Hans Keilson began writing Der Tod des Widersachers (English version: The Death of the Adversary) in 1942, while active in the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance. Keilson had fled Germany already in 1936 since as a Jew he was forbidden to practice medicine. The manuscript for Der Tod des Widersachers was buried in Amsterdam as the deportation of Jews accelerated, and was not published until 1957. The book received little notice in Germany; an English translation appeared in 1962 and did briefly receive some attention. Keilson remained popular in the Netherlands - both for his poetry and his psychoanalytic work with children, but faded into obscurity elsewhere. Now, suddenly, we are seeing a Hans Keilson rennaissance thanks to the New York Times, which has declared Keilson to be one of the great literary geniuses of the 20th century.
Der Tod des Widersachers is an extended meditation on the etiology of hate and the symbiotic relationship between the persercutor and the persecuted. The book is about Hitler and Holocaust, but neither Hitler nor the Jews are ever mentioned by name. Hitler is "der Widersacher" or "der Feind" (Enemy) or simply "B.". The anonymous narrator first learns about his adversary as a 10 year-old boy when he overhears his parents talking about him in the kitchen.
"Wenn B. je an die Macht kommt, dann gnade uns Gott! Dann werden wir noch etwas erleben."
Meine Mutter erwiderte ruhiger:"Wer weiss, vielleicht kommt es auch anders. Ein so grosser Herr ist er doch noch nicht."
("If B. ever takes over then God help us!. Then we're done for." My mother replied calmly: "Who knows, mayber it will never come. He's not such a big shot yet.")
Soon the boy begins to feel the presence of the adversary in his own life as his classmates begin to shun him or try to injure him in soccer. He breaks up with his best friend after his friend expresses his admiration for B. Even a normal relationship with a girl becomes impossible when it turns out her brother is a thuggish follower of the adversary. The narrator is haunted by the adversary, who becomes the focal point of his life - or rather his hatred of the adversary gives mearning to his own life.
At the center of Der Tod des Widersachers is a parable: The Russian Czar has given a gift of a herd of elk to the Kaiser. The elk are brought to Germany and put in a protected forest preserve where they have ample food and no predators. The begin the die off. Perplexed, the Kaiser summons the Russian caretaker of the elk to ask what he has done wrong.
"Eines fehlt ihnen" fuhr der Förster fort. "und darum sterben sie." "Nun?" sagte der Kaiser und trommelte mit seiner Hand auf dem Tisch. "Die Wölfe." "Die Wölfe?" widerholte der Kaiser ungläubig. "Ja", sagte der Alte, "die Wölfe fehlen ihnen."
("They (the elk) are missing just one thing," the old woodsman continued. "and that's why they are dying." "Well?" said the Kaser, drumming his fingers on the table. "The wolves." "The wolves?" repeated the Kaiser in disbelief. "Yes", the old man said. "The are missing the wolves.")
In the last scene of the novel, the narrator encounters his adversary in person, as his triumphant motercade passes through Berlin. He regrets that he is too cowardly to act - to kill B. - and at the same time is somewhat perplexed when this monster turns out to be a small man with a sentimental fondness for children. The narrator senses something of himself in his mortal enemy.
Francine Prose in the New York Times called Der Tod des Widersachers a "masterpiece", but the book doesn't really hold together as a novel. The "frame" of the novel - a Dutch lawyer finds a lost manuscript and asks his friend to read it - is clumsy; there is no character development, the figures remain abstract, and the dialogue is stilted. As a treatise on the pathology of hate and anti-Semitism the book pales beside Sartre's essay Réflexions sur la question juive ("Anti-Semite and Jew") and Thomas Mann is more insightful in analyzing the phenomenon of Hitler in his brilliant essay Bruder Hitler.
But there are passages of Der Tod des Widersachers that stay with the reader. In one chapter, the narrator describes how his father calmly packs his rucksack in preparation for certain deportation (Keilson's own parents were murdered in Auschwitz). Suddenly the narrator realizes who his true adversary is:
O mein Gott, in der Sterbestunde dessen, den Du mir als Feind geschickt hast, frage ich Dich aus einem geprüften Herzen, warum hast Du Rucksäcke geschaffen, mit denen Du alte Leute auf Reisen schickst in Deine schöne Welt zu einem schrecklichen Ende? …. Du hast mir einen Widersacher geschaffen, und ich begreife sein Schicksal tiefer, seit er das meine wurde, gröβer als ich je gedacht, warum? Soll ich ihn totschlagen, um nicht von ihm totgeschlagen zu werden? Abe ich zweifle, ob er nicht doch nur eine Geiβel in Deiner Hand ist, die Du geschickt hast. Waum? Ach, mit dem Haβ und der Rache und ach, auch mit der Liebe ist hier gar nichts getan. Merkst Du denn nicht, daβ Du Dich selbst zum Widersacher geschaffen hast…?
(Dear Lord, in the hour of death of the enemy you sent me, I need to ask you, from an examined heart, why did you create rucksacks for you to send along with old people on journeys through your beautiful world to a horrible end?... You created an adversary for me, and I understand his fate more deeply now that it is my fate. Why? Should I kill him, so as not to be killed by him? But I despair that he is nothing but a chisel in your hand which you have sent us. Why? Ah, nothing is accomplished here with hate and revenge, nor with love. Don't you see that you have made yourself into an adversary?)
Comments