Resumen

FRAGO, Marta  y  NOGUERA, María. Melodrama and nazi postmemory. The paradigmatic case of Generation War (2013). Revista de Comunicación [online]. 2025, vol.24, n.1, pp.229-246.  Epub 09-Abr-2025. ISSN 1684-0933.  http://dx.doi.org/10.26441/rc24.1-2025-3733.

The article analyzes the seriesGeneration War(Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter, 2013) to explore how melodramatic fiction contributes to the collective memory of Nazi Germany as Holocaust witnesses gradually disappear. A content analysis of the series’ three episodes is based on the hypothesis that emotional narratives can influence the preservation of memories and intergenerational dialogue about Hitler’s crimes. This analysis employs nine categories derived from the literature on audiovisual melodramatic modes: victim-characters, threatening forces, nostalgia, spaces of innocence, suspense, redemptive death, narrative logic disruptions, random fate, and moral reading pact. The findings show thatGeneration Warincorporates these emotional elements to present a representation that combines both critique and understanding of the Nazi past. This demonstrates that melodrama can overcome criticisms of historical distortion, given the crucial role of emotion as an effective tool for keeping the memory of traumatic episodes alive.

Palabras clave : memory; postmemory; Nazism; World War II; melodrama; emotion; trauma; German TV; television series; Generation War.

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