Dialog International

Review: Uwe Wittstock's Februar 33: Der Winter der Literatur

This is a terrific book that should be read along with Anatol Regnier's Jeder shreibt für sich allein (see my review).  Whereas Regnier's book covers the fate of German writers who remained in Germany during the NS-period (1933-1945), Wittstock writes about how writers reacted to the Nazi seizure of power, covering the the first six weeks of Hitler's chancellery - from January to early March 1933. Wittstock describes the dilemma of many of the greatest 20th century writers during those short weeks - day by day, sometimes hour by hour.  It is an amazing feat of research drawing on memoirs, diaries, letters, interviews with surviving relatives - every source available.  During that short 6-week period Germany was transformed from a liberal democracy to a barbaric dictatorship, and any writer who opposed the new regime faced an existential crisis: to go, to stay, to wait and see.  Few could have imagined in January 1933 that as respected public figures, whose books and plays were enjoyed by millions of Germans, they could within weeks be detained and, in many cases, tortured and sent to concentration camps.  Even a Nobel Prize - as in the case of Thomas Mann - was no guarantee of safety, for Mann was a vocal supporter of the Republic and therefore persona non grata to the Nazis.

Yet there were some who could see exactly what was happening and going to happen.  Joseph Roth, whose Radetzkymarsch is on my list of the Ten Greatest German Novels, got on the next train to Paris as soon as he heard the news that Hitler was the new Reichskanzler.  As he wrote to his his friend Stefan Zweig:

"...usere literarische und materielle Existenz ist ja vernichtet... Es ist gelungen, die Barbarei regieren zu lassen. Machen Sie sich keine Illusionen. Die Hõlle regiert."

As a Jew, Roth knew he was especially vulnerable. Yet some Jewish writers hesitated to leave.  The novelist Herman Kesten, a Jew, was fully aware of the danger, but his family was sick with the flu and he couldn't leave them. Still, he ran to the French Embassy in Berlin to obtain a visa as preparation to flee Germany.  The Jewish poet Elsa Lasker-Schüler was about to have her drama Arthur Aronymus staged in Darmstadt by the respected director Gustav Hartung - a triumph that would have revived her career and provided some deserved financial security. But the Nazis intervened, and ordered Hartung to fire all Jews associated with his theater. Elsa Lasker-Schüler eventually did make it out of Germany and ended up in Israel. 

Bertolt Brecht also had several plays in various stages of production but he knew he was close to the top of the list of writers to be arrested.  He checked himself into a hospital for a hernia operation that he needed anyway.  Hospitals at that time were not required to divulge the names of their patients. Brecht was able to make his way to Denmark and eventually to the United States.

Some writers and artists were fortunate enough to be outside of Germany during the Nazi seizure of power. Eric Maria Remarque, whose anti-war novel Im Westen nichts Neues was hated by the Nazis, had already moved to Switzerland. Best-selling author Vicki Baum was in the US.  Nazi thugs raided the Berlin studio of the painter Georg Grosz, but he was already working as an art teacher in New York. Thomas Mann and his wife were enjoying a restful stay in the Swiss Alps following a lecture tour.  Mann wanted to return to Munich to retrieve his manuscript for Joseph und seine Brüder, but his children Klaus and Erika warned him to stay out of Germany. The Nazis did raid his house but the manuscript was fortunately rescued.

Wittstock writes about the sad fate of the Prussian Academy of Arts.  Thomas Mann's brother Heinrich Mann was president of the Dichtung (Poetry)  division of the academy, which included many of the best known writers of the Weimar Republic.  After Heinrich Mann and artist Käthe Kollwitz signed a declaration calling the new regime "barbaric" the members conspired to expel Mann from the academy without having the courtesy to inform him in person - an act of pure cowardice.  Only one member - Ricarda Huch - acted honorably and immediately resigned in protest.  The poet Gottfried Benn was one of the members who did not resign. Wittstock provide a plausible explanation for Benn's initial enthusiasm for the Nazis: resentment.  Wittstock compares the careers of Benn with Alfred Döblin.  Both were medical doctors.  But the prolific Döblin achieved fame with the publication of the novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (also on my Top Ten list) which was made into a successful feature movie.  Döblin was able to shut down his medical practice and devote his time to writing.  Benn's medical practice was primarily treating prostitutes and down-and-out patients in the working class district where he lived.  That practice paid poorly.  Yes, his lyric poetry was admired by many - but poetry also paid poorly. So his position on the Prussian Academy of Arts was a vindication of sorts:

"Nun endlich bekam er did offizielle Anerkennung, die ihm so fehlte, endlich gestand man ihm seinen Platz in der literarischen Elite des Landes zu. Jetzt war er kein ärmlicher Prostituiertenartz mehr, der fürseine Gedicthe kaum mehr als ein paar gute Kritiken bekam, sondern nahm er seinen Sitz ein in der Tafelrunde der berühmtesten deutschsprachign Schriftsteller der Zeit." 

Besides famous writers like Gottfried Benn and Alfred Döblin, Wittstock writes about the fates of many lesser-known writers.  One of my favorites - the Berlin poet Mascha Kaléko - makes a cameo appearance as she encounters the satirical writer Walter Mehring on the street and warns him that some SA-men are on the next block looking to arrest him.  Mehring immediately rushes to station to get on the next train to Prague.

Not everyone made it out of Germany.  Some, like Erich Kästner remained by choice.  The publisher of Die Weltbühne, Carl von Ossietzky was urged to leave by his friends but stubbornly refused.  He was arrested and sent to a concentration camp where he died, despite being honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936.  The anarchist poet and essayist Erich Mühsam was arrested immediately after the Reichstag fire and was tortured to death at the Oranienburg concentration camp. Looking back, it is hard to imagine how these writers coped with the life and death decisions that confronted them in those terrible few weeks in 1933.   Many of those who fled the Nazi terror thought it would be only for a few months.  Surely the German people would not tolerate living under a Nazi dictatorship for long.  Many would never set foot in their homeland again for the rest of their lives.

Review: Brigitte Reimann's novel Die Geschwister

I became interested in the East German writer Brigitte Reimann (1933-1973) after reading this recent piece by Kate Connelly in The Guardian. I have read most of the famous DDR writers - from Anna Seghers to Christa Wolf - as well as a few not so famous, but knew virtually nothing about Brigitte Reimann, who evidently was something of a cult figure in the DDR.  Connelly writes:

Reimann, who has been compared to the writers Carson McCullers and Edna O’Brien and who counted Anna Seghers and Ernest Hemingway among her literary heroes, became a cult figure with a reputation similar to that of a beatnik poet.

Die Geschwister ("Siblings") is about to be published in English translation, so I started with that short novel (the DTV version I have called it an Erzählung (story).  The first person narrator - Elisabeth Arendt - a 24-year-old painter and art instructor at a coal mining plant (Braunkohlenkombinat) somewhere in the eastern DDR.  Elisabeth (or "Betsy") has two brothers: a much older brother Konrad - who left the DDR for the West ("das andere Deutschland") and Ulrich - just slightly older that then narrator.  Most of the story is about her relationship with "Uli" - the novel begins and ends with a heated argument between Besty and Uli , but the reader doesn't learn why they are fighting until the last part of the novel.  What struck me most about the novel is the almost incestuous relationship between bother and sister: the two can't keep their hands off each other. Uli admits he has difficulty maintaining relationships with other girls because none seems to measure up to Betsy.

Between the bookends of the sibling's argument, Reimann writes beautifully about the sibling's childhood during the war and the hardships just after the war, as her father returned as a diminished man from years in a POW camp.  Towards the middle of novel Betsy and her mother have a reunion of sorts with Konrad - now a "Wessie" - in West Berlin.  It does not go well.  Betsy despises her older brother for "abandoning" the country that trained him as an engineer. 

"Du haβt die Republik so blind und dumm, wie man einen Gläubiger haβt.  Du wirst es ihr nie verzeihen, daβ du ihr deine Ausbildung und deinen Beruf verdanken.  Das ist es. Deinen Beruf", fügte ich hinzu, " mit dem du Westmark verdienst."

Later she nearly accuses Konrad of being a Nazi and storms off, wandering the streets of Berlin, totally lost until she sees a welcoming sign that she is leaving the "west sector". 

Towards the end of Die Geschwister we learn the reason behind the heated argument between Besty and Uli: her beloved Uli has also made plans to flee to the "other Germany."  For Betsy, this is an existential crisis, and she betrays her brother's plan to her fiance Joachim - the manager of a VEB steel plant and party stalwart.  Here is where the novel breaks down, for the efforts of Betsy and Joachim to convince Uli to stay - the back and forth to stay or leave - becomes tiresome. Also, Betsy admits that - although she remains committed to the socialist ideals of her beloved DDR and could never consider leaving, she could also never be a true Party member: her family background is "bourgeois" (bürgerlich).  And because of this innate orientation she can never be a true proletariat:

"Was wir gelernt haben haben und was unser Kopf begriffen hat, das it bloβ die Oberfläche, die Haut ... Aber innen, im Herzen, wenn du es so nennen willst, in einem letzten Gehirnwinkel, denken und fühlen wir noch als Bürgerliche."

This and other nods to Leninist orthodoxy - perhaps necessary to get published in the DDR - put me off somewhat. So, on balance, I wasn't a huge fan of Die Geshwister, despite Brigitte Reimann's obvious writing talent.  So I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle her unfinished novel Franziska Linkerhand (600+ pages!).

For anyone interested in reading a lesser-known but brilliant DDR novel I strongly recommend Rummelplatz by Werner Bräunig.

Review: Lion Feuchtwanger's DIe Geschwister Oppermann

Many years ago I read Lion Feuchtwanger's two-part novel Erfolg (1930), a roman à clef that dealt with the rise of Hitler and the Nazi movement in Bavaria.  Hitler is represented in the comical figure Rupert Kutzner, and various other luminaries of the late Weimar Republic  appear as recognizable characters. Feuchtwanger wrote himself into the novel as the writer Tüverlin. The novel - one of the great Weimar  Zeitromane - is even today a highly entertaining read but was also a serious warning at the time about Hitler and fascism.  For some reason I never read Feuchtwanger's follow-on novel Die Geschwister Oppermann (1933) even though I had a copy in my personal library.  A recent review in the New York Times of a new translation of the novel compelled me to finally read it. 

The tone of Geschwister is much different than Erfolg.  It is no longer just a warning about a fanatical nationalist, who seems more clown-like than threatening. In Geschwister the red lights are flashing and sirens blaring: the story moves from Bavaria to Berlin - the seat of the government - and Hitler is chancellor.  The Oppermanns of the books title are a prominent, - well to do -  Jewish family in Berlin.  The three Oppermann brothers are all respected professionals; they each served honorably in the Great War for Germany, and, if asked, considered themselves to be loyal Germans.  The idea that they could somehow be persecuted in a modern, civilized society seemed preposterous. Yes, they see the new chancellor and the regime as a threat, but only a temporary one.  They have faith that the German people will come to reject the violence and excesses of the Nazis (called "Landesknechte") and a sane, liberal government will be restored.  Only one child - Ruth, the Zionist daughter of Edgar Oppermann - sees the writing on the wall and makes preparations to emigrate to Palestine.

The central figure in Die Geschwister Oppermann is the writer and intellectual Gustav Oppermann.  Gustav is a bachelor and bon vivant who enjoys fine wine, cigars and dining at his club. He considers himself an intellectual and scholar and works intermittently on a biography of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing - the 18th century proponent of German Aufklärung ('enlightenment').  Gustav embodies the "free-floating intelligentsia" ("freischwebende Intelligenz') described by the sociologist Karl Mannheim in his study Ideologie und Utopie (1929). The intellectual, Mannheim posited, operates outside the social classes and above the political fray. Gustav is more interested in his girlfriends and the arts rather than politics, but he has nothing but contempt for the crude language and actions of the Nazis. So he unthinkingly signs a petition attacking the new regime in Berlin.  This act puts Gustav in danger of arrest and torture at the hands of the Landesknechte and he is forced to leave leave Germany once the Reichstag burns.  Gustav, with his financial means, could lead a comfortable exile existence in Switzerland and the South of France, but he is haunted by reports of repression and barbaric torture in his homeland.  When he receives news that his friend, the Jewish professor Johannes Cohen, died "unexpectedly" in a Nazi concentration camp, Gustav decides he must return to German incognito to see with his own eyes what is happening. Eventually he falls into the hands of the Gestapo and is detained at the Moosbach concentration camp. This is the most difficult section of the novel to read, for Gustav's treatment - as well as the that of the other inmates - is barbaric.  He does survive - barely- and is released from the camp.  But his health so badly compromised by the harsh beatings and labor that his body fails.  On his deathbed he dictates what he saw and experienced at Mossbach to his friend Dr. Frischlins.  He realizes that his Lessing biography was useless against Hitler; he can use what remains of his talents to bear witness to the crimes against humanity he experienced at the hands of the Nazi.  Dr. Frischlin describes his last moments:

Oppermann bat mich, ihm eine Frage zu beantworten, die ihn beunruhigte: ob ich nämlich ihn und sein Leben für unnützlich hielte. Ich erwiderte ihm, er habe under sehr gefährlichen Umständen seine Bereitschaft gezeigt, für das Richtige und Nützliche einzutreten. Er habe indes nuch gesehen, was ist, und keinen nützllichen Rat gewußt, was zu tun sei.  Er habe einen Marathonlauf gemacht, un eine Meldekapsel zu überbringen: leider nur sei kene Botschaft in der Kapsel gewesen.

Feucthwanger wrote Die Geschwister Oppermann as a warning to the German people: there can be no appeasing the forces of Nazism.  Unfortunately, the book was published outside of Germany, so very few Germans could actually read it at the time.  But Feuchtwanger's warning is relevant for us today in the United States as a growing sector here embrace fascist conspiracies and ideas.  What is astonishing is that Feuchtwanger had clear knowledge of the Nazis network of concentration camps, just months after the 1933 seizure of power.  Of course, he could not imagine - nor could anyone in 1933 - the horror of the "Final Solution." 

 

 

 

 

Erich Kästner in the Third Reich

As a follow-up to my previous post about writers who remained in Germany during the NS-period where I mentioned Erich Kästner in passing, Der Spiegel published a short piece that puts Kästner's particular situation in more complete context.   Erich Kästner despised the Nazis, and, for the the most part, the animosity was mutual. Kästner was perhaps the only author of note who was brave enough to attend the Nazi book-burning orgy in Berlin on May 10, 1933. He watched as the fanatical students consigned his own books to the bonfire, shouting "»Gegen Dekadenz und moralischen Verfall« ("Down with decadence and moral decay!")  A woman spotted him in the crowd and shouted "»Dort steht ja der Kästner!« ("Kästner is standing right over there!«)  so he was lucky to make it out from the horrible event unharmed.  What followed were twelve miserable years: his books were banned - except for the beloved children's book Emil und die Detektive. He was arrested several times and interrogated by the Gestapo.  Yet he stayed in Germany - unlike so many other talented writers.  He was the first to admit that he wasn't a hero - he never participated in any underground resistance activity: 

»Ich bin ein Deutscher aus Dresden in Sachsen.
Mich läßt die Heimat nicht fort.
Ich bin wie ein Baum, der, in Deutschland gewachsen,
wenn's sein muß, in Deutschland verdorrt.«

("I am a German from Dresden in Saxony.  My homeland will not let me go. I'm like a tree that grew in Germany - and, if it comes to that, will wither away in Germany.")

Erich Kästner somehow survived through the Nazi dictatorship.  After the war, his career once again took off.  Looking back on the dreadful period he wrote:

»Die Ereignisse von 1933 bis 1945 hätten spätestens 1928 bekämpft werden müssen. Später war es zu spät. Man darf nicht warten, bis der Freiheitskampf Landesverrat genannt wird. Man muß den rollenden Schneeball zertreten. Die Lawine hält keiner mehr auf. Sie ruht erst, wenn sie alles unter sich begraben hat … Drohende Diktaturen lassen sich nur bekämpfen, ehe sie die Macht übernommen haben"

("The events from 1933 to 1945 should have been stopped in 1928 at the latest. After that it was too late.  You can't wait until the struggle for freedom is labeled as treason. You need to squash the rolling snowball. No one can stop the ensuing avalanche after that.  It ends only after everything is ruined. ... Threatening dictatorships can only be stopped before they have taken power.")

In 1930, Thomas Mann gave his famous speech in Berlin - "Appell an die Venunft" ("Appeal to Reason") before a large audience that included Nazi thugs and the writer Ernst Jünger.  No doubt Jünger was amused.  He knew the Republic - which he hated- was finished.

That same year Erich Kästner published my favorite novel of the Weimar Republic - Fabian: Geschichte eines Moralisten.  Towards the end of the novel the protagonist Fabian thinks:

"Vernunft kann man nur einer beschränkten Zahl von Menschen beibringen, und die sind schon vernünftig."

(You can only bring a limited number of people to Reason, and they are already reasonable.)

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. 

Review: Harald Jähner's Aftermath:Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich

What happens to a people whose country has been destroyed by years of war - entire cities reduced to rubble by relentless firebombing, a nation reviled internationally as a pariah for its perpetration of the Holocaust?  They find a way to keeping living, and, eventually even thriving.  That is the gist of Harald Jähner's wildly entertaining book Aftermath ( Shaun Whiteside's translation of Wolfszeit).  Jähner's focus is on the lives of ordinary Germans, not the postwar geopolitical situation. And he covers the key stages of Germany's recovery: the almost giddy exhilaration in the immediate aftermath of having survived the war, the harsh conditions of hunger an lack of housing which led to Cardinal Frings' blessing of petty theft of coal and food (which coined a new verb: fringsen), the social upheaval caused by  millions of displaced persons and expellees from the former Sudetenland and East Prussian who transformed both cities and rural villages, the critical role of the Black Market which vanished virtually overnight with the 1948 Currency Reform.  All of this is covered by Jähner in the early chapters of Aftermath. 

The later chapters deal with the beginnings of the Wirtschaftswunder - Germany's "Economic Miracle" as it rose from the rubble to become Europe's economic powerhouse.  Jähner focuses here on key individuals who are representative for this astonishing transformation: there is Beate Uhse, a wartime pilot who became a household name as a sex entrepreneur and brought the sexual revolution to Germany a decade before the hippies and the "68ers"; there was Heinz Heinrich Nordhoff  who led Volkswagen from 1948, making the car manufacturer an icon of Germany's newfound economic power; there was Hans Habe, a writer and publisher who was initially installed by the American occupiers to create 18 regional newspapers but who later "went native" and was instrumental in building West Germany's vibrant independent free press; and there was Willi Baumeister, an abstract painter and designers, whose art was promoted by the American CIA to counter Soviet-style socialist realism.  If I have any criticism of Harald Jähner's book is that he barely mentions  the Gruppe 47 of writers and poets who reconnected Germany to modern world literature. 

The final chapter of Aftermath deals with how many German's "repressed" their involvement in the Third Reich as well as their horrific experiences during the war.  This was a 'willful amnesia' - perhaps necessary to some extent to move on and focusing on creating a new future. In this context, the attempt by the American Occupation Forces at "denazification" of the German population was an abject failure.  Still, the United States -through its culture - played the essential role in postwar Germany's embrace of democracy, as  Jähner points out in a recent interview in The Guardian: 

American entertainment culture had a very pacifying effect on Germany: its films taught us previously unknown, relaxed and laconic attitudes. It wasn’t just chocolate and cigarettes that made American GIs attractive to German women, but because they embodied a freer lifestyle. They were softer than their German counterparts: American soldiers were seen pushing prams through bombed-out cities, which was absolutely unheard of at the time. Germany learned less about liberalism through official denazification programmes than through pop culture. If there is a lesson for these modern times, it is how important it is to keep on caring for a nation even once it has been defeated.

The Stories of Franz Fühmann

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.)

 

Review: Juli Zeh's Über Menschen

With her most recent novel Juli Zeh has proven herself as an adept novelist of social satire. Über Menschen has been on the bestseller list ever since it was published last spring: it is a Zeitroman for the corona-pandemic era. Zeh herself says her intention was to capture the anxiety and contradictions of Germany today: "Ich bin ohnehin eine Schriftstellerin, die stets versucht, möglichst nah am Puls der Zeit zu schreiben." As in her earlier novel Unterleuten (see my review)  Zeh captures the divisions in Germany: east vs. west, urban vs. rural, left vs. far-right, affluence vs. poverty. But she writes about this social polarization with humor and compassion. 

Like Unterleuten, Über Menschen takes place in rural Brandenburg - the fictitious town of Bracken, close to Unterleuten (also fictitious).  Although only an hour by auto from Berlin, Bracken may as well be on a different planet from the capital.  Unterleuten was a panorama of village life, with the perspective constantly shifting among characters. In Über Menschen we see the world through the perspective of one character - Dora, a successful marketing professional in Berlin, who on impulse uses a small inheritance to buy a dilapidated house in the Bracken.  Dora lives with her boyfriend Robert, a science journalist and blogger, in Berlin when the city goes into lockdown due to the pandemic. Stuck in the small apartment with Robert - who becomes increasingly controlling as the pandemic spreads - Dora decides to decamp with her dog to Bracken, where she can work remotely for her advertising agency in the city. 

At first, life in Bracken is difficult.  Dora is isolated, without a car, not knowing a soul in the village, without furniture or provisions.  The nearest supermarket is 20 km and bus service is at best erratic.  She makes an attempt at planting vegetables on her property by watching YouTube videos.  Her worst fears about living in the province appear to be realized when she learns that her next-door neighbor is the Dorf-Nazi.  Other folks in Bracken, including the gay couple who run a florist business, are supporters of the far-right AfD party. Gradually, though, she fits in to Bracken.  Her neighbor Gote - the Dorf-Nazi - gives her furniture and drives her to the shopping mall. Dora bonds with his daughter. Other neighbors show up to paint her house or deliver seedlings.  Her high anxiety begins to dissipate, except when she checks the news on her phone.  Dora finds what she was missing in the hyper-modern Gesellschaft of Berlin - she finds a kind of  Gemeinschaft in rural Brandenburg.

Kein Ost und West, unten und oben, links oder rechts. Weder Paradies noch Apokalypse, wie es Medien und Politik hāufig schildern. Stattdessen Menschen, die beieinanderstehen. Die sich mehr oder weniger mögen. Die aufeinandertreffen und sich wieder trennen. Dora gehört daqu, Gote gehört dazu, [...]Sie machen eine Party, um die einzige Wahrheit zu feiern, die es gibt: dass sie alle hier und jetzt gemeinsam auf diesem Planeten sind. Als Existenzgemeinschaft.

With her fictitious rural village of Bracken Juli Zeh want to show how seemingly intractable social divisions can be overcome by recognizing each other's shared humanity.  Of course, it's a fairy tale - an enjoyable one, to be sure.  No foreigners seem to living in Bracken.  I could imagine that migrants from Syria or Afghanistan living in AfD strongholds in eastern Germany don't experience the same sense of Gemeinschaft - except, perhaps a Volksgemeinschaft, Is community - Gemeinschaft - even possible in this age of deep polarization?  Schön wär's!

 

 

In Praise of Heinrich Mann

Bundespräsident Frank-Walter Steinmeier published an excellent tribute to Heinrich Mann in Der Tagesspeigel on the occasion of the great writer's 150th birthday:

"Heinrich Mann wollte der Gesellschaft nützen, auf seine Art und mit seinen Mitteln. Er wollte Menschen verändern und auf die Wirklichkeit einwirken, als moderner Romancier, als kritischer Intellektueller, als Künstler und als Citoyen. Bis zuletzt arbeitete er daran, die Welt mit Hilfe des Wortes zu einem besseren Ort zu machen, allen Enttäuschungen zum Trotz.Er war ein Humanist und ein Aufklärer, geprägt von Voltaire und Zola, den er als leidenschaftlichen Ankläger in der Dreyfus-Affäre bewunderte. Vernunft und Wahrheit, Frieden und Freiheit, Gerechtigkeit und Güte, das waren die Ideale, um die sein Schreiben seit der Jahrhundertwende kreiste."

("Heinrich Mann wanted to be useful to society, in his own way and using his own talents. He wanted to change people and have an impact on the real world, as a modern novelist, as a critical intellectual, as artist and citizen.  Up to the end he worked to make the world a better place with his writing, despite all the disappointments and criticism.  He was a humanist and advocate for enlightenment, in the mold of Voltaire and Zola, whom he admired as a passionate accuser in the Dreyfus Affair.  Reason and truth, peace and freedom, justice and goodness: these were the ideals that embodied his work after the turn of the century.)

Heinrich was overshadowed by his brother, who achieved international fame with the Nobel Prize in 1929.  But unlike Thomas Mann, Heinrich was a passionate advocate for democracy and social justice from the beginning.  A francophile, he embraced the ideals of liberté and égalité.  He defended the Weimar Republic from its enemies, and early on clearly saw the danger of the Hitlers National Socialism.  Heinrich Mann's books were some of the first to be burned after the Nazi seizure of power.  Heinrich fled to Paris where he became an important voice for the German exile community.  When the Nazis occupied France, Heinrich Mann escaped certain detention with the help of the American Varian Fry first to Spain and then to the United States.  Unlike his brother, Heinrich Mann never really adapted to life in America; he died in Santa Monica in 1950.

I've read two novels (so far) of Heinrich Mann: Professor Unrat (1905), which was later made into a feature film -Der blaue Engel ("The Blue Angel") - which launched the career of the international film star Marlene Dietrich, and Der Untertan (1918) ("The Loyal Subject"), a masterpiece of social satire.  The central figure in Der Untertan - Diederich Hessling -  is a slavish and fanatical admirer of Kaiser Wilhelm II, as an archetype of Wilhelmine Germany, and a prototype of Theodor Adorno's Authoritarian Personality - a type that lives on today  in the fanatical followers of Donald Trump. I've added Die kleine Stadt (1909)  (mentioned by Steinmeier in his tribute) and Ein ernstes Leben (1932) (a novel based on the life of his wife Nelly Kröger) to my 2021 reading list.

Reading Tip: Michael Lentz's 2009 novel Pazifik Exil describes Heinrich and Nelly Mann's harrowing journey by foot (joined by Golo Mann, Franz and Alma Werfel, and Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger) over the Pyrenees.  A later, very moving chapter, has Heinrich mourning at the grave of Nelly, who fell into alcoholism and committed suicide in 1946.