Anamnesis

The life-stories of problematic central figures as recounted in Moritz' »Anton Reiser«, Keller's »Der grüne Heinrich« and Raabe's »Akten des Vogelsangs« serve as a basis for mapping out ambitiously extensive topologies of memory. Behind the narrative »I remember« ploy, topologically structured models of the cultural organization and imaging of knowledge are discernible. Literary com-memoration makes one thing clear: prior to any kind of individual materialization, memory requires an archive of images to draw on, an archive containing the rhetorical formulas of both mythological and christological initiation narratives as well as of iconography. The literary figuration of »modern« memory thus calls for reexamination and reevaluation.