Günter Grass

Front 1

Background

Back 1

• born in Danzig in 1927 (Freistadt under LoN control in Polish Corridor)
• son of a Protestant shopkeeper and a Catholic of Kashubian heritage - neither German nor Polish
• joined army in 1942 aged 15
• joined 10 SS Panzer Division of Waffen SS in Nov 1944
• admitted these facts in his 2006 autobiography

Front 2

Early career

Back 2

• studied graphic drawing and sculpture in Düsseldorf 1948-52
• studied in Berlin 1953-56
• moved to Paris 1959-60
• published Die Blechtrommel in 1959 (Tin Drum) - first major work dealing with Vergangenheitsbewältigung
• caused a scandal with 1969 novel Katz und Maus - referred to Bundesprüfstelle because of alleged immorality

Front 3

Political engagement

Back 3

• edited Willy Brandt's election speeches in 1961
• from 1969, literature addresses the present, rather than the past
• Kiesinger (former Nazi administrator) becomes Bundeskanzler in 1966
• in 1969 Grass travels 31,000km and gives 94 speeches in favour of Willy Brandt
• becomes a member of SPD in 1982 but leaves again in 1991 - doesn't want to be held down by political positions
• Enzensberger: "Der Schriftsteller braucht kein Partei"

Front 4

Political developments

Back 4

• Brandt and SPD come to power
• 'Ostpolitik' aims to improve relations with the East
• rejection of 'Alleinvertretungspolitik'
• Brandt: 'systemübergreifend fortbestehende deutsche Kulturnation' - Germany still exists as a nation and as an idea
• Reagan visits Bergen-Belsen and Bitburg (cemetery for SS soldiers) - taboo to equalise perpetrators and victims; 'die besagte Mehrheeit wohl wußte, daß es Konzentrationslager gab...alle wussten, konnten wissen, hätten wissen müssen' (Grass - sense of guilt is a defining element to German history); 'die Bezeugung aktueller Waffenbrüderschaft: Kohl wollte die Rückkehr zu deutschen Kontinuitäten'
• 'die Gnade der späten Geburt' - Kohl 1983; those born later have no sense of guilt

Front 5

End of Cold War

Back 5

• glasnost and perestroika from 1985 (Gorby <3)
• demand for reform growing in Eastern Bloc
• DDT regime is resistant to reform

Front 6

1989: 'die sanfte Revolution'

Back 6

• collapse of Polish regime gives DDR resistance groups more confidence
• rise of organised opposition with increasing public support
• eventually leads to renunciation of force from the regime
• Leipzig Monday meetings from the Nikolaikirche: 'Wir sind das Volk; wir haben die Macht'; 100,000 marches on 16th Oct; 500,000 on 30th Oct; first officially authorised demo was on 4th Nov; entire GDR gov resigned on 7th Nov and Politburo on 8th Nov

Front 7

9th November 1989

Back 7

• 9th Nov historically significant date
• fall of the wall
• Schabowski makes a mess of it
• fall of the wall changes the dynamic of reform protests from 'das Volk' to 'ein Volk'

Front 8

Responses from the West

Back 8

• Kohl's Ten Point Plan in Nov 1989
• both Gorb and Modrow see reunification as necessary by Feb 1990, due to GDR's economic and political collapse
• 'und nicht mit dir allein' - 2+4 agreement at Ottawa meeting of NATO and Warsaw Pact
• Article 23: public vote to join BRD
• Article 146: two states to debate a new constitution

Front 9

Thomas-Mann-Preis

Back 9

• speech given by mayor Bouteiller May 1996
• draws parallels between treatment of Grass with treatment of Mann in 1930s
• people felt Grass was not an appropriate recipient of the prize
• mayor stated that Mann was attacked because of a strengthening of national ideology: this caused the writer to become a 'vaterlandloser Geselle'; Literat and Schriftsteller are associated with Zivilisation and are therefore superficial; Dichter associated with Kultur
• distinction between German writers and 'undeutsch' writers who had been influenced by ideas of democracy
• tradition of seeing critical writers goes back to period of German history where a writer must conform or risk being seen as unpatriotic

Front 10

Grass and the 'dritte Weg'

Back 10

• Grass felt that Auschwitz was an integral part of German history and identity
• mayor cannot understand why a writer cannot suggest a third way between capitalism and communism
• wants to stop the writer being seen as a critical voice of society

Front 11

Summary of Grass' speech

Back 11

• addressing everyone: aware of considerable East German enthusiasm for unity; reminding them of Auschwitz reminds them of their shared past
• seen as 'vaterlandslose Geselle'
• rejects that Einheitsstadt as he sees it as the forerunner of Auschwitz
• Germans cannot have a normal national identity expressed in political state form
• his solution was a Kulturnation in a loose federal structure
• rejects the primacy of economics as an answer to the German question

Front 12

Grass and Reunification

Back 12

• Kurze Rede eines Vaterlandslosen Gesellen: unpatriotic resonances; references to German political history; insulting socialists, communists and social democrats in 1890s-1900s
• gives speech at Evangelische Akadamie in Tutzing (founded in 1947 as site for discussion; pan-German idea)
• speech printed in Die Zeit - wider sphere of influence; talks about how Grass is being attacked for not being a nationalist a
• arguing against reunification: significance of Auschwitz and the idea of the Kulturnation is his rejection of the Einheitsstadt
• 'der dritte Weg': somewhere between capitalism and communism; democratic socialism?

Front 13

Tutzing speech

Back 13

• 'Völkermord' - killing fields of Europe
• die deutsche Frage: identity; economics; relation of state to its history; politics; foreign policy
• addressing German people with a common history
• unstable democracy in 1919
• Europe opposed to reunification (Thatcher)
• Auschwitz at heart of argument against reunification
• history has made Germans different
• "der deutsche Einheitsstadt verhalf der nationalsozialistischen Rassenideologie zu einer entsetzlich tauglichen Grundlage"

Front 14

Speech: Einheitsstaat

Back 14

• Reich under Prussian supremacy
  
• Weimar Republic
  
• whole German Reich; summarised under 'Auschwitz'
  
• crime of genocide encumbers the Einheitsstadt: Germany has given up any right of having a unified state
  
• Grass calls the Holocaust unique to Germany and caused by Germans
  
• as Germans cannot have a normal history, they cannot have a normal state
• provided a plausible basis for racist Nazi ideology: political unity demands separation between Germans and non-Germans; ethnicity must be defined, unlike in a Kulturnation

Front 15

Speech: Kulturnation

Back 15

• did once exist as a possibility: missed opportunity
• gave Germans a sense of superiority
• megalomania of Germans destroyed possibility of Kulturnation and a federal state
• Grass wanted diffused, not centralised power

Front 16

Speech: Nation or Staat?

Back 16

• national identity can be manipulated by the state
• in Germany, the state mobilised nationalism for its own purpose and then becomes exclusionary
• construction of state through idea of nation that excludes certain groups
• nationalism used by a state for political and ideological purposes
• idea that Auschwitz defines German identity