Review: Siegfried Lenz's Deutschstunde

I have been making my way through the German titles on the list 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and came to Siegfried Lenz's most famous novel, Deutschstunde (The German Lesson). I must admit I hesitated before committing to a 700-page novel; I had picked up Heimatmuseum many years ago, and discarded it as mere Heimatliteratur. But after reading Deutschstunde I now realize that there was a serious gap in my reading of postwar German novels:  Siegfried Lenz must be read along with Grass, Böll, and Koeppen.  I personally have always been drawn to modernists like Koeppen - a true innovator in fiction.  With Siegfried Lenz one is transported back to the leisurely style of the great 19th century novelists, with long, detailed descriptions of places, things and people - people rooted in a specific place and time.  While Joyce is the model for Koeppen, Lenz shows the influence of Faulkner, with the difference here that instead of the stifling heat of Yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi the reader is transported to the desolate village of Rugbüll, a northern-most German outpost on the North Sea.

Deutschstunde is a "frame novel" (Rahmenroman) told nearly entirely from the perspective of the 21-year old protagonist Siggi Jepsen.  Siggi is being held in a youth correctional facility outside of Hamburg and as part of a class assignment is required to write an essay on "die Freuden der Pflicht"  (the joys of duty). He is paralyzed by a psychological writer's block which is misinterpreted as insubordination, leading to a punishment of solitary confinement. Alone, he contemplates the flowing Elbe from his cell and is overpowered by a flood of memories, which he captures on paper.

The bulk of Deutschstunde is comprised of Siggi's first-person narration of events that happened when he was ten-years old in his village of Rugbüll - towards the end of World War II. Lenz does a magnificent job of describing Rugbüll as tight-knit community where everyone has known each other since birth, where the sea, the harsh weather and conditions force the villagers to support one another.  There is timeless quality to the place; the war and the realities of the Third Reich seem far away.  Yet, the war and the Third Reich intrude with a "letter from Berlin" to Siggi's father, the local constable.  Jens Ole Jepson is required by the Nazi authorities to enforce a Malverbot - a prohibition to paint - on the celebrity painter Max Ludwig Nansen (modeled on the great expressionist painter Emil Nolde).  The Nazi authorities had deemed his paintings entartet (degenerate). Siggi's father is hardly a hard-core ideological Nazi, yet his authoritarian personality rises to the task, and he becomes completely obsessed with carrying out his "duty", even though he and the painter Nansen have been friends since childhood. Nansen, for his part, can no longer stop painting than he could cease breathing. So Siggi gets caught in the middle of this terrible pas de deux between his father, whom he wants to obey, and the artist, whom he idolizes.

Deutschstunde succeeds as a novel on many levels. As a kind of progressive Heimatliteratur it depicts the everyday life of a rural village and how the idyll is shattered by war.  As a psychological novel it is a reverse Bildungsroman that shows how excessive authoritarianism stunts emotional growth.  And finally as a Künstlerroman it deals with the role of art and the artist in society.  Siegfried Lenz has created a compelling character with the artist Nansen, and the descriptions of Nansen's paintings are highly accomplished, as is the insight into the artistic process.  There is a scene in the chapter entitled Sehen ("to see") where Nansen explains what he does to Siggi:

 

Sehen ist Durchdringen oder Vermehren. Oder auch Erfinden […]Es kann auch Investieren bedeuten, oder Warten auf Veränderung. […] Sehen: das ist doch nicht: zu den Akten zu nehmen. Man muβ doch bereit sein zum Widerruf. Du gehst weg und kommst zurück, und etwas hat sich verwandelt. Laβ mich in Ruhe mit Protokollen. Die Form muβ schwanken, alles muβ schwanken […] Sehen ist also ein Tausch auf Gegenseitigkeit. Was dabei herausspringt, ist gegenseitige Veränderung. (Seeing means penetrating or enhancing. It can also mean investing or waiting for change. Seeing : it's not the same as filing away.  You have to be ready to recall it. You go away and come back and something has changed. Don't bother me with protocols.  The form has to fluctuate; everything has to fluctuate. Seeing is therefore a mutual swapping. What that produces is mutual transformation.")

What Nansen is describing here the creative process in general - not just the act of painting.  It is the lesson Siggi learns as he writes his past in his cell, and in the process writes himself free of his father.

I know that Deutschstunde is often assigned to German high school students, so it is probably hated as required reading. But it is a very rich work of fiction that should be read and reread long after one has left school. 

 

Comments

[Roland]

Lasen Sie das Buch auf Deutsch oder auf Englisch?

[Marianna Scheffer]

I'm glad for these intelligent reviews of yours. Thanks.

[Boros1124]

I can honestly say that you do not like his works. Egyis friend, read a book he wrote Lens. He did not have a favorite book. I read another one from him. An anthology. Not tied down. Maybe the problem is that Russia is strongly reminiscent of the works. They feel depressed. Unfortunately, much of Europe at a time of Russian literature was very popular. And that these works are similar. http://www.konyv-konyvek.hu/book_images/52a/999641252a.jpg