“Ich habe gedacht, ich wäre unverwundbar”: Embodied Vulnerability in Judith Hermann’s Alice and Aller Liebe Anfang

This article examines Judith Hermann’s exploration of embodied vulnerability in Alice (2009) and Aller Liebe Anfang (2014), drawing on vulnerability studies, feminist care ethics, phenomenology, and narratology. Alice addresses vulnerability through the experience of witnessing loved ones dying, while Aller Liebe Anfang explores it through the embodied practices of maternal and professional care work. Across both novels, Hermann’s modulation of focalization and her attention to bodily presence and absence reveal vulnerability in moments of crisis as well as in the temporal textures of daily care. In Alice, prolonged illness and sudden death articulate a phenomenology of loss, disclosing how bodily breakdown transforms perception for both the dying and those who attend to them. In Aller Liebe Anfang, the rhythms of caregiving expose vulnerability as a persistent condition, where protection—understood as the ongoing effort to safeguard those who depend on one’s care—is inseparable from dependence and ambivalence. Read together, the two texts highlight Judith Hermann’s thus-far-overlooked contribution to literary explorations of embodied vulnerability and the human interdependence at its core.