The goal of this dissertation is to provide an answer to the question of how the German/Austrian authors of the postwar generation try to reconcile the past, with a special focus on the issue of guilt in selected literary works. The selected corpus contains four novels, and those are Bernhard Schlink's The Reader (Der Vorleser, 1995.), Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Lost (Der Verlorene, 1998.), Marcel Beyer's The Karnau Tapes (Flughunde, 1995.) and Christoph Ransmayr's Morbus Kitahara (Morbus Kitahara, 1995.). It will be necessary to address the problems which the second generation faced as well as possible physical reactions that were the result of the conflict between the first and the second generation. The second generation is, considering that it is closely connected to the generation of the accomplishers, tangled into their guilt and forced to bear the consequences of their parent's mistakes. Irritating reactions and long-term consequences in the relationship child-parent have also been noticed, as well as paradoxical phenomenon that the repressed and suppressed creates mental problems in the next generation. What will especially be emphasized is the relationship of the third generation that will be shown on the example of the author Beyer who is the only representative of the third generation in this paper. Besides that, the paper contains another author of Austrian origin in the presence of Ransmayr. The presentation of literarization of guilt in their novels should provide an answer to the question of whether confronting the past within the second generation is different outside Germany and how the third generation is confronting the past. The goal of the analysis of the novels is to provide an answer to the following questions: How are different aspects of guilt reflected? Is the topic presentation of individual guilt? Is collective guilt of the generation of the parents, offenders, post-war generation? What is the meaning of guilt for all the generations? Can guilt be overcome or is it crossed over too lightly? The fact that these literary texts achieved such great national and partially international success testifies to the presence of a great need for overcoming the past in Germany and Austria.