Introduction: in defense of melancholy -- The diseased imagination: perpetrator melancholy in Gunter Grass's Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke and Beim Hauten der Zwiebel -- The disenchanted mind: victim melancholy in Wolfgang Hildesheimer's Tynset and Masante -- The feminine Holocaust: gender, memory, and melancholy in Peter Weiss's Die Asthetik des Widerstands -- From the Weltschmerz of the postwar penitent to capitalism and the "racial century": melancholy diversity in W. G. Sebald's work -- Epilogue: death of the male melancholy genius: from Vergangenheitsbewaltigung to Vergangenheitsbewirtschaftung in Iris Hanika's Das Eigentliche.
