"Bitte (nicht) sterben!" - Die Verwaisung Erwachsener als ambivalente biographische Übergangssituation - untersucht in narrativen (literarischen) Rekonstruktionen der Söhne und Töchter

"Please (Don’t) Die!" The Orphanhood of Adults as an Ambivalent Transition Situation - Examined in Literary Reconstructions of the Sons and Daughters

The death of old parents is an event that for middle-aged children is often an experience accompanied by contradictions and feelings of ambivalence. Although it is a normative and thus a principally predictable life event in the course of development over the life span, it has so far hardly found its way into educational science research. This contrasts with the findings of numerous texts by writers who address this stage of life as a significant loss that is often underestimated in its valence. It is precisely this described experience in adulthood which is consciously introduced as “orphanhood”. It forms the subject of research in this dissertation and includes the qualitative analysis of eight autofictional texts on the experience of dying and death of parents in the age range of 70-99 years from the perspective of their children in the middle age range of 40-60 years. In the examined texts, which were written between 1964-2014, the daughters and sons experience the entry into the “orphaned” status as an ambivalent transition situation.

The following eight texts are examined :

- Simone de Beauvoir (1964) Ein sanfter Tod / A Very Easy Death
- Verena Stefan (1993) Es ist reich gewesen
- Hermann Kinder (1997) Um Leben und Tod
- Josef Winkler (2007) Roppongi. Requiem für einen Vater
- Nicola Bardola (2005) Schlemm
- Noëlle Châtelet (2005) Die letzte Lektion
- David Rieff (2009) Swimming in a Sea of Death. A Son’s Memoir / Tod einer Untröstlichen. Die letzten Tage von Susan Sontag
- Emmanuèle Bernheim (2014) Alles ist gut gegangen

The experiences reflected in the literary texts are understood as examples of expressive orientation patterns in the field of dying and death. The texts make it clear that this experience is interpreted as (auto-)biographically relevant and that the writing down of the subjective perceptions and accompanying circumstances can be reflected as a possible emotional processing. In terms of methodology, these texts are rated as subjective interpretations presented in narrative terms. The ambivalence concept sensu Kurt Lüscher is used as a meta-theoretical framework. The process of becoming an orphan analysed here refers to a transformation that can change the way we see the world and thus creates ambivalence-sensitive dispositions for possible solutions. The practised approach to the texts together with their linguistic peculiarities underlines the innovative function of literary sources for educational science.