Main focus of Monday, August 14, 2006

Günter Grass was in the Waffen-SS

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung this weekend, German novelist Günter Grass admitted that when he was seventeen years old he served in the Waffen-SS during the last months of the Second World War. He said this had "weighed on his conscience for too long." However, this belated admission has cast many doubts on the credibility of a novelist who always has criticised Germans for trying to avoid and conceal the truth about their past.

Mladá fronta Dnes - Czech Republic

"Even if he wasn't an evil person, Günter Grass has shown that he was a weakling," writes Teodor Marjanovic commenting on Grass's surprising confession. "Grass was a moral authority in these unsettled times. He was a person whose great achievement it was to make it possible for Germans to examine their Nazi past without grimacing or hypocrisy. And now he has confessed that for most of his life he has remained silent about what he himself did during the war. Some may say, 'So what?'. Even Pope Benedict XVI was a member of the Hitler Youth and was drafted into the Wehrmacht. But the Pope deserted the army and didn't conceal his past. The Grass affair resembles the Kurt Waldheim scandal. The former UN Secretary General remained silent about the fact that during the war he was in command of units that committed atrocities in western Bosnia. Although Grass's assurance that 'he didn't shoot even once' is believable, his confession still has a nasty taste to it. It has come unacceptably late." (14/08/2006)

» more information (external link, Czech)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Teodor Marjanovic

Canarias7 - Spain

Francisco Suarez Alamo, director of the Spanish daily, does not expect Grass's declarations to tarnish his image. "Almost everyone will be understanding and some will even go so far as to praise the writer's act. That is what happens when one lives within clearly defined ideologies: one finally forgives everything. Grass will be portrayed as a young Nazi who was a victim of his misunderstanding of the events unfolding around him and hostage to a repressive system. Yet it is obviously due to the passivity of ignorant young people and adults that others got on with the job of filling the concentration camps with dead bodies." (14/08/2006)

» full article (external link, Spanish)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Francisco Suárez Alamo

Neue Zürcher Zeitung - Switzerland

According to Roman Bucheli, Günter Grass has brought about his own downfall with his admission. He accuses Grass of "trying to capitalise on his admission from an aesthetic and ethic point of view by assuming the pose of the self-assured and somewhat vain moralist." Buchelis says he's appalled by the condescending way in which Grass talked about the Konrad Adenauer era – and jewish poet Paul Celan – in the interview with the German daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung. "Grass lived in Paris for four years in the late 1950s and was a friend of Paul Celan at the time. Now Grass says of his friend: 'Most of the time he was submerged in his work and a prisoner of all his real and exaggerated fears.' It doesn't seem to have occurred to Grass that Celan's 'exaggerated fears' could have been the product of precisely the kind of haunting silence to which Grass has now admitted. There's no telling what would have happened if Celan had learned that his friend was a member of the Waffen-SS." (14/08/2006)

» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Roman Bucheli

Die Welt - Germany

Novelist Burkhard Spinnen, born in 1956, calls for a "gentle" reaction to Grass's admission and notes that Günter Grass learned from his mistake in a way that many others haven't. "There was a time when my father used to receive invitations from the various veteran soldiers' clubs. My mother remembers him saying: 'You can throw them away!' Günter Grass is one of the few among his generation who has shown ways of thinking and appeals for action that go beyond forbidding contact with mass hysteria and criminal ideologies. This 'flaw' in his biography has not only been a source of self-discipline and self-criticism but has also motivated his lifelong struggle to improve the general situation. Therefore we sons and daughters of such fathers should be as 'gentle' as we can in our reaction to this confession." (14/08/2006)

» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Burkhard Spinnen

Le Soir - Belgium

Belgian author Jacques De Decker sees in Günter Grass's revelations the culmination of the German writer's literary project. "Grass's whole work, or nearly, is an X-ray image of Germany's (bad) conscience viewed through the convulsions of the last century. He has not approached these tragedies and traumas as a thinker or theorist, but as a poet and an occasionally visionary graphic artist ... Is Grass a provocateur? He has never ceased to be in his writings, etchings, and public statements. This latest declaration, which comes as the prelude to the first book where he reveals himself as is (hitherto he had only ever talked of himself under the cover of fables and metaphor), is a new way of pursuing his project: through the desire that his descendants should understand." (14/08/2006)

» to the homepage (external link, Le Soir)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Jacques De Decker

La Stampa - Italy

Italian political scientist Gian Enrico Rusconi interprets Grass's statements as "a subtle shift in German's collectif perception of their own past ... The new generations, more than others, have had to prove that they felt ashamed in the name of the entire nation and Günter Grass has been, in the name of collective responsibility, both protagonist and prisoner of this critical and emancipating process. In more recent times Germany has gained new national dignity and Grass has been able to take a fresh look - not of indulgence, but of liberation. His admission is no mundane matter, but a signal for the whole nation ... It is a sort of 'literary permission' to launch a collective experience that the writer wants once again to be able to interpret." (14/08/2006)

» to the homepage (external link, La Stampa)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Gian Enrico Rusconi

Rzeczpospolita - Poland

Krzysztof Gottesmann draws parallels between Günter Grass and those who once worked for the Polish state security service, noting that confronting the past is a difficult process on both sides of the German-Polish border. "The Poles and the Germans experienced the two greatest cataclysms of the 20th century: communism and National Socialism… Even today both nations are having difficulties dealing with their past. Confronting the dark side of history, of one's shame, personal responsibility and mistakes, and how individuals were implicated in the events, is an important task for a nation… It has taken Grass, who has become the conscience of many Germans, over 60 years to talk openly about his past – to confess and assume responsibility for his actions. Does this damage his credibility? The answer is yes, because you can't separate the work of an artist from the creator and his life." (14/08/2006)

» full article (external link, Polish)
More from the press review on the subject » Literature, » History, » Germany
All available articles from » Krzysztof Gottesman

» To the complete press review of Monday, August 14, 2006