WHILE LITERATURE THAT SPANS MULTIPLE GENERATIONS most commonly depicts family history from the viewpoint of children and grandchildren, the reversed, forward gaze from parents and grandparents to their offspring is far less common. Even more unusual and exceptional are literary texts by multiple family members that allow insight into several generational perspectives. In this essay, I analyze and juxtapose two works that complement each other in their seemingly opposite familial perspective while treating the same subject matter. Both the renowned GDR playwright and writer Christoph Hein and his son, physician and writer Jakob Hein, base their works Mama ist gegangen (2003; Mama Has Gone) and Vielleicht ist es sogar schön (2004; Perhaps It Is Even Beautiful) on Christiane Hein's premature death from breast cancer in 2002. Christoph Hein fictionalizes his wife's death and its aftermath in a novel written for children, whereas his son, Jakob Hein, deliberates on his mother's death in an autobiographical text that unravels the parental and grandparental family history. The father relinquishes his position of power to express his loss by adopting the ingenuous vernacular of a child. The son, on the other hand, takes the loss of his mother as a point of departure to consider the loss of the family's past, connecting the fate of his Jewish grandfather and his own childhood memories of the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s with the progression of his mother's illness. In this way, both writers purposely bring into play multiple generational perspectives from different vantage points. The respective familial gaze allows each author to go beyond patriarchal traditions, expanding concepts of both the earlier father literature and the reemerging family novels.

Looking Back: From Family Novels to Grandmother Literature

As both Heins take up and revise literary traditions of family narratives, it is worth considering briefly the rich canon of family novels that (usually) focus on various generations of protagonists from the perspective of their offspring.