Dog Years

by Günter Grass

  And yet, eloquently as Director Brauxel lauds the harmony prevailing between birds and scarecrows, the words “cruelty to animals” keep falling from the lips of Matern, the stranger below. When he is now doomed to hear that Brauxel & Co., in line with its rationalization program, has begun to let sparrows, rock pigeons, and blackbirds nest, brood, and hatch in the mine, when it dawns on him that whole generations of birds have never seen the light of day and look upon rock salt ceilings as the sky, he speaks of the infernal torments of infernal birds, though all three stalls sound as merry as the merry month of May: the song of the finches and larks, the cooing of pigeons, the music of the daws, unorganized sparrow hubbub, in short, the sound effects of a sap-fomenting day in May fill the three stalls; and only very seldom, when the ventilation of the twenty-eight-hundred-foot level weakens, are employees of Brauxel & Co. obliged to gather up feathered folk, whose joie de vivre has been impaired by the atmospheric conditions.

  The stranger affects indignation. He speaks of a “hellish outrage.” If the foreman hadn’t promised him that in the twenty-ninth stall he would witness the end of all scarecrow training, the graduation exercises, the great scarecrow mass meeting, he would run blindly for the fill level, there—if he ever made it—to scream for light and air, the light of day and the month of May.

  But under the circumstances he consents to watch the shindig from the sidelines. In this scarecrow show the graduates of all the preceding stalls are represented. Halleluia scarecrows and close-combat scarecrows, and whatever scarecrow society has to offer: many-headed scarecrow families, the scarecrow cock at the head. Unleashed, inhibited, narcissistic scarecrow sex fiends. In degraded glad rags they have come to the scarecrow get-together, the scarecrow ball: the stockingcap scarecrow and the standardized secondary scarecrows, elite angelic scarecrows and the scarecrows of his tory: Burgundian nose and Hapsburg lip, Stuart collar and Suvorov boot, Spanish black and Prussian blue; in among them the touts of the free-market economy; internal refugees, almost indiscernible, because they have crawled back into their own wombs; who is speaking resolute language over there? Who is keeping up scarecrow morale and fostering scarecrow development? It’s the universally popular opportunists, who wear red under brown and will slip into ecclesiastical black any minute. And with this gathering of the people—for a republic is here represented by its average citizens—mingle the atomic and stage-struck particularities. A colorful gathering: scarecrow-colored. Beloved scarecrow German makes friends. Scarecrow music appeases hate, rage, and roving revenge, the cardinal emotions bred in stalls, which oil every scarecrow’s mechanism and, serving as monitors, brandish the scarecrow whip: “God help you if. God help you if you!”

  But the graduates are well mannered, though at all times ready for mischief. Pickaback scarecrows tease singing Salvation Army scarecrows. The scarecrow vulture can’t stop thieving. The historical group, “Wallenstein’s Death,” has been joined by hospital-pale nurses. Who would have expected the pre-Socratic stockingcap scarecrow to be conversing with the stale theory of social stratification? Flirtations are in the making. Laughter, acquired in the seventh stall and unjustly called “infernal laughter,” mingles with the weeping of the eighth stall and the teeth-grinding of the ninth; for where has there ever been a party at which jokes were not laughed at, the loss of a pocketbook wept over, and a sharp but soon settled quarrel ironed out amid a grinding of teeth?

  But as now, accompanied by the mine director with dog and the stranger following the foreman, the graduates are led from the graduation celebrations into the nearby thirtieth stall, silence prevails for a moment.

  A sense of shame commands Matera to avert his face, for the assembled guild of scarecrows, guided as he knows by remote control, “soulless automats,” as he puts it, take the oath to the firm of Brauxel & Co. And the scarecrows have the audacity to babble: “So help me God.” What begins with the customary “I solemnly swear…” ends, after scarecrows have taken the oath never to deny their origin, namely the pit below, never irresponsibly to desert the field assigned them, always to carry out their primary mission of firmly but fairly discouraging birds, ends with Him, whose eye also watches the pit below: “So help me God.”

  It remains to be mentioned only that in the thirty-first stall individual scarecrows and scarecrow collections are packed and bedded in crates for export; that in the thirty-second stall cases are labeled, bills of lading made out, and trucks dispatched.

  “This,” said Wernicke, the foreman, “brings us to the end of our long production process. We hope you have been able to form a rough idea. Certain features, such as all the laboratories situated on the surface, the automation, and our electrical workshops, are not included in the tour of inspection. Similarly our glassworks may be visited only by special permission. Perhaps you would like to ask Herr Brauxel.”

  But Walter Matern, the stranger below, has had enough. He craves to return to the light faster than the trolley can reach the shaft. Matern is supersaturated.

  For that reason he has no heart to protest when Brauxel, the director, takes Pluto, the black shepherd, by the collar and chains him in the place where the tour of inspection began, where the view of the mine ends, where, as Brauxel has ordered, the mine-joyous inscription “Glück auf” has its place, but where, as Matern suggests, what ought to be written is: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here!”

  Already the cage is opening for the ascent when the stranger drags up final words: “See here, that’s my dog.”

  Whereupon Brauxel utters words of conclusion: “What object worthy of his guardianship has the bright surface of the earth to offer a dog such as this? This is his place. Here where the mining shaft says amen and the ventilators breathe forth spring air from above. He shall be guardian here, yet he will not bear the name of Cerberus. Orcus is up above.”

  O ascent two together—they have left the foreman below.

  O ye fifty feet gained in every second.

  O well-known feeling that every elevator imparts.

  The roar in which they are silent stuffs cotton in every ear. And everyone smells the burnt smell. And every prayer beseeches the cable to remain united, in order that light, day light, once again the sun-embroidered May…

  But when they set foot on the platform of the shaft collar, it is raining outside and dusk is creeping over the land from the Harz Mountains.

  And this man and that man—who now will call them Brauxel and Matern?—I and he, we stride with doused lamps to the changehouse, where the changehouse attendant takes our hard hats and carbide lamps. I and he are led to cabins where Matern’s and Brauxel’s clothes are in keeping. He and I strip off our mine outfits. For me and him bathtubs have been filled. I hear Eddi splashing next door. Now I too step into my bath. The water soaks me clean. Eddi whistles some thing indeterminate. I try to whistle something similar. But it’s difficult. We’re both naked. Each of us bathes by himself.

  NOTES

  13 Adalbert, Bishop of Prague, 955-997, known as apostle of the Prussians, came down the Vistula, according to legend, and baptized more than a thousand pagans. He was killed by a pagan priest.—Dukes Swantopolk and Mestwin II, Dukes of Pomerelia, around whose castle Danzig was built. Mestwin II died in 1294 without a male heir.—Duke Kynstute (r. 1345-77) ruled Western Lithuania at a time when it was constantly raided by the Teutonic Knights (see below).

  55 Uniformed scarecrows : the references are to the wars of Frederick the Great of Prussia. In the battle of Leuthen, 1747, the Prussians defeated the armies of the Austrian Empire.—The Poor Man of Toggenburg is the sobriquet of a Swiss mercenary who participated in the Seven Years’ War, and later published his autobiography under this title.—General Seydlitz, one of Frederick’s generals, pursued and defeated the head of the Austrian army, Hildburghausen.

  66 The Teutonic Knights, a military and religious Order dedicated to the extension of the borders of Christendom. In 1208, Duke Conrad of Masovia invited the Order to settle along the Vi
stula in order to help protect his territories against the savage Prussians. In 1308, in alliance with the Poles, the Knights ousted the Prussians from Danzig, but forced their Polish allies out also. The Order established a Germanic military outpost on the Baltic which thrived at the expense of the Slavs. Eventually, the Order degenerated and its power waned. In 1410, the Knights were defeated by the combined Lithuanian and Polish forces in the battle of Tannenberg.—Hitler and his SS revived the mystique of the Order’s mission as instrument of Germanic expansion in the East and the enslavement of the Slavs, and used the fortress castles of the Order as schools for the Nazi elite.—Jagello, Grand Duke of Lithuania, a pagan chieftain who brought about the union of Poland and Lithuania in 1386 and became Wladislaus II, Catholic King of Poland, founder of a dynasty which ruled Poland for two centuries, and devoted itself to keeping the Teutonic Order, the old enemy of their race, in check.—Kasimir III, the Great, 1333-70, King of Poland.—Stanislaus Lesczynski, King of Poland 1704-09 and again 1733-34, besieged by the Russians in Danzig, his last refuge; vanquished and exiled.—Kniprode, Letzkau, and von Plauen, Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights.—Albrecht Achilles, 1414-86, Elector of Brandenburg, established his house as regnant over Pomerania.—Zieten, Hans Joachim von, 1699-1786, Prussian cavalry general under Frederick the Great.

  72ff The Teutonic Order was joined by the flower of European chivalry in its crusade against the heathen. Henry Derby, Duke of Lancaster, later King Henry IV of England, made two journeys to Prussia, 1390-91 and 1392. Other foreign knights participating in raids against Lithuania were Jacob Doutremer, Pege Peegott, Thomas Percy, Fitzwater. At the time of Henry Derby’s visits, Konrad Wallenrod was Grand Master of the Order (1391-93). Engelhard Rabe, Marshal of the Order (1387-92), led the Order’s army into the trackless woods of Lithuania, starting his raids from one of the frontier castles, Ragnit. Traditionally, the St. George’s banner, insignia of all Christian knights, was carried by a German knight, but Thomas Percy insisted on his own smaller banner. This led to bloody quarrels among German and English knights. Henry Derby also brought his own St. George’s banner but was frustrated by Wallenrod, who conferred the privilege of carrying the banner on the German knight Hattenstein. Simon Bache, Erik Cruse, Claus Schone, Richard Westrall, Spannerle, Tylman, and Robert Wendell were artisans who supplied the Duke of Lancaster with various necessities on his Prussian campaigns.

  111 Sleeping lights : candles made from the fat of stillborn children. Before breaking into a house, as many sleeping lights are lighted as there are sleepers in the house. If a light extinguishes, it is a sign that someone inside the house has woken up.

  161 Angela Raubal, Hitler’s widowed half-sister and housekeeper.—Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s aide who helped him write Mein Kampf, and during the war undertook a sensational flight to Scotland.—Ernst (Putzi) Hanfstaengl, Harvard graduate, son of an American mother, befriended Hitler during his early Munich days and was later made chief of the Foreign Press Department of the Party.—Hermann Rauschning, President of the Danzig Senate 1933-35, helped National Socialism to victory in Danzig but was soon disillusioned. He went into exile and wrote Conversations with Hitler and The Revolution of Nihilism.—Albert Forster, National Socialist Gauleiter of Danzig. Proclaimed the annexation of Danzig to the German Reich on September 1, 1939, and appointed himself administrator of Danzig City and District.—Wilhelm Bruckner, SA Commander and Hitler’s personal adjutant.—Gregor Strasser, one of the earliest adherents of National Socialism and chief organizer of the nascent Party. He quarreled with Hitler and was liquidated in 1934.—General Kurt von Schleicher, last Chancellor of the Weimar Republic, who played a devious role in Hitler’s rise to power. He was liquidated during the purge of June 30, 1934.—Ernst Röhm, one of Hitler’s earnest supporters, who helped create and organize the SA, whose commander he was until bis assassination at Hitler’s orders on June 30, 1934.—Count Joseph Arthur Gobineau, French man of letters, whose Essay on the Inequality of Races profoundly influenced Nazi racial theories.

  176 Franz and Karl Moor, rebels against society in Schiller’s early revolutionary drama Die Räuber.

  184 Arthur Greiser, National Socialist, succeeded Hermann Rauschning as President of the Danzig Senate and signed a treaty with the Nationalist Socialists regarding relations between Poland and Danzig.

  193 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, 1855-1927, son-in-law of Richard Wagner, propagated Count Gobineau’s racial theories. His main work, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, exalts the Teutonic race and laid the groundwork for ideological anti-Semitism in Germany.

  204 SA man Brand, propaganda figure of National Socialism, touted as hero and martyr of the Movement.—Herbert Norkus, Hitler youth, killed in 1932 in one of the bloody battles between Nazis and Communists.—Horst Wessel, SA leader of dubious morals, killed in a fight with Communists. Author and composer of the “Horst Wessel Lied,” which became the second National Anthem in the Third Reich.

  206 Wilhelm Löbsack, Nazi publicist and speaker, who edited the speeches and writings of the Danzig Gauleiter Albert Forster.

  244 Richard Billinger, Austrian dramatist, dealt with the conflict between progress and mechanized city life on the one hand and the demonic world of the peasant on the other. In The Giant (1937), a peasant girl succumbs to the temptations of the city and finally drowns herself. Her seducer is the son of Donata Opferkuch.— The phenomenology of a stockingcap: the reference is to Martin Heidegger, who studied under Edmund Husserl, the founder of a new philosophical method which he called phenomenology. In 1927, Heidegger published his principal work, Being and Time. Soon after Hitler’s rise to power, Heidegger came out in favor of the Nazi regime. His predilection for the stockingcap of the Alemannic peasant betokened his attachment to the simple life and the soil of his native Baden. He lives in Todtnau, in the Black Forest.— Abstrusely secular lyric poetry is a reference to the Expressionist poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956), who also supported National Socialism from 1932 to 1934, but was later disillusioned and attacked by the regime. The fragments cited in the text are from his poem “Das späte Ich” (The late I). One of his early works is entitled “Morgue.”

  388 The raving Beckmann is a reference to the protagonist of the postwar play Outside the Door by Wolfgang Borchert, which describes the plight of the returning and unwanted soldier.

  407 Max Reimann, Communist Party leader in postwar Germany.

  410 Quirinus Kuhlmann, 1651-89, great lyric poet of the baroque, burnt in Moscow as a heretic.

  418ff In article 12 of the Potsdam Pact, signed at the end of the war, the Allies outlawed “undue concentration of German economic power.” A number of “decartelization laws” were issued, affecting all cartels, or trusts, and many other corporations and private businesses. Their purpose was to break the power of German heavy industry which had helped establish Hitler’s rule. It was argued that excessive concentrations of economic power impeded the functioning of democratic institutions and that German economic life should be guided by the spirit of free competition prevailing in the United States, France, and England. But the worm was in the economic system from the start—the expansion following the currency reform led to the formation of new trusts and monopolies. The old and new men of power: Axel Springer, who soon after the war founded the radio magazine Hör Zu (Tune In), published under British license, which today has the largest circulation of any German periodical (four million). He now directs the largest and most influential newspaper chain in Germany, which publishes the newspapers Bild, Die Welt, and the magazine Kristall. Springer also controls two publishing houses, Ullstein AG and Propylaen Verlag.— Gerd Bucerius, founder of Zeit-Verlag GmbH, which own an interest in the Henry Nannen Verlag. These houses publish the weekly Die Zeit and Stern, one of the big illustrated magazines. From 1949 to 1962 Bucerius was a Christian Democratic member of the Bundestag.— Rudolf Augstein, after a short-lived experiment with the weekly Die Woche, in 1946 founded the news magazine Der Spiegel on the model of Time ma
gazine.— Otto-Ernst Flick, son of the industrialist Friedrich Flick, who was sentenced to a prison term by the Nuremberg War Crimes court. Friedrich Flick KG was obliged by the decartelization law to withdraw from mining. Today it again holds an interest in Harpener Bergbau AG and is in fluential in numerous corporations, such as Daimler Benz AG. Otto-Ernst Flick is a board member and executive in these firms.— Ernst Schneider, chairman of the board and a large shareholder in Kohlensaure-Industrie AG, in which the C. G. Trinkhaus private bank also holds an interest.— The Michel group, whose holdings in the Soviet zone were confiscated, built up a new soft-coal corporation on the basis of four mines it had retained in West Germany.— Vicco von Bülow-Schwante, landowner in Mecklenburg and retired ambassador, is chairman of the board of the Stumm family’s mining company in the Saar— Bertold Beitz. was director of the Polish oil fields during the war. In 1953 he became chairman of the board of Friedrich Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach and directed the rebuilding of the Krupp Corporation, which was largely dissolved in 1945.— Carl F. W. Borgward, owner of the Borgward Automobile Corporation, which has meanwhile gone into bankruptcy.— Heinrich Nordhoff, chairman of the board of Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest producer of automobiles.— Herbert Quand directs in partnership with his brother Harald the concern inherited from their father, which has absorbed the Burbach Potash Works.— I-G Successors: In 1945 I-G Farben (the German Dye Trust) was the largest of German corporations. On the strength of Law No. 35 of the Allied High Commission it was split up into the following concerns: Badische Anilin- u. Soda-Fabrik AG, Farbenfabriken, Bayer AG, Farbwerke Höchst AG.— Hjalmar Schacht, economist, banker, former finance minister and president of the Reichsbank, in 1946 acquitted of war crimes charges by the Nuremberg court. Today he is part owner of the Schacht & Co. export-import bank, in Düsseldorf.— Julius Munnemann became, thanks to a new method of industrial financing, one of the most successful German financiers in the years after the war.— Willy H. Schlieker developed, in the same period, an important government enterprise in the Ruhr. After having built the world’s most modern shipyard in Hamburg, his firm went into bankruptcy.— Joseph Neckermann in 1950 founded the Neckermann Versand KG, a mail-order house, which with ninety-one outlets is today the leading German enterprise of its kind.— Max Grundig developed after the war a small radio business into a large corporation which is now one of the world’s foremost producers of radios, phonographs, and other electrical appliances.— Hermann F. Reemtsma vastly expanded the production of the Reemtsma cigarette factories after the war.— Rudolf Brinckmann, banker, part owner of the Brinckmann, Wirtz & Co. bank (formerly M. M. Warburg).— Hermann J. Abs, chairman of the Deutsche Bank AG, one of the three largest German banks. Member of the board of almost thirty leading corporations.— Kurt Forberg, banker, part owner of the C. G. Trinkhaus bank; member of the board in some twenty-five concerns.— Robert Pferdmenges, banker, part owner of Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie. bank. Helped to found the Christian Democratic Party in the Rhineland. Long-time friend of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.— Rudolf August Oetker expanded the flourishing baking powder factory inherited from his father and subsequently founded the largest German steamship company.— Kurt Schumacher, 1930-33 Social Democratic member of the Reichstag, spent the years 1933-45 in a concentration camp. He was the first postwar chairman of the German Socialist Party and up to the time of his death in 1952 the most prominent figure in the opposition.— Erich Ollenhauer, chairman of the German Socialist Party after Schumacher. During the war he was a member of the executive committee of the Socialist Party in exile.— Dr. Eugen Gerstenmaier, Protestant theologian and member of the German resistance movement during the war. Since 1949 a member of the Bundestag, of which he is now president.— Dr. Otto Dibelius, Protestant Bishop of Berlin since 1945. From 1954 to 1961 he was chairman of the World Council of Protestant Churches.— Franz Joseph Würmeling became Minister for Family Affairs in 1953. Known for his proposed legislation in favor of large families.— Bruno Leuschner became vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic in 1955, in 1960 a member of the state council, in charge of the co-ordination of economic plans. He died February 11, 1965.— Otto Nuschke, first chairman of the Communist Party in the German Democratic Republic, long vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers.— Kurt Mewis, appointed in 1960 to the Council of State of the German Democratic Republic. In 1961 became a minister and first chairman of the State Planning Commission.— Petersberg Agreement: an agreement concluded in May 1952 between the three Western occupation powers and the German Federal Republic.— Erich Kuby, left-wing journalist.— Hans Globke, one of the jurists who formulated the notorious Nuremberg laws by which the Nazis deprived the Jews of the rights of citizenship. In postwar Germany, he became chief assistant to Chancellor Adenauer.