; order/disorder that the Wall had seemed to contain and by which it so conveniently defined postwar German experience and identity. 25 However, unlike the West Germans, he does not feel threatened by East German otherness. The East Germans visibility they can easily be identified by their Kombinatmode amuses the fashion-conscious Hasan, who shares his interest in style and brand names with many of the protagonists of German pop literature. As much as East Germans become objects of his ethnographic gaze, the three young women with whom Hasan comes to share an apartment and who, as he explains, kamen aus Wessiland und kannten Turken nur vom Sehen 26 treat him like a native informant. Hasan ironically observes: Wenn sie zu Besuch in ihren D rfern waren, dann hatten sie den anderen Wessis o dort etwas voraus. Sie hatten den vollen Durchblick in Sachen T urken und Multikulti. 27 While Hasan is not afraid of East German otherness and only gradually becomes weary of his roommates, he does fear the Neo-Nazi gangs that are becoming a predictable presence in the city. Narrowly escaping an assault himself, he learns that the group that harassed him in the subway later attacked and badly injured his best friend. He feels safe only when he gets off at the Kottbusser Tor: [ich] war so froh, da sich so viele schwarzhaarige Menschen auf dem Bahnhof befanden. 28 While Hasan realises that at the Bahnhof Zoo commuters are indifferent to his plight and will not come to his defence, Kreuzberg appears as a safe haven. However, as Ulrike Zitzlsperger observes, the specific and unique meaning that some Berlin districts had during the Wall years dramatically changed when it came down. This is particularly true of Kreuzberg, which, formerly situated at the margin of the city and in the shadow of the Wall, has moved to the centre. 29 A number of recent Berlin novels like Sven Regeners Herr Lehmann (2001) and Inka Pareis Die Schattenboxerin (1999) link their protagonists coming of age with his or her leaving Kreuzberg. The fall of the Wall marks the end of a lifestyle that identifies Kreuzberg as a refuge for non-conformists, a multicultural melting pot, and home to the largest Turkish diaspora. Although Hasan eventually moves out of Kreuzberg, it remains a place of memory as well as a sanctuary for him. In Selam Berlin, as in other Berlin novels, the dismantling of the Wall functions as a trope to signify the end of an era. While his West
25

Mary Beth Stein, The Banana and the Trabant: Representations of the Other in a United Germany, in Ernst Schurer et al (eds.), The Berlin Wall: Representations and Perspectives, New York 1996, pp. 33346 (here p. 334). 26 Kara, p. 205. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., p. 334. 29 Ulrike Zitzlsperger, St dte in der Stadt: Berliner Erfahrungsr ume, Seminar , 40.3 (2004), 27792 a a (here 281).
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German roommates treat the post-Wall city as a tabula rasa, the dismantling of the Wall and the re-zoning of city districts 30 indicate that the myth of Berlin as a city of alternatives is being replaced by that of Berlin as a city of the future. The novel not only ironically captures moments of Berlins changing topography, but it also satirises the swift change of cultural trends. Hasan is hired by a famous West German filmmaker to play a Turkish drug dealer. He describes the plot as So eine Art Westside Story a la Kreuzberg-Version mit ` Rache, Blut, Ehre, Schande, Mord. 31 In an act of self-Orientalisation, he reinforces the common stereotypes of the Turk with his effort to improve the script: Die Dialoge und Drohungen waren so soft, so k unstlich, so wie die T rken in der Tatort-Krimiserie immer reden. [. . .] Ich dachte mir einige u turkische Ausdrucke aus. 32 While the filmmaker believes that things Turkish sell best when he is shooting his current movie, he turns his interest to things Jewish a few months later:
Die Juden haben schon immer zu Berlin geh rt, wie das Brandenburger Tor o zu Preuen. Also, ich sags dir, bring die neuen Juden zusammen, und mach den neuen Bombenfilm. . .! [. . .] Nachkriegsdeutschland ist nicht judisch, sondern turkisch, stellte der Produzent fest [. . .]. [. . .] Das ist Kuchen von gestern, wandte Wolf ein [. . .]. [. . .] Auerdem ist die Turkenthematik schon ausgelutscht. [. . .] Die bleiben auf ihrer D ner- und Clanebene stehen. Ich o sags dir, diese Juden aus Riga haben Pep, die sind westlich im Kopf. 33

This dialogue makes fun of the German fascination with things Jewish, the commercialisation of ethnicity, as well as the phenomenon of referring to the Turks as the Jews of today. Berlin is also portrayed as a kind of play zone, i.e. a carnevalesque space in which people watch each other perform. In her discussion of Tanja Duckers Spielzone (1999), Inka Pareis Die Schattenboxerin (1999), and Chri sta Schmidts Eselsfest (1999), Gerstenberger, observes that [i]f recent literature is any indication, Berlin is a place where people pursue sex. 34 Like many other Berlin novels, Selam Berlin probes post-Wall Berlin through the topos of sex and sexuality. Whereas Thomas Brussigs Helden wie wir (1996), arguably the very first Wenderoman, portrays the fall of the Wall as an act of male sexual conquest, Hasan secretly masturbates on the family sofa in Istanbul as his parents witness the opening of the Wall on the TV screen. Watching his parents freeze, he believes that his father is having a heart attack brought on by his activity: Baba, Babaaa! kr chzte ich aus der granithara ten Erregung heraus. [. . .] Als ich wieder zu mir kam, lag ein kuhles Tuch
30 31

Ibid. Kara, p. 220. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., pp. 3723. 34 Gerstenberger, p. 259.

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auf meiner Stirn. Die Levis 501 klebte mir zwischen den Beinen. Meine Eltern diskutierten. 35 Ironically, unlike for the protagonist of Helden wie wir , sexual prowess and masculinity are issues for Hasan. On one of his exploratory walks through the city, Hasan sees Cora, a photographer and documentary filmmaker, with whom he falls in love. Cora, who is taking pictures of the newly created holes in the Wall and becomes aware of Hasans interest in her, asks him to pose looking through one of the holes. Following Coras instructions, he begins a conversation with one of the guards on the other side of the Wall while Cora records the scene on videotape. Whereas for the nineteenth-century fl neur the women whom he observes on his walks a through the city become the objects of his sexualising gaze, Hasan becomes the object of this womans calculating gaze. Cora, who happens to be the filmmakers girlfriend, uses Hasan here just as much as she does later in the novel when she dismisses him as a lover. While the filmmaker switches his professional interest from Turks to Jews, Cora replaces Hasan with the Klezmer musician from Riga. For them and for other members of their circle who live in a world reminiscent of that described in Zaimo lus German g Amok Berlin is but a play zone, i.e. a space in which the individual can appropriate a range of identities without serious consequences. In creating the character of Hasan, who moves with ease between German and Turkish social realities, Selam Berlin also subverts binary identity politics. Karas novel is involved in a complex negotiation about where is East and where is West, how to distinguish East Germans from West Germans, Germany from Turkey, and Turkish Germans from Turks. Turkeys ambiguous position in and out of Europe at the juncture of two continents is juxtaposed with Germanys geographical and cultural position between Eastern and Western Europe. Even Hasans family disagrees as to where Europe begins: F Mama h rte Europa s ur o udlich der Alpen auf. Alles daruber war f r sie zu nordisch und zu kuhl. Baba ging in Opposition. Fur ihn begann u Europa n rdlich der Alpen. 36 Unlike Akif in Tranen sind immer das Ende, o who is not interested in Turkey, Hasan draws on his intimate knowledge of Istanbuls history and society in his comparison of Berlin and the Turkish capital. Selam Berlin portrays Istanbul as a Westernised society in constant flux. The old Istanbul, in which his parents grew up, has ceased to exist:
F r Baba und Mama war Istanbul immer noch die Stadt der glitzernden u Lichter, Tavernas und Open-air-Kinos, wo Moslems, Christen und Juden nebeneinander lebten. Eine Stadt auf zwei Kontinenten, sieben Hugeln und mit einer Million Einwohner. [. . .] Aber dieses Istanbul gab es nicht mehr. Jetzt lebten zw lf Millionen Menschen hier. [. . .] Da gab es Bezirke, wo die o

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Kara, p. 7. Ibid., p. 10.

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Leute in Shalwar und Tschador herumliefen. Einige Straen weiter sch kerten a Transvestiten und Nutten mit ihren Freiern. 37

By comparison, Berlin, particularly the divided city, comes across as both less sophisticated and less cosmopolitan. Selam Berlin also inverts common German stereotypes of the Turk by portraying middle-class Turkish society as orientalising Turkish Germans:
Die Leute lebten mitten in Kreuzberg, Berlin, Europa, aber sie schauten nach Osten, nach Mekka. Hier waren sie t rkischer als die Turken in Istanbul. [. . .] u F r die Reichen von Istanbul war Deutschland gleich Gastarbeit-Dreckarbeit. u Sie blickten nach Florida, Boston und New York. 38

As the novel demonstrates, East and West are unstable concepts that are open to interpretation and whose usefulness is therefore limited and questionable. Instead, Selam Berlin stresses the inevitable fact of cultural transfers and mixing of Eastern and Western traditions in a global society. As a true member of the generation born in the late 1970s, Hasan has the kind of flexibility and mobility that a transnational and post-ethnic society demands: [. . .] ich wollte mich nicht festlegen [. . .]. Der Nomade in mir trieb mich zu neuen Orten [. . .]. Ich wollte weiter nach Westen, nach London, New York, San Francisco oder nach Osten? Nach Tokio, Teheran, Taschkent. 39 While Akif in Tranen sind immer das Ende remains entrenched in the Turkish/German divide, Hasan is not burdened by his dual cultural heritage. Akif attempts to commit suicide, but has a change of heart at the last minute. After his recovery, he writes down his story. The therapeutic writing process helps him to cope with the breakup of his relationship with Christa and reconcile him to the fact that he is a second-generation Turkish German. The final question of the novel [w]ie geht das, Leben? 40 indicates both anxiety and hope. In contrast, Hasans final words [i]ch w rmte mich an der a Kippe und wute pl tzlich, wo es langgeht in meinem Leben! 41 reflect his o self-confidence and independence from cultural and societal constraints.
NEW NEW GERMAN CINEMA: KURZ UND SCHMERZLOS AND GEGEN DIE WAND

A discussion of Selam Berlin alongside Akins feature films Kurz und schmerzlos 42 and Gegen die Wand 43 is intriguing and relevant for several reasons.
37 38

Ibid., p. 1112. Ibid., p. 1567. 39 Ibid., p. 382. 40 Ibid., p. 256. 41 Ibid., p. 382. 42 Kurz und schmerzlos, Hamburg 1998. 43 Gegen die Wand, Hamburg 2004.
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First of all, Karas novel satirises aspects of the German mainstream film industry, particularly the trend to exoticise ethnic minorities as well as foreign cultures. But it also acknowledges the specific importance of film culture for Turkish-German culture in general. Furthermore, in Selam Berlin and in Gegen die Wand Istanbul is portrayed as a much more vibrant city than Berlin and Hamburg respectively, a city that offers young Turkish Germans a seductive alternative to life in Germany. All three works share the energy that Biller and Akin refer to in their comments on the cultural production of members of dritte Ethnie. Some of this energy manifests itself in the playful undermining of ethnic stereotypes and that of reader and viewer expectation. What makes Akins films appealing to a mainstream audience despite their ethnic and provocative content is the effective merger of film techniques characteristic of the New German Cinema, the new German comedy of the 1990s, and of Hollywood genre films. But he is also indebted to new Turkish Cinema 44 and to Third Cinema in general. For Jim Pines and Paul Willemen third cinema is the expression of a new culture and of social changes. Generally speaking, Third Cinema gives an account of reality and history. It is also linked with national culture [. . .]. It is the way the world is conceptualised and not the genre nor the explicitly political character of a film which makes it belong to Third Cinema. 45 In a similar way, works of dritte Ethnie are expression[s] of a new culture and of social changes. I argue that Akin rewrites the strategies and objectives of the New German Cinema, particularly those of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, for whom Akin admits to having great admiration, into transnational practices. As a representative of independent transnational cinema one of the co-producers of his films is the Franco-German TV station Arte, and Akin has also just formed his own production company, Coraz n International o he is addressing at least three major audiences: German, Turkish, and Turkish German. In the following I will show how he playfully undermines persisting stereotypes of Turks as well as of what ethnic filmmaking is supposed to be about, by reversing character roles, using space subversively, and undercutting audience expectations and genre conventions. Although the strategies identified above are also at work in his romantic road movie Im Juli (2000) and his Italian family saga Solino (2002), I will focus on his first feature film Kurz und schmerzlos, which won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno, and his most recent, Gegen die Wand. These two films are linked by a common concern: the negotiation of ethnicity and gender within the Turkish-German context. What is distinctive about both films is that the on-screen conflicts are not between the Turkish minority and dominant German culture. Instead they take place between the Turkish community and other ethnic communities
44 45
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I am thinking here of directors like Serif G ren, Zeki Okten, and Atif Yilmaz. o Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (eds), Introduction, Questions of Third Cinema, London 1989, p. 9.
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and within the Turkish community itself, i.e. between the generations and between men and women as well as within the characters themselves. Kurz und schmerzlos has only two German characters, one of whom has a mere symbolic role, and Gegen die Wand has only one minor German character. While representatives of the New German Cinema like Fassbinder with Angst essen Seele auf (1973), whose original title was Alle Turken heien Ali, Hark Bohm with Yasemin (1988), and Helma Sanders-Brahms with Shirins Hochzeit (1975) opened the space for the portrayal of the experience of foreigners in Germany, they inevitably depicted these characters as victims of xenophobia and racism. The binary of dominant-culture racism and Turkish victim status has also been reproduced in the films of Turkish-German filmmakers like Tevfik Baer (Lebewohl, Fremde 1993), Yilmaz Arslan (Yara 1998), and Yuksel s Yavuz (Aprilkinder 1998), although these directors pay greater attention to the complexities of cultural conflict. 46 By focusing on the conflicts within the Turkish community and between Turkish Germans and other ethnic minority groups in Germany, Akin avoids casting his Turkish protagonists as cultural outsiders and perpetual victims. All four of Akins feature films are about growing. Not coming of age, as Akin explains, but the quest for living, where are we going. 47 Part of this process, as shown in the two films under discussion as well as in Selam Berlin is making the right choice in finding a partner. The fact that the oppressed Turkish woman is one of the central icons of how Turkishness is constructed in Germany the criminal male being the other proves that the womans choice in finding a partner is not a given. Both Caida in Kurz und schmerzlos and Sibel in Gegen die Wand are portrayed as the sisters of older brothers. They are portrayed as modern, independent women whose life styles are shown to clash with the patriarchal norms imposed by their respective families. With the character of Gabriel, Caidas brother and hero of Kurz und schmerzlos, Akin inverts the stereotype of the older brother defending the family honour in that Gabriel protects the freedom of his younger sister instead. Caida ends her relationship with Costa, Gabriels Greek friend the fact that Turks and Greeks are best friends in this film also contradicts the common stereotype of these two ethnic groups being enemies because she is no longer prepared to tolerate his criminal activities. Costas petty thievery and Bobbys Bobby, the Serb, is the third member of the male trio more dangerous flirtations with the Albanian mafia are portrayed as manifestations of these two characters refusal to grow up. Caida enters into a relationship with a German no more acceptable from a traditional Turkish point of view than dating a Greek because, as she explains to Gabriel, he
46

See Deniz G kt o urk, Verst e gegen das Reinheitsgebot. Migrantenkino zwischen wehleidiger o Pflichtubung und wechselseitigem Grenzverkehr, in Ruth Mayer and Mark Terkessidis (eds), Global kolorit. Multikulturalismus und Popul rkultur , St. Andr / W rdern 1998, pp. 99114. a a o 47 Akin cited in Wendy Mitchell, Going to Extremes: Fatih Akin on His Turkish-German Love Story Head-On. IndieWire (http://www.indiewire.com/people/people 050119akin.html).
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treats her with respect, has a good job, and is not into drugs. The other German character, Alice, who is Caidas friend and business partner, also makes the wrong choice at first by becoming Bobbys girlfriend. She distances herself from Bobby and falls for Gabriel when Bobby associates himself with the mafia boss, who, among other things, runs a prostitution ring. Yet Gabriel is determined to stay away from crime after his release from prison where he served a term for robbery. One could read the romantic relationship between Alice and Gabriel, in which Gabriel becomes Alices saviour, so to speak, as inverting the common model of the German man rescuing the Turkish woman. 48 The fact that Caidas relationship with the German seems to repeat this conventional model is one of the films ambiguities, which, so I argue, are the result of Akins writing different viewer positions into his film. 49 The search for the right partner is treated more ironically in Gegen die Wand. Sibel proposes to a complete stranger whom she sees at a psychiatric clinic that treats patients who have survived suicide attempts. Although Sibel was born in urban Germany and Cahit in rural Turkey, his perfect German proves that he came to Germany as a very young child. Not only are they thus both members of the second generation in terms of immigration, but their lifestyles, music preferences, and other forms of cultural expression show that both are also members of the new generation. She wants the down-and-out Cahit, whom she approaches because he is a Turk, to enter into a marriage of convenience with her. A fake non-traditional Turkish husband, who is not interested in his wife, will make it possible for her to enjoy the sexual freedom for which she has been longing. In return, she offers to be Cahits housekeeper and cook. The audience learns that Sibel tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrist because her father and brother force her to live the constricted life expected of an unmarried Turkish woman. The film dramatises her self-destructive tendency in two scenes of excessive filmic spectacle. Although the audience does not witness Sibels first suicide attempt, Gegen die Wand opens with a scene in which the 40-something alcoholic Cahit is emptying leftover beer bottles after an event at the Cultural Centre where he works as a waiters assistant. Getting more and more intoxicated, he beats up a patron at a pub. After leaving the pub, he drives his car full-speed against a brick wall in an unsuccessful attempt to end his life. The audience learns later that Cahit, who grew up in Germany but has no family, was previously married to a German and apparently lost his wife in tragic circumstances. Unlike Sibel, whose family has close contacts with relatives in Turkey, Cahit has no connections with Turkey, and, unlike Sibels fluent Turkish, his is only rudimentary. With the exception of one close TurkishGerman male friend, Cahit dislikes Turks and all things Turkish. The scene in which an uncomfortable Cahit is interviewed by Sibels family as her future
48 49
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See G kt o urk. Obviously, Akin is not considering an Albanian viewer position.

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husband, as well as the scene in which a reluctant Cahit joins the men in a card game to maintain the illusion that Sibel and he are having a real marriage provide much needed comic relief. Akin meets the audiences expectation in following the conventions of lamour fou by showing Sibel and Cahit gradually falling in love with each other. As in Kurz und schmerzlos a happy ending is made impossible by the fact that, like Cahit, Gabriel ends up killing someone. In Kurz und schmerzlos, which Barbara Mennel calls a ghettocentric gangster movie 50 and which pays homage to both Brian De Palmas Scarface (1983) and Martin Scorseses Mean Streets (1973), Gabriel shoots the Albanian mafia boss in revenge for having killed his two friends Costa and Bobby. Cahit in Gegen die Wand accidentally kills one of Sibels lovers in a fit of jealousy. Kurz und schmerzlos ends with Gabriel booking a one-way ticket to Istanbul to avoid jail in Germany and leave the past behind. Sibel also moves to Istanbul because she is afraid of her brother. She fears that he might want to kill her because of her extramarital affair and Cahits consequent imprisonment for murder. In Istanbul, she has a daughter with another man. After Cahit completes his term for manslaughter in a German prison, he too travels to Turkey in the hope of finding Sibel who promised to wait for him. The film ends with a scene in which Cahit, after waiting in vain for Sibel and her daughter to join him, boards a bus, departing for the town of his family. The return of Turkish Germans to the homeland is highly ambiguous in the two films. Kurz und schmerzlos leaves it to the audience to speculate what kind of a future Gabriel will have in Turkey, if any at all. And although Cahits return journey to his familys roots seems to be more therapeutic than anything else, the audience is still left to wonder how Cahit could possibly adjust to a life so completely different from the one he led in Germany. Yet Sibels choice to raise a daughter in Turkey is the most unexpected and ambivalent. The close shot that the camera takes of her daughters clothes and toys in the scene in which Sibel is packing her belongings in a resolution to secretly leave her partner, and then suddenly changes her mind, leaves the audience with the impression that she is making this sacrifice for her daughter. On the other hand, her decision can be interpreted in the light of the fact that both Sibel and Cahit only follow the advice of the German psychiatrist, ironically named Dr. Schiller: Wenn Sie Ihr Leben beenden wollen, dann beenden Sie doch Ihr Leben! Aber dafur mussen Sie doch nicht sterben! Beenden Sie Ihr Leben hier und gehen weg! Machen Sie doch was Sinnvolles. Turkey seems to give both of them the opportunity for a radical new beginning. Yet while Turkey is portrayed as an alternative space, the film clearly does not represent it as a liberating space. Akin explains with regard to the image
50

See Barbara Mennel, Bruce Lee in Kreuzberg and Scarface in Altona: Transnational Auteurism and Ghettocentrism in Thomas Arslans Brothers and Sisters and Fatih Akins Short Sharp Shock, NGC, 87 (2002), 13356 (here 138).
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of Istanbul in his latest feature film: Istanbul is occupying a bigger and bigger place in my life. To me, its the Holy City and Babylon at the same time. Its a city full of contradictions; a wild place, a dangerous and very exhausting city. It is the city for me the ultimate setting for such a story. 51 Furthermore, Istanbul is portrayed as a modern and open space in contrast to the old-world, claustrophobic Hamburg, in which both films are set and which is also Akins home town. Hamid Naficy sees in the configuration of claustrophobic spaces a characteristic iconography of transnational cinema. Within this configuration, prison remains a key chronotope. 52 While both Gabriel and Cahit actually spend time in German jails, this happens offscreen. Jails as such, unlike in the first-generation Turkish-German films, are not among the claustrophobic spaces shown in Akins. Gabriels tiny room in the small family apartment, which he has physically outgrown and to which he returns to seek refuge from the violence of street life, and Cahits small filthy apartment, which he rarely leaves, are the truly claustrophobic spaces. While in several Turkish-German films of the earlier generation women are associated with claustrophobic domestic space, 53 Akin depicts his male characters as trapped in it. His female characters, by contrast, enjoy more mobility. Sibel, for example, spends very little time in the apartment, and Caida is shown spending time at her German boyfriends place as well as in her jewellery store. In all of Akins films, his male protagonists struggle with their masculinity because of a lack of suitable role models. The traditional patriarch has lost his legitimate function, and American pop culture heroes send them on a path of (self)destruction. As in all his films, Akin here achieves an interesting tension between engagement and distance. Although the audience identifies with Sibel and Cahit in Gegen die Wand and wants them to be happy, the film also uses distancing devices through its documentary style, soundtrack, and the intermittent cutaways to a Turkish band playing traditional tunes and a singer in front of the Bosphorus. According to Akin, this Brechtian 54 theatrical flourish has at least two functions: to break the Western, realistic look of the film with a kitschy postcard element as well as to show the audience when a new act begins. 55 The latter strategy is reminiscent of the way in which each scene in Fassbinders Angst essen Seele auf appears as a single, autonomous tableau rather than as part of a fluid dramatic development, so as to reflect critically, in Brechtian manner, on the social forces behind the events. Kurz und schmerzlos is self-reflexive to an even higher degree than Gegen die Wand. The opening sequence of the film identifies the three
51

Akin cited in Preview Online. Feature Article: Head-ON (http://www.preview-online.com/sp2004/ feature articles/head-on/page3.html). 52 Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking , Princeton 2001, p. 191. 53 See, for example, Tevfik Ba ers 40m 2 Deutschland (1986) and Abschied vom falschen Paradies (1988). s 54 Like Fassbinder, Akin is indebted to a Brechtian aesthetics. 55 Akin cited in Wendy Mitchell, Going to Extremes: Fatih Akin on His Turkish-German Love Story Head-On. IndieWire (http://www.indiewire.com/people/people 050119akin.html).
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friends each with a freeze-framed title: Costa, Greek, Bobby, Serb, Gabriel, Turk, thus reducing the characters to first names and a nonGerman ethnicity. As Barbara Mennel observes: Such self-reflexive subversion exaggerates the process of negative stereotyping, but it assumes an informed spectator who can appreciate the irony. 56 Other self-referential citations such as Akin playing a storytelling drug dealer add to the irony, as does the three friends discussion of the merits of Scarface vis-` -vis the Kung a Fu movie that they just watched, as well as a comment by Gabriels father that like every movie, life has to come to an end.
CONCLUSION

While post-Wall German cinema, for which Eric Rentschler has coined the phrase cinema of consensus, 57 defines itself in contrast to the New German Cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders, among others, Akin keeps its legacy of stylistic idiosyncrasy, narrative subversion, and political rebellion alive by adopting or refashioning some of its techniques and subject matters. The New German Cinema set itself apart from the classical Hollywood narrative by carefully positioning the spectator to achieve, as needed, both identification with and distance from its protagonists. Spectatorship is also a central concern in Akins films. Like the New German Cinema, Akin constructs a spectator position both emotionally involved with the narrative as well as critical of the socio-cultural forces that shape the protagonists experiences. Although he adopts such typical Hollywood elements as fight scenes, melodrama, doomed love and love triangles, and ethnographic glimpses into Turkish domestic life, he allows for differing interpretations from different viewer perspectives. In the process, he reveals the complexity and ambiguity of the dichotomy of mainstream and minority, which has dominated the German political and literary discourse on multiculturalism. The fact that he is the first German filmmaker to win the Goldener B r since Reinhard Hauff won it for Stammheim in 1986 a Fassbinder was devastated when he did not win it for Die Ehe der Maria Braun (1978) lends credence to Turkish-German filmmakers claim of producing the new New German Cinema. Akif Pirin ci, who is much better known to the German reader as the c author of his popular Katzenkrimis than for Tranen sind immer das Ende, had great difficulty publishing his semi-autobiographical first novel. 58 He realised that if he wanted to launch a writing career in Germany in the early 1980s, he had to avoid ethnic subject matter. Yet only a decade later,
56 57

Mennel, p. 148. Eric Rentschler, From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds), Cinema and Nation, London 2000, pp. 26077. 58 See Ilyas Me , Wider die tribalistische Einfalt: Die zweite Generation, Diskussion Deutsch, 26.143 c (1995), 17685 (here 1767).
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Zaimo lu established a successful career by fictionalising Turkish subculture g in at least three of his texts. The success of Karas Selam Berlin, which won the Deutscher Bucherpreis 2004 for most accomplished debut novel, needs to be seen within the context of the development of Turkish-German writing over the last two decades. Karas contribution is unique in that Selam Berlin, although not the first and only Turkish-German text to be set in Berlin, is the first novel to focus on the aftermath of the fall of the Wall from a TurkishGerman perspective. Like Kara, Akin offers a complex representation of things Turkish in Germany by demonstrating that there are more than two different value systems, one Turkish and one German, set against each other. Both Kara and Akin have made it to the centre without compromising the subversive potential that characterises, according to Biller, the creative works of the members of dritte Ethnie. Turkish-German writing and film have entered a new phase of which the recent works of Akin, Kara, Ozdamar, Zaimo lu as well as of Zuli Alada , Thomas Arslan, Serdar Somuncu, and g g Zafer Senocak are representative. Turkish Germans are no longer portrayed as perpetual victims as in the texts of Literatur der Betroffenheit of the 1970s and in the Turkish-German films of the 1980s.

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