eJournals Colloquia Germanica 48/1-2

Colloquia Germanica
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/
This article argues that the recent literary and essayistic works of Bernhard Schlink represent a reckoning with the 1968 generation – a generation to which Schlink belongs, but as one of the “silent majority” who made their way without getting involved in the student unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Schlink takes issues with the 1968 generation for its supposedly moralising attitude to the Nazi past, calling implicitly for the historicization of Nazism. His recent work therefore shares views of the 1968 generation typical of others such as the historian Götz Aly, and is part of a wider deconstruction of 1968 noticeable in Germany in recent times.
2015
481-2

Bernhard Schlink and the Legacies of 1968

2015
Bill Niven
Bernhard Schlink and the Legacies of 1968 Bill Niven Nottingham Trent University Abstract: This article argues that the recent literary and essayistic works of Bernhard Schlink represent a reckoning with the 1968 generation—a generation to which Schlink belongs, but as one of the “silent majority” who made their way without getting involved in the student unrest of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Schlink takes issues with the 1968 generation for its supposedly moralising attitude to the Nazi past, calling implicitly for the historicization of Nazism. His recent work therefore shares views of the 1968 generation typical of others such as the historian Götz Aly, and is part of a wider deconstruction of 1968 noticeable in Germany in recent times. Keywords: 1968, generation, Nazism, moral, historicization To think of Bernhard Schlink is to think of Der Vorleser (1995), and of Schlink’s contribution, however it might be evaluated, to the German tradition of coming to terms with Nazism. Yet it might make as much sense to think of Schlink’s literary work as focused on coming to terms with, as he clearly sees it, the problematic legacies of 1968. These legacies, of course, are themselves entwined with the process of coming to terms with Nazism, so that, for Schlink, addressing one past inevitably means addressing the other. It is not surprising that Schlink would wish to articulate his views on the 1968 generation, of which, in terms of his date of birth at any rate (1944), he is a member. Nor is it surprising that he should do so in the last two decades or so, a period which has seen many, now aging members of that generation take stock of its achievements. Yet Schlink’s take on his own generation is almost uniformly critical, give or take the odd nod towards the 1968ers’ confrontation with Nazism. He is not the only intellectual of his generation to seek to expose as a myth the conventional assumption that the effect of the 1968 movement was a positive one. The historian Götz Aly (born 1947) has argued in Unser Kampf (2008) 36 Bill Niven that the 1968ers were not even interested in Nazism, unless it be to exploit it for cheap rhetorical attacks against the supposed fascism of the USA ; nor, he says, were they interested in the fate of the Jews, or, if so, then only insofar as it served as a point of comparison with their own supposed “victimhood” at the hands of the West German establishment. Unlike Aly, though, Schlink does not seem to have been particularly rebellious in his youth; he bears comparison to Thilo Sarrazin (born 1945), the Social Democratic politician whose recent books represent an attack on the supposed legacies of “political correctness” inherited from the 1968ers. 1 While Aly’s anger at his own generation is part of a process of self-reckoning (and thus a more extreme form of the self-reckoning typical of other intellectuals such as Peter Schneider), Schlink’s and Sarrazin’s seems to spring from a different source. Their views represent those sections of the 1968 generation whose more distant stance towards the student movement has long gone unnoticed. That their voices now ring out so clearly has much to do with a general shift in Germany’s culture of memory of Nazism away from “moralization” towards “historicization”—a shift that has also resulted in criticism of some members of the so-called “Flakhelfergeneration” for their part in supposedly establishing rules and regulations around how the Nazi past is to be remembered. 2 Schlink’s oeuvre, I argue here, needs to be understood as a deconstruction and indeed discrediting of 1968 and its representatives, and as preparing the way for an approach to the Nazi past freed from what is clearly perceived as moral censure: Martin Walser’s dictum that memory of Auschwitz should not be deployed as a threat, a form of intimidation, moral club (“Moralkeule”) or a routine duty is surely one with which Schlink would concur. 3 In his book on Bernhard Schlink, William Collins Donahue argues that Schlink’s Der Vorleser actually sets out to “burnish” the image of the 1968 generation rather than incriminate them (113). Yet Donahue also shows how the novel separates the narrator, Berg, from the rest of his generation. In the courtroom, Berg shares in the moral zeal and self-righteousness of the 1968 generation, but only out of a kind of curiosity and momentary desire to belong ( Vorleser 89). He stands aloof, judging the judgers. Prior to any half-hearted participation in condemnation of the war generation, he has sex with a former camp guard, and he never really sheds his empathy with her, nor abandons his desperate attempts to understand her. He is, mutatis mutandis , more a representative of today’s younger generations, eager to get away from dismissive categories of guilt and shame (even if he cannot succeed) in order to enter the mindsets of the killers. 4 Der Vorleser sets the tone for several of Schlink’s subsequent publications—on which I wish to focus here more—by mapping out, through Berg’s generational critique, the psychological dependencies and susceptibilities which inform what Schlink clearly regards as the overwrought, judgemental and arrogant response Bernhard Schlink and the Legacies of 1968 37 of the 1968 generation to the guilt or complicity of their elders. Der Vorleser thus undermines the notion that this generation was inspired by any truly ethical or political sensibilities, and paves the way for Schlink’s exploration of maladjusted 1968er psychologies in his later works. The first of these I would like to consider is the short story “Zuckererbsen,” published as part of Schlink’s short story collection Liebesfluchten in the year 2000. The central character is Thomas, a member of the 1968 generation who, when the hoped-for revolution does not transpire, takes up his studies again and becomes an architect, and then a bridge designer and, finally, a painter—professions he continues to pursue simultaneously, as he does three relationships, one with his wife, Jutta, one with the gallery owner Veronika, and one with a student of dentistry, Helga. Unable to make his mind up as to where his true love lies, he feigns fatal prostate cancer and abandons all three women to take up an itinerant life, indulging in a self-pitying asceticism and even dressing himself in a habit. When his outfit becomes caught in one of the doors of a departing train—literary justice for his self-stylisation as a monk—he is severely injured; he returns to Berlin paralysed from the waist down, and in a wheelchair. In his absence, the three women have formed a triumvirate, and they take control of his life and assets, consigning him to his flat with orders to produce paintings for them to sell. The story’s title “Zuckererbsen” refers to Heinrich Heine’s vision of “sugar peas for everyone” in Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen (1844), a vision often interpreted as an affirmation of communism (yet this is to overlook the sarcasm of the verses concerned). At one point—Thomas has just opted to spend his 49 th birthday alone, rather than make up his mind which woman to spend it with—he reflects on his erstwhile commitment to the egalitarian goals of the 1968 movement, recalling that Heine’s idea of the sugar peas had impressed him more than Marx’s communist vision. Now, he wonders if the secret behind the sugar peas is to make sure one is having a good time, so that one can enjoy life and help other people to feel good (165). In Thomas’s case, then, 1968er visions of a better world seem to have given way to a reckless egocentricity which, in typical self-delusion, he construes as a form of selflessness—although it is abundantly clear that his unashamed sexual and professional experimentation comes at the cost of the happiness of the three women he “juggles.” Yet it could be argued that Thomas never had such purely altruistic visions, given that he felt more drawn in his student days to the mouth-watering image of the sugar peas than to the rationalistic prose of Marx. The 1968 spirit he embodies is hedonistic and individualistic from the start. Schlink casts doubt on the motives of the 1968ers: they were really in pursuit of their own privatized utopias. Thomas’s development is thus to a degree only logical. The ideals of his generation (such 38 Bill Niven as sexual freedom and freedom of choice) which he transports into the future in exploitative form were but forms of egoism from the outset. In the conclusion to the story, Thomas, a macho leftover from 1968, returns to Berlin and is subjected to punitive control by a matriarchy formed through the solidarity of his female lovers. Deprived of his sexual potency and his ability to walk (no more marching through institutions for him), stripped, in other words, of the libidinous drive behind his generational restlessness or at least of the mechanisms for its fulfilment, there is a hint he might even find a kind of contentment. But this is hardly the “conciliatory” ending it has sometimes been taken to be. The message seems to be that only the emasculation and domestication of the 1968 generation, together with a good dose of discipline in the form of quasi-forced labor (even if it is in the name of art), is likely to put an end to its misdirected energies, or redirect them fruitfully. Schlink’s later novel Das Wochenende (2008) shares some features with Der Vorleser. In fact, in some ways, it reworks Der Vorleser . In the latter novel, Hanna, formerly a guard at a satellite camp of Auschwitz, is imprisoned for her crimes, until, shortly due to be pardoned, she commits suicide. In Das Wochenende , Jörg, an RAF terrorist imprisoned for his crimes, is pardoned, but on his release reveals to former acquaintances and family that he has prostate cancer. Jörg’s son, Ferdinand, struggles to come to terms with his father’s guilt in a manner not dissimilar to Michael’s struggles with the knowledge that his lover, Hanna, was part of the mass-murdering Nazi system. Yet while Hanna’s illiteracy and apparent ethical ignorance render her an at least ambiguous character, there is no such moral shilly-shallying in the portrayal of Jörg, an intellectual turned murderer who is fully aware of his actions and their impact, yet defends them in the name of a social revolution that never took place. In fact, while Hanna in prison learns to read and perhaps to understand and regret her crime (though this is never entirely clear), Jörg stands by his deeds after his release, even if his self-justifications are mixed with tinges of regret, tearfulness and uncertainty. Das Wochenende is a third-person narration whose perspective alternates from that of characters who are sympathetic to Jörg, to that of characters who are not, but for the most part the critical view predominates. Der Vorleser is a first-person narrative whose narrator is so caught up emotionally with Hanna that he is prone to defend her; some have seen in the novel an unseemly invitation to feel sorry for a camp guard. No such invitation is extended in the case of Jörg: he is well-educated, makes conscious choices on the basis of his beliefs, is well aware of the cost of these beliefs and resulting actions, and remains at bottom unrepentant. He does not “slip” into terrorism as Hanna does into murdering Jews. Schlink’s anger at his own generation pervades Das Wochenende more than any moral indignation towards Hanna pervades Der Vorleser . Ferdinand’s Bernhard Schlink and the Legacies of 1968 39 view is that his father is no better than a Nazi; in comparison to Hanna, he seems even more cold-blooded. If “Zuckererbsen” condemns the emotional and sexual legacies of 1968, Das Wochenende shows us its violent legacies. Both Thomas and Jörg are pathologically self-obsessed, just in different ways. Schlink does create other 1968-generation characters in Das Wochenende who, while also not without their psychological deficits and family problems, nevertheless seem to have found a normal place in society. They belong to that silent majority of 1968ers—so we are meant to think—who were hitherto marginalized in discussions of the period because they opted to adapt to social and professional norms and shed their 1968 skins. Jörg is the exception among other members of his generation in Das Wochenende , who effectively subject him to a kind of peer-group tribunal. The harmonious conclusion where all pass buckets to each other in an attempt to clear the cellar of floodwater and Jörg finds himself part of a positive collective enterprise—rather than throwing bombs to destroy property, he is helping to rescue it—hints at his redemption, as does the prospect of Jörg’s rehabilitation through work: he seems ready to accept a position in one of Ulrich’s dental laboratories ( Wochenende 215). This may all come too late, however, to save him from cancer. Schlink’s most recent novel, Die Frau auf der Treppe (2014), though set in the present, begins by taking us back to the summer of 1968. Commissioned by the industrialist Peter Gundlach to paint Gundlach’s wife, Irene, the artist Karl Schwind falls in love with Irene, who leaves her husband to live with him. Schwind hires the services of a lawyer, the unnamed narrator, when he discovers that Gundlach has been wilfully damaging his painting, presumably in retaliation for being cuckolded by Schwind. The lawyer-narrator then also falls in love with Irene. All three men become involved in drawing up a rather shameful contract according to which Schwind agrees to “return” Irene to Gundlach in exchange for his painting. The narrator warns Irene, however, and helps her escape from Gundlach’s clutches—with the painting. Some forty years later, he sees the painting by chance in a gallery in Sydney. He, Schwind, and Gundlach find out that Irene is living in Australia, and descend on her. While Schwind and Gundlach quarrel over who owns the painting, the narrator’s love for Irene is rekindled, and he is able to spend the final days with her—final, because she is dying of pancreatic cancer. It transpires that Irene became involved with West German terrorism, lying low in the GDR until fleeing Germany for Australia in 1990. Irene, to a considerable degree, is the victim of men who treat her like a business commodity. At the same time, she appears to identify with the roles allocated to her by the dominant males—whether as “trophy” (Gundlach), “in- 40 Bill Niven spiration” (Schwind), or “threatened princess” (lawyer-narrator) ( Frau 95)—and unable to find her own identity. She admits at one point that the unconditional careerism of Gundlach and Schwind (126) had attracted her. Her subsequent involvement in West German terrorism, although never fully explained, could be understood as a reaction to this male manipulation, and as an articulation of her longing for experience as a substitute for a weak sense of self. Her slide into the world of terrorism with its own set of absolute commitments appears, then, as another form of acting out a dependency, almost of thrill-seeking. That she sums up her life as resembling a shattered vase emphasises her perception of herself, later in life, as a now useless receptacle for the projections, wishes and demands of others. Gundlach seeks to remind her when he meets her in Australia that she had been keen to mix in wherever the present was “at its most intense” (143). He also reminds her of her “stubborn silence” when he asked her how this motto might have served her under Hitler or Stalin (142). Overall, Die Frau auf der Treppe aligns itself with Schlink’s critical take on the student movement—not just because it again addresses the issue of the descent into terrorism. Terrorism is a crime of the worst sort, yet those who commit the crime may still believe they are doing it for a purpose. If they are portrayed, as Irene is, as driven largely by mechanisms of psychological compensation, their violent deeds become devoid even of misguided ideology. 1968 and its aftermath appear as nothing but the performance of personality disorders—this, it seems, is how Schlink wishes us to understand it. Schlink’s lead 1968 characters either get ravaged by cancer—prostate in the case of Jörg, pancreatic in the case of Irene—or pretend they have cancer (i.e., Thomas, who is punished for his pretence by ending up in a wheelchair). In this context, cancer takes on a symbolic significance, becoming the manifestation of their inner moral disorder. Because Irene escapes the conflagration approaching her house by sliding into the water, we might imagine that she has been cleansed of her past and dies a “pure” death (purification by water is a theme we already encountered in Das Wochenende ). Before her watery demise, she seems to redeem herself by helping to make the lawyer-narrator understand the self-centered and self-destructive spiral in which, as a result of his careerism, he is caught up. The novel ends with the prospect of the narrator re-establishing contact with his estranged children, and establishing contact with Irene’s daughter. It is Irene, then, who reminds him of the need to protect the integrity of the family if he is to create the correct balance in his life—and, effectively, restore a healthy Bürgerlichkeit . For a former West German terrorist to complete her days giving family advice is a rather cosy inversion. Not only that: Irene also seems to have abandoned any hope that anything one does really matters. She tenderly chides the narrator for his naivety in this respect (and in others), Bernhard Schlink and the Legacies of 1968 41 simultaneously comparing him with Parsifal and Don Quichotte (223). If even his belief that fighting for his clients no longer matters, in her eyes, then what does this say about the fight of the 68ers? Here, her view that “eine Zeit [ist] an ihr Ende gekommen” (223) echoes that of Gundlach, for whom history, as for Francis Fukuyama, has come to an end now that fascism and communism have been conquered: all that is left, whether for industrialist or artist, is participation in the game of global capitalism ( Frau 158). Not that Schlink would want to celebrate global capitalism. But Die Frau auf der Treppe can be read as a confirmation of the status quo, imagining the future as an extension of the present, a future unthreatened by grand visions of alternative forms of political and social organisation. Schlink’s literary oeuvre has little that is charitable to say about 1968. Nor, for that matter, do his essays. In a 2001 essay, he chided the 1968 generation for insisting on the theme of Nazism and the Holocaust even when no one needed to be persuaded any more of the importance of memory. The result, according to Schlink, was a certain “Banalisierung,” a symptom of which, for Schlink, is the proliferation of days and sites of commemoration. 5 In 2003, he accused the Red-Green government of having failed to deliver, arguing that the 1968 generation was “erschöpft.” 6 On a number of occasions he has criticized the 1968 generation for its moralizing and self-righteous attitude. 7 The Holocaust and the Third Reich, he has claimed, must find its place in history for today’s young generation; for them, it cannot be “die Gegenwart,” as it was for his (“Epilog” 156). Arguably, Schlink also wishes to consign the 1968 generation to history. Because their moralizing attitude to Nazism supposedly prevents its historicization, and because the 68ers seek to hold down innocent generations by insisting on feelings of shame and guilt, Schlink is at pains in his literary texts to discredit them. Depicted by the author as psychologically ill-adapted, errant misfits in today’s world, they are figures of pity, not moral authority. Strictly speaking, of course, it is not the entire 1968 generation Schlink criticizes, but that rebellious part of it too often mistaken for the whole. Schlink actually portrays the triumph of one set of 1968ers over the other: of those, namely, who never really rebelled but made their way more conventionally and became good citizens, like Henner or Ulrich in Das Wochenende , or indeed like the author himself. In Schlink’s works, it is Bürgerlichkeit which wins the day. Quite what the passing of Nazism into “history” might mean in this context, Schlink never tells us. His works may help to clear away the old paths, but it is not quite clear where any new ones will lead. And in the end, his writing is no less moralizing in its criticism of his generational peers than the attitudes he criticizes (an objection one might also raise in the case of Aly and Sarrazin). All 68ers, then, have something in common.