The controversy over Günter Grass’s revelation that as a teenager he had been drafted into the Waffen-SS has received much more press coverage than I would have expected. And that could be a good thing: if the "scandal" inspires even a few Americans to pick up and read The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel) – one of the great novels of the last century – then the dredging up of the past has been more than worthwhile.
Leading the media coverage has been the New York Times – which even had an editorial (A Betrayal of Memory) on Friday about Günter Grass. Today, in its Sunday edition, the NYT has TWO op-ed pieces on Grass. The first is by the literary sensation Daniel Kehlmann – whose novel DIe Vermessung der Welt will be released in English this November. Kehlmann views Grass’s silence about his youthful sins as a tactical ploy for ambition to receive the Nobel Prize. He views Grass’s early works as literary masterpieces, but believes his political didacticism transformed him in the 1970s into a mediocre novelist:
Later, Mr. Grass changed, and his novels changed, too, becoming didactic and colorless. These weaker books, along with the image of the model democratic author, will be effaced by the passage of time. His earlier novels, however, which tell of the deep corruptibility of human beings, of the coexistence of mendacity and greatness and of the infinitely complex nature of guilt, will be with us for as long as people read books.
The second NYTime’s op-ed piece is by the cultural historian Peter Gay, who refuses to condemn Grass and views his confession in the context of the tragedy of German history:
I am not Mr. Grass’s analyst, nor have I ever met him. But it seems to me that he failed to come forward all these years simply because he was too ashamed. And if I am right, the affair will have a useful consequence: it will be a reminder, more than 60 years later, that his country had a great deal to be ashamed of.
Unfortunately, many of the commentators in Germany don’t have the literary appreciation of Daniel Kehlmann, or the historical perspective of Professor Gay. They have used this affair to attack Grass’s politics, believing that his confession discredits Social Democracy. This hysterical blog post by the neoconservative Tagesspiegel commentator Clemins Wergin is a good example. Here Wergin equates Grass’s political outlook to the ideology of the Third Reich.
Und in diesem antiwestlichen, in weiten Teilen antifreiheitlichen Denken unterscheidet sich der bundesrepublikanische Grass eben doch erschreckend wenig von dem des Dritten Reiches
This is an intellectually dishonest position – gleefully embraced by German Bush-Bloggers, who have always hated Grass for his criticisms of US foreign policy. Fortunately, Dr. Dean has gone back and analyzed Grass’s political statements over the years and neatly summarizes his politics. I translate just a couple of points:
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tying German politics to German Basic Law (Grundgesetz)
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Human Dignity as the goal and essence of the State (i.e. Article One of the Basic Law: Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.)
Grass’s political and economic views are well within the mainstream of the SPD/Green constellation in Germany.
