If Alexander Kluge's prose and films are populated with figures looking for escape, his programmatic statements on the media are no less concerned with how various narrative strategies provide more or less possibility for a way out from dominant discursive practices. This idea of Auswege-at the level of both the experience as well as the representation and the conceptualization of historical events-is at the core of Kluge's multi-media project and is the focus of this article. Auswege describe processes of representation/depiction that serve as the reader's point of departure to re-imagine the present, and potentially, offer a Rettung from the repetition of catastrophe. The article traces the evolution of this concept in examples of Kluge's work from the 1970s (Luftangriff auf Halberstadt and Verschrottung durch Arbeit) and in prose texts composed in the context of the end of the GDR and the unification of Germany in 1989/90 (Verfallserscheinungen der Macht). Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
