Interview with Tamar Shapiro about her novel “Restitution”  Beyond 1989: A Family’s Story

When we think of German reunification today, many of us picture people beaming with joy, Trabants passing through open border checkpoints, and strangers hugging in one big celebration. But there was another side: property that had been expropriated in East Germany, or left behind by those who fled, was returned to its former owners and their heirs. For people who had lived in these homes for decades, this often meant losing their home. In her novel Restitution, Tamar Shapiro explores the private consequences a family faces in such a property dispute.

What inspired you to write Restitution?

Restitution is not autobiographical, but certain aspects of the narrator’s life do mirror my own. My mother is German, and I have moved back and forth between the U.S. and Germany for much of my life. From early on, I have felt the tug between two cultures that is likely familiar to many of the GEGENÜBER readers—and to anyone who calls two different countries home.
As a child, the Germany that I considered my second home was West Germany. Then, in the early 1990s, my parents moved from the U.S. to former East Germany. Over the course of frequent visits, I fell in love with their new hometown, Leipzig—with its openness and with the sense of endless creative possibility during those years of transformation, as well as its stunning green spaces, waterways and neighborhoods. Many years later, in 2017, I finally moved to Leipzig myself, albeit temporarily, with my husband and kids. It was a dream come true, both because I adore Leipzig and because I finally had the time to do something I’d long been curious about: write a novel. It was while living there that I completed the first drafts of Restitution, inspired by my love for Leipzig, by decades of observations and conversations about the persistent divide between East and West, and by a deep fascination with the ways the city and its people responded to rapid and dramatic change. The novel tells the story of Lena, a German woman living in the United States with her daughter Kate and her son Martin after a divorce. In the 1950s, her parents fled East Germany for the West, and another couple moved into their house. After reunification, Lena must grapple with the question of whether to reclaim her parents’ former property. What drew you to this particular family situation?

Restitution is about many things, but one of its key themes relates to loss—how people experience it and how they respond to it. Many of us think of loss in personal terms, such as the loss of a loved one. But, of course, loss also occurs on a far larger scale. In Restitution, I explore the emotional parallels between the loss of people (whether through geographic distance, estrangement, divorce, or death) and the loss of home and country. I am especially intrigued by the idea that you can grow distant from someone you love even when they are still in your life, just as you can lose your home or country without moving, simply because everything around you changes. The divorce that shatters the family is only one example of loss, but it is an important one because it occurs early in the life of my narrator, Kate, and her brother Martin. It shapes their response to future losses.

Lena’s decision not to openly discuss the divorce with her children creates a lasting silence within the family. What interested you about the consequences of what remains unsaid?

Silence within families is another big theme in Restitution. So is silence about historical events. In fact, Kate’s mother’s silence is directly tied to her family’s experiences during a dark historical time. She grew up in the aftermath of World War II. Then, as a teenager, she fled with her family from East to West Germany, finally ending up in the United States after her marriage. Throughout all of this, she learned not to look back. This seems to work for her, but her kids struggle. How do you process the events of your childhood if they are largely unacknowledged and if there’s no one there to process them with you?

The siblings often experience the same family history in very different ways. Were you interested in exploring how memory can differ even within a single family?

I find it fascinating how children can grow up in the same environment and come away with wildly different memories. It reveals a lot about how malleable memory is. But the assumption that siblings necessarily have the same experiences is also flawed. At key moments, Kate and Martin’s experiences diverge dramatically, and these moments of divergence become a wedge between them. They feel they should understand each other, yet they don’t. Inevitably, the expectations they have of one another as siblings give way to disappointment, confusion, and anger. So, yes, memories differ within a single family, but so do experiences. In Restitution, I explore both.
Of course, I also chose to write about siblings, because I was drawn to the parallel between estranged siblings trying to find common ground and two countries coming together after decades of division. In both cases, the process is precarious, messy and imperfect. Was there a particular scene, character, or relationship that proved especially difficult to write?

The portions of the book that take place in East Germany in the 1950s required by far the most research. It was difficult but also wonderful. I read countless books and historical documents I also talked to as many people as I could. I am lucky to have friends who grew up in the region around Leipzig, who connected me to their relatives, neighbors, and even schoolteachers. These conversations (and the many pieces of cake I was served!) ended up being an unexpected highlight of the writing process.

The novel takes place in the shadow of German reunification. What do you think is the most overlooked aspect of the transformation of eastern Germany after 1989?

I wrote Restitution with a U.S. audience in mind, so the question I asked myself while writing was specifically what was missing from the U.S. narrative about German reunification. The answer was: so very much! The story that was told in the U.S. was one of triumph, and the fall of the Wall was indeed a triumph. It marked the downfall of a violent, repressive authoritarian regime. But the story of reunification is far more complicated. It was this sense of complexity, the flaws of reunification and their lingering impacts, that I wanted to convey to a U.S. audience.
The specific aspect of reunification that interested me most (though not overlooked) was the thorny issue of property. Among the many property-related questions that reunification raised, Restitution only addresses one deeply poignant example: the restitution claims made by prior owners who had fled East Germany. I chose to focus on these claims because there are no easy answers. How does place shape identity? Who owes what to whom and why? How can debts, both literal and figurative, best be repaid? These are the questions I wanted to explore—questions that still confound the East-West relationship to this day. More than three decades after reunification, what conversations about East and West Germany do you think still need to be had?

I have been horrified to watch the rise of the extreme far right as the most prominent political force in former East Germany. Of course, the far right is also gaining support across former West Germany—part of a larger global trend—but not at the levels seen in the East, where recent state elections and polls have revealed shocking percentages for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a nationalist, anti-immigrant party, prominent leaders of which have espoused definitions of German identity based on ethnicity and have aligned themselves with rhetoric reminiscent of the Nazi party. On recent trips to the rural areas around Leipzig, I have been dismayed to see a proliferation of swastika stickers and people wearing T-shirts declaring themselves proud Nazis. The AfD has tapped into fears and resentments that have arguably been festering since reunification, and I do believe understanding the past is critical to finding a path forward. But I also feel strongly that the conversations that are the most urgent today are not the ones that ask what we should have done differently, but rather, what do we do differently now to protect Germany as an inclusive and democratic state? I fear we are running out of time.

You grew up in the United States but spent your summers in Germany near Lake Constance. How has this transatlantic upbringing influenced your writing?

In addition to my summers at Lake Constance, I spent several school years in Bonn as a child and have also lived in both Berlin and Leipzig. I feel very lucky to be able to have two countries I call home (and two languages), yet it comes with a certain sadness—a feeling of never being fully settled in either one. This tension has defined my whole life, and it also shaped many of my choices in writing the novel. Most obviously, I chose a narrator who, like me, is torn between countries. I dedicated Restitution to my parents who gave me these two homes, and I truly am grateful for the wonderfully confusing richness this excess brings to my life. Are there differences in how German and American readers respond to the themes of the novel?

Above all, this book is about a family. It explores universal themes, such as loss, memory, and betrayal, that are presumably equally relevant to readers in the U.S. and Germany. With regard to the historical elements of the book, I love it when my U.S. readers tell me that Restitution left them wanting to know more about Germany’s post-war division and reunification. It gives me great joy to think of my novel as the start of a journey for them! But I have also been really pleased by the reaction of German readers. I do a little dance every time they tell me that they not only recognized their own stories in my writing but also learned something new.