Literature in West Germany

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Literature in West Germany

• 1945-1965

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German Literature 1933-1945

• Literature under state control
• Writers had to belong to the Reichschriftstumskam
  mer
• Left-wing writers forced into exile
• Conservative writers into inner emigration

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Germany 1945 Stunde Null

• Idea of a fresh start, clean slate
• Writers formed Gruppe 47 Rejection of
  highly-literary style
• Description of realities of situation Heinrich
  Bölls essay Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur
  (1952)

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Bekenntnis zur Trümmerliteratur

• Es ist unsere Aufgabe, daran zu erinnern, daß der
  Mensch nicht nur existiert, um verwaltet zu
  werden und daß die Zerstörungen in unserer Welt
  nicht nur äußerer Art sind und nicht so
  geringfügiger Natur, daß man sich anmaßen kann,
  sie in wenigen Jahren zu heilen.

5
Wolfgang Koeppen

• Born 1906 influenced by Kafka, Mann, James Joyce
• First book Eine unglückliche Liebe (1933)
• Voluntarily into exile 1935
• Die Mauer schwankt (1935), republished as Die
  Pflicht (1939)
• Returned to Germany 1939. Worked in film
  industry inner emigrant? Compare with figure of
  Philipp

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Tauben im Gras (1951)

• Not a clean slate Koeppen remained true to his
  modernist influences the complexity of
  representing modern urban life
• Limited use of omniscient narrator
• Use of third-person focalized narration, stream
  of consciousness
• Isolation of characters, like pigeons on the
  grass
• Use of aesthetic patterning to create formal
  connections and structures myth, linguistic
  connections

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Tauben im Gras

• Demonstrating continuity of attitudes since 1945
  (racism, authoritarian beliefs)
• Pessimistic world-view suggesting that nothing
  has been learnt from the past things will repeat
  themselves - just a brief Atempause auf einem
  verdammten Schlachtfeld
• A cause celebre.

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Literature in the 1950s

• The works of Böll and other members of Gruppe 47
  reflect concerns about the development of
  superficially materialist Wirtschaftswunder-soci
  ety.
• Gradual realization that historical roots of
  contemporary society need investigation

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Günter Grass

• Günter Grass, born in Danzig 1927
• Came to live in West Germany after the war, first
  works poetry.
• First novel, Die Blechtrommel (1959), tells story
  of Danzig from 1933 onwards through Oskar
  Matzerath, an unreliable narrator (Zugegeben
  ich bin Insasse einer Heil- und Pflegeanstalt),
  who appears in Katz und Maus

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Katz und Maus

• Published 1960, second in so-called Danzig
  Trilogy (third book Hundejahre, has talking dog
  as narrator)
• Once again examines Danzig society during NS
  period.
• Focus on social insitutions - institutions that
  socialize young people church, school, army, and
  how they operated during NS-era First paragraph
  Das Krematorium zwischen den Vereinigten
  Friedhöfen und der Technischen Hochschule
  arbeitete bei Ostwind

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Katz und Maus

• Enigmatic narrator with particular relationship
  to Joachim Mahlke
• External description (Adams apple), but seine
  Seele wurde mir nie vorgestellt. Nie hörte ich,
  was er dachte.
• Form Novelle The concentrated presentation of
  an action unerhörte Begebenheit which arouses
  suspense with a point at which the story takes
  an unexpected, decisive turn.

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Next week

• Tauben im Gras - focus on the long section
  beginning In Paris schien die Sonne identify
  those attitudes that appear to be continuing
  since 1945 (and how they are presented to us)