Trümmerliteratur

Trümmerliteratur ("rubble literature"), also called Kahlschlagliteratur ("clear-cutting literature"), is a literary movement that began shortly after World War II in Germany and lasted until about 1950.

It is primarily concerned with the fate of former soldiers and POWs who could return to Germany, who must stand both before the rubble of their homeland and their possessions as well as before the rubble of their ideals and deal with it. American short stories served as a model for the authors of this epoch. The stylistic means employed were simple, direct language, which laconically described but did not evaluate the destroyed world, and a restriction, usual for short stories, of the space, narrated time, and characters.