This is the memoir of Nanda Herbermann, a German Catholic writer and editor who was arrested and deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp after being accused of collaboration. An introduction placing her work within current debates about gender and the Holocaust is included.

On February 4, 1941, Nanda Herbermann, a German Catholic writer and editor, was arrested by the Gestapo in M?nster, Germany. Accused of collaboration with the Catholic movement, Herbermann was deported to Ravensbr?ck Concentration Camp for Women in July 1941 and later released upon direct orders from Heinrich Himmler on March 19, 1943. Although she was instructed by the Gestapo not to reveal information about the camp, Herbermann soon began to record her memories of her experiences. The Blessed Abyss was originally published in German under the imprint of the Allied occupation forces in 1946,...

What is the status of women's writing in German today, in an era when feminism has thoroughly problematized binary conceptions of sex and gender? Drawing on gender and queer theory, including the work of Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault, the essays in this volume rethink conventional ways of conceptualizing female authorship and re-examine the formal, aesthetic, and thematic terms in which "women's literature" has been conceived. With an eye to the literary and feminist legacy of authors such as Christa Wolf and Ingeborg Bachmann, contributors treat the works of many of...

Essays in this volume rethink conventional ways of conceptualizing female authorship and re-examine the formal, aesthetic, and thematic terms in which German women's literature has been conceived.