A Homage to Civil Society? Literary Responses to Germany’s Refugee Crisis by Jenny Erpenbeck and Bodo Kirchhoff

Abstract

Although Angela Merkel refused to close Germany’s borders in 2015 when faced with thousands of migrants, her response to this humanitarian crisis made shortfalls in EU policies abundantly apparent. It became obvious that the Schengen Agreement, and the Dublin Regulations were no longer workable in view of a global movement of people that had not been experienced on such a scale since the end of World War Two. Literary greats, Jenny Erpenbeck and Bodo Kirchhoff, have dealt with the related challenges emerging for civil society in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Their protagonists’ responses to encounters with refugees and irregular migrants serve as a litmus test for dominant values of the middle class and a truly civil society. My contribution suggeststhat literary representations of German middle-class encounters with refugees explore aspects of civil society during the European migrant crisis, illustrating gaps and failures in German and EU policy.