Dialog International

Review: Anatol Regnier's Jeder schreibt für sich allein: Schriftsteller im Nationalsozialismus

Shortly after the war ended in 1945 Thomas Mann, wrote the following concerning literature published in German during the 12 years of Nazi dictatorship.

"It may be superstition, but in my eyes books that could be printed at all in Germany from 1933 to 1945 are less than worthless and ought not to be touched. They are impregnated with the smell of blood and disgrace. They ought all to be pulped."

Was Mann correct? Was everything published in the Third Reich worthless?  Was it possible to make a living as writer and maintain a shred of integrity?  Of course, I am familiar with the works of the exiled writers - from Mann to Brecht to Lion Feuchtwanger and many others.  But what of the writers who didn't - or couldn't - leave Germany during that terrible period?  That is subject of Anatol Regnier's fascinating book "Jeder schreibt für sich allein" - a riff on Hans Fallada's novel "Jeder stirbt für sich allein" (1947). 

Regnier follows a number of writers starting with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 to the postwar period.  And things weren't quite as black and white as Thomas Mann saw them.  There were gradations of collaboration with the Nazi regime. There were craven opportunists and mediocre talents such as Hans Johst, who entertained close ties with Goebbels and other Nazi officials as a chance to advance his career.  Others, such as Gottfried Benn - perhaps the greatest lyric poet of his generation - enthusiastically embraced the nationalist-socialist "revolution" as a victory of the German Geist, but quickly became disillusioned and retreated into his medical practice.  More typical, perhaps, was Erich Kästner - a beloved childrens' author - who witnessed his books being burned by the Nazis, but decided to remain in Germany for family reasons.  Kästner managed to publish a couple of apolitical novels and the Nazis permitted him to write the screenplay for a prestige movie production (Münchhausen) under a pseudonym 

Regnier closely follows the career of two writers in particular: the poet and novelist Ina Seidel and bestselling novelist Rudolf Ditzen, whose pen name was Hans Fallada.  Fallada's novel Kleiner Mann, was nun? (1932) depicted the fall of the middle class during the Weimar Republic - and was such a huge success that it was made into a Hollywood feature film.  Fallada's writing was initially denounced by the Nazis and the Gestapo even briefly imprisoned him. But he kept writing and even agreed to certain revisions of his texts required by the Nazi censors.  His 1937 novel Wolf unter Wölfen was a success and caught the attention of Goebbels, who commissioned Fallada to write an anti-Semitic novel (never completed).  Shortly before his death after the war ended Fallada was able to finish what is perhaps the best work of fiction about everyday life under the Nazi dictatorship - "Jeder stirbt für sich allein - which as recently as 2010 was a best seller in the UK under the title of Alone in Berlin. Ina Seidel was a popular novelist and poet during the Weimar Republic and her 1932 novel Das Wunschkind was a huge bestseller. She was a passionate supporter of the Nazis, and was one of 88 writers who signed the Vow of Total Loyalty ("Gelöbnis treuester Gefolgschaft") to the Führer.  Her poem celebrating Hitler's 5oth birthday was widely published in newspapers and magazines.  After the war, Ina Seidel was able to rehabilitate herself and even today there are schools and streets in Germany bearing her name. 

Regnier's coverage of writers during the Third Reich leaves out a number of important writers. Notably, he elected not to write about the brothers Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger ("[Sie] sind für sich ein so groβes Thema, dass sie ein eigenes Buch rechtfertigen würden.") Missing also is the modernist novelist Wolfgang Koeppen, the poets Günter Eich and Ricarda Huch, and Peter Huchel.  Entirely missing are also those writers who were forbidden by the Nazis to publish their works.  The poet and novelist Elisabeth Langgässer was deemed a "half Jew" by the Nazis and could remain in Germany but not allowed to publish (Schreibverbot) ; her daughter Cordelia was a "full Jew" and deported to Auschwitz.  In 1933 Elisabeth Langgässer and Ina Seidel published an anthology of women poets (Herz zum Hafen. Frauengedichte der Gegenwart) which included poems by the brilliant Jewish poet Gertrud Kolmar. Kolmar also remained in Germany (to care for her father)  and was forbidden to publish,  and after the Novemberpogrom of 1938 was forced into slave labor at a Nazi munitions plant. In 1943 Gertrud Kolmar was transported to Auschwitz where she was immediately murdered.  There is no record of Ina Seidel making any attempt to intervene with her friend Joseph Goebbels to save the poet Gertrud Kolmar. 

Review: Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf

What happens when the greatest philosophers, novelists, poets, playwrights, and scientists all converge on a small city in eastern Germany?  As Andrea Wulf writes in her delightful book, they change the way we see the world.  Jena, in the 1790s, was the cradle of Romanticism, which in the decades that follow spread to the rest of Europe, Great Britain, and the United States. Jena would seem to be an unlikely venue for launching an international revolution: it had no theater, no museums, no court culture as existed in nearby Weimar.  But it did have a university - and one where the faculty had unusual freedom to pursue and teach radical ideas.  In 1793 the university recruited a young philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who, influenced by Kant and the politics of the French Revolution, developed a radical gospel of subjectivity that electrified the students at the university.  Andrea Wulf does the right thing in not focusing on Fichte's virtually unreadable texts but rather convey the excitement he brought to his young students, and later, to the poets, writers, scientists who flocked to Jena to hear his lectures.  One luminary was Goethe, who made the short trip by horseback from Weimar to Jena to attend Fichte's lectures.  It was then that he bonded with Jena's most famous citizen Friedrich Schiller.  Soon other famous writers and thinkers followed - including the Schlegel brothers, the poet Novalis, the novelist Tieck and the von Humboldt brothers.  Since there was little other entertainment in Jena, deep friendships were formed among this brilliant group and they spent time with each other on long walks, gathering in one of the many taverns, and meeting for long dinners with lively arguments over the meanings of Fichte's philosophy.  Of course I was familiar with the works of Goethe, Schiller and the others, but in Wulf's book they all come alive: we learn about their habits, their sex lives, their petty jealousies, etc. 

Romanticism was fueled by philosophy.  And Fichte's influence cannot be understated:

"Fichte's ideas were a work in progress.  He didn't arrive in Jena with a fully formed philosophical system: instead he developed and expanded as he lectured. His many students fed his imagination and thinking. He explored, found and generated his ideas, he said, 'with the listeners and before their eyes.' As they watched Fichte's thinking unfold, they felt they were witnessing something momentous. They were thrilled to see their hero conjuring up this new world.  Fichte's philosophy was alive - so new and revolutionary that even its creator had to revise it as he went along." 

As influential as Fichte was by 1799, his star would soon be eclipsed by Friedrich Schelling, who, in turn, was surpassed by Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel - both of whom were recruited by the university.  Fichte, himself, was later accused of atheism and banished from Jena. 

The central figure in Andrea Wulf's narrative is Caroline von Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling - a brilliant free spirit who, no matter where was always the center of attention with her beauty and intelligence.  As a widow with a young daughter she carried on an affair with a French officer in French-occupied Mainz.  Then, pregnant, she was imprisoned  in Koenigstein along with her daughter Auguste by the Prussians for "consorting with the enemy".  After release from prison, she married August Wilhelm von Schlegel and began a highly productive collaboration. Together, they began translating and published the works of Shakespeare - translations that still hold up today. She wrote numerous articles, essays, and even a novel - all published under her husband's name.  For a brief period in 1799 Caroline presided over the "Jena Set" at her home in Jena - where the resident poets, philosophers, novelists met and worked together nearly every day - with Goethe frequently dropping in from Weimar.  The was a time of enormous creativity and productivity as the group worked and played in communal harmony.  But of course the harmony could not last.  The concentration of strong personalities and egos exerted a centrifugal force.  August Wilhelm Schlegel's brother Friedrich reveled in conflict and started a bitter feud with Schiller.  Friedrich's mistress, the married Dorothea Veit, poured fuel on the fire with vicious gossip about Caroline.  Goethe stayed above the fray and did his best to calm the acrimony. But to no avail: the members of the Jena Set went their separate ways. By the time Napoleon destroyed the city in the 1806 Battle of Jena, only Hegel had remained there - and barely managed to rescue his manuscript of Phänomenologie des Geistes as the city burned.  Still, the Jena Set lit the flame of Romanticism, which quickly spread across the continent to Britain and shortly thereafter, to America - influencing a generation of poets and thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson - whose writings had a powerful influence on Friedrich Nietzsche.