FR 1090 Aspects of Modern German Literature in Translation

Week 9 Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1974)

Urban terrorism and its consequences for democracy and literature in Germany

The development of German culture in general, and writers in particular, in terms of their relationship to historical and political developments in Germany after the 2nd world war.

Key stages:

1.1945 - 1960: anti-fascist suspicion of ideology

VERGANGENHEITSBEWÄLTIGUNG

Radical examination of German language:

  • Führer
  • hero/ism
  • Volk ( = ? )
  • Einsatz (commitment)

De-nazification: ‘Persil’-certificate:

  • “ During years of denazification in the late 1940s, a "Persilschein," (literally a "Persil certificate"—a certificate of exoneration) served as testament to one's innocence during Nazi years. This printed indication that one had both a literally and figuratively "clean" past became a coveted document during the years of postwar denazification.”

German rearmament; NATO membership (joined in 1955).

Set against backdrop of the Economic Miracle Wirtschaftswunder – the economic recovery of Germany, with support and investment from Allied powers, during which the country was rebuilt physically and economically, but arguably not psychologically. Fassbinder’s 1979 film The Marriage of Maria Braun and Böll’s 1955 story The Bread of Those Early Years depict this era’s emotionally stunted characters, damaged or distracted by materialism which supplants human values.
2.1960 - 1968: understanding the past and its consequences for the present

Gradual but ultimately radical change in the attitude of writers and intellectuals to politics.

Peter Weiss after 1964 = Jean Paul Marat’s revolutionary socialism (cf. Marat/Sade

Key factors in politicisation of cultural and intellectual life in Germany from the mid 1960s:

  • Berlin Wall built 13 August 1961 – Cold War politics.
  • 1966 – 1969 Protests against US foreign policy, esp. war in Vietnam.
  • 1966-1969 Große Koalition (Grand Coalition) government of the two major political parties under leadership of ex Nazi-Party member K.G. Kiesinger
  •  reduction of effective parliamentary opposition
  •  anti-authoritarian student movement: APO “Außerparlamentarische Opposition” (Extraparliamentary Opposition)
  •  Widespread student dissatisfaction with antiquated higher education teaching practices, learning facilities and unaccountable authoritarian power structures
  • May 1968: Introduction of Emergency Laws: modification of democratic constitution to empower government to take measures without consent of parliament to suppress radicalism. Viz Mary Fulbrook, A History of Germany 1918-2000. The Divided Nation
  • (cf. present-day UK anti-terrorism measures)

Who are these people?

3. 1968 - 1980:

  • Increasing political commitment on part of writers & intellectuals
  • Instrumentalisation of culture e.g. The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1974)
  • APO (Extraparliamentary Opposition)  several key political movements in West Germany in the 1970s:

Non violent

  • Women’s movement
  • Ecology movement
  • Peace movement
  • Grass roots’ democracy movements ( = local single-interest groups)

Violent

Urban terrorism

May 1970(Andreas) Baader (Ulrike) Meinhof Group

April 1971Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction RAF)

June 19712 June Movement

BMW= Baader/Meinhof Wagen

Dec 1971BILD: “Baader/Meinhof mordet weiter”

BILD = The German SUN circ. 13 mill., Owner Axel Springer (the German Rupert Murdoch, German media empire, similar to FOX)

Jan 1972Radicals’ Decree (Berufsverbot)

(public-service jobs ban for ‘radicals’)

10 Jan 1972Böll article in Der Spiegel

Spring 1972Böll President of International PEN

May/June 72Meinhof & Gudrun Ensslin arrested

1974The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

(Novella)

1975The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

(film dir. Volker Schlöndorff/ Margarethe von Trotta)

May 1975Government decree: requirement to swear allegiance to constitution

June 1975Trial starts of RAF members at Stammheim prison (nr Stuttgart)

May 1976Ulrike Meinhof found hanged at Stammheim

April 1977Life sentences for remaining RAF members

June 1977Hanns-Martin Schleyer, Ex-Nazi Pres. of BDI (German CBI) kidnapped & murdered

Oct 1977Lufthansa plane hijacked to Mogadishu by Palestinian terrorists. Terrorists attempt to negotiate release of RAF members at Stammheim fails.

Baader & Ensslin found dead in cells.

Permission for funeral in Stuttgart cemetery given by Mayor Manfred Rommel (son of 2nd world-war general “desert fox”)

Post 1977Urban terrorism in Fed. Rep. gradually declines

1981 Film, The German Sisters, dir. Margarethe von Trotta

4. 1980 - 1990 De-politicisation of literature and culture, return to inwardness and subjectivity

5. 1990- the present-day

  • 1989/90 demise of Communist East Germany (GDR)
  • October 3 1990: second German (re-) unification

A major structural changein Germany’s approach to the past

  • 1961 Trial & execution of Adolf Eichmann in Israel
  • Dec 1963 - Aug 65Frankfurt Auschwitz hearings
  • Late 1960s. Revelations of the student movement about their parents’ guilt; Debate about the Statute of Limitations (no time limit on Nazi crimes?)

Key factors impacting on public attitudes and government legislation:

  • ‘Historikerstreit’
  • 1995 Germany Army exhibition
  • Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Random House, 1997.
  • Martin Walser: call for end to German soul-searching and sole guilt.
  • Willi Sebald: German civilian suffering at hands of Allied bombing e.g. of Dresden (Luftkrieg und Literatur, 1999)
  • Günter Grass, Krebsgang (Crab Walk), 1995

Extremism in German history

  • Prussian rigidity and militarism after first unification in 1871
  • German imperialism & colonialism (cf. Fontane, Effi Briest)
  • National Socialism. Ideologically motivated total control of knowledge and power. cf. Brecht, Life of Galileo)
  • GDR Stalinism
  • West German 1970s urban terrorism

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade, 1964

Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, 1974

  • Nobel Prize for Literature (1972) "for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature",
  • President of PEN (International Writers’ Association)

Preface to original German edition (not in English language version):

“Characters and plot are invented. If my portrayal of certain journalistic practices reveals similarities with BILD these similarities are neither intended nor coincidental but inevitable.”

Klaus Staeck photomontage poster text as an example of the polemical extent of the anti - Böll campaign in Germany:

  • “Fellow citizens! reading makes you stupid and violent!” Minister for Peace in the Community
  • “I urge the people to reject terrorism and the writer Heinrich Böll, who, under the pseudonym Katharina Blum, [sic!]recently published a novel justifying violence.”

Karl Carstens, CDU politician (Christian Democrat, i.e. conservative) 12.12.1974