Remembering and Narrating the “Bloodlands” in Josef Haslinger’s Jáchymov (2011)Die “Bloodlands” in Josef Haslingers Jáchymov (2011) erinnern und erzählen

Josef Haslinger’s novel Jáchymov (2011) engages with a particular troubling episode of Czechoslovakia’s immediate postwar history: the arrest of the entire national ice hockey team on 13 March 1950 and its members’ subsequent imprisonment and condemnation to work in the uranium mines of Jáchymov, having been accused of treason, criticism of the regime, and the intention to emigrate. In the novel, an aging publisher in poor health, Anselm Findeisen, gets to know the daughter of one of the prisoners, Bohumil Modrý (1916–1963), and encourages her to tell her father’s story including the traumatic impact of what happened on her father and herself. The novel uses a multidirectional model of memory, integrating and moving between various historical narratives: the history of the “Third Reich”; Czechoslovakia before, during, and right after World War Two; the past of other Eastern Bloc countries, and finally also the history of Western Europe. The main characters in the novel Jáchymov seek to develop strategies on how to communicate on traumatic events. In doing so, the text tries to imagine a “life in common” informed by a reflection on the “bloodlands,” the history of trauma and violence—experienced in many different ways—that needs to be acknowledged in order to understand Europe today.