Dialog International

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. 

Review: Christian Berkel's Der Apfelbaum

Can a great actor also write great fiction?  In the case of Christian Berkel, famous for his movie and television roles, the answer is an emphatic yes.  To be sure, Berkel's 2019 book Der Apfelbaum is not strictly fiction, rather it is something of a mixed genre - an imaginatively enhanced-family memoir.  It is primarily the story of Berkel's mother - Ursula Nohl or "Sala" in the book. In describing the arc of Sala's life - and to some extent that of his father Otto - Berkel takes the reader on an odyssey beginning in the working class slums of post-WWI Berlin, to Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, to Nazi-occupied Paris, to a concentration camp in the French Pyrenees. to Buenos Aires, a Russian POW camp in Poland, and then back to Berlin.  In the process, Berkel conjures up for himself a fictitious sister, Ada. 

The novel begins with the author/narrator interrogating his mother about people and events in her past. He is in search of his own identity, but his mother, suffering from early-stage dementia, proves to be an unreliable source.  And so the narrator - relying on letters, interviews, and legal documents - fills in the gaps with his imaginative third-person narrative retelling of Sala's (and Otto's) story.  In his search for the truth Berkel writes the story not just of his family, but of the terrible course of modern German history. For Sala's journey across Europe and across the Atlantic to Argentina was not due to some thirst for adventure, but rather for survival.  Sala was a Jew - a Halbjüdin (half-Jew), she thought, since her father was Aryan while her mother a Volljüdin (fully Jewish) . But the Nazis made little distinction between Half and Full.  So she fled Berlin as a teenager to be with her mother, who, with her artist husband, was supportive of the anti-Franco anarchists. Unable to establish a relationship with her estranged mother, Sala then arrived in Paris just as German troops marched in.  Eventually Sala was rounded up by the Gendarmes in a sweep of non-French Jews and sent to Gurs concentration camp in southwestern France.  This, for me, was the most gripping section of Der Apfelbaum, for the narrator describes in some detail what daily life was like in the camp.  Gurs had an unusual mix of detainees: besides the Jews there were members of the anti-Franco International Brigade fighters as well as "undesirables" - prostitutes, homosexuals, indigent, "Gypsies", etc.  Eventually, the SS take control of the camp from the Vichy regime and begin deporting the Jewish detainees to the Auschwitz death camp.  Through luck and quick thinking Sala manages to elude the deportation and, through a series of harrowing events ends up in Leipzig, where she survives the end of the war and gives birth to Ada. 

In the middle of Der Apfelbaum the author/narrator muses about his drive to discover the truth about his family, his great need to remember the past.  All too often he encounters  this hostile attitude among his fellow Germans: "Irgendwann muss doch mal Schluss sein."  ("At some point you need to put this behind you.")

"Es geht um das Wagnis der Erinnerung für jenen unter uns. Wann diesder Vorgang als abgeschlossen gelten darf, mag jeder für sich entscheiden. Aber wollen wir die Erinnerung benutzen, um uns von etwas to befreien, das wir nicht getan haben, oder wollen wir mit ihr versuchen, das Bild unserer Identität zu schärfen, zu der auch die Vergangenheit des Zwangzigsten Jahrhunderts und des deutschen Völkermords an den europäischen Juden gehört?  Erst mit der Erinnerung gewinnt unser Leben ein Gesicht. {...} Ich will versuchen, die leeren Seiten zu füllen. Für mich. Für meine Kinder. "

With Der Apfelbaum, Christian Berkel has done a masterful job of "filling the empty pages" (die leeren Seiten zu füllen) of his family history not just for himself and his children, but for all of us.  I look forward to reading Berkel's sequel novel - Ada - which continues the story of his "sister",  just published this year. 

Review: Heinrich Böll's Das Brot der frühen Jahre

I've read many of Böll's novels and stories, but I keep coming back to his early work - written in the immediate postwar decade.  He was an early proponent of Trümmerliteratur: his city of Cologne was completely bombed out and was the setting of his first novel Der Engel schwieg (1950) (see my review), in which the characters move zombie-like through the rubble,  The book was far too realistic for a reading public looking to escape the deprivations of the war's aftermath: it was finally published in 1992.  In his next novel - Und sagte kein einziges Wort (1952) (see my review) the principal characters are still traumatized by the war, and the ruins of the city are mirrored in the ruins of a marriage.  By the time Böll wrote Das Brot der frühen Jahre (1955) the "economic miracle" - Wirtschaftswunder - was well underway but the rubble and hardship of the war and its aftermath were still imprinted on memory. The title refers to the hunger experienced in the "early years". The first-person narrator - 24-year-old Walter Fendrich - was a young teenager when the war ended and his existence at the time was a constant search for bread. There was never enough bread. His relationship with other people was binary: those who gave him bread - his dying mother or the nuns at the hospital - were good; those who refused or were stingy were evil.  In particular he hated his boss Wickweber, who exploited his young apprentices by having them loot bombed out apartments.  Instead of bread, the boys were given soup for lunch.

„Die Rechnungseinheit ist das Brot, das Brot dieser frühen Jahre, die in meiner Erinnerung wie unter einem tiefen Nebel liegen: die Suppe, die uns verabreicht wurde, kullerte flau in unserem Magen, heiß und sauer stieß sie uns auf, wenn wir abends in der Straßenbahn nach Hause schaukelten: es war das Rülpsen der Machtlosigkeit, und der einzige Spaß, den wir hatten, war der Hass.“

The events in Das Brot der frühen Jahre take place over one day.  Walter is by now a successful washing machine repairman.  He has plenty of money for all the bread he could possibly eat, but still there is a hollowness left over from the lean years.  He hates his work, but craves the money that it brings - even though happiness is elusive.  His father asks him to pick up a young woman from his hometown who is arriving by train in the city.  The sight of the woman - Hedwig - strikes Walter like a lightening bolt: he realizes he must change his life:

In dieser halben Minute, in der ich hinter ihr herging, dachte ich daran, daβ ich sie besitzen würde und daβ ich, um sie zu besitzen, alles zerstörem würde. was ,mich daram hindern könnte.  Ich sah mich Waschmaschinen zertrümmern, sie mit einem zehnpfündigen Hammer zusammenschlagen.

And over the next few hours Walter Fendrich does change his life: he gives up his employment, breaks off his engagement with Ulla, withdraws all the money is his bank account to spend on gifts for Hedwig. At the end of this very short novel (my edition calls it a "story" - Erzählung) the narrator has experienced a breakthrough - an awareness of his own mortality - and immortality: ("Nie voher hatte ich gewuβt, daβ ich unsterblich und wie sterblich ich war.")  But what does he mean by wanting to "come back" instead of "going forward" in the last sentence?

[...}und ich wuβte, daβ ich nicht vorwärtskommen wollte, zurückkommen wollte ich, whohin wuβte ich nicht, aber zurück.

Böll was a devout Roman Catholic (although highly critical of the Church), and there is much religious symbolism in Das Brot der frühen Jahre that I still need to think about .  Brot for Böll has a double significance: bread as the sacrament of Holy Communion, and bread as a necessity for sustenance and material survival.  As a soldier and prisoner of war Böll  was acquainted with both meanings.  Later he would outline an Ästhetik des Brotes:

„Wer das Wort Brot hinschreibt oder ausspricht, weiß nicht, was er damit angerichtet, Kriege sind um dieses Wortes willen geführt worden, Morde geschehen, es trägt eine gewaltige Erbschaft auf sich, und wer es hinschreibt, sollte wissen, welche Erbschaft es trägt und welcher Verwandlung es fähig ist.“

Thomas Mann's Speech "Germany and the Germans"

Three weeks after the surrender of Nazi German, on May 29, 1945, Thomas Mann delivered a speech at the Library of Congress about his homeland
Germany and the Germans.  The speech was much anticipated, for to the American audience Thomas Mann embodied "the Good Germany" and there was a need to understand how Hitler's "Bad Germany" had come into being and was able to inflict so much damage on the world.  Mann had originally written the essay in German - Deutschland und die Deutschen - and his daughter Erika translated it for the speech, which was delivered in English.  Along with Deutsche Ansprache - Appell an die Vernunft (1930)  and Bruder Hitler (1939) Deutschland und die Deutschen is considered one of Mann's most important political essays. 

Recently the Thomas Mann House in Pacific Palisades, California conducted a Group Virtual Reading Initiative - Mutually Mann# - where Mann scholars, political analysts, historians and others were invited to read and comment on Germany and the Germans.  The timing of this initiative was auspicious, since Americans are grappling with the aftermath of an election and the presidency of Donald Trump as many observers see an erosion of America's commitment to democracy and draw parallels to the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism in Germany.

In his speech, Mann is quick to dispel the notion that he is condemning "Bad Germany" from a vantage point of a morally superior "Good Germany".  For the qualities that led Germany down the path to mass destruction are contained within himself as well:

“Any attempt to arouse sympathy to defend and to excuse Germany, would certainly be an inappropriate undertaking for one of German birth today. To play the part of the judge, to curse and damn his own people in compliant agreement with the incalculable hatred that they have kindled, to commend himself smugly as ‘the good Germany’ in contrast with the wicked, guilty Germany over there with which he has nothing at all in common, — that too would hardly befit one of German origin. For anyone who was born a German does have something in common with German destiny and Germany guilt”.

This "inner complicity" with the German character is something Mann examines at length in Bruder Hitler. 

Mann then compares and contrasts the German concept of Freiheit - Freedom - with French and Angl0-American liberté / Liberty.  Here he turns to Martin Luther:

“And no one can deny that Luther was a tremendously great man, great in the most German manner, great and German even in his duality as the liberating and the once reactionary force, a conservative revolutionary. He not only reconstituted the Church; he actually saved Christianity”.

Luther liberated the church from the constraints of Catholicism, promoting a direct relationship between God and Man, democratizing the Bible through his brilliant German translation, but brutally attacked any movement towards civic freedom. 

This duality finds further expression in Goethe's Faust,  where the most compelling character is not the frustrated scholar, but rather Mephistopheles - the Devil:

“And the devil, Luther’s devil, Faust’s devil, strikes me as a very German figure, and the pact with him, the Satanic covenant, to win the treasures and power on earth for a time at the cost of the soul’s salvation, strikes me as something exceedingly typical of German Nature. A lonely thinker and searcher, a theologian and philosopher in his cell who, in this desire for world enjoyment and world domination, barters his soul to the Devil, — isn’t this the right moment to see Germany in this picture, the moment in which Germany is literally being carried off by the Devil?”

But Goethe clearly saw the danger of this German propensity towards 'inner freedom' - Innerlichkeit (in Mann's original) .

"Goethe laconically defined the Classical as the healthy, the Romantic as the morbid.  A painful definition to one who lover Romanticism down to its sins and vices  But it cannot be denied that even in its loveliest, most ethereal aspects where the popular mates with the sublime it bears in its heart the the germ of morbidity, as the rose bears the worm; its innermost character is seduction, seduction to death."

This German Romanticism contributed "deep and vitalizing impulses to European thought", but once it turned outward - closing the deal with Mephisto - the outcome has been tragic:

"And, reduced to a miserable mass level, the level of a Hitler, German Romanticism broke out into hysterical barbarism, into a spree and paroxysm of arrogance and crime, which now finds its horrible end in a national catastrophe, a physical and psychic collapse without parallel."

I have to say that I was disappointed by much of the discussion of Germany and the Germans on MutuallyMann#. Several of the commenters criticized Mann for failing to mention the Holocaust.  This is perhaps unfair since Mann spoke several times about the mass murder of Jews in his wartime radio addresses to the German nation.  The German Studies Scholar Stefan Keppler-Tasaki (University of Tokyo) suggests that Mann intended "German" to be a code word for "American" since Mann was warning Americans about the dangers of McCarthyism and anti-Communist hysteria.  But McCarthy didn't start his destructive crusade until 4 years later - in 1949.  No question were he alive today, Mann would be greatly disturbed by the anti-democratic tendencies of Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and Trump followers.  We would benefit from a re-reading of his 1937 essay The Coming Victory of Democracy. 

Marx and Lenin on Broadway: The Brecht Musical That Almost Happened

The New York Times recently published a piece looking back at a fascinating chapter in the history of Broadway musicals. Three giants of music and dance - Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Jerome Robbins - came together in 1967 to develop a new musical that would match their greatest triumph ten years earlier - West Side Story.  While Shakespeare inspired West Side Story, Jerome Robbins turned to Bertolt Brecht for this new project.  At first glance this doesn't seem strange, since Three Penny Opera had already enjoyed a long run Off-Broadway and Bernstein had been involved in that early success.  So Brecht was already well-known to the New York theater crowd.  But for this new project Robbins chose the most radical of all of Brecht's Lehrstücke ("Didactic Plays") - Die Maβnahme  ("The Measures Taken") which itself had been inspired by Lenin's pamphlet Radical "Communism" , An Infantile Disorder.  In the play, a group of revolutionary agitators in China are forced to kill one of their own - Der junge Genosse (The Young Comrade) - after his extremist behavior threatens their mission.  Later the agitators ask the Party - here Der Kontrollchor - for retroactive approval of their actions.  The play ends with a Lob der Partei ("In Praise of the Party"):

Der Einzelne kann vernichtet werden / Aber die Partei kann nicht vernichtet werden / Denn sie ist der Vortrupp der Massen / und führ ihrn Kampf / Mit den Methoden der Klassiker, welche geschöpft since / Aus der Kenntnis der Wirklichkeit. 

Actually it was The Measures Taken that caught the attention of the House of Un-American Activities in 1947, which summoned Brecht to a public hearing in 1947.  When asked directly about the "communist propaganda" in the play, Brecht cleverly deflected by insisting it had been mistranslated (you can watch the amusing interrogation of Brecht by the HUAC here. 

Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein eventually decided that The Measures Taken perhaps wasn't the best vehicle for the new musical, and instead chose the Brecht's next Lehrstück - Die Ausnahme und die Regel ("The Exception and the Rule") - a Marxist parable of capitalistic exploitation and injustice. 

“The Exception and the Rule,” is about a rapacious oil merchant (read: capitalism) who races another merchant across a desert to win a lucrative deal. Accompanying him are a guide and a porter; when the three get lost, and the porter (read: exploited labor) tries to help the merchant, the merchant misunderstands the gesture and shoots him. Naturally, being of the ruling class, he is acquitted: Self-defense, the judge decides, applies even if the threat is imaginary."

Sondheim agreed to move ahead with the lyrics for the musical, although he had some reservations concerning Brecht:

"Sondheim, eager to work with Robbins, whom he called “the only genius I had ever associated with,” thought this story might work, even though he found most of Brecht, and especially the teaching plays, “insufferably simplistic.” In his book “Look, I Made a Hat,” he wrote that there was “too much Lehr in each stück” — too much teaching in each play — “to hold my attention.”

Eventually the three geniuses - Bernstein, Sondheim, and Robbins - had a falling out and bailed on the project. What ultimately killed it was the world's worst show title - chosen by Bernstein: A Pray by Blecht. 

Review: Juli Zeh's Unterleuten

After reading Juli Zeh's terrific novel Unterleuten I will never pass by a wind farm without wondering who acquired the rights to build it and how the land was appropriated to the project.   I was interested in reading the novel - published in 2016 - since I was impressed by her later, and much shorter book Neujahr (see my review).  But I was apprehensive about committing to a 650 -page novel.  I needn't have been: Juli Zeh pulled me in with the first chapter and kept my interest until the last page.  Juli Zeh makes the rural village of Unterleuten come alive with vivid characters who at once exasperating and sympathetic - in short, human.  The village is located just 70 km from Berlin in rural Brandenburg, but it may as well be on a different planet.  Most of the residents of Unterleuten have been there for generations - everyone knows everyone's family history, everyone's business.  That is, they believe they know everything:

Ständig glaubten alle, alles zu wissen, während in Wahrheit niemand im Bilde war. Statt miteinander zu reden, erfanden die Leute Geschichten, die sich weitererzählen ließen.

These misunderstandings festered for generations - nothing really changed until Die Wende - the collapse of the DDR in 1989.  While this fundamental change was greeted with euphoria in Berlin, here in rural Brandenburg it was seen as an opportunity to settle old scores:

In Unterleuten herrschte ein fiebriger Schockzustend, der das Blut erhitzte und die Gehirne benebelte. [...] Berufliches Scheitern taugte plötzlich als Beweis für geleisteten Widerstand gegen das Unrechtssytem, so dass die größten Versager mit geschwellter Brust umherspazierten und den Erfolgreichen vorwarfen, sie hätten auf den Schößen der Bonzen gesessen.

The "shock to the system" - Schockzustand - was further amplified by the arrival of newcomers - mostly young westerners - Wessis - seeking an idyllic refuge from the big city as well as investors looking to acquire land at bargain prices. 

The novel is structured as a series of alternating short chapter -each with a narrative perspective of eight key figures in the novel.  The characters have radically different personalities and Zeh creates compelling backstories, so it was easy to keep track and avoid confusion.  There are three principal characters that drive the narrative. Rudolf Gombrowski is viewed as the wealthiest citizen.  His father owned most of the land in and around Unterleuten, but during the DDR era he was considered a Klassenfeind - an enemy of the proletariat - and his land was appropriated for a collective farm, "LPG" - Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft.  Rudolf Gombrowski was chosen by party officials to run the LPG, and after the collapse of the DDR he once again took control of the land.  His farm is the only functioning enterprise in the area, he is the largest employer and his taxes pay for the fire department, road maintenance, etc.  Because of his perceived wealth and power Gombrowski becomes the scapegoat for everything bad that happens in Unterleuten.  Gombrowski's nemesis is Kron, a die-hard communist who resists any changes in the village.  Kron has a loyal following of many of the men in Unterleuten who were disenfranchised following die Wende.  Then, among the young interlopers seeking a rural utopia, there is the energetic and cunning Linda Franzen, the "horse whisperer" who uses her animal training techniques on humans to good effect.  Ultimately, the intrusions of the outside world - from the newcomers, the investors, and the wind farm - have tragic consequences for the village:

Zugezogene begriffen nicht, dass der Weltuntergang hier bereits stattgefunden hatte. Mehrmals. Durch die Bomben des Zweiten Weltkriegs, die bei schlechtem Wetter wahllos über dem Berliner Umland abgeworfen wurden. Durch Rot-Armisten während des Vormarschs auf die Hauptstadt. Durch die Ankunft der Vertriebenen aus Ostpreußen, die sich auf Scheunen, Ställe und halb zerstörte Häuser verteilten. Durch die Errichtung der Mauer und durch das Einreißen der Mauer. Die Überlebenden sprachen eine eigene Sprache und folgten einer eigenen Moral. 

With Unterleuten Juli Zeh has written an important social novel - a modern Zeitroman - that examines the great conflicts of our time - between East vs. West, urban vs.rural, millennials vs.their elders, wealthy vs. disenfranchised, etc - but does so with deft satire and sympathy for her characters. Hopefully the novel will soon be available in English translation. 

Ständig glaubten alle, alles zu wissen, während in Wahrheit niemand im Bilde war. Statt miteinander zu reden, erfanden die Leute Geschichten, die sich weitererzählen ließen.

Quelle: https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Zeh-unterleuten.htm (c) Dieter Wunderlich

Review: Ingo Schulze's Die rechtschaffenen Mörder

Finally got around to reading Ingo Schulze's latest novel Die rechtschaffenen Mörder ("The Righteous Murderers") which was published earlier this year. Schulze can be counted on to provide an enlightened east German perspective on the world.  I enjoyed his 1998 story collection about Die Wende - Simple Storys. Ein Roman aus der ostdeutschen Provinz ( see my review) - even if it was something of a Raymond Carver knock-off.  Now we are 30 years into the Wiedervereinigung (reunification) and I was eager to get his take on what has changed - for better or worse.

The most interesting aspect of Die rechtschaffenen Mörder is the narrative structure.  The novel is divided into three separate parts.  The first part tells the story of the rare bookseller Norbert Paulini. This is told in the first-person narration with an unidentified, unobstrusive narrator which ends abruptly in mid-sentenc after 38 short chapters. The second part is a long run-on, first-person reflection on Paulini by the writer "Schultze" (not Ingo Schulze). The third and final section is a description of the tragic deaths of Paulini and his partner Lisa by Schultze's editor in Berlin, and speculation about who or what caused the deaths.  Here we learn that the narrator in the first part was, in fact, Schultze. 

Despite the shifting narrative perspective the focus of the novel is on the bookseller Norbert Paulini - an interesting figure to be sure.  Paulini was born and raised in Dresden, and we watch his evolution as a first-class collector of books.  He not only collects, he actually reads the books and develops an encyclopedic knowledge of literature and publishing history. Selling the books - the business of a bookstore - was always secondary to Paulini. More important was finding a buyer "worthy" enough to provide a new home for his precious inventory.  Paulini's reputation as an Aficionado of literature and books began to attract notice throughout the DDR - East Germany, and he had some modest success with the business in spite of himself:

Manch einer empfahl ihn weiter, weil man sich von seinem Besuch das versprach, was man „die Begegnung mit einem Original“ nannte. Von diesem Mann, der allein für die Bücher lebte, vielleicht weltfremd und anspruchslos, aber belesen wie kein zweiter, ließ sich stets gut erzählen.

His bookstore becomes something of a salon for writers and intellectuals, who organize readings and lectures - even about topics that might catch the attention of the Stasi.  Paulini becomes a mentor to young writers - including the teenage Schultze -, recommending books that influence their early attempts to write. 

Life was good - but then came Die Wende - the collapse of the DDR. Virtually overnight his business dries up - his inventory of poorly produced east German and Soviet books can't compete with much higher quality in the West.  Then the Internet makes physical bookstores redundant.  The floods of 2002 along the Elbe destroy a good bit of his beloved inventory. His marriage collapse after it becomes known that his wife was a Stasi informant all along.  Paulini is forced to accept menial jobs to support himself and his young son.  In his bitterness he drifts into a right-wing extremist, anti-immigrant mindset. 

I have to say I didn't find the devolution of Norbert Paulini from unworldly (weltfremd) lover of great books to far-right Pegida follower entirely convincing.  I enjoyed the first half of Die rechtschaffenen Mörder far more than the second, especially the convoluted whodunnit? third part.  If it was Ingo Schulze's intention to explain the motivation for the rise of right-wing extremism - the rise of the AfD political party - in eastern Germany he didn't quite succeed.  Nevertheless, Schulze is a major talent and his books deserve attention. 

Die rechtschaffenen Mörder was nominated for (but didn't win) the 2020 Leipziger Buchpreis.

Leipziger Buchpreis

Quelle: https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/schulze-rechtschaffenen-moerder (c) Dieter Wunderlich

Leipziger Buchpreis

Quelle: https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/schulze-rechtschaffenen-moerder (c) Dieter Wunderlich

 

 

 

Norbert Paulini

Quelle: https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/schulze-rechtschaffenen-moerder (c) Dieter Wunderlich

 

Norbert Paulini

Quelle: https://www.dieterwunderlich.de/schulze-rechtschaffenen-moerder (c) Dieter Wunderlich

 

Salka Viertel and Greta Garbo: A Love Story

165 Mabery Road in Santa Monica is a modest, unassuming bungalow with a view of the Pacific Ocean, far from the mansions of Beverly Hills and the glamour of Hollywood.  But in the 1930s this house became a sanctuary for artists, writers, composers, film makers - the cultural elite of Europe who managed to escape the horrors of Hitler's Germany. The house was owned by Salka Viertel, a Polish-born Jewish actress and screenwriter who with little fanfare managed to create a European-style salon on the California coast.  The Catalan writer Núra Añó was kind enough to send me her book El Salon de los artistas exiliados en California (also in English: The Salon of Exiled Artists in California), based on years of research on Salka Viertel, her family and friends, and the emigré community in Pacific Palisades.  This community has always fascinated me ever since I discovered a copy of Salka Viertel's memoir The Kindness of Strangers (1969) in a Maine library.  I also discovered Salka Viertel again in Christopher Isherwood's Diaries: he was a close friend of Salka and her husband, the Austrian writer and director Bertold Viertel.  Even though Salka Viertel was such a pivotal figure in the exile community very little has been written about her, so Núra Añó's book is a corrective, and she fills in many of the gaps of The Kindness of Strangers. 

The names of Weimar luminaries who frequented Salka Viertel's salon are far too many to list here.  She had a talent for making visitors feel at ease, they could speak German and enjoy German meals and Apfelstrudel, all prepared by Salka herself.  Writers who couldn't stand one another back in Berlin - such as Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann - would often encounter each other at 165 Mabery Road.  And it wasn't only German speakers who would meet there:  Hollywood royalty - both actors and directors  - were frequent guests.  Charlie Chaplin could often be found there and became a close friend with the hostess.  It is amazing that Salka was able to put on these lavish parties while earning very little as a screenwriter and all the while raising three sons on her own - her husband was rarely around. 

The heart of Núra Añó's book her research into the relationship between Salka Viertel and Greta Garbo.  By the time the two of them met at one of Salka's parties in 1930 Greta Garbo was already an international film sensation - adored by millions of fans for her great beauty and acting talent.  Something immediately clicked between the two of them.  Garbo was an intensely private - even introverted  - woman, but she could let her guard down with Salka.  During Hollywood's glory years in the 1930s and 40s sexuality was quite fluid - even though this was kept from the tabloids and gossip columns.  Many of the great stars were lesbian or bi-sexual: besides Garbo there was her erstwhile rival Marlene Dietrich as well as Tallulah Bankhead, Louise Brooks and many others.  Salka Viertel herself had affairs with both men and women.  But her relationship with "G.G." was more than just a fling - they remained close and, to a large extent, dependent on each other for the rest of their lives.  For Salka Viertel's career as a screenwriter her devotion to Garbo was both a blessing and a curse. Núra Añó lists the numerous treatments and screenplays she wrote for Garbo, but most of them were rejected or never made it into production.  Garbo herself was quite fickle when it came to screen roles, and her studio and agents were very protective of her persona as a sex goddess.

As an American, it is infuriating to read how Salka Viertel's story ends.  After the war, Salka was accused of having communist sympathies since she had helped so many European exiles, regardless of their political views. But inevitably there were some people deemed "undesirable"  - such as Hanns Eisler - by the House of Un-American Activities.  Salka was blacklisted and unable to get screenwriting work in Hollywood.  Of course, she was not alone:  America had provided sanctuary to so many Europeans of great talent, and now was turning against them.  Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin and many, many others realized that America had changed and it was time to return to Europe.  Salka was extremely proud that she had become an American citizen, but now she was nearly destitute - unable to earn a living.  She left 165 Mabery Road behind and fled to Switzerland, where she could be closer to her sons and grandchildren.  In Kloster she was able to find a measure of peace and could write her memoir.  And occasionally her great love - G.G. - would come to visit. 

See also some related posts:

Review: Salka Viertel's "Kindness of Strangers"

Christopher Isherwood on Thomas Mann

Review: Pazifik Exil by Michael Lentz

Review: Christa Wolf's Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud