Interesting how Herta Müller's Nobel Prize for Literature has been greeted by criticism and derision in her native Romania and by other former East Block countries. Actually it was the conservative press in Poland that launched the first salvo after the Swedish Academy announced the prize. A commentator in the Polish paper Rzeczpospolita accused her of being a historical revisionist who was the literary equivalent of Erika Steinbach, longing to reclaim East Prussia for Germany. But Herta Müller is a realist when it comes to German history, and has written frankly about her father, who was a member of the SS.
Her ex-husband, Richard Wagner came to her defense against the criticism coming from Poland:
Geradezu zynisch ist es aber in einer Herta Müller eine Revanchistin zu
vermuten. Sie hat sich wie kaum eine andere deutsche Autorin ihrer
Generation an der Nazivergangenheit, an der der Banater Schwaben, und
an der des eigenen Vaters, abgearbeitet. Und zwar so unerbittlich, dass
etliche ihrer Landsleute sie deshalb als „Nestbeschmutzerin“ und
„kommunistische Agentin“ titulieren. Das alles kann man im Übrigen aus
ihren Büchern erfahren. Sieben Buchtitel von Herta Müller wurden bisher
ins Polnische übersetzt. Der Kommentator der Rzeczspospolita hat
offenbar kein einziges gelesen.(It's completely cynical to suppose that Herta Müller is a revisionist. Like no other writer of her generation she has dealt with the Nazi past, with the Banat Swabian (minority in Romania) and with her own father. And she has been so relentless in pursuing the truth that her own compatriots accused her of being a "communist agent" and of "fouling her own nest".)
And now the head of the former Romanian Secret Service – the Securitate – which Herta Müller has written about so intensely, has accused the writer of "having a pyschosis":
Radu Tinu, who has admitted to spying on Müller as head of the secret
police (or Securitate) in the Romanian city of Timisoara, where the
Romanian-born German-speaking writer lived until 1987, told a newspaper
she was suffering from mental delusion. "She has a psychosis, and has
no contact with external reality," Tinu, formerly known as Major Tinu,
told the Bucharest daily Adevarul this week. "She wasn't interrogated
nearly as often as she has claimed."
Nor is Tinu the only critical voice in Romania:
In one outspoken attack, Cristian Tudor Popescu, one of Romania's most
prominent journalists, said Müller's reputation was based purely on her
ability to attack the Ceausescu regime, rather than on any literary
merit. "When she got the prize she spoke about the dictatorship, but
not about literature, as if she were Nelson Mandela. The Nobel Peace
prize would have suited her better," he said.
And even in Germany, the "Putinized" left has grumbled about Herta Müller. After she slammed Russia at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm for its awful record on human rights, the left wing Junge Welt attacked Herta Müller for her support of Nato's 1999 war against Yugoslavia.
The best response to all of her critics is her Nobel Prize lecture. I strongly recommend that everyone read it. (English pdf, Deutsch ).
