by W. G. Sebald
Perhaps only to help us to remember, and teach us to understand that some strange connections cannot be explained by causal logic, for instance the connection between the former princely residence of Stuttgart, later an industrial city, and the French town of Tulle, which is built on seven hills—Elle a des prétentions, cette ville, a lady living there wrote to me some time ago, That town has grand ideas of itself—between Stuttgart, then, and Tulle in the Corrèze region through which Hölderlin passed on his way to Bordeaux, and where on June 9, 1944, exactly three weeks after I first saw the light of day in the Seefeld house in Wertach, and almost exactly a hundred and one years after Hölderlin’s death, the entire male population of the town was driven together in the grounds of an armaments factory by the SS Das Reich division, intent on retribution. Ninety-nine of them, men of all ages, were hanged from the lampposts and balconies of the Souilhac quarter in the course of that dark day, which still overshadows the memories of the town of Tulle. The rest were deported to forced-labor camps and extermination camps, to Natzweiler, Flossenbürg, and Mauthausen, where many were worked to death in the stone quarries.
So what is literature good for? Am I, Hölderlin asked himself, to fare like the thousands who in their springtime days lived in both foreboding and love, but were seized by the avenging Parcae on a drunken day, secretly and silently betrayed, to do penance in the dark of an all too sober realm where wild confusion prevails in the treacherous light, where they count slow time in frost and drought, and man still praises immortality in sighs alone? The synoptic view across the barrier of death presented by the poet in these lines is both overshadowed and illuminated, however, by the memory of those to whom the greatest injustice was done. There are many forms of writing; only in literature, however, can there be an attempt at restitution over and above the mere recital of facts, and over and above scholarship. A place that is at the service of such a task is therefore very appropriate in Stuttgart, and I wish it and the city that harbors it well for the future.
*The famous poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) grew up in Nörtingen near Stuttgart. He had an unhappy love affair with the wife of his employer, the banker J. F. Gontard, in whose house he was a tutor. Around 1802 he showed the first signs of psychological distrubance, and spent most of the rest of his life suffering from mental illness. Much of his poetry celebrates the ideals of ancient Greece.
Acceptance Speech to the Collegium of the German Academy
Born as I was in the Allgäu in 1944, I did not for some time perceive or understand any of the destruction that was present at the beginning of my life. Now and then, as a child, I heard adults speak of a coup, but I had no idea what a coup was. The first glimmerings of our terrible past came to me, I believe, one night at the end of the 1940s when the sawmill in the Plätt burned down, and everyone ran out of the houses on the edge of town to stare at the sheaf of flames flaring high into the black night. Later, at school, more was made of the campaigns of Alexander the Great and Napoleon than of what then lay only fifteen years in the past. Even at university I learned almost nothing of recent German history. German studies in those years were a branch of scholarship stricken with almost premeditated blindness, and as Hebel would have said, rode a pale horse. For a whole winter semester we spent a proseminar stirring The Golden Pot, without once discussing the relation in which that strange story stands to the time immediately preceding its composition, to the fields of corpses outside Dresden and the hunger and epidemic disease in the city on the Elbe at that period.* Only when I went to Switzerland in 1965, and a year later to England, did ideas of my native country begin to form from a distance in my head, and these ideas, in the thirty years and more that I have now lived abroad, have grown and multiplied. To me, the whole Republic has something curiously unreal about it, rather like a never-ending déjà vu. Only a guest in England, I still hover between feelings of familiarity and dislocation there too. Once I dreamed, and like Hebel I had my dream in Paris, that I was unmasked as a traitor to my country and a fraud. Not least because of such misgivings, my admission to the Academy is very welcome, and an unhoped-for form of justification.
* E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Goldne Topf of 1814.
NOTES
STRANGENESS, INTEGRATION, AND CRISIS
1 Peter Handke, Kaspar, Frankfurt 1969, p. 12 Eng., Plays: 1, Kaspar, tr. Michael Roloff, New York and London, 1969, 1972, p. 57.
2 Jakob Wassermann, Caspar Hauser, Frankfurt, 1968, p. 5; Eng., Caspar Hauser, tr. Michael Hulse, Harmondsworth, Eng., 1992, p. 3.
3 Friedrich Nietzsche, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Stuttgart, 1964, p. 101; Eng., Unmodern Observations, ed. W. Arrowsmith, New Haven and London, 1990, p. 88.
4 Ibid., p. 109; Eng., p. 91.
5 Caspar Hauser, p. 16; Eng., p. 13.
6 Ibid.; Eng., p. 14.
7 Cf. Kaspar, p. 99; Eng., Kaspar, p. 139; Caspar Hauser, p. 20; Eng., p. 18; Rudolf Bilz, Studien über Angst und Schmerz—Paläoanthropologie vol. 1/2, Frankfurt, 1961, p. 278.
8 Franz Kafka, Erzählungen, Frankfurt, 1961, p. 158; Eng., Stories 1904–1924, tr. J.A. Underwood, New York, 1981, p. 222.
9 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Terzinen—Über die Vergänglichkeit, Frankfurt, 1957, p. 16.
10 David Cooper, Death of the Family, London, 1971, p. 11.
11 Peter Handke, “Die Dressur der Objekte,” in Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms, Frankfurt, 1972, p. 145.
12 Ibid., p. 144.
13 Ibid., p. 145.
14 Peter Handke, Ritt über den Bodensee, Frankfurt, 1972, p. 95; Eng., Plays: I, The Ride Across Lake Constance, tr. Michael Roloff, London, 1973, p. 227.
15 Cf. Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Berlin, 1930, p. 496; Eng., The Man Without Qualities, tr. E. Wilkins and E. Kaiser, London, 1954, vol. II, p. 318.
16 Kaspar, p. 20; Eng., p. 64.
17 Ibid., p. 21; Eng., p. 65.
18 Lars Gustafsson, “Die Maschinen,” in Utopien, Munich, 1970, p. 39.
19 Kaspar, p. 50; Eng., p. 93f.
20 Ibid., p. 75f.; Eng., p. 117f.
21 Ibid., p. 55; Eng., p. 99.
22 This and the two following quotations are from ibid., p. 56; Eng., p. 100.
23 Ibid., p. 57; Eng., p. 101.
24 This and the following quotation are from ibid., p. 58; Eng., pp. 101, 102.
25 This and the following quotation are from ibid., p. 92; Eng., p. 133.
26 Ibid., p. 31; Eng., p. 75.
27 This and the following quotation are from ibid., p. 93.
28 Ibid., p. 100f.; Eng., p. 140.
29 From the introduction to the German version of David Cooper, Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry (London, 1967); Ger. Psychiatrie und Antipsychiatrie (Frankfurt, 1971), p. ii.
30 Peter Handke, Wunschloses Unglück, Frankfurt, 1974, p. 48; Eng., A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, tr. Ralph Manheim, London, 1976, p. 31.
31 Ernst Cassirer, Sprache und Mythos, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg, Leipzig and Berlin, 1925, p. 5; Eng., Language and Myth, tr. Susanne E. Langer, New York, 1946, pp. 6–7.
BETWEEN HISTORY AND NATURAL HISTORY
1 Heinrich Böll, Hierzulande—Aufsätze zur Zeit, Munich, 1963, p. 128.
2 Günter Eich, 1907–72, poet and playwright; Paul Celan (pseudonym of Paul Antschel), 1920–70, poet; Wolfgang Borchert, 1921–47, poet, actor, writer of plays and short stories; Hans Erich Nossack, 1901–77, novelist, wrote on the air raids of the Second World War in Der Untergang, much quoted in the present work; Ernst Kreuder, 1903–72, journalist and novelist; Ilse Aichinger, b. 1921, novelist, writer of plays and short stories; Wolfdietrich Schnurre, 1920–89, novelist and literary critic; Hans Werner Richter, 1908–93, novelist; Walter Kolbenhoff (pseudonym of Walter Hoffmann), 1908–93, novelist; Rolf Schroers, 1919–81, writer; Elisabeth Langgässer, 1899–1950, poet, novelist, and essayist; Karl Krolow, 1915–99, poet; Siegfried Lenz, b. 1926, novelist; Arno Schmidt, 1914–79, novelist, essayist, and critic; Alfred Andersch, 1914–80, novelist and essayist; Walter Jen
s, b. 1923, novelist and essayist; Marie Luise von Kaschnitz, 1901–74, novelist and poet.
3 Heinrich Böll, Frankfurter Vorlesungen, Munich, 1968, p. 121.
4 Hans Erich Nossack, “Er wurde zuletzt ganz durchsichtig—Erinnerungen an Hermann Kasack,” in Pseudoautobiographische Glossen, Frankfurt, 1971, p. 50. The text was first published in Hamburg in 1966 in the Jahrbuch der Freien Akademie der Künste.
5 In the essay cited above, Nossack speaks of its being an international success. See ibid., p. 50.
6 Hermann Kasack, Die Stadt hinter dem Strom, Frankfurt, 1978, p. 18.
7 Ibid., p. 10.
8 A term coined by Nossack, in “Er wurde zuletzt …,” p. 152.
9 Kasack, Die Stadt, p. 152.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 154.
12 Ibid., p. 142.
13 Ibid., p. 314.
14 Ibid., p. 315. Arno Schmidt’s prose work of 1949, Leviathan oder die beste der Welten, rests upon comparable juggling with contemporary reality. In this work, the theory of the successive self-realization of a negative cosmic principle is presented with physical and philosophical sophistry.
15 Cf. Nossack, “Er wurde zuletzt …,” p. 47: “Real literature was a secret language at the time.”
16 Die Stadt, p. 348.
17 Hans Erich Nossack, “Der Untergang,” in Interview mit dem Tode, Frankfurt, 1972, pp. 209, 225.
18 Ibid., p. 233.
19 Ibid., p. 230.
20 Ibid., p. 229.
21 Ibid., p. 210.
22 Ibid., p. 209.
23 This quotation is from the autobiographical essay Dies lebenlose Leben (“This Lifeless Life”), in which Nossack describes his time under the Fascist regime. It refers to a former fellow student who took his own life in 1933 because he wanted to be among the victims.
24 See in particular Canetti’s Crowds and Power, Weiss’s Abschied von den Eltern (“Farewell to My Parents”), and Hildesheimer’s Tynset.
25 Nossack, op. cit., p. 193 (the “classical” figure embodying this attitude is probably Pastor Helander, who dies with his boots on in Alfred Andersch’s novel Sansibar oder der letzte Grund (“Zanzibar: Or, the Last Reason”), dubious as that book is in many respects); Pseudoautobiographische Glossen, p. 21.
26 Der Untergang, p. 254.
27 Ibid.
28 Pseudoautobiographische Glossen, p. 21.
29 Hans Erich Nossack, “Bericht eines fremden Wesens über die Menschen,” in Interview mit dem Tode, p. 8.
30 Der Untergang, p. 204.
31 Ibid., pp. 205, 208.
32 Ibid., p. 211f.
33 Ibid., p. 226f.
34 Victor Gollancz, In Darkest Germany, London, 1947. The book is a compilation of newspaper articles, letters, and observations by Gollancz himself, and in its very lack of literary pretention it conveys a precise impression of the situation of the German population directly after the war. It includes a chapter entitled “This Misery of Boots,” which is devoted to the footwear of the postwar Germans, as well as photographs documenting about twenty pairs of these boots and shoes. The extremely battered items of footwear shown do indeed suggest a phenomenon of natural history, reminding the viewer of all the connotations of the term “stout shoes” (festes Schuhwerk) for the Germans even later. It is almost a model of the documentary linking of past and present as practiced by Kluge. Gollancz was also one of the few individuals to speak up for the German people immediately after the war, just as he had previously been one of the few to point, at the earliest possible moment, to the murder of the Jews in the concentration camps and suggest practical countermeasures, without getting much response. (See Let My People Go—Some Practical Proposals for Dealing with Hitler’s Massacre of the Jews and an Appeal to the British Public, London, 1943. An impressive historical study of this subject has been published: T. Bower, A Blind Eye to Murder, London, 1981.)
35 Cf. Frankfurter Vorlesungen, p. 82.
36 Der Untergang, p. 216.
37 Frankfurter Vorlesungen, p. 83.
38 Der Untergang, p. 243.
39 Alexander Kluge, Neue Geschichten. Hefte 1–18, Unheimlichkeit der Zeit, Frankfurt, 1977, p. 102.
40 Theodor W. Adorno, Prismen, Munich, 1963, p. 267; Eng., Prisms, tr. S. and S. Weber, London, 1967, p. 260.
41 Kasack, Die Stadt, p. 82.
42 Ibid., p. 22.
43 Der Untergang, p. 217.
44 Elias Canetti, Die gespaltene Zukunft, Munich, 1972, p. 58.
45 Der Untergang, p. 219.
46 Ibid., p. 248f.
47 Ibid., pp. 248–49.
48 Theodor Adorno, Kierkegaard—Konstruktion des Ästhetischen, Frankfurt, 1966, p. 253.
49 Der Untergang, p. 245.
50 The Odyssey, XXII, 471–73, Eng. tr. Robert Fagles, New York, 1996.
51 Der Untergang, p. 245.
52 Neue Geschichten, p. 9.
53 Ibid., p. 83f. The conclusions that the reader can draw from these “statements” converge with the ideas published by Solly Zuckerman in his autobiography, From Apes to Warlords (London: 1978). Lord Zuckerman was scientific adviser on air warfare strategy to the British government during the war, and with great personal commitment tried to dissuade High Command of the bomber forces under Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris from continuing with the strategy of wholesale destruction that went by the name Operation Overlord. He backed, instead, a selective strategy aimed against the enemy’s system of communications, which he was convinced would have brought the war to an end sooner and with far fewer victims, an opinion that, incidentally, coincides with the conjectures on this subject put forward by Speer in his memoirs. Lord Zuckerman writes: “As we now know, bombing at about a hundred times the intensity of anything ever suffered by European cities during the Second World War at no moment broke the spirit of the people of Vietnam against whom the American forces were fighting between 1964 and 1973. In those nine years, seven million tons of bombs were dropped on South Vietnam (which received about half of the total), North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia—three times the total tonnage of British, American and German bombs dropped on European soil in the Second World War” (Apes to Warlords, p. 148). These observations bear out his thesis of the objective pointlessness of “area bombing.” As Lord Zuckerman says in his book, once he had seen for himself after the war the effects of the air raids on German cities, he agreed to write an account entitled “The Natural History of Destruction” for the journal Horizon, edited by Cyril Connolly, but unfortunately this project was never carried out.
54 Neue Geschichten, p. 35.
55 Ibid., p. 37.
56 Ibid., p. 39.
57 Ibid., p. 49.
58 This and the following quotation: ibid., p. 53.
59 Cf. Wuppertal 1945, by Robert Wolfgang Schnel, in Vaterland, Muttersprache—Deutsche Schriftsteller und ihr Staat seit 1945, ed. K. Wagenbach, W. Stephan, and M. Krüger (Berlin: 1979), p. 29f., which quotes this comment by Brecht in a context that is relevant here. Stanislaw Lem, Imaginäre Grösse (Frankfurt: 1981), p. 74; Eng., Imaginary Magnitude, tr. Marc E. Heine (London: 1985).
60 Neue Geschichten, p. 59.
61 Ibid., pp. 63, 69.
62 Ibid., p. 79.
63 Interview mit dem Tode, p. 121.
64 Andrew Bowie, Problems of Historical Understanding in the Modern Novel, typewritten diss., Norwich, Eng., 1979, an outstanding work that studies Kluge in its closing chapter.
65 Neue Geschichten, pp. 38, 54.
66 Problems of Historical Understanding, p. 295f.
67 Neue Geschichten, p. 106f.
CONSTRUCTS OF MOURNING
1 Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern, Munich, 1967, p. 9.
2 An almost entirely dismantled and deindustrialized Germany such as the Morgenthau Plan envisaged would hardly have been in any state to rehabilitate itself, and Robert Burton’s description of melancholy states where the land lies uncultivated, desolate, full of swamps, marshes, wilder
nesses, and the like, where cities fall into decay, towns are depressed and poor, villages are deserted, and the population is dirty, ugly, and uncivilized, would probably have been very relevant to Germany.
