Review: Hans Keilson's Das Leben geht weiter

I've started reading the fiction of Hans Keilson after Francine Prose declared Keilson a "genius" and his novels "masterpieces" in the New York Times: "Read these books and join me in adding him to the list, which each of us must compose on our own, of the world’s very greatest writers."  I must confess that, until reading Francine Prose's piece, I was not familiar with Keilson even though I consider myself a scholar of literature of the  Weimar Republic and German Exilliteratur. 

There is not much commentary on Keilson in German, not even one reviewer on the German Amazon site.  Roland Kaufhold has a highly appreciative essay on Keilson, but Kaufhold writes more about Keilson's work as a psychoanalyst than a writer. 

I'm sorry to say that after reading Keilson's first novel Das Leben geht weiter (1933)  (English: Life Goes On) I was unable to find evidence of Keilson's genius or that he belongs to the ranks "of the the world's greatest writers."  Nevertheless, I'll reserve final judgment until I've finished his only other full novel Der Tod des Widersachers (1946).  

Keilson must be the last living writer to have published a novel in the Weimar Republic.  Das Leben geht weiter came out as the Republic collapsed when the writer was just 24 years old - and just in time to be banned by the Nazis. Oskar Loerke was instrumental in recommending the young Keilson to the S. Fischer Publishing House.  Das Leben geht weiter belongs to the genre of novels popular in the Weimar Republic known as the Zeitroman - or social novel.  Writers as diverse as Hermann Kesten, Otto Flake, Lion Feuchtwanger and Kasimir Edshmid wrote about a society that appeared to be collapsing around them in Germany.  Das Leben geht weiter follows the downward spiral of one family as the economic depression takes hold in Germany in the early 1930s. 

The central figures in the novel are Herr Seldersen and his son Albrecht.  Seldersen is the owner of a small clothing retail store in an unidentified eastern German city. Seldersen fought as an infantryman in the Great War and a respected fixture in town.  Like most middle-class Germans, his life savings were wiped out by the hyper-inflation of the 1920s in Germany. Since that time, he has been operating on the edge, extending credit to his customers and praying they would pay him back - an impossibility, as it turns out.  Nowhere in the novel is Seldersen's Jewishness referred to, nor are his business woes the result of any anti-Semitic bias: he is simply one more victim of a collapsing economy.  Seldersen does his best to hide his predicament from his teenage son Albrecht.  But Albrecht - a bright student- knows what is happening.  He watches his father fall into a deep psychological depression.  Keilson describes Seldersen's emotional state with the precision of the psychoanalyst he would later become.

Seldersen prides himself in being "non-political", he would never want to offend any customer or vendor by expressing a political opinion.  As a consequence, he fails to see his financial problems in the context of the greater economy.  A different perspective is provided by one of his customers - Herr Kipfer - a party activist (which party, is never mentioned) who engages Seldersen in political debates.  Albrecht Seldersen also has no particular political views, but as a student in Berlin gets caught up in worker demonstrations and witnesses police brutality first-hand. 

The Zeitromane of the Weimar Republic often dealt with the tension between Geist and Praxis - between remaining true to ideals and facing the socio-political contingencies of the time.  The central figure is often a disillusioned intellectual who either experiences a political breakthrough or collapses in despair.  In this novel Albrecht is representative of Geist who tries to remain true to his beliefs even as his family is in crisis.  His friend Fritz Fiedler abandons Geist altogether, drops out of school and flees to America, but things end badly. 

In the end, the elder Seldersen is bankrupt,  beaten, but alive, and Albrecht has experienced something of a political awakening.  Father and son together watch a political procession in Berlin:

Arbeiter, Arbeitslose, verarmte Bürger, Studenten, Frauen und Männer. Sie marschieren alle im gleighen Tritt, und obwohl der Mann in der ersten Reihe den Mann in der zehnten Reihe nicht kennt, nicht weiss, wer er ist - sie marschieren zusammen. Ein starker Wille geht von ihnen aus, eine einheitliche Bereitschaft - she wissen warum sie marschieren.

(Workers, unemployed, impoverished citizens, students, women and men.  They are all marching in step and, even though the man in the first row doesn't know the man in the tenth rowm they march on together. One can sense a strong will from these marchers, a common readiness - they know why they are marching.)

Who are these marchers?  Nazis? Communists?  The author doesn't say, and that is a weakness of Das Leben geht weiter - it is a Zeitroman that is somehow removed from die Zeit.  And, despite the detailed psychological portrayal of Herr Seldersen's slide into depression, the characters remain abstract.  Keilson's youthful attempt lacks the panoramic sweep of Feuchwanger's Erfolg, the breezy sophistication of Irmgard Keun's Das kunstseidene Mädchen, or the melancholy humor of Erich Kästner's Fabian. Still, as one the very last books of the Weimar era, it is an important historical document. 

See my review of Keilson's Der Tod des Widersachers .

Comments

[hosting]

nice and informative.

[Roland Kaufhold]

http://buecher.hagalil.com/2011/04/keilson/

http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2007/11/keilson.htm

Here you will find two more german written studies deling from Hans Keilson, published in the jewish internetmagazine haGalil /www.hagalil.com)

[David]

@Roland.

Thank you! Very helpful.