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/4.0/121
2008
414
STUART PARKES: Writers and Politics in Germany, 1945–2008. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. x + 239 pp. $ 65
121
2008
Siegfried Mews
cg4140360
360 Besprechungen / Reviews The strength of Gerstenberger’s book lies in the wealth of her primary materials. She introduces close to three hundred primary works and gives excellent introductory readings of many of these, including works by Peter Schneider, Christa Wolf, Tanja Dückers, Ingo Schramm, Zafer Senocak, and Yadé Kara. This wealth of material is, unfortunately, also the weakness of the study. There are times when the reader wonders why a particular author’s work was included and another work or author left out. One wonders why a particular passage is quoted in full but so much of the novel left unexamined. The answer seems to be that those works and passages that fit best with the themes which Gerstenberger chose to organize her book around were included and cited extensively while much of the material that didn’t fit these themes was left out or marginalized. This is, of course, the danger inherent in any work that attempts to broadly survey the literary production of a period while exploring particular themes across works. What I found lacking was a compelling argument as to why the work was organized around the themes Gerstenberger chose. Did these themes emerge from her extensive readings of 1990s Berlin literature? Or were the themes chosen because of their relative importance as commonplaces of the discourse on modern German identity? One suspects the latter, but Gerstenberger never makes this clear. In all fairness though, the project is not intended to be encyclopedic, and Gerstenberger manages to provide a good overview of the period with some particularly interesting readings based on the themes she chose to highlight. What I found more troubling was the elevated status some works acquired simply because they resonated with and where seen to explore the identity themes around which the study was organized. One wonders, for example, why Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir and Judith Hermann’s Sommerhaus, später receive a passing paragraph while Tanja Dückers’s Spielzone is discussed in great detail. I still need to be convinced that Dückers’s work is somehow more significant to the renegotiation of post-unification German identity than the others. I think one could just as easily make the opposite case. Nevertheless, the study offers sound, well-researched insights into the works examined and should be included alongside works like Stuart Taberner’s German Literature of the 1990s and Beyond and Moritz Baßler’s Der deutsche Pop-Roman by scholars and students hoping to understand German literary production in the 1990s. Just as our ideas about cultural production in the Weimar period continue to evolve with historical distance, so too will our understanding of the profound changes in German culture in the 1990s. Gerstenberger should be commended for tackling such difficult material so soon. Her book helps lay the groundwork for future studies of the period. University of Kentucky Jeff Rogers S TUART P ARKES : Writers and Politics in Germany, 1945-2008. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. x + 239 pp. $ 65. Perhaps the title of the present study may not immediately reveal to the reader that the author is dealing with a time-honored topic that particularly in a German context is frequently couched in the antithetically perceived terms of «Geist und Macht.» But in his introduction Parkes does provide a brief survey of the problematic relationship CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 360 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 360 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38 Besprechungen / Reviews 361 between the representatives of the two spheres by referring, for instance, to the opposing views of the Mann brothers Heinrich, champion of «the world of intellect» (3) and admirer of the French Revolution, and Thomas, erstwhile defender of German Innerlichkeit (1). To be sure, as a consequence of the disastrous pre-1945 German history the concept of Innerlichkeit had lost its luster, and Parkes acknowledges the shift in emphasis by indicating his intent to provide specific and reliable information about postwar writers’ engagement in the political arena as «public intellectuals» (5) who are avoiding the proverbial ivory tower and express their support of or opposition to the various representatives of the political sphere in both divided and unified Germany. By offering a wealth of pertinent information that generally serves him as the basis for drawing well-reasoned, tenable conclusions, Parkes essentially achieves his goal of summarizing as well as elucidating «the political and literary developments» (5) from the immediate postwar period to the twenty-first century. This period of more than sixty years, which in political terms extends from the crushing defeat of Nazi Germany to the Cold War and the division of the country, unification, the Berlin Republic and the “grand coalition” of 2005-09 formed by Chancellor Angela Merkel, is characterized by literary developments that range from the vaunted Stunde Null of 1945 and the subsequent Trümmerand Kahlschlagliteratur (12) to Gruppe 47, the revival of literature under different auspices in both West and East, its survival of the serious challenge posed by the revolting West Berlin and FRG students of the 1960s whose slogan «Schlagt die Germanistik tot/ Färbt die blaue Blume rot» (not cited by Parkes) was indicative of the presumed social irrelevance of literary pursuits. But the «death of literature» proclaimed by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and others proved to be premature; as Parkes judiciously remarks, the entire «debate can be seen as merely a brief episode» (81). After all, writers continued to produce literary works in both East - despite the limitations imposed by the cultural policies of the SED - and West; eventually a German literature emerged that was no longer subject to the obstacles and restrictions imposed by the political division. The study is divided into two major parts; the unification process of 1989-90 provides a both convenient and obvious turning point in Parkes’s coverage of the period in question. Although the structuring of chapters according to decades in the first part may appear somewhat rigid, Parkes posits the primacy of political events and developments by providing at the beginning of each chapter brief summaries of such developments before analyzing the literary responses and debates they evoked. Unsurprisingly, writers’ preferred mode of intervening was by means of their pen; less frequently, they responded by becoming actively involved in the political process. Günter Grass’s energetic engagements in election campaigns on behalf of Willy Brandt and the SPD, which ultimately contributed to Brandt becoming Chancellor (1969-74), are presumably one of the best-known examples of a writer’s active participation in the political sphere. At the same time, the (temporary) cooperative relationship between Brandt and Grass as well as other intellectuals was not entirely unproblematic; the comparative brevity of the «honeymoon» (a coinage by journalist Dieter E. Zimmer; 92) is indicative of the fact that the collaboration between politicians and intellectuals in the FRG constituted the exception rather than the norm. CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 361 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 361 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38 362 Besprechungen / Reviews It goes without saying that there is a broad spectrum of persons, events, and developments that writers felt called upon to respond to or to take issue with; in general, Parkes provides both a sufficiently detailed account and circumspect assessment that steers clear of excessive claims about the political significance of intellectuals. Nevertheless, he regards their role as by no means negligible and credits them with contributing to the establishment of «the democracy of the [pre-unification] Federal Republic» (196) - no mean feat in view of the sometimes open hostility towards and contempt of writers on the part of prominent CDU/ CSU politicians such as Ludwig Erhard and Franz Josef Strauß, the «bête noir of intellectuals» (89). In the election campaign of 1965 Erhard condescendingly characterized intellectual critics as «ganz kleine Pinscher,» and in the 1978 campaign Strauß disdainfully dismissed writers and their ilk as «Ratten und Schmeißfliegen.» Ultimately, the numerous controversies attracted considerable public notice and contributed to a change in the perception about the function of writers and their role in the democratic process. As to the GDR, perhaps Parkes’s cautiously expressed opinion that writers were seeking to improve «the political system» (196) of their state tends to understate the hurdles they faced; the notorious Biermann affair of 1976 is a case in point; the administrative obstacles imposed upon writers by Hermann Kant, long-time president of the GDR Schriftstellerverband, among others, severely restricted reform efforts and ultimately impeded writers’ creative process. The Literaturstreit concerning the (belated) publication of Christa Wolf’s Was bleibt (1990) offers a prime example of the consequences of a writer’s acquiescing in restrictive cultural policies. As is to be expected of a detailed, analytical survey such as the volume under discussion, a useful apparatus consisting of a fairly comprehensive section of Works Cited and an Index facilitates readers’ orientation. Yet there are also a number of mostly minor errata such as misspellings and mistranslations; specifically, it appears odd that in a work presumably intended for English-speaking readers in general and literary scholars at the beginning of their careers in particular the translation of titles of literary works is handled inconsistently in that only in rare instances information about extant English renderings is provided (see, e.g., Martin Walser’s Eiche und Angora; 168). Ultimately, however, such minor blemishes cannot significantly detract from the general usefulness of the volume. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Siegfried Mews R UTH B. B OTTIGHEIMER : Fairy Tales: A New History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009. 152 pp. $ 14.95. How old are fairy tales? Were they part of the oral tradition of our distant ancestors, or are they a more recent invention, a product of the new print culture of the Renaissance? Exactly when, where, and why did they first appear? And - a question upon which all the others turn - how should «fairy tale» be defined? These are issues Ruth B. Bottigheimer has worked with for years, and in this deftly written book she draws her conclusions together into a history of the fairy tale from Straparola to Grimm. CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 362 CG_41_4_s281-368End.indd 362 19.08.11 09: 38 19.08.11 09: 38
