I've read many of the leading (and not so leading) East German writers of the DDR era, but was not familiar with Franz Fühmann, who was known primarily for his essays and popular children's books. Fühmann was also a mentor to many more famous writers such as Christa Wolf and Wolfgang Hilbig, a writer I very much admire (see my review of Hilbig's novel "Ich"). Recently Fühmann's centenary was noted in Die Zeit and other publications, so I decided to pick up a copy of his short stories.
Fühmann was born in the Sudetenland and at a young age was enthralled by the Nazis. At the age of 16 he participated in the destruction of Jewish-owned property during the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. He joined the Wehrmacht at 17 trained as a Funker (radio operator) and was later part of the occupation force in Ukraine and Greece. He later said that he had not committed any atrocities - but only by luck since he was never ordered to. Fühmann was taken prisoner by the Soviet forces an it was in the POW camp that he learned about the Holocaust and the death camps. It was here that he underwent a "conversion" and became a committed socialist. The only answer to Auschwitz, he felt, was to establish a socialist society.
„Ich bin gleich Tausenden andren meiner Generation zum Sozialismus nicht über den proletarischen Klassenkampf oder von der marxistischen Theorie her, ich bin über Auschwitz in die andre Gesellschaftsordnung gekommen. […] Die neue Gesellschaftsordnung war zu Auschwitz das Andere; über die Gaskammer bin ich zu ihr gekommen […].“
For the rest of his life Fühmann wrestled with the question "How could I have been a Nazi?" And he dealt with his past head-on and openly, unlike Günter Grass, who concealed his joining the Waffen SS as a teenager until towards the end of his life. In the short stories I picked up Fühmann attempts to transport himself into the mindset of not just his own youth, but that of his friends and the adults who were in charge.
In Das Judenauto ("The Jew Car") A group of 9-year old kids are transfixed when a classmate tells them about a yellow car with 4 Jews inside that roams the countryside looking to abduct young girls in order to use their blood in a ritual: "Und dann rühren sie das Blut mit Nullermehl an und backen draus Brot!" While walking home from school, the young narrator sees a car passing by. He assumes its the "Jew Car" and runs for his life. The next day he tells his classmates about his narrow escape from certain death at the hands of the Jews. A girl, however, reveals that the car he described belongs to her family - not the Jews - and therefore his story is just a made-up lie. Humiliated, the boy runs off in shame, but he knows the source of his humiliation: the Jews!
"Sie waren daran schuld! Sie hatten alles Schlechte gemacht, das es auf der Welt gibt, sie hatten meinem Vater das Geschäft ruiniert, sie hatten die Krise gemacht [...] sie zogen mit ihren gemeinen Tricks den ehrlichen Leuten das Geld asu der Tasche, und auch mit mir hatten sie einen ihren hundsgemienen Tricks gemacht, um much vor der Klasse zu blamieren. Sie waren schuld an allem!"
In Die Verteidigung der Reichenberger Turnhalle ("The Defence of the Reichenberg Gymnasium") which takes place in the Sudeten town of Liberec a group teenage boys gather to "defend" the local gymnasium from Czech-Jewish-Marxist cutthroats who, according to the German radio broadcasts were set on taking over the building and killing any German-speakers who resisted them. The teenage narrator recounts how just a few weeks before, he had attended the huge Nazi sports gathering, the Sport- und Turnfest held in the German-Silesian capital, Breslau, in July 1938. He had even caught a glimpse of the Führer himself:
"Und da war auf der Tribüne der Führer gestanden, ganz nah vor uns im gleissenden Scheinwerferlicht, ganz nah und gross und allein, ein Gott der Geschichte, und er hatte die Hand über uns erhoben, und sein Blick war unsre Reihen entlanggeglitten. Ich hatte geglaubt, mein Herz würde stillstehen, wenn der Führer mich ansehen würde, und da hatte ich jäh gewusst, dass mein Lben dem Führer geweiht war für immerdar."
In this spirit the boys occupied the gymnasium - ready to defend it to death, if need be, from the Czech-Jewish-Marxist hordes. But the hordes fail to show up, and the boys become increasingly bored and hungry. Finally a Czech constable shows up and tells the boys it's time to go home - to which they sheepishly comply. The next morning however the radio broadcast from Germany reports that murderous Czechs had attacked the gymnasium, killing and injuring a number of brave German boys. The Reich could not simply stand by and allow this atrocity to go unpunished. Rather than laughing at this blatantly absurd propaganda, the boys are quite impressed:
"Mensch, der versteht sich auf Propaganda, der kleine Goebbels", sagte Karli, mein Stosstruppführer, und boxte mich in die Rippen. [...] kein anderes Land als das Reich könne so eine grandiose Propagand aufziehen.
Two weeks later, the Munich Agreement granted Hitler nearly a quarter of Czechoslovakia’s territory.
In Die Schöpfung ("Creation") a young Wehrmacht conscript in Nazi-occupied Greece is given the order to search and kill partisans in the area. On patrol, he stumbles upon an impoverished old woman on her deathbed. He orders her to get up and walk, but she is too week. The young soldier then recalls the words he learned from Der Führer about "inferior races":
"Untermenschen! dachte er, das war es, Untermenschen, das war das richtige Wort. Man muss sie ausrotten, diese Untermenschen [...]die sich wie Schimmel und Krãtze in den gesunden Volkskörper niste und die man gnadenlos vertilgen werde.."
But before the young soldier can aim his rifle to "extinguish" (vertilgen) the poor woman he is surprised and shot by a partisan.
There is a sense of shame in these stories of Franz Fühmann ... shame for his past embrace of Naziism and his participation in Hitler's war. And shame for the pervasive psychosis of the society that formed him and that infected millions of Germans. Writing, for Fühmann was an act of expiation, of atonement for his past self. As he stated once, when receiving a prize for his writing, „Du kannst tun, was du willst, du kommst von Auschwitz nicht mehr los“. ("Whatever you do, can never get beyond Auschwitz.)
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