Mauthausen-Studien 2: Paul Le Caër

The memoirs Paul Le Caër form the second volume in the series Mauthausen-Studien. Like the first volume, this book was written by a former prisoner. In character, however, it differs fundamentally from the study by Pierre Choumoff published as Volume 1.

On the one hand, ‘A Young European in Mauthausen’ is a very personal text. It is not just a depiction of the author’s experiences during his time imprisoned in several Nazi camps. It also integrates these into a life history as a whole, one that is inextricably linked to the experiences of the concentration camp. Only in the context of a personal biography, it seems, is it possible to even begin to comprehend the profound significance of the traumatic experiences of concentration camp imprisonment. And only in the context of this kind of biography does it become possible to address the trauma itself through the medium of language.

It is therefore the aim of this series to publish not only works of scholarship in the narrow sense, but also texts of this kind that are highly individual and personal and which, in the way they grapple with literary form, are capable of conveying impressions of the unsayable – impressions that cannot be captured by standardised academic language.

This volume is also part of the focus on the subcamps of the Mauthausen concentration camp. The ‘Schlier’ subcamp, on which Paul Le Caër’s memoirs are centred, was the location of rocket production and testing sites and was one of the most important of the Mauthausen subcamps set up for the arms industry.