W.G. Sebald claimed that German writers of the post-war time have remained silent when it came to writing about the air-raids over Germany, the bombing of the German cities and the suffering of the people living there. There are several more or less known works adressing the topic Luftkrieg. For this project, Sebald's work is used as a point of departure. Four different German literary works concerning the Luftkrieg will be examined: Hans Erich Nossack's Der Untergang, Heinrich Böll's Der Engel schwieg, Alexander Kluge's Der Luftangriff auf Halberstadt am 8. April 1945 and Dieter Forte's Der Junge mit den blutigen Schuhen.

This work aims for two goals: 1. Pointing out how the different texts are approaching the topic Luftkrieg and the linguistic features the authors use to describe the air-raids. The focus is on the depiction of the people living in the German cities. 2. Comparing the results and finding differences and similarities among the four works.

The project produces the following results: Every author has his individual way to deal with the topic Luftkrieg what makes a generalization difficult. But although the texts have different authors and originate from different periods of time in or after World War Two, they have several things in common. It can be noticed that the silence Sebald adressed exists indeed, every author has to deal with the trauma the Luftkrieg caused in his very own way. There recurring motives in most of the texts, such as hunger, resignation and the appearance of nature.