„Peeling of the onion” – revelation by Günter Grass

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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„Peeling of the onion” – Guenter Grass will reveal in his forthcoming autobiography to be published in September that when seventeen he was receptive to NS propaganda, had volunteered for military service on submarines but after failing to do so ended up with the SS. If anything such revelation 60 years later shatters the moral validity of his literature.

This is quite some revelation of a man and writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature but it should not come completely as a surprise. After all Guenter Grass did welcome the most recent exhibition by Hitler’s sculpturer Breker in saying it would be good if exposed to the public. And he took on the plight of Germans exiled from former Sudentenland in the now Czech republic with the risk to reinforce the recent trend amongst Germans to look at themselves more as victims of war than being responsible for what took place ever since Hitler ascended to power in 1933 und dictated things until he committed suicide in 1945.

Be revealing what he did during those final years of the war, Guenter Grass mentions as well that he was at the same prisoner-of-war camp as the current Pope known for his membership in the Hitler Youth organisation (which cannot be by itself sufficient reason for going to prison-of-war camp) and who has been strangely silent about what is going on in the Middle East. It has to be noted Guenter Grass says at first he was not ashamed to join the SS in 1944 and even wonders, retrospectively speaking, why he had not perceived then, when joining, the full extent of the SS involvement in the liquidation of the Jews.

To recall the book by Moczarski called ‘Discussion with the henchman’ is about Juergen Stroop who was responsible for the liquidation of 50 000 Jews in the Warszawa Ghetto. That took place in 1943 and involved completely the SS. Around the same time, the Allies, including Churchill had full knowledge as to the systematic liquidation of the Jewish population in both Western and Eastern Europe being conducted by the Germans. And even if the SS tried to keep many of its actions a secret, someone like Spyros Mercouris, brother of the late Greek Minister of Culture and film actress Melina Mercouri, notes that there is a difference to a wild killing spree being done outside the attention of the general public and the systematic, even industrialised way of murdering the Jewish people as done by the Germans. The latter meant everyone was involved from the top down. It was not merely Hitler, Himmler, Eichman but all the rest like Juergen Stroop from the SS, including ordinary soldiers of the then Wehrmacht who rounded up Jews in order to take them to the train station where other persons took care that these special trains left ‘on time’ for their destinations: the concentration camps.

Is it, therefore, unbelievable for Guenter Grass not to have known anything by that time? While it was a common saying of Germans that they had not seen anything with regards to Jews disappearing, surely such an excuse cannot hold in the case of a highly perceptive artist as must have been Guenter Grass already back then, even though at an early age. It is even more shattering that Guenter Grass could praise in one of his many speeches the courage, morality and resistance of the Brother and Sister Scholl in Munich who had distributed leaflets against the Nazis and who after having been arrested were shot, and not mention his own failure at the same time to do likewise! More so the brother and sister Scholl were of the same age as Guenter Grass: seventeen.

In post war West Germany Guenter Grass had always tried to be after Heinrich Boell the conscience of the nation of writers deeply concerned with the fate of society which had lost its moral bearings during the time of the National Socialists. His poetry and writing became representative of the Germany slowly emancipating itself from such a horrible and terrible past. By expressing the ‘moral conscience’ of a nation coming slowly to terms with its problematic relationship between past and present, it may have been one of the many reasons why he received the Nobel Prize.

Amongst his most outstanding novels is not only ‘Tin Drum’, the story of Oscar whose voice at a high pitch could break any glass, but also the famous story recreating poets seeking to unify language during the thirty year religious war and named therefore “Meeting in Telgte”. Guenter Grass was critical of his fellow writers as of late to be noticed again in his dispute with Peter Handke after the latter had been to the funeral of Milosevic. Guenter Grass said about Peter that he would cultivate his ego more than anyone else. That dispute goes a long way back to when both were in the United States but Peter Handke managed then to upstage Guenter Grass with his first play called ‘Publikumsbeschimpfung’ – ‘Insulting the audience’.

Still the news and revelation of Guenter Grass that he had served in the SS is shattering, indeed it is a terrible blow to anyone who had believed in him not merely as a staunch but more so up-righteous critic of political developments in Germany and in the world. Around the group ’47 of whom he was a member there were many writers who attempted to come to terms with Fascism. Always Guenter Grass would criticize those who tried to create anti Fascist heroes although, so his point, there were none. Now we know why. No writer can distance himself all too much from what he or she has done in the personal life. There are limits to what can be distorted for it would mean just bad literature.

It was always curious to see that Guenter Grass had no strong sense for an alternative to German nationalism. Hence his concept of resistance in ‘Tin Drum’ was as weak as it gets for Oscar managed only to play on his drum a Baverian folk dance rhythm to off-set the military march of the Nazi soldiers. Deviation was limited to the kind of folkloristic version of a more authentic identity even though one knew Hitler kept close linkage to Berchtesgarden and the type of folk dances the locals could perform whenever he arrived with his special troops, in particular the SS with their death skulls on their collars.

About not knowing the full implications, this is more than just a puzzle. Given all the propaganda at that time Hitler would be seen everywhere. Goeppels made sure that with the modern film technique (Kodak had astonished the world with a first film in colour in 1941) anyone could see what the leader was up to and who would surround him. As such a troop being so close to the dictator as the SS could but mean in terms of discipline and even worse in terms of criminal actions just one thing: too close to power. By mere intuition everyone knew it would be wiser not to be too closely associated with them unless you were disposed to still other things which go with being close to power.

Moczarski reaccounts Juergen Stroop telling him in jail how the SS was using already the methods of terrorism to win local elections in 1933. There had been the burning of books and a total war started which did not end in France or in Poland, but extended to Africa and to Russia. Then, they always enjoyed a better life than anyone else as they were a privileged society within society. It included also living out wild sexual fantasies. Above all they were feared by everyone. Moreover anyone could have seen what impact upon life in society had all this militarization. Peter Weiss in ‘Aesthetics of Resistance’ describes it as many falling silent since but one language was being used: the command language. If being naive about it, as Guenter Grass claims now of himself to have been at the age of 17, then another observation by Mocrarski holds: what happens to a society that does not know the experience of freedom nor of another life based on justice and open minds?

But to come out with such revelations only sixty years later, it is a bit too much and too late. Guenter Grass should have come forth much earlier since now in retrospect it means he has deceived all along many who have supported him, translated his books, made possible readings and even made sure he could become the director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Just at the last International Pen Club meeting in Berlin 2006 he was again the main speaker as ten years earlier and again he addressed the moral issues of the world as if speaking from a ‘free conscience’ that gives any writer the possibility to speak up. By having deceived for so long Guenter Grass has not merely damaged himself but also all those who have believed in him since now they too must add to their biographies that they were naïve about him and his relationship to the past.

After the war Guenter Grass said he had chosen the colour ‘grey’ as symbol for mourning and even when he went to India to do his drawings about the poverty there, it was done with pencil, in the colour ‘grey’. Still, one wonders what Paul Celan would have advised him if he had known when the two met in Paris and Celan encouraged Guenter Grass to write novels instead of poems.

If anything Guenter Grass can now be perceived in what had been said already before, namely “Fascism was not defeated in 1945 but has learned to mask itself even better.” Now that the mask is off, the real question is what more will unravel in retrospect. Certainly it will explain things felt or perceived but without any proof thereof. The key question in terms of interpretation of his works shall now be where has he been consistent all along with regards to being so political naïve back then? It has been suggested that there is this nationalist streak in his writings and more than anyone else he picks up this trend and devotes literature to it as if a mere symbol of a political entity which goes through much pain due to having been split up and now after reunification is free to give full vent to the feelings of having been a victim of circumstances all along.

Guenter Grass may not be able to answer the question but why did he not perceive as a 17 year old the full meaning of the SS? By volunteering for military service due to having been receptive to NS ideology, it means he had back then no critical base to ensure independence from any ideology. The question now is whether or not by art of deception he has become the carrier of a new ideology of nationalism even though it had been always masked by being outspoken and critical of many political developments. His outspokenness is now incompatible with what he was in reality back then. How then to explain this huge difference?

The revelation is shattering and shameful since it comes sixty years too late. He should have known better that deceiving the public is by far more serious and it will mean asking also what the Nobel Prize Committee shall do now in retrospect. It is deplorable to think of him being in the same company as Albert Camus, Heinrich Boell, Elytis, Seferis, Seamus Heaney and many others. It is impossible to still think his literature has a moral base. Instead his work has become now null and void. It leaves a new emptiness in German literature and in the world. That is more than just a pity.