Negotiating Borders in Anna Seghers’ and Christian Petzold’s Transit

Abstract

This article focuses on the negotiation of borders in Anna Seghers ' novel Transit (1944) and Christian Petzold's film of the same name (2018). Seghers' Exilroman, set in the 1940s, describes the torment of a nameless refugee from Germany waiting to escape Marseille, one of the last open ports in a Europe ravaged by National Socialism. Seventy years later, Petzold's film delves into the history of displacement and nationalism in Europe by setting the fascist persecution in the 1940s amongst the refugee "crisis" in the present day. Drawing on a trans-period approach which is already present in Seghers' book, the Berlin School director presents expulsion and migration as timeless phenomena, grounding his film in the historical movement of populations across borders. Both authors construe the crossing of borders as a loss of identity and alienation, but offer different solutions, if any, to what they perceive as an existential as well as a political predicament. After providing some background to each work and author, I will analyse Petzold's diachronic adaptation of Seghers' novel before demonstrating that he deploys an understanding of migration inherent in the earlier text. Considering both authors' representation of displacement as the loss, not only of the home, but also of the self, I will then examine how their coping strategies involve creating and sharing narratives, yet diverge in fundamental ways: Seghers' selfreliance and international solidarity is juxtaposed with Petzold's submitting to the absurdity of the transit space. Finally, I will argue that the state of crisis experienced by Seghers' and Petzold's protagonists is tied to the enforcement of borders both within and around Europe, making this an enduring humanitarian as well as artistic issue which needs to be addressed in order to protect the rich yet contested multicultural community which has historically shaped, and continues to shape, this continent. Negotiating Borders in Anna Seghers' and Christian Petzold's Transit Interfaces, 47 | 2022Set in France after the German invasion of 1940, Seghers' novel is the story of an unnamed narrator who has successively escaped a German and a French camp, and has resorted to living with false papers. He is asked to deliver important letters to a Parisbased exiled writer by the name of Weidel. Weidel, it turns out, has taken his own life, leaving behind a beautiful ex-wife, a visa for Mexico and an unfinished manuscript. Having appropriated the documents, the narrator moves on to Marseille, a town full of people like himself, desperate to flee from the Nazis. He decides to assume Weidel's identity in order to secure his escape route out of Europe. When he comes across the writer's estranged wife Marie, now with a new man, a doctor, the narrator falls deeply in love with her. Without disclosing her husband's demise, he tries to arrange matters so that she can leave with him, whilst concealing that he has taken over the other man's identity and visa. After many trials and tribulations, just as they are abo...