Colloquia Germanica
cg
0010-1338
Francke Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel, der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/61
2008
412
SIEGFRIED MEWS: Günter Grass and His Critics from The Tin Drum to Crabwalk. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. 434 pp. $ 90.00.
61
2008
Richard E. Schade
cg4120179
Besprechungen / Reviews 179 ater, film, and TV - not, however, without the familiar controversies that accompanied him in this third phase of his life. One provocative role in particular had defined his career, i.e., that of Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, whom he had first played in 1927 to equal acclaim and disparagement. In his revival of this role 41 years later, nothing substantial had changed. In 1968 Kortner again portrayed Shylock not as the prototypical vengeful Jew, but as the much more differentiated and historically accurate victim of prior Christian offense and marginalization. That reading, with its inversion of cause and effect, had a powerful historical corollary as it retraced arguments from the beginning of the emancipation debate in the late eighteenth century. In this debate, which took place in the circle around Moses Mendelssohn, Jewish behavior was first seen as a reaction to Christian abuse and exclusion. Kortner adopted this argument with its humanistic as well as pragmatic implications, which raised the critical issue of efficacy: Was it helpful in his lifelong fight against anti-Semitism, or were his recurring portrayals of an alleged everyday fascism ultimately fueling anti-Semitic resentments even after the demise of the Third Reich? There can be little doubt that his combative stance against any real or perceived anti-Semitism contributed greatly to the complexities of his life. Yet it is also true that the actor, stage director, and «dictator» Kortner left a legacy built on the continuing task of great art to foster the advancement of humanity. It is that commitment that Critchfield’s study lays out in exemplary detail. University of California, Davis Karl Menges S IEGFRIED M EWS : Günter Grass and His Critics from The Tin Drum to Crabwalk. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. 434 pp. $ 90.00. Grass attended a portion of the Bremen conference later documented in the volume Die Medien und Günter Grass (2008). At the conclusion of a celebratory roundtable discussion, he rose from his first-row seat, turned to the audience, and uttered a word of thanks prefaced by the remark - «Es freut mich, daß ich Arbeitgeber bin […].» Truer words were never spoken, proof positive being the roughly 1050 secondary titles - from Ábbe to Zweig - Mews lists under the rubric «Works Cited» (346-405). And even if these titles are largely restricted to German and American scholarship and press reviews, it is clear that Mews has rendered a great service to Grassforschung. Mews outlines his method - «I first comment on the critical reaction upon the publication of the German original […] and then survey the reception of the English translation, and, finally, investigate the critical contributions by scholars […]» (7) - and he dutifully lists the print bibliographies of his predecessors (O’Neill, 1976; Neuhaus, 1992) as well as the periodically updated online bibliography by Hermes, Mertens and Neuhaus, each of which simply list title citations. The book under review seems to have had its inception in his own «Review Article» (GQ 74.2 [2001]), and Mews has recently updated the current work in Monatshefte 101.2 (2009). His masterful commentaries, deft summaries, occasional corrections and sensible evaluations of the work of other researchers represent all but the last word on content and methodology. 180 Besprechungen / Reviews Put another way, the need for an introductory Forschungsbericht to an article or monograph on Grass is henceforth all but obviated by Mews. Each of the fifteen chapters focuses on a single work of prose fiction from Die Blechtrommel to Im Krebsgang. A last-minute epilogue addresses the reception of the memoir Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, but Shafi’s useful publication Methods of Teaching The Tin Drum (2007) eluded Mews. The reservation parenthetically expressed by Julian Preece that Mews «covers only his prose works, leaving aside poetry, drama, and essays» (Monatshefte 101.2: 297) is well taken, even though their inclusion would have burst the seams of Mews’s book, not to mention the fact that Stuart Taberner has most recently published an essay collection in the Cambridge Companion series (2009), one including considerations of his poetry, drama, essays, and of Grass’s artistic creations (prints, sculpture, paintings). It would not be reasonable to review Mews’s book in all detail, since it is itself a commentary on the scholarship of others, making my review a review of reviews. The book is not a study on Grass’s literariness per se, yet Mews is more than well versed in Grass’s texts and his grasp of the scholarship and critical issues is impressive. He selects points of argument made by the scholars under review, thereby advancing potentially meaningful viewpoints on a given text: «In contrast to [Peter] Schneider, [Thomas] Schmidt opines that Grass’s grand gesture, with which he wants to reassert the power of literature to shape public consciousness, has come too late. He adds a cautionary note for those who would rashly draw moral lessons from the Gustloff tragedy, juxtaposing it to another event: only one day after the ship’s sinking, the SS forced five thousand inmates on a death march from the concentration camp Stutthof near Danzig and into the surf of the Baltic, where they were executed.» (318-19) By privileging this detail of Schmidt’s commentary, Mews enriches the reader’s understanding of the complex implications of Im Krebsgang, to say nothing of the pivotal role played by critics such as Schmidt. And lesser details seldom escape his eagle eye. Writing on Mein Jahrhundert, for example, he points out that the 1903 chapter documents not a soccer Länderspiel - as the author had termed it - «but the (first) game that decided the German championship (in 1903, German clubs from abroad were permitted to participate).» (312) The devil is, indeed, in the details. More importantly, Mews subdivides Grass’s prose fiction into three chronological categories: «Danzig, Center of the Universe,» «From Danzig to the Global Stage,» «After Reunification: Old Problems and New Beginnings.» On one level, this attempt at systematizing Grass’s Gesamtwerk simply aids the reader in coming to grips with the sweep of Grass’s literary creativity, even as he achieves global status, while on another level, it oversimplifies Grass’s achievement. Reddick originally came up with the concept Danziger Trilogie, but now it has been expanded to include three other titles centered on Danzig. Mews knows this, of course, and it does suggest that Grass has never escaped the hold of his birthplace - his present residence near Lübeck being but a surrogate Danzig. All the world became Grass’s stage in 1959, if you will, and the fiction of the 1970s and 80s was a curious amalgam of the particularly «German» - Das Treffen in Telgte, for example - and the global, as exemplified by Zunge zeigen, even if Grass’s Eurocentrism clashed with the civilization of India. To term Besprechungen / Reviews 181 the 1990s to the present as «After Reunification» is predictable, 1989/ 90 being a sort of political and cultural Stunde Null, and Mews is correct in seeing it as an admixture of old and new. Mein Jahrhundert was surely mostly about the former, even as Im Krebsgang parsed the intersection of old problems and new beginnings. The controversial Brisanz of past and present surfaced in the memoir (even if the autobiography was about much more than the Waffen-SS revelation). Since then, of course, Die Box (2008), a sequel to the memoir, as well as Grass’s journal of the immediate Wendezeit, Unterwegs von Deutschland nach Deutschland (2009), have been published, each testing the validity of Mews’s chronological categories. Finally, an evaluation of Grass’s other writings - poetry, drama, essays, and of his art - would significantly inform and possibly refute Mews’s categorization. Perhaps my musings are moot, yet they do speak to the implicit agenda of the book as a whole. In taking stock of Grass at the hands of his critics, the novelist is celebrated, to which an ever immodest Grass would likely say - «Es freut mich, daß ich Arbeitgeber bin […].» University of Cincinnati Richard E. Schade C HRISTINE A CHINGER : Gespaltene Moderne: Gustav Freytags Soll und Haben. Nation, Geschlecht und Judenbild. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2007. 380 pp. € 48,00. Vor etwa 20 Jahren erstand ich für ganze 10 DM eine Taschenbuch-Ausgabe von Gustav Freytags Roman Soll und Haben, der, so hatte ich in meinem Hauptseminar zum realistischen Roman gehört, zur Standardlektüre des deutschen Lesepublikums gehört hatte, bevor er besonders nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg seiner antisemitischen und stereotypenhaften Züge wegen eher ins literarische Abseits geriet. Erst im Jahr 2007 gelang es mir, mich Hunderte von Seiten lang mit dem Schicksal des biederen Anton Wohlfahrt zu beschäftigen. Dass die Literaturwissenschaft wie auch der literarische Markt dieses Buch in den letzten Jahrzehnten eher ignoriert hatten, wunderte mich nach Abschluss der Lektüre nicht so sehr. Auf diesem Hintergrund erstaunte es mich nun zunächst, dass Christine Achinger sich in ihrer über 350-seitigen Doktorarbeit Gespaltene Moderne: Gustav Freytags Soll und Haben. Nation, Geschlecht und Judenbild ausschließlich mit diesem Roman befasst. Schnell macht Achinger jedoch klar, dass es sich lohnt, tiefer in diesen Roman einzusteigen, der vom Veröffentlichungsjahr 1855 an bis weit nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg Generationen von bürgerlichen Lesern und Leserinnen faszinierte und ihr Selbstverständnis spiegelte, wenn nicht gar mitprägte: «Eine genaue Lektüre [des Romans, BM] […] ist auch ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Entwicklung bürgerlichen Denkens, zur Analyse des Zusammenhangs zwischen Erfahrung des Aufstiegs der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft und spezifischen Konzeptionen von Rasse, Geschlecht und Nation und ihrer vielfältigen Vermittlung, sowie zur Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus. Gerade die illiberalen Züge des Romans eines liberalen Autors vermögen Aufschluß zu geben über einige der grundlegenden Probleme bürgerlichen Denkens selbst» (11).
