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Of literature and legend: German writers and the bombing of

Spencer, Andrew John, Ph.D.

The Ohio State University, 1992

300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106

OF LITERATURE AND LEGEND: GERMAN WRITERS AND THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

By

Andrew John Spencer, B.A., M.A.

****

The Ohio State University

1992

Dissertation Committee: Approved by Prof. Helen Fehervary

Prof. Bernd Fischer

Prof. Charles Hoffmann Adviser Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures To My Parents

11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Charles Hoffmann for struggling with my tortuous prose and Bernd Fischer for his insightful commentary.

Without Helen Fehervary and Sue Harshe this project would have been much more difficult.

i n VITA

May 14, 1961 ...... Born - ,

1984 ...... B.A., Warwick University,

Coventry, England

1985 ...... M.A., Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

. . PUBLICATIONS

"Bonfire of Profanities". Review. "; The Fate of The Avant-Garde in Nazi ", Art Institute of Chicago, 6/22-9/8/91. Dialogue. Arts in the Midwest. 5/1991.

"Germany 1918 - 1933: Republic by Name, Not by Nature. An Overview of the Era from which Jooss' The Green Table Emerged". Program Essay, Ohio State University Dance Company, March 1988.

Translation. Maria Mies. "Women's Research or Feminist Research? The Debate Surrounding Feminist Science and Methodology". In: Bevond Methodology. Feminist Scholarship as Lived Research. Ed. Fonow, Mary Margaret and Judith A. Cook. Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 1991. 60-84.

Translation. Gertrud Koch. "Torments of the Flesh, Cold­ ness of the Spirit: Jewish Figures in the Films of ". New German Critigue. 38/1986, 28-38.

Translation. Walter Suss. "Detente and the Peace Movement". New German Critigue. 37/1986, 73-104.

FIELD OF STUDY

Major Field: Germanic Languages and Literatures

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ...... Ü

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... i ü VITA ...... iv

INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE EXAMPLE OF ...... 23 N o t e s ...... 38

II. IMMEDIATE RESPONSES: 1945- 1949 ..... 40 The T e x t s ...... 42

The Visual A r t s ...... 69 Cycles of Works ...... 70

Christian Iconography ...... 76 Self P o r t r a i t s ...... 84 S u m m a r y ...... 87

N o t e s ...... 89

V III. DRESDEN: THE COLD WAR Y E A R S ...... 101 The GDR and the Ideology of the Aufbau; Max Zimmering ...... 101 Anti-Eastern Literature in the West . 115

Dresden as Justification: Erhart Kastner and Bruno Werner . . . 126

N o t e s ...... 151

IV. HISTORY WRITING IN THE GDR IN THE 1960'S

AND 1 9 7 0 ' S ...... 159

Eberhard Panitz and Dresden ...... 168 : From Enthusiasm to Despair ...... 175 Notes ...... 206

V. ROLF HOCHHUTH'S SOLDATEN: NEKROLOG AUF GENF: TRAGÔDIE: FOCUSING ATTENTION ON

THE PERPETRATORS ...... 213 N o t e s ...... 257

AFTERWORD...... 268

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 291

VI INTRODUCTION

THE BOMBING OF DRESDEN: A GAP IN THE HISTORY BOOKS

Writing about an historical event raises a number of issues which it is my intention to address in this study. In looking at the body of work which has been produced by German authors in response to the bombing of Dresden in

February, 1945, it will be possible to see that individual works were colored markedly by the time during which they were composed - by the social and political situations and by the conception of the function of history writing prevalent at the time. In demonstrating this the reasons for the decidedly nebulous position of the destruction of Dresden in contemporary debates as to the National

Socialist period of German history will be significantly illuminated. The controversial nature of the original event has not been lessened over the course of time. Indeed, since almost all attempts at coming to terms with

that event have been guided by ideological considerations, it will be argued that the history of the raids has become

so clouded that, in a very real sense, there is no. definable history, rather a history of receptions. In the

Historikerstreit of the mid-1980's, it became possible for

conservative historians to offer a significantly new

1 2 interpretation of the destruction of Dresden, not just because the existing interpretation was unsatisfactory, but because forty years after the fact, Dresden represented a glaring gap in the history books. This gap has resulted from the blinkered history writing in both East and West.

THE WESTERN MODEL

Western history writing on the Dresden bombing from the

1940's and '50's was overwhelmingly based on the denial that the bombings represented anything more than an inevitable consequence of Total War.l The context for the raids in historical texts extended back to the bombing of

cities during the Spanish Civil War and reached forward to include the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much documentation was provided as to what actually

happened during the raids but there was no discussion,

beyond the realm of World War Il-specific military tactics, as to why it happened.% Here, at the outset, it must be made clear that the

half-hearted attempts by the Allies to justify the

destruction must be seen for what they were: smokescreens designed to hide an act of senseless retaliation. Dresden, in particular, was a city of little strategic significance

in February, 1945. It presented a defenceless target, packed to overflowing with refugees from the east, situated

less than 70 miles from the advancing Soviet troops.3 The

argument which was made to justify the atomic bombings of 3 Hiroshima and Nagasaki, namely that the bombings hastened the end of the war and prevented further Allied casualties, could not be made in this instance. The war against had been effectively won by February. Allied bombers were free to fly over Germany at will, unhindered by ground to air defenses. The German army was involved in wholesale retreat. Some later historians, such as Humphrey

Fisher writing in the English Guardian newspaper on the

45th anniversary of the destruction, and Earl S. Beck in the German Studies Review of October, 1982, have cited British Admiral Sir Gerald Dickens, "who believed that if the effort applied to the bombing of cities had been directed to air strikes against submarines and other military objectives, the course of the war would have been shortened."4 British newspapers from the time of the raids offered

flimsy, speculative reasoning for the attack, as in the following report from the Evening Standard of February 14, 1945:

The Germans may be using Dresden - almost as large as Manchester - as their base against Koniev's left flank. Telephone services and other means of communication are almost as essential to the German Army as the railways and roads which meet in Dresden.

Such reporting is naturally to be expected at a time like this. The mood among the Allies was buoyant since the

end of the war was clearly in sight. Those critics of the tactics of saturation bombing, such as Bishop Bell of Chichester, who feared that the Allies had sunk to Hitler's

level, were in a distinct minority. That allegations of 4

terror bombing should cast a pall over the anti-Nazi front was unthinkable. The raids were thus presented as well-

aimed blows at Nazi industry and morale, as is evinced by Desmond Hawkins' 1946 commentary to a published collection of dispatches broadcast on the BBC radio show War Report;

The [German] Ardennes offensive had achieved little more than the gaining of time - time to develop the rocket attacks on London and to scrape up what manpower remained for a last-ditch stand. But mere time was by now a doubtful asset, for it also meant a winter of day-and-night bombing which shattered the cities of Germany and laid waste her industries. The annihilation of Dresden by air attack in mid-February carried its own terrible message.5 The writing of history from the victor's standpoint

began already in February, 1945 and continued in the same tone until events in Dresden were eclipsed by the cessation

of hostilities. After 1945 there followed a fifteen year period of downplaying the significance of the raids. It was not

until 1961 and the publication of Webster and Frankland's History of the Second World War: The Strategic Air

Offensive against Germany 1939-1945 that the subject of the bombings became a major talking point. Two years later public debate flared with the publication of 's controversial study The Destruction of Dresden. The reason

for the controversy surrounding the book was Irving's portrayal of 's problematic role in the

decision-making process which led to the destruction of the

city. Although a re-appraisal of the Prime Minister's role was certainly long overdue since it had been quietly

brushed aside and much overshadowed by his status as a war 5 hero, the British establishment was no more willing to come to terms with its own past in 1963 than it had been in 1945. Churchill had downplayed the raids in his three volumes of wartime memoirs, published in 1953, devoting a mere sentence to the subject: Throughout January and February our bombers continued to attack, and we made a heavy raid in the latter month on Dresden, then a centre of communications on Germany's Eastern Front.®

Irving brought much more evidence to light and cited

Churchill's call, two months before Dresden, for a "bast­ ing" of German cities, but also noted the reservations which the Prime Minister voiced in a March 28 minute to the Chiefs of Staff after he had seen the results at Dresden: It seems to me that the moment has come when the ques­ tion of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. We shall not, for instance, be able to get housing materials out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans them­ selves. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing. I am of the opinion that military objectives must henceforward be more strictly studied in our own interests rather than that of the enemy. The Foreign Secretary has spoken to me on this subject, and I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive.7

The commanders of the Air Force were outraged at the implication that they had been acting without the Prime

Minister's approval and rejected the above memorandum, upon which Churchill softened the hectoring tone, resubmitted his communication and saw it accepted.® 6

Yet despite the heated debates which ensued, no more understanding of the raids was gleaned. Irving might have briefly endangered Churchill's reputation, but his work was essentially one which subscribed to Ralph Waldo Emerson's belief that the history of the world amounts to the biography of great men.

Later works (such as Gotz Bergander's Dresden im Luftkrieg [1977] and Alexander McKee's Dresden 1945: The

Devil's Tinderbox [1982]) integrated the problematizing of Churchill's role into their studies while still treating the destruction as a wartime inevitability. This parameter for discussion has proved so limiting to conventional historiography that the three books mentioned above are the only three extensive studies on Dresden by Western historians currently available. In general historical writing on the Second World War, Dresden has been consistently downplayed. One of the most recent examples of this was British military historian John Keegan's best­ selling The Second World War, published in 1989 which, despite its length (over 600 pages), allotted only two brief mentions to Dresden. The first noted that the city

"did not begin to function again until after the war was over," the second that " Dresden was burnt out.

THE EASTERN MODEL

Denial was also the motivating factor behind the

Eastern model of history writing. The GDR did not regard 7 itself as the successor state to Nazi Germany (that, by suggestion, was the FRG) but rather to the progressive forces during the which the Nazi ascension to power had brought to an end in 1933. To substantiate their claims, the new communist rulers referred back to a time when the German communists had been the Nazis' street- fighting opponents before being forced into exile or sent to concentration camps. The new German state was seen to represent the untainted continuation of the humanistic/democratic tradition. Hence, the blame and guilt for the Nazi past was placed at the neighbor's door. Events during the Nazi times were viewed as the events from the history of a foreign country.

This interpretation of history meant that, just as in the FRG, but for different reasons, there took place no thoroughgoing coming to terms with the past. Dresden was ahistoricized once again. As in the Western model, the context for the raids was limited to the history of aerial bombardment, but a twist was added: blame for the destruction could be laid squarely at the feet of the Western Allies since the Soviets played no part in it. Dresden became a symbol for the barbarism of the

Western/capitalist powers to the point that certain ruins were left in the city with plaques commemorating the atrocity attached to them.

As a corollary to this, Dresden was also portrayed as a

symbol for the regenerative powers of socialism. The two book-length historical studies of the raids which were 8 published in the GDR - Max Seydewitz' Zerstoruna und Wiederaufbau von Dresden [1955] and Walter Weidauer's Inferno Dresden. Über Lüaen und Leqenden um die Aktion "Donherschlaa" [1965] - contained substantial sections on the rebuilding of the city. Later editions of the Weidauer text concluded with a stirring speech of Erich Honecker's, the tone of which was very much in keeping with that of the book: Da brachten bewahrte Antifaschisten im engen Zusammen- wirken mit den sowjetischen Befreiern unter unsagbaren Miihen das Leben wieder in Gang und gaben den Biirgern der Stadt ein neues Ziel. Der Aufbau Dresdens ist ein beeindruckendes Beispiel fur die Schopferkraft der befreiten Arbeiterklasse und aller anderen Werktatigen...10 Again, the model did not contribute to an understanding of the raids nor of the processes which led to them. As a result, Dresden played an ever-diminishing part in the writing of German history until both models were burst open by events in the two German societies. In the East, the collapse of the communist government in 1989 freed history writing from the constraints of adhering to official Communist Party teachings. In the West, much of the cautiousness which attended discussions of the Third Reich was thrown to the wind with the eruption in 1986 of the Historikerstreit in the pages of the nation's newspapers.

As Claudia Koonz noted:

Until recently, West Germans have discussed the Third Reich in restrained terms, at least in respectable public circles. Good taste and political savoir faire suggested that it was not wise to paint too positive a picture of life under , or to emphasize German suffering at the hands of the Allies. In discussing genocide it was not prudent to remark on mass atrocities by other nations. It was also convenient to blame Nazi brutality on a handful of morally depraved leaders, and to ignore the millions of ordinary people who complied with orders. These constraints on public discourse of the past left a silence at the center of the Third Reich history. That silence is now being broken. The Historikerstreit was prompted by the writings of a diverse group of conservative historians who shared the belief that the time had come for to claim for itself a national identity of which it could be proud - a patriotism not conditioned by the Nazi period. Opposed to this re-casting of German history stood Jürgen Habermas who disputed the legitimacy of Germany claiming a conventional national identity. Instead of attempting to make connections with the past, he argued. West Germans should pledge their allegiances to the young FRG;

Die vorbehaltlose Offnung der Bundesrepublik gegenüber der politischen Kultur des Westens ist die groBe intellektuelle Leistung unserer Nachkriegszeit, auf die gerade meine Generation stolz sein konnte. Stabilisiert wird das Ergebnis nicht durch eine deutsch-national eingefarbte Natophilosophie. Jene Offnung ist ja vollzogen worden durch Überwindung genau der Idéologie der Mitte, die unsere Revisionisten mit ihrem geopolitischen Tamtam von "der alten europaischen Mittellage der Deutschen" (Stürmer) und "der Rekonstruktion der zerstorten europaischen Mitte" (Hillgruber) wieder aufwarmen. Der einzige Patriotismus, der uns dem Westen nicht entfremdet, ist ein Verfassungspatriotismus. Eine in Überzeugungen verankerte Bindung an universalistische Verfassung- sprinzipien hat sich leider in der Kulturnation der Deutschen erst nach - und durch - Auschwitz bilden konnen. Wer uns mit einer Floskel wie "Schuldbesessen- heit" (Stürmer und Oppenheimer) die Schamrote über dieses Faktum austreiben will, wer die Deutschen zu einer konventionellen Form ihrer nationalen Identitat zurückrufen will, zerstort die einzig verlaBliche Basis unserer Bindung an den Westen.12

Habermas' opponents in the debate, the revisionists, or to use Pierre Vidal-Naquet's somewhat more precise term, "relative revisionists," argued that a German patriotism 10 was possible but not before the history of the Nazi period had been rewritten from the perspective of a new understanding of National Socialism. As opposed to "full- scale" revisionists (hence the distinction) such as Arthur Butz in the U.S.A. or Robert Faurisson in France, who have denied the existence of the gas chambers altogether, the "relative revisionists," principally among them Ernst Nolte

(Free University ), Andreas Hillgruber (University of

Cologne), Michael Stürmer (University of Erlangen) and Klaus Hildebrand (University of Bonn), argued against viewing Nazi crimes, in particular the Holocaust, as unique since they occurred during "das Zeitalter der Tyrannen," the title of an essay by Hildebrand.13 Nazi history was revised in the light of this epochal classification: In universaler Perspektive bleibt der national- sozialistische Judenmord singular und steht doch in einer historischen Reihe, wenn man Vorlaufer und Nach- folger dieses Genozids betrachtet: etwa den Mord an den Armeniern im ersten Weltkrieg; die "Liquidierung" von Millionen russischer GroBbauern, der Kulaken, wahrend der Zwischenkriegsara des 20. Jahrhunderts sowie die Ausrottung verschiedener Volker innerhalb und auBerhalb der Sowjetunion im Zeichen des stalinistischen Vernichtungskrieges zwischen 1939/41 und 1945 oder das Schreckensregiment des kambodischen Steinzeit- kommunismus in der Gegenwart.14

This argumentation for a relativizing of the Holocaust

is quite obviously a much more effective attempt at

normalizing German history than that of "full-scale" revisionism. By setting one atrocity alongside another the relative revisionists did not deny that the Holocaust

happened, but attempted to make it seem somehow less specifically German in character. Nolte has written at length about Stalin's reign of terror in the 11 and particularly the genocide practised against the Kulaks mentioned above by Hildebrand. He labeled Stalin's actions "das Original" and the Holocaust "die Kopie": Sie [die Vernichtung der Juden] war entsetzlicher als das Original, weil sie die Menschenvernichtung auf eine quasi industrielle Weise betrieb. Sie war abstofiender als das Original, weil sie auf bloBen Vermutungen beruhte und nahezu frei von jenem MassenhaB war, der innerhalb des Schrecklichen immerhin ein verstandiiches und insofern versohnendes Element ist. Doch all das begründet zwar Singularitat, ândert aber nichts an der Tatsache, daB die sogenannte Vernichtung der Juden wahrend des Dritten Reiches eine Reaktion oder verzerrte Kopie und nicht ein erster Vorgang oder das Original war.15 Jürgen Habermas roundly attacked Nolte for his "eher abstrusen Beispiel aus dem russischen Bürgerkrieg" 16 and for reducing the uniqueness of the Holocaust to "den technischen Vorgang der Vergasung."!?

The "relative revisionists" have a clear agenda which includes rewriting the history of Nazi Germany by de­ emphasizing those aspects of the period which have heretofore been the subject of most attention (the

Holocaust) while bringing to the fore the formerly taboo subject of German suffering at the hands of the Allies. It

is this latter approach which is of most relevance to the topic at hand, since German suffering naturally included

the bombing of civilian centers. The taboo-breaking writings of conservative historians have exploited to the full the symbolic value of an under-researched (and thus partly mythologized) history of suffering. Like a recurring nightmare, Dresden, among other incidents, has

returned to haunt those who tried to erase it from memory

and has provided ammunition for the "relative 12 revisionists." Perhaps most importantly, the consistent marginalizing of this topic opened the way for the revisionist historians to speak misleadingly of Germany as a country without history. Such a position was adopted because it "legitimized" a thorough revision of a very real, but pain­ ful, history. If the revisionists were able to convice that the gaps in German history nullified that history, then they could begin the task of creating a new history and a new national identity. The political implications of such a tactic are clear, indeed Stürmer has spelled them out: Wer aber meint, daB allés dies auf Politik und Zukunft keine Wirkung habe, der ignoriert, daB in geschichtslosem Land die Zukunft gewinnt, wer die Erinnerung füllt, die Begriffe pragt und die Vergangen- heit deùtet.18

This struck a chord, particularly with the generations of Germans born after or towards the end of the Nazi period who felt that their lives had been conditioned by a guilt which they should not be forced to share. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the pronouncements of Chancellor

Kohl for whom Stürmer is a speechwriter. Kohl has spoken of his good fortune at having been "born too late" and some of his actions have signaled an alliance with the revisionist historians. In May, 1985, on the fortieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, Kohl was able to coax a perhaps unwitting President Reagan to a cemetery at Bitburg which contained the graves of 47 SS officers. The furor which surrounded this visit shamed 13

Reagan into "compensating" for his action by adding to his agenda a visit to the memorial at the site of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, but moreso than any other single incident, the visit to Bitburg forced the issue of the "other German history" into the spotlight. There have been other examples of lesser notoriety. Kohl chose Dresden as the site of his first major rally in the former GDR.

Standing in front of the ruins of the Frauenkirche, Kohl acknowledged the cheers of the crowd and, as the New York Times of December 20, 1989 reported, "wished the East Germans a merry Christmas and then, his voice breaking, concluded, 'God bless our German '." The Dresden writer Thomas Rosenlocher described the same event in his diary covering events between September 9, 1989 and March 19, 1990, the day after the first all-Germany elections. From Rosenlocher's account one gets a taste of the dramatic use to which the ruined Frauenkirche was put. The writer described how he was standing amidst the huge crowd:

Freilich ist der Bundeskanzler als solcher vor lauter Menschen gar nicht zu sehen, aber seine Stimme direkt über uns: "Ich werde euch nicht im Stich lassen." Von weit da vorn kommt sie, wo das Scheinwerferlicht die Frauenkircheruine mit ihren beiden Stümpfen und dem Gerollberg in ein femes Mysterium aus weiBflüssigem Silber verwandelt hat.19 Upon returning home, Rosenlocher watched the day's

events once more on television: Abends im Fernsehn sah ich dann den Bundeskanzler noch einmal wirklich. Er beugte sich vor, legte einen Kranz fur die Toten des 13. Februar auf die Trümmer und ringsum sangen sie: 'So ein Tag, so wunderschon wie h e u t e . ' ^ O 14

The choice of Dresden was not accidental. Standing before an immensely powerful symbol of an Allied atrocity and then placing a wreath on the ruins. Kohl adroitly shifted emphasis away from German wrongdoing to German suffering. The same speech delivered before the gates of Auschwitz would have had very different connotations. The rewriting of history is not carried out at the highest political levels alone. Claudia Koonz cites a radio broadcaster who "linked the deaths caused by the Allied bombing of Dresden to deaths in concentration camps."21 The crudeness of such a relativization has been

attacked by Habermas and also as long ago as 1959 by the

philosopher's mentor Theodor Adorno in his essay "Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?" In this essay Adorno addressed the very same issues which later constituted the core of the Historikerstreit; Wir alle kennen auch die Bereitschaft, heute das Geschehene zu leugnen oder zu verkleinern - so schwer es fallt zu begreifen, daB Menschen sich nicht des Arguments schamen, es seien doch hochstens nur fünf Millionen Juden und nicht sechs vergast worden. Irrational ist weiter die verbreitete Aufrechnung der Schuld, als ob Dresden Auschwitz abgegolten hatte. In der Aufstellung solcher Kalkiile, der Eile, durch Gegen- vorwiirfe von der Selbstbesinnung sich zu dispensieren, liegt vorweg etwas Unmenschliches, und Kampfhandlungen im Krieg, deren Modell überdies Coventry und Rotterdam hieB, sind kaum vergleichbar mit der administrativen Ermordung von Millionen unschuldiger M e n s c h e n . 22

Adorno's argument holds as true today as it did over forty years ago and yet those views condemned by the

philosopher in 1959 are now more prominent than at any time during the post-war period. In order to understand this phenomenon it is instructive to go beyond an 15 investigation of the facts of the raids, facts which have long been available to historians, even if some of them, such as the number of fatalities which resulted, are still disputed and have thus become, in the words of Charles S.

Maier, something of "political f o o t b a l l s . "23 we need instead to examine the legacy of Dresden, the ways in which the destruction has been appropriated and used symbolically. Dresden has become a multi-faceted symbol with great emotive power owing to the numerous interpretations of the raids which have been offered since 1945. The facts of the destruction have not changed, the interpretations have. A political-historical analysis of the reception of the raids would clearly show how the changing political climate in Europe and the U.S.A. has affected greatly the interpretations given the destruction. However, such an analysis would ignore a crucial means by which Dresden has entered the public consciousness, namely through the medium of literature and culture.

The city has been the subject of literature throughout the entire post-war period and it is my contention that the various treatments of the subject matter have been of

profound import in shaping our present day relationship to the destruction. Proof of this can be seen in the wide- ranging debates which followed the publication of both Rolf

Hochhuth's Soldaten in 1967 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five in 1969. At no other time in post-war

history did Dresden receive so much attention as it did in the late 1960's. 16

Lesser-known literary works have also been of profound although less acknowledged effect. Literary works have both mirrored political-historical conditions and ushered in periods of changed perceptions of the raids. Thus it is that this study is structured as a reception history of the destruction in literature and the visual arts. To this end, a major portion of my research has consisted of compiling the various responses to the destruction and ordering them into phases of "Dresden literature." Each chapter will concentrate on a specific period or writer, charting the changing attitudes to, and use of, the atrocity. The first chapter will take as its starting point the acknowledged difficulty of the individual writer ever coming to terms with an event of such profound upheaval. This difficulty will be discussed with reference to Alexander Kluge's text on the bombing of the German city of , also during 1945. Kluge's text will be referred to throughout the rest of the study as a possible model for a literature of catastrophe. The second chapter will deal with immediate responses to the destruction: diaries, letters, notebooks and pieces written for newspapers as well as the visual arts. The third chapter will grapple with the literary treatments of the raids which began to appear in 1949. In

the texts of West German writers we will see an attempt to

use Dresden as a symbol for the sufferings of non-Nazi Germany. In an atmosphere of starting afresh, Dresden was employed by writers such.as Bruno Werner and Erhart Kastner 17 to invoke the sympathy of an outside world equating German with Nazi for a population which had also suffered at the hands of the National Socialists and wanted now an opportunity to put the past behind it. These works acted as self-justification for that same German population but, it will be shown, the legitimacy of such a ploy was most problematic.

Writers from the GDR, on the other hand, wrote in praise of the regenerative powers of socialism in an attempt to bolster the new regime. Max Zimmering also colored his works with a strident anti-capitalist/Western tone, suggesting that the destruction was aimed at weakening the Soviet's position in the post-war period and

likening the actions of the Allies to those of the National Socialists. Zimmering's Cold War counterpart in the West,

Wolfgang Paul, chose the subject of Dresden's changed circumstances after the war to attack the new regime and

its Soviet partners.

The fourth chapter will concentrate on the works of GDR writers Heinz Czechowski and Karl Mickel, both of whom were

born in 1935 and experienced the raids as children. Very

differently from earlier generations, these two writers

communicated in their works not only a sense of living in the shadow of the experience of total destruction, but they

also identified the marginalizing and ideologizing of their

own and Dresden's history.

Dresden's role as a symbol for the senselessness of warfare has been consistently undermined by the continuing 18 debates as to the apportioning of blame; and chapter five will concentrate on the literary figure who has done most to keep these debates alive; Rolf Hochhuth. The principal text here is Hochhuthfs 1967 drama Soldaten. at the center of which stands a questioning of Winston Churchill's role in the, decision-making process which led to the destruction. Although such an inquiry is entirely legitimate, it is possible to see in the sometimes bitter and acrimonious debates which followed Soldaten's publication and subsequent productions in the FRG and

England the genesis of the present-day situation. In both the now-united Germany and its former wartime enemy there exists a dogged refusal to accept responsibility. In

Germany we see the attempts by the revisionist historians

to foreground Dresden as an example of an Allied atrocity while in England we see the continuing contention that Dresden must be viewed as one step in the successful

military campaign against Nazi Germany. Against this background, the Afterword will contain an overview of events post-Soldaten. including a discussion of the theoretical debates as to the methods by which to

achieve a coming to terms with the past. A brief evaluation of 's novel Die Verteidiquna der Kindheit [1991] will attest to the continuing relevance of

Dresden for that coming to terms. 19

Notes 1. See for example Stephen Brooks' Bomber; Strategic Air Power in Twentieth Century Conflict; By the time of the German surrender the strategic air offensive had made a decisive contribution to victory, but not the decisive contribution, as the advocates of independent bombing operations had expected. It had formed one aspect of the many-sided process of attrition which total war between great industrial states inevitably involves. (London: Imperial War Museum, 1983), 48. "Total War" was a term employed by Goebbels to characterize the complete mobilization of the German population necessary to withstand the resurgent Allies in 1943. In a speech of February 18 that year, delivered at the Berlin Sportpalast, he directed ten questions at the huge crowd, the first five of which were prefaced with a statement designed to fuel the crowd's indignation. The fourth through seventh questions follow: Viertens: Die Englander behaupten, das deutsche Volk wehrt sich gegen die totalen KriegsmaBnahmen der Regierung. Es will nicht den totalen Krieg, sondern die Kapitulation. Ich frage euch: Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg? Wollt ihr ihn, wenn notig, totaler und radikaler, als wir ihn uns heute überhaupt noch vorstellen konnen? Fiinftens: Die Englander behaupten, das deutsche Volk hat sein Vertrauen zum Führer verloren. Ich frage euch: 1st euer Vertrauen zum Führer heute groBer, glaubiger und unerschütterlicher denn je? (Die Menge erhebt sich wie ein Mann. Sprechchore: "Führer, befiehl, wir folgen!") 1st eure Bereitschaft, ihm auf alien seinen Wegen zu folgen und allés zu tun, was notig ist, um den Krieg zum siegreichen Ende zu führen, eine absolute und uneingeschrankte? Ich frage euch als sechstes: Seid ihr bereit, von nun ab eure ganze Kraft einzusetzen und der Ostfront die Menschen und Waffen zur Verfügung zu stellen, die sie braucht, um den Bolschewismus den todlichen Schlag zu versetzen? Ich frage euch siebentens: Gelobt ihr mit heiligem Eid der Front, daB die Heimat mit starker Moral hinter ihr steht und ihr allés geben wird, was sie notig hat, um den Sieg zu erkSmpfen? Bergschicker, Heinz, ed., Deutsche Chronik 1933-1945. Alltaa im Faschismus. (Berlin: Elefanten Presse, 1983), 460.

2. See for example: Andrews, Allen, The Air Marshals: The Air War in Western 20

Europe. (New York: Morrow, 1970). Frankland, Noble, Bomber Offensive: The Devastation of Europe. (New York: Ballantine, 1970). Higham, Robin, Air Power. (New York: St. Martin's, 1972). Overy, R.J., The Air War. 1939-1945. (London: Europa, 1980). Price, Alfred, Battle over the Reich. (New York: Scribner's, 1973). Verrier, Anthony, The Bomber Offensive. (New York: Macmillan, 1969). Webster, Sir Charles, and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germanv. 1939-1945. 4 vols., (London: HMSO, 1961).

3. An example of the "smokescreen" of rationales is to be found, for example, in Earl R. Beck's Under The Bombs: The German Home Front 1942-1945:

That Dresden became an Allied bombing target was not in itself surprising. As the range of bombing from England came to cover most of eastern Germany, a number of locations there were designated prime bombing targets. Brüx, to the south of Dresden in the area of the Sudetenland, Bohlen, Ruhland, and Politz to the north and west, were high on the list of cities chosen for attention because of refining or synthetic oil plants. For all of these, Dresden was a potential secondary target. Contrary to later East German and Soviet claims, Stalin welcomed bombing activities in eastern Germany, especially against Berlin. On a number of occasions, he called for an intensification of bombing there. Dresden was the scene of intensive railroad movements and these were everywhere acceptable targets for Allied attacks. And as Soviet forces attacked German cities, their air forces wreaked destruction upon them in support of the ground forces.

(Lexington, KY: U. Press of Kentucky, 1986), 177. 4. Beck, Earl R., "The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942- 1945, and the German Response: Dilemmas of Judgment", German Studies Review 5,3 (Oct. 1982), 326.

5. Hawkins, Desmond, ed., War Report D-Dav to VE-Dav: Dispatches bv the BBC's War Correspondents with the Allied Expeditionarv Force 6 June 1944 - 5 Mav 1945 (1946), (London: BBC, 1985), 260. 6. Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War: Triumph And Traqedv. (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1953), III 540-1.

7. Irving, David, The Destruction of Dresden. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 229. 8. The full text of the amended memorandum reads as follows:

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so-called 'area bombing' of German 21

cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests. If we come into control of an entirely ruined land, there will be a great shortage of accommodation for ourselves and our Allies: and we shall be unable to get housing materials out of Germany for our own needs because some temporary provision would have to be made for the Germans themselves. We must see to it that our attacks do not do more harm to ourselves in the long run than they do to the enemy's immediate war effort. Pray let me have your views.

Cited by Irving, 231. 9. Keegan, John, The Second World War. (New York: Viking, 1990), 432 and 591. 10. Weidauer, Walter, Inferno Dresden: Über Lüqen und Leaenden um die Aktion ”Donnerschlaa”. (Berlin: Dietz, 1987), 205. 11. Koonz, Claudia "New Germany, Old Wounds" in The Village Voice Literary Supplement 83, March 1990, 14. 12. Habermas, Jürgen, "Eine Art Schadensabwicklung. Die apologetischen Tendenzen in der deutschen Zeitgeschichts- schreibung" in Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzioartiakeit der nationalsozialistis- chen Judenvernichtung. (: R. Piper, 1987), 75-6.

13. Hildebrand, Klaus, "Das Zeitalter der Tyrannen" in Historikerstreit. 84-92. 14. Hildebrand, Klaus, "Wer den Abgrund entrinnen will, muB ihn aufs genaueste ausloten. 1st die neue deutsche Geschichts- schreibung revisionistisch?" in Historikerstreit. 289. 15. Nolte, Ernst, "Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus? Das Dritte Reich im Blickwinkel des Jahres 1980" in Historikerstreit. 32-3.

16. Habermas, 71. 17. Nolte, Ernst, "Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will. Eine Rede, die geschrieben, aber nicht gehalten werden konnte". Frankfurter Allqemeine Zeitunq 6/6/1986. 18. Stürmer, Michael, "Geschichte in geschichtslosem Land" in Historikerstreit. 36.

19. Rosenlocher, Thomas, Die verkauften Pflastersteine. Dresdener Taqebuch. ( am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), 81f.

20. Rosenlocher, 82. Later in the diary Rosenlocher describes how the Frauenkirche was illuminated immediately 22 to the elections of March 18, 1990: Die Frauenkirche wird jetzt groB angestrahlt. Die vielgestaltigen Triimmerbrocken Schwarz in Schwarz vertieft und wuchtiger denn je, aber die Stümpfe hell in die Nacht hineinragend. Noch immer ist sie das Denkmal der Bombennacht, aber in ihrer theatralisch ausgeleuchteten Perfektion schon Hybris, erinnerungslos. Ein mitnehmbares Erschütterungsbild für welches nachste Jahrtausend?

Rosenlocher, 109.

21. Koonz, 14. 22. Adorno, Theodor, "Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit", (1959), in Erziehuna zur Mündiakeit. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 11-12. 23. Maier, Charles S., "Why the Allies did it". Harvard Magazine 87/4, March-April 1985, 61. 23

CHAPTER I

THE EXAMPLE OF ALEXANDER KLUGE

The dilemma faced by the author of literary texts who attempts to come to terms with an historical event such as Dresden stands at the center of the formalistic arrangement of Alexander Kluge's texts Schlachtbeschreibuna; Der orqanisatorische Aufbau eines Unalucks [1964, revised and

expanded 1978] and "Der Luftangriff auf Halberstadt am 8. April 1945" in Neue Geschichten. Hefte 1-18

'Unheimlichkeit der Zeit' [1977]. Of particular relevance

for the topic of the Dresden raids is the latter text.

Kluge experienced the destruction of Halberstadt (approximately 30 miles south-west of ), his

birthplace, as a 13 year old and it affected him profoundly:

Die Form des Einschlags einer Sprengbombe ist ein- pragsam. Sie enthalt eine Verkürzung. Ich war dabei, als am 8 April 1945 in 10 Meter Entfernung so etwas einschlug.i

For Kluge, as critic Stefanie Carp has noted, these

raids represented a critical moment in German history and

for the development of the collective German psyche: Denn gerade die Luftangriffe machten den Zusammenbruch des Nationalsozialismus als Zerstorung von Sinn so existentiell erfahrbar und sichtbar. Die Ruinen waren ein auBeres Zeichen für die Zerstorung eines kollektiven und eines privaten Lebenssinnes. Dieser 23 24 Sinn- und Lebenszusainmenhang wurde schneller zerstort als Menschen es begreifen konnten.2

The psychologist Robert J. Lifton, who has done much work on the survivors of atrocities, has written of a "psychic numbing." The collapse of reason is accompanied by guilt and the two combine to silence the survivor: Victims and victimizers [... ] shared a sense of guilt, expressed partly in a conspiracy of silence, a prolonged absence of any systematic attempt to learn about the combined physical and psychic assaults of the bomb on human beings. Survivors felt guilty about remaining alive while others died, and also experienced an amorphous sense of having been part of, having imbibed, the overall evil of atrocity.3

By presenting a multi-perspectival work, Kluge highlighted the impossibility of eye-witness accounts alone providing an understanding of the raids. The form which he chose for his text was that of the montage — a montage of different perspectives. He recreated the fates of several individuals including a cinema manager, two women stationed at the top of a tower acting as look-outs, a school teacher and others. He included photographs of the devastation taken by an unknown photographer, maps and plans drawn up by the Allied air forces as well as photographs of the pilots and their superiors and statements made by them. There are also technical diagrams of the bombs used and a transcript from a conference concerning the Allied raids held near Stockholm in 1976.

In the final section of the text, entitled "Besucher vom anderen Stern," a certain James N. Eastman jr. from the

Albert F. Simpson Historical Research Center of Maxwell Airforce Base, Alabama, visits the destroyed city at the 25 end of May, 1945, to talk with the survivors. Expecting to find feelings of hatred and thoughts of revenge, he finds instead a population stubbornly refusing to dwell on the past, confirming Lifton's theory of a "conspiracy of silence." This conspiracy extends even into the city's official record keeping; Vom Stadtarchivar forderte er [Eastman] eine Liste aller Brânde der Stadt seit 1123. In der Liste war der 8. April 45 "vergessen." Aufgefiihrt 44 GroBbrande, Mehrzahl davon im Mittelalter. Der Mann barmte über jeden dieser historischen Brânde, insbesondere über zerstorte Kunstschatze in Kirchen.^ The people were willing to talk of the raids, so willing that Eastman did not need to ply them with the

gifts of food which he had brought to loosen tongues, but they spoke without saying anything:

Die Leute redeten alle ziemlich gern. Er wuBte aber praktisch schon allés im voraus. Er kannte die Redensart: "An jenem furchtbaren Tag, an dem unsere schone Stadt dem Erdboden gleichgemacht wurde" usf. Die Spekulationen nach dem Sinn, die "stereotypen Erlebnisberichte," er hatte diese gewissermaBen fabrikmaBigen Phrasen, die sich aus den Mündern herausfütterten, schon gehort in Fürth, Darmstadt, Nürnberg, Würzberg, Frankfurt, Wuppertal usf.5 In reply to Eastman's hypothetical question as to what they would do to avoid such an experience again, the

respondents seemed disinterested: Es kommen jetzt wohl keine Bombardements mehr. Die Situation lag 100 Jahre zurück.® We can see from this attitude the reasoning behind Kluge's electing to construct an impersonal, detached text in response to the raids: those who experienced them were too close to learn anything and so despite their position at the center of the inquiry can tell us almost nothing 26 which we do not already know. In the face of such a large- scale atrocity the individual's capacity for understanding breaks down and rather than even attempt to understand it, the incident is attributed to fate. It is mythologized.

Understanding of the destruction necessitates temporal dis­ tance and employment of the capacity for abstract thought: Die Ausgrenzung dieser Dimension [das Personliche und Existentielle] des Geschehens tragt aber zugleich dem Krieg zwischen Form und Inhalt im heutigen Menschen Rechnung. Die Abstraktionsprinzip der modernen, anonymen Kriegsführung ist allein als Vernichtung des (Erfahrungs-) Inhalts durch die Form begrifflich zu erfassen. Es geht Kluge um die "Form dieses Ereignisses," die nur durch die Perspektivenwechsel der Montage angegangen werden kann. [...] Wie für Brecht ist für Kluge die Frage nach dem Realismus zur Frage nach dem Unsichtbaren geworden, das es gilt sichtbar zu machen.?

Kluge's distancing technique in this text and others is sometimes compared to Brecht's theory of "Verfreradung" and indeed Brecht also personified the inability to learn from catastrophe in the character of Mutter Courage. In his

notes on Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (1949) Brecht

explicitly stated: "Die Courage lernt nichts." She accepts the fortunes of war and adjusts her business dealings

accordingly, even after members of her own family are killed:

Die Zuschauer bei Katastrophen erwarten ja zu Unrecht, daB die Betroffenen daraus lernen werden. Solang die Masse das Objekt der Politik ist, kann sie, was mit ihr geschieht, nicht als einen Versuch, sondern nur als ein Schicksal ansehen; sie lernt so wenig aus der Katastrophe wie das Versuchskarnickel über Biologie lernt.8

It was not Brecht's intention for the audience to

identify/sympathize with the unquestioning Courage but

instead to learn from her inability to learn. The audience 27 must detach itself from the character and recognize that there are other options. This is precisely Kluge's aim, for if nothing is learned from an atrocity, if a form of selective amnesia is allowed to take hold, then there is nothing to stop the historical processes which led to the destruction of life from being once again embarked upon. Nor is there anything to stop a distorted view of history from being employed to specious ideological ends. We have already seen in the Introduction that such a misuse of history occurred during the Historikerstreit.

At the time of the raids, in 1945, the survivors substituted "eine Flucht nach vorne"^ for rational analysis. Dresden was consigned to prehistory ("Die

Situation lag 100 Jahre zurück") and life was picked up where it had left off. Thus it is that Dresden represents a gap in German history, "eine Erinnerungsliicke" ; it lives on in the minds of the survivors as a "zugebautes Trauma"iO which, if not named and thoroughly investigated, will ultimately surface in potentially explosive fashion. This lack of memory, which Kluge elsewhere labels "irreal,"ii is what he aims to replace with a collective historical consciousness. Traditional historiography is unable to achieve this consciousness, since it always chooses a limited context (the Second World War, aerial bombardment, etc.) within which to discuss Dresden. A text which does not take into account prehistory and subsequent developments, lends an event such as Dresden the appearance of naturalness when in fact, as Andrew Bowie has written. 28

it was very much out of the ordinary; [...] an effective historiography has to have far more roots than is generally assumed if the deceptive appearance of naturalness is to be avoided. How unnatural such an event is can only really be demonstrated by a process of radical reorganization of the structures of historical cognition and a widening of the scope of such cognition, thus redissolving historical forms which have come to be regarded as the unquestioned basis of historical discourse. If Kluge's text demonstrates the limitations of

historiography, then it does the same for the literature of

atrocity which limits understanding by tending towards a mythologizing of events, a tendency evident in the majority

of the texts to be discussed in this study. The historical consciousness which Kluge is striving for both expands the limits of historical discourse and exposes the fundamentally rational structure of an event widely

perceived as irrational. To demonstrate how Kluge achieves this some examples from the text are in order.

The very first short (two pages) section of the text, which recreates the thoughts and actions of cinema manager

Frau Schrader, tests the reader's capacity for abstraction and poses the type of question which the text itself then attempts to answer. After briefly mentioning the fact that

a bomb crashed through the roof of the cinema, which at the

time was showing the film Heimkehr (a poster advertising the film is also reproduced as part of the text) Kluge states :

Die Verwiistung der rechten Seite des Theaters stand in keinem sinnvollén oder dramaturgischen Zusammenhang zu dem vorgeführten Film.13 29

The shock at this seemingly naive statement produces humor but Kluge's point is that there is indeed a connection between the two: "Zwischen unten und oben gibt es keinen 'Zusammenhang' und doch ist der Zusammenhang durch Bomben gegeben."^^ We as readers must do what Frau Schrader is unable to do: make the connection. Schrader

is unable to do this because the enormity of the rupture in everyday life cannot be comprehended by the direct senses.

Her immediate reaction is to check through the theatre in the hope of clearing up in time for the 2 o'clock showing of the film ("die Flucht nach vorne"). In other words, her

strategy for coping is to continue on in her position as manager. However, more raids follow and she is forced out of the theatre, but even then her chief concern lies in finding a telephone in order that she might inform the theatre's owners of the damage. She returns to the theatre's basement to find six corpses which had been

sprayed and scalded with hot water from the heating system. She busies herself with stacking the corpses (some dis­

membered, some whole) out of the way. Such a reaction, macabre sounding as it may be, is understandable, for the shock must have been great enough to have completely dulled

the senses. However, it is for the reader of Kluge's text to follow him now as he attempts, by bringing together information to which Schrader could not possibly have been privy, to make the connections she could not have made. We

should not expect to learn much about the raids from

Schrader or anybody who experienced them directly, since 30 they defy understanding by the direct senses. Kluge cites several more examples of the profound disjunction between everyday life and the changed circumstances occasioned by the raids, including the experiences of the schoolteacher Gerda Baethe who, in addition to herself, must also watch out for her three children. It is in this section, entitled "Stratégie von oben," that Kluge opens up the notion that things did not have to happen the way they did. In this section the temporal distance mentioned above becomes of crucial importance. Obviously, at the time of the raids there was nothing which Gerda Baethe could have done beyond looking out for herself and her children. She could not have affected the course of the destruction. Now, however, with the benefit of hindsight we can see that the opportunity to prevent history from progressing towards an ultimately destructive outcome was missed.

Um eine strategische Perspektive zu eroffnen, wie sie sich Gerda Baethe am 8. April in ihrer Deckung wünschte, "stark angebraten," insbesondere dann in den Nachtstunden, als die Hitze am schlimmsten wurde, hatten seit 1918 siebzig-tausend entschlossene Lehrer, alle wie sie, in jedem der am Krieg beteiligten Lander, je zwanzig Jahre, hart unterrichten mxissen; aber auch iiberregional: Druck auf Presse, Regierung; dann hatte der so gebildete Nachwuchs Zepter oder Zügel ergreifen konnen (aber Zepter und Zügel sind keine strategischen Waffen, es gab kein Bild für die hier erforderliche Gewaltnahme). "Das allés ist eine Frage der Organisation."15 Baethe's options at the time of the raids are so limited because it is already too late. Thus it is that organization is a key concept for Kluge — it is the recognition of the need to organize which we, as latter-day 31 readers of the Halberstadt text, can take from Baethe's experience of catastrophe. We witness, in Baethe's situation, an example of what Kluge labels in the subtitle to his collection of Neue Geschichten. the "Unheimlichkeit der Zeit." This concept is perhaps best explained with reference to Kluge's 1979 film Die Patriotin. in which he returns to the story of Gerda Baethe, setting a reading aloud of the Neue Geschichten text in the classroom of history teacher Gabi Teichert: Kommentar: Blauer Montag. Unterrichtsstoff: Gerda Baethe. Diese Frau liegt 1944 unter Bomben, will sich wehren. Die letzte Chance, sich gegen das Elend von 1944 zu wehren, war 1928. 1928 hatte sich Gerda Baethe mit anderen Frauen organisieren konnen.16

It is not until 1944, however, and the bombing of

Halberstadt, that this lack of organization becomes evident to Baethe:

Es geht in der Diskussion um die sogenannte Organisâtionsfrage. Das BewuBtsein entsteht in der Erfahrung des Schicksals: 1944. Die Organisations- chance liegt sechzehn Jahre zurück: 1928. BewuBtsein und Organisation kommen nicht zusammen.l? This recognition of the discrepancy between consciousness and organization leads one of the school­ children of the film to summarize the situation:

Wenn du das zusammenfügst: das BewuBtsein hatte dasein müssen. Und: Auf diesem BewuBtsein hatte organisiert werden müssen...18

A statement such as this is easily made but the truth of it is apparent. Of concern to Gabi Teichert is the uncovering of the historical processes which led to an event such as the bombing of Halberstadt. Had Gerda Baethe been aware of the historical processes underway in 1928, 32 the necessity for organization to ward off future catastrophe would have been apparent. That Baethe and others like her did not organize led to a situation where a very different, fundamentally senseless form of historical development was allowed to run its course, namely the organization for war. This organizational principle is allegorized in both texts through the inclusion of an illustration of a plan, devised by the Organisation Todt of the SS, to canalize the Alps. In the Halberstadt text the plan is described as follows:

Gerda hatte, als der Westwall gebaut wurde, vierzehn herrliche Tage mit einem Herrn von der Organisation Todt in der Eifel verbracht. [...] Von ihm hatte sie den Ausdruck: Allés bloB Organisation. Er zeigte ihr Plane, auf denen Schiffe bergauf über die Alpen die Poebene erreichten. Das war Organisation als Kanalbau, ingenieursberechnet.l9 Like the bombings, the canalization served no progressive ends, yet the organization behind both projects was of the highest order of technical complexity. While

the senselessness of the canalization project is evident from the plans, the raids present more of a problem in

identifying an initiation point for the process which led to them. Gabi Teichert, aware that conventional history

writing has failed to uncover these historical processes, attempts to uncover them herself by literally digging up history out of the ground. The film is interspersed with shots of the history teacher, shovel in hand, at various

excavation sites. Kluge presents the reader with an allegory for the task which the latter-day historian must undertake if society is going to become aware of the 33 historical processes underway today and not arrive at the point reached by Gerda Baethe. It is for the historian to provide the impetus for a form of organization which will prevent future catastrophes. Gerda Baethe was not the only person involved in the raids who stood powerless at a critical moment in history. Following "Stratégie von unten" is a section entitled "Stratégie von oben" in which Kluge demonstrates the

inevitability of the destruction of Halberstadt once the chain of events which led to it had been set in motion.

The aircraft crews who flew bombing missions during the Second World War were very different from the combatants of previous conflicts:

Es ist nicht der Einzelkampfer von Valmy, der bewaffnete Bürger (Proletariar, Lehrer, Klein- unternehmer), der diese Ângriffe durchführt, sondern der geschulte Fachbeamte des Luftkriegs.20

Those up above have no direct relationship to those

down on the ground, indeed they cannot even see them. The

relationship is not one of the attackers achieving personal gain at the expense of the attacked. The airplane crews

are simply the penultimate, albeit essential, link in the chain, carrying out the specific task for which they have

been trained. The final link in the chain is represented by the population on the ground. Modern warfare is impersonal and executed according to a strict division of

labor. Contributing to the bombing raids over Germany were many different individuals with widely varying, specific

tasks from producing oil in Texas to manufacturing machine

parts in the factories of the American midwest and the 34 north of England, to assembling those parts into aircraft, to servicing them at the bases in England, to tracking the weather over Germany, to flying the planes themselves. The aircraft are designed to perform specific tasks - in this case drop as many bombs as possible with the greatest possible accuracy. The relation of the person who finally pushes the button to drop a bomb on Halberstadt to this production process is that of an anonymous cog in the machine it helps drive: Hier fliegen nicht Flugzeuge im Sinne der Luftschlacht um England, sondern es fliegt ein Begriffs-System, ein in Blech eingehülltes Ideengebaude.2i

The reference to of Britain, which saw individual airmen doing battle in the skies over England and the Channel, is included to highlight the functionality of the task of the bomber crew. As in the case of the population on the ground, there is little to be learned from the other individuals at the center of the event, the aircraft crews. To illustrate this further Kluge includes in "Stratégie von oben" the transcript of an interview with Brigadier Frederick L. Anderson of the u.S. Air Force. The interview is conducted by a reporter by the name of Kunzert, a native of Halberstadt who had been with the

English troops when they occupied Sachsen-Anhalt, Anderson explains the clinical procedures of the raids on Halberstadt, how certain bombs were used to achieve certain ends, such as creating the right conditions for massive

fires to flare up, and then adding to them: Wir treiben keine Mittelalterstudien, aber haben doch auch gehort, daB eine solche Stadt aus dem Jahr 800 35

nach Christus stammt. [...] Erst müssen die Dacher abgedeckt sein, und es müssen Ôffnungen eingesprengt werden, die ins zweite oder môglichst erste Stockwerk hinabreichen, wo das Brennbare sitzt. Sonst haben wir keine Flâchenbrânde, keinen Feuersturm u s f . 22

Kunzert then asks Anderson about a rumor that a woman in the town below had hung from the church tower a white flag, sewn together out of bedsheets, to signal

capitulation, a rumor which Anderson dismisses as

" L a r i f a r i . ”23 what i f it were a trick he wants to know?

Kunzert persists, asking just what a town would had to have done to capitulate, but Anderson counters by saying that it would have been dangerous for a crew to have attempted to return to base fully loaded with bombs or to have attempted

a landing in the vicinity of the "captured" town: Spielen wir das doch einmal durch. Eine Maschine landet auf dem nahegelegenen Flugplatz der Stadt - Landebahn ware aber für Viermotorige zu kurz - und besetzt die Stadt mit 12 oder 18 Mann Besatzung? Woher weiB man, ob die Person, die das weiBe Laken hiBte, nicht von einem ErschieBungskommando wegen Defatismus langst erschossen ist?24

Kunzert finally corners Anderson by asking if the crews could not have jettisoned their loads over open fields, to which Anderson replies: Wer will für die schwerbeladenen Enten die Verantwortung übernehmen, nur weil sich ein weiBes Tuch gezeigt hat? Die Ware muBte runter auf die Stadt. Es sind ja teure Sachen. Man kann das praktisch auch nicht auf die Berge oder das freie Feld hinschmeiBen, nachdem es mit viel Arbeitskraft zu Hause hergestellt ist. Was sollte denn Ihrer Ansicht nach in dem Erfolgsbericht, der nach oben geht, s t e h e n ? 2 5 It is in this statement that the crux of the issue is

contained; the participants in the raids were caught up in

a process over which they individually had no control. Any

moral condemnation of the aircraft crews is necessarily 36 problematic since that condemnation should, by extension, include the aforementioned Texas oil workers, the weather trackers, etc. This is obviously unsatisfactory. The whole notion of an ethical subject, as Bowie writes, "has no real s e n s e . "26

In order to understand the destruction it is necessary to attempt, theoretically, to understand the conditions of the modern historical world where the individual is alienated not only from the products of his or her labor but also from experience itself. The individual fulfills a

function within an historical process without understanding that process. Unable to understand, the individual can only describe, but even here alienation is apparent. In

order to communicate the magnitude of a catastrophic event, the victims rely upon clichéd, ready-made phrases. The stories retold to the American psychologist Eastman are described by him as "fabrikmâBig."27 Eastman's term leads

Kluge to draw a parallel between the physical results of the historical process that is human labor and industry (the destroyed city), and the psychological results. The

situation in which human beings create the means of their own destruction is linked to the destruction of reasoning

powers. This theoretical understanding of history is not Kluge's work alone, but he is able to demonstrate it in a

way that makes it comprehensible. Towards the end of the text he cites Marx, the source for the theoretical

underpinning of his inquiry. Beneath a photograph of the destroyed city he appends a quotation from Marx as a 37 caption: Man sieht, wie die Geschichte der Industrie und das gewordene aeaenstandliche Dasein der Industrie das auf- geschlaqene Buch der menschlichen BewuBtseinskrafte. die vorliegende menschliche Psychologie ist.^*

In order to get beyond this ruinous situation a new conception of history writing will be necessary. In the investigation to follow of literary materials dealing with the destruction of Dresden, it is my aim to demonstrate that the eye-witness accounts of the raids which we possess, despite their obvious shortcomings, are important as registrations of the end result of a historical process. That we should not expect to glean from them a larger comprehension of the raids is clear. From the works which followed, however, discussion of which begins in chapter three, we might indeed expect some degree of insight. Yet we get relatively little. Taking my lead from Kluge, these works will be discussed from the perspective that writers have consistently failed to "dig" deep enough into history

in their expositions of the destruction, with the result that the events of February, 1945, remain inadequately

understood. Indeed, that in place of a true

contextualizing of the raids there has taken place a symbolizing of them for ideological ends which has contributed significantly to their contentious stature today. 38 Notes 1. Kluge, Alexander, Neue Geschichten. Hefte 1-18 'Unheimlichkeit der Zeit'. (Frankfurt am Main; Suhrkamp, 1977), 9. 2. Carp, Stefanie, "Die Erzahlung: "Der Luftangriff auf Halberstadt am 8. April 1945". Die mehrfache Bedeutung eines historischen Luftangriffes" in Krieasaeschichten. Zum Werk Alexander Kluges. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1987), 137. 3. Lifton, Robert Jay, "Beyond Atrocity", in Crimes Of War. A legal, political-documentary, and psychological inquiry into the responsibility of leaders, citizens, and soldiers for criminal acts in wars, ed. Richard A. Falk, Gabriel Kolko, Robert J. Lifton (New York: Random House, 1971), 19.

4. Kluge, 105, 5. Kluge, 104. 6. Kluge, 105.

7. Roberts, Dayid, "Alexander Kluge und die deutsche Zeit- geschichte: Der Luftangriff auf Halberstadt am 8.4.1945. in Alexander Kluge ed. Thomas Bohm-Christl (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 79. 8. Brecht, Bertolt, Schriften zum Theater 6 1947-1956. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 79. 9. Roberts, 102.

10. Roberts, 102.

11 Kluge, Alexander, Schlachtbeschreibung: Der orqanisatorische Aufbau eines Unglücks. reyidierte und erweiterte Fassung, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 7. 12. Bowie, Andrew, "New Histories: Aspects of the Prose of Alexander Kluge", Journal of European Studies xii (1982), 200.,

13 Kluge, Neue Geschichten. 35. 14. Roberts, 91. 15. Kluge, 59.

16. Kluge, Alexander, Die Patriotin: Texte/Bilder 1-6. (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1979), 148. 17. Kluge, 148.

18. Kluge, 148. 39

19. Kluge, Neue Geschichten. 61. 20. Kluge, 63. 21. Kluge, 66. 22. Kluge, 77. 23. Kluge, 78.

24. Kluge, 79.

25. Kluge, 79. 26. Bowie, 190.

27. Kluge, 104.

28. Kluge, 103. CHAPTER II

IMMEDIATE RESPONSES: 1945-1949

This second chapter is concerned only with those texts which were composed as direct responses to the bombings themselves and their aftermath, or to a first visit to the

destroyed city after February 13/14, 1945. Those individuals who recorded their impressions on visiting the city after 1949, or who were in Dresden at the time of the raids but did not write about their experiences until after

that year, will be discussed in ensuing chapters. Some of the texts were not published or made available until after 1949, but where they appeared in unadulterated

form they have been included; The strictness of the guidelines for inclusion in this chapter is essential to ensure the immediacy of the texts, since the concern here is with writings of primary informational importance. These works are a measure of the consciousness of catastrophe. These are texts composed in an extreme

situation, yet some writers are able to confront the chaos and impart to the reader at least an insight into the experience of catastrophe. The decision to limit this chapter to just four years

was prompted by two factors, the first being the changed

political situation after 1949. That year saw the founding

40 41 of both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, and the coming to power of Konrad

Adenauer (Chancellor until 1965) in the former and Walter Ulbricht in the latter (Secretary General until 1971). The establishment of the two states and the escalation of the Cold War exerted a profound influence on the treatment of

the bombing of Dresden in both history writing and

literature. Chapter three will discuss the period from

1949 to 1961 and focus on the ideological uses to which Dresden was put during that time.

The second factor is specifically literary. With the exception of a handful of poems by Max Zimmering and one by

Reinhardt Fetscher, Dresden did not provide the subject matter for a consciously literary text until 1949 with the publication of Bruno Werner's Die Galeere and Erhart Kastner's Das Zeltbuch von Tumilat. The texts to be discussed in this chapter — newspaper articles, letters, diaries and notebooks — represent the pre-literary

Dresden. With the exception of Nazi reporting of the raids, they should be read as unmediated attempts at

communicating the experience of catastrophe. The chapter

concludes with a section devoted to the visual arts of the immediate post-war period and the several important works of memorial which Dresden artists produced for their city and its people. 42

THE TEXTS

As one would expect, the most consciously propagandistic writings on the raids were provided by the

National Socialist press and these accounts will be looked at first. In Dresden, a single sheet of "Kurznachrichten fur die vom Luftkrieg betroffene Bevolkerung" (printed in Pirna, south-east of Dresden) appeared on February 14; it included an appeal to the population of the city to stand firm: Dresdner Volksgenossen! In kurzen Abstanden haben sich die Luftgangster Dresden zum Ziel ausgesucht. Die Gegner des deutschen Sozialstaates setzen in ihrem teuflischen HaB allés daran, soviel wie moglich zu zerstoren. Wir mvissen diesem HaB unseren unerschütterlichen Willen zum Leben entgegensetzen; unseren festen Glauben an die schicksalshafte Gerechtigkeit, die wir aber durch den Einsatz unserer ganzen Krâfte selbst erkampfen und verteidigen miissen. Bewahrt in dieser Stunde Disziplin und Ruhe!1 The same righteous tone was maintained in the first edition of Dresden's daily newspaper, Der Freiheitskampf. to appear after the bombing (February 16): Sachsens Hauptstadt ist Frontstadt geworden. Allerdings Stadt an der Front in einem Kriege, der wahrlich nicht mehr das geringste mit jener [...] Auseinandersetzung um Ehre und heilige Rechte zu tun hat, die die Welt Krieg zu nennen pflegt. Der nun auch gegen Dresden angewandte Terror aber bedeutet Mord und Vernichtung in der allerbrutalsten Form.2

Goebbels chose to withhold information about the devastation from the general population until early March, in the meantime leaking rumors to the neutral press in

Sweden and of a death toll of 250,000. By this means, he hoped to compound the fear, already sown by him in the German population, that the Allies were intent on 43 obliterating German cities and following through with the Morgenthau Plan which called for the creation of a strictly agrarian Germany. This fear, he reasoned, would stir the population to last acts of resistance, believing, perhaps, that scientists really were on the verge of perfecting a new wonder weapon which could still win the war for Germany.3

At this late stage of the war, only the most horrifying of accounts would be enough to maintain the level of fear requisite to spur the population on to further resistance. Thus it was that on March 4 an article entitled "Der Tod von Dresden: Ein Leuchtzeichen des Widerstandes" by Rudolf

Sparing, appeared in the Goebbels-edited weekly newspaper Das Reich, from which the following extracts are taken:

Um Mitternacht erschien am glutroten Himmel des Elbtals eine zweite britische Luftflotte und richtete mit Sprengbomben und Bordwaffen unter den Menschenmassen auf den Grünflachen ein Blutbad an, wie es bis dahin allenfalls die Phantasie eines Ilja Ehrenburg hâtte ersinnen konnen. [...] Die drei Luftangriffe auf Dresden - zwei in der Nacht vom 14. Februar und einer am darauffolgenden Mittag - haben, soweit Vergleiche bisher moglich, die radikalste Vernichtung eines groBen zusammenhangenden Stadtgebietes und im Verhaltnis zur Zahl der Einwohner und der Angriffe die weitaus schwersten Verluste an Menschenleben hervorgerufen. Eine Stadtsilhouette von vollendeter Harmonie ist vom europaischen Himmel geloscht. Zehntausende, die unter ihren Tiirmen werkten und wohnten, sind in Massengrabern beigesetzt, ohne daB der Versuch einer Identifizierung moglich gewesen ware. [...] In den inneren Stadtbezirken gibt es nur die vollkommene Zerstorung, keine Gebaudeteile oder Einzelhauser, die halbwegs wieder instand zu setzen waren. Daher ist dieses weite Gebiet menschenleer, hier gibt es nur Tote - und Lebende nur, um Tote zu bergen und VermiBte zu suchen. Es ist eine einfache Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung, wie sich bei dieser Sachlage Frauen, Kinder und Greise einerseits, Soldaten und Wehrpflichtige andererseits auf die Gesamtzahl der Toten verteilen. 44

In the event that an observer of the effects of the bombing on the city's population might erroneously confuse that population's continued quiet, dedicated faith in Nazi Germany with "abgestumpfter Gleichgültigkeit," Sparing offered a pseudo-psychological explanation for the prevailing mood of the city: Wir haben es als eine Einrichtung wohltatigen Selbstschutzes der menschlichen Natur schatzen gelernt, daB die Weite ihrer inneren Spannung eine Grenze hat. Jenseits ihrer sinkt der Zeiger, der fieberhaft ausschlug, auf den Nullpunkt zuriick. Das ist gewohnlich dann der Fall, wenn die Eindrücke so schwer und gewalttatig sind, daB sie uns, nach den iiblichen MaBstaben unseres Empfindens, zerbrechen müBten. Was Auge und Ohr wahrzunehmen sich nicht weigern konnen, was der Verstand, zwar widerstrebend vielleicht, doch als wirklich und ursachlich erfaBt, wenngleich es nicht zu fassen scheint, dem konnen wir, wenn es das MaB der Reaktionsfahigkeit sprengen will, den Zutritt zu unserem innersten Wesen furs erste verwehren, und so leben wir weiter - nur so konnen wir es. 1st die Moglichkeit, sich seelisch zu feien, auf einen allgemein menschlichen Abwehrinstinkt gegründet, so haben wir Deutschen ihn in diesem Krieg jedenfalls mit BewuBtsein ausgebildet; wir konnten es, weil keiner sich in seinem Leid allein fiihlte. Eine solche Haltung ist aüBerlich oft kaum von abgestumpfter Gleich­ gültigkeit zu unterscheiden, und der oberflachliche Beobachter mag sie leicht mit ihr verwechseln. Wie aber ware, trafe sein Bild zu, die einzigartige Erscheinung der deutschen Widerstandskraft zu erklaren! Nicht weil wir schwach sind, sondern weil wir stark bleiben wollen, verharten wir uns gegen uns selbst. Aus der Stadt, von der hier die Rede ist, schrieb mir zwischen dem 3. Februar, dem Tag des bisher schwersten Luftangriffs auf die Berliner Stadtmitte, und dem 13. Februar, dem Dresdner Katastrophentage, ein Mann, von dem ich nicht weiB, ob er noch lebt: "Jetzt gilt's, jetzt mUssen wir das Herz in beide Hande nehmen." Starb er unter Trümmern oder in Flammen, so gab er sein Leben gewiB tapferen Sinnes hin. Lebt er, so zog er mit Hundertausenden anderen aus der vernichteten Stadt trânen- und klaglos seines Weges. Wir machen keine Mitleidskampagne, wir rücken die Kriegführung des Feindes nur in das Licht eines Feuers, das er selbst entzündet hat. Er will uns von der einen Seite her, durch Massenmord zur Kapitulation zwingen, damit dann am verbleibenden Rest, wie sich die andere Seite ausdrückt, das Todesurteil vollstreckt werden kann. Gegen diese Drohung gibt es keinen anderen 45

Ausweg als den des kampfenden Widerstandes.4

Sparing's piece must have been deemed appropriate by his superiors on account of its emotive content, rather than its factual accuracy, since it appears that Goebbels himself was not fully cognizant of the damage done until a few days after this article appeared, when he received a visit from Dresden police chief and SS Gruppenfiihrer Alvensleben. The propaganda minister noted the visit in

his diary: Er schildert mir die Katastrophe von Dresden in den grausigsten Farben. Es hat sich tatsachlich hier eine Tragodie abgespielt wie selten iiberhaupt in der Geschichte der Menschheit und auch wohl kaum noch einmal im Verlaufe dieses Krieges. Jetzt beginnt das Leben in Dresden langsam wieder aus den Ruinen zu erwachen.5 In contrast to Sparing's article, which combined a fear-inspiring eulogy for the city with an appeal for continued resistance, there appeared on March 8 an article

entitled "Ohne Gepack" by Dr. Richard Ley, Reichspropaqandaleiter. which displayed a callous disregard for the feelings survivors may have had for their city. It is propaganda of the crudest variety and bespeaks a

desperate rearguard action:

Nach der Zerstorung nun auch des schonen Dresdens, atmen wir fast auf. Nun ist es : Die steinernen Denkmaler deutschen Schopfergeistes liegen in Trümmern. Jedoch die genialen Entwürfe deutscher Künstler sind gerettet. Nach ihnen werden wir wieder aufbauen! Wir werden jetzt im Blick auf den Kampf und den Sieg durch die Sorgen um die Denkmaler deutscher Kultur nicht mehr abgelenkt. Vorwarts! Das Schicksal hat nahezu die Halfte der Nation zu Besitzlosen gemacht und sie damit erleichtert. [...] Wie wollte jemand im Feuersturm brennender StraBen seine bürgerliche Standesfahne erheben! Auch die Salons sind verbrannt und die Zirkel in den man kleine Rebellionchen vorbereitete sind nicht mehr. So 46 marschieren wir ohne alle überfliissigen Ballast und ohne das schwere ideelle und matérielle bürgerliche Gepack in den deutschen Sieg. Wir treten an zum Sturm. Sturm-Sturm-Sturm lauten die Glocken von Turm zu Turm!^ This proved too much for even Goebbels who described in his diary the reaction to the article as "eine ausgekochte Wut."7 He himself was troubled by the twisted logic of it; Wenn ich diese Beweisführung fur richtig anerkennen wollte, dann müsste ich als letzte Schlussfolgerung daraus ziehen, dass es das beste ware, wir würden das Reich überhaupt dem Feind überlassen, da wir dann nicht das geringste Gepack mehr mitzuschleppen hatten.8 Meanwhile, native Dresdener Erich Kastner, writing in his diary in Berlin, could only offer black humor in response to the article: Sehr viele Türme stehen Herrn Dr. Ley nicht mehr zur Verfügung. Und die Glocken wurden langst zur Artillerie eingezogen. Wenn er zum Sturm antritt, muB ein Rundfunkwagen nebenherfahren und das Glockenlauten von alten Schallplatten abspielen.9 Not all reactions in the Nazi press were as crude as Sparing's. 's short text, "Die Untat von

Dresden," which appeared in the Deutsche Allaemeine Zeitunq of April 6 and subsequently in two further newspapers,10 has become the most oft-cited eulogy for the city, despite its distinctly political overtones. The full text reads as follows:

Wer das Weinen verlernt hat, der lernt es wieder beim Untergang Dresdens. Dieser heitere Morgenstern der Jugend hat bisher der Welt geleuchtet. Ich weiB, daB in England und Amerika gute Geister genug vorhanden sind, denen das gottliche Licht der Sixtinischen Madonna nicht fremd war und die von dem Erloschen dieses Sternes allertiefst schmerzlich getroffen weinen. Und ich habe den Untergang Dresdens unter dem Sodom und Gomorra-Hollen der englischen und amerikanischen Flugzeuge personlich erlebt. Wenn ich das Wort "erlebt" einfüge, so ist mir das jetzt noch wie ein Wunder. Ich nehme mich nicht wichtig genug, um zu 47

glauben, das Fatum habe mir dieses Entsetzen gerade an dieser Stelle in dem fast liebsten Teil meiner Welt ausdrücklich vorbehalten. Ich stehe am Ausgangstor des Lebens und beneide alle meine toten Geisteskameraden, denen dieses Erlebnis erspart geblieben ist. Ich weine. Man stoBe sich nicht an das Wort "weinen": die groBten Helden des Altertums, darunter Perikies und andere, haben sich seiner nicht geschamt. Von Dresden aus, von seiner kostlich-gleichmaBigen Kunstpflege in Musik und Wort sind herrliche Strome durch die Welt geflessen, und auch England und Amerika haben durstig davon getrunken. Haben sie das vergessen? Ich bin nahezu dreiundachtzig Jahre alt und stehe mit einem Vermachtnis vor Gott, das leider machtlos ist und nur aus dem Herzen kommt: es ist die Bitte, Gott moge die Menschen mehr lieben, lautern und klaren zu ihrem Heil als bisher.11

Nowhere does Hauptmann actually describe the raids but instead begins the mythologizing and symbolizing of them, incorporating both the Bible and Classical mythology. From the text it is not even evident that the destruction occurred during wartime. The Western Allies are condemned for their godless act but no mention is made of context.

The piece does not attempt to come to terms with the bombing but instead, Hauptmann chooses to begin right away with the allotment of guilt. , keeping a diary in his Californian exile, succinctly laid bare the false premise of Hauptmann's piece:

Hauptmann in der D. Allgem. Zeitung, vergoB Tranen ("Ich weine") iiber Dresden. Über sonst n i c h t s . l 2

During and after the war Hauptmann's actions throughout the time of the Third Reich became the subject of harsh criticism, although those close to the aged writer refused to see his stance as anything other than apolitical. His former secretary, Erhart Kastner, tells in a letter that he took Hauptmann's Dresden piece with him when he first 48 returned to the city in June, 1947: Ich war auf allés vorbereitet, aber wie kann man auf so etwas vorbereitet sein. Ich schrieb mir zwei Tage vor meiner Abreise die schonen und totwunden Worte ab, die Vater Gerhart nach dem Untergang der Stadt geschrieben und veroffentlicht hat, als man ihn darum bat (und die Weltpresse, vor allem der lappische und liigenhafte Kerri3 hat Unrat darüber gegossen, als ob ein parteiliches Wort darunter ware) - das schrieb ich mir ab und steckte es zu mir, und es sollte mir genügen; in die Stadt wollte ich gar nicht hinein.l4

The purposefully vague subject of "als man ihn darum bat" does little to strengthen Kastner's argument for Hauptmann's independence from the Party. After Hauptmann's death the controversy subsided and the intervening years have been kind to his legacy, to the point that extracts from the Dresden piece were sometimes cited by Soviet bloc historians of the bombing as supporting evidence in the case against Western/capitalist barbarism and by others as the reactions of an impartial observer.15 Hauptmann's piece was not, of course, the only eye­ witness reaction to the raids. Military historian Alexander McKee cites it along with the accounts of forty nine other eye-witnesses in his 1982 book on the bombing,

Dresden 1945: The Devil's Tinderbox. Some of the accounts are said to have been committed to paper while events were still fresh in the mind, while others were collected by

McKee some thirty years after events when he sought out

survivors and interviewed them. Both types are given the status of documentary evidence in which McKee places great faith, believing that "the story of Dresden can be told

only in the testimony of survivors."1® 49 The on-the-ground witnesses recount, uniformly, how they headed for a cellar once they heard the air-raid warning, how the walls shook and the noise deafened, how they emerged after the first attack to find a city in flames and then fled, where possible, to an open space, from where they once again had to find shelter when the second wave of bombers arrived. This is a grossly over­ simplified, perhaps cynical belittling of honest attempts to describe the indescribable (a word used by one of the witnesses) but it is unrealistic to expect any more. The accounts of McKee's book are as "fabrikmaBig” as those of Kluge's text. Some examples are: the word "hell" is used by nine witnesses to describe the scene; "inferno" appears five times and there are other ready-made comparisons which serve to illustrate the survivors' difficulty in finding language equal to the intensity of their experiences: "last judgment day," "witches' cauldron," "It was as if I was rsic! watching a film," "one hundred per cent horror film of our century," "a crater landscape," "nightmare," "the last days of Pompeii," "it was like an earthquake," "it was like a lunatic asylum." In addition to those who described events transpiring as in a film, two further witnesses talk of themselves as having seen events as if through "a veil." This tendency to rely on stock phrases was inadvertently demonstrated by Ronald Bailey, almost forty years after the event, in his review of McKee's book in the New York Times Book Review, when he adopted the language of Dresden 1945 to describe the city after the bombing as a 50

"hellish landscape."17 More extensive than the accounts of McKee's book are the diary entries of Wolfgang Paul, a German soldier who was in Dresden on wounded leave at the time of the raids. His entries are peppered with metaphors and similes which are at times successfully evocative and at others as clichéd as those above. As an example of the former there is Paul's description of the cellar in which he took refuge: Ich bin schnell im Keller, er beginnt nun wie ein Schiff im Sturm sich zu wiegen, zu schlingern, das kenne ich gut aus den Kellern an der Front, aus Berlin. Aber hier dauert das Schlingern endlos, er will nicht aufhoren, wir klammern uns aneinander wie Ertrankende.18

There is also the diarist's depiction of the scene at the railway station the next day as corpses were dragged from the cellar there: "wie ein Schacht, der in ein Bergwerk führt, das Leichen abbaut."19 (The painter Otto

Griebel would later use similar language to describe the bodies he saw piled up in the station as "einen Berg verkohlter Leichen.")2 0

Less effective are the same stereotypical phrases familiar from McKee's eye-witness accounts: "Das ist der

Untergang der Welt," "Wie Pompeji," "Gespenster die aus der Holle kommen" and "Vorhof der Hoile." At certain points, however, language fails Paul altogether and he is able to

do little more than repeat himself as if trying to force

consciousness of the situation into his head: Ich [...] sehe den Himmel brennen [...] der Himmel brennt, das sah ich noch nie, mit dem Himmel brennt die Stadt, sie und der Himmel brennen, von oben nach unten. 51 von unten nach oben, Himmel und Stadt haben sich miteinander verbunden, sie werden eine Holle.21

Paul's recounting of a meeting with an army captain tellingly illustrates how this total incomprehension could lead, in some instances, to a very real loss of mind: Hier steht Hauptmann M. , er hat die Dienstpistole gezogen und schreit: "Bei Philippi sehen wir uns wieder." Ich versuche eine Antwort zu schreien, sie gelingt nicht, ich verbeuge mich vor dem wahnsinnig gewordenen Hauptmann und laufe weiter. Nur fort, weg von hier, doch dann bleibe ich stehen, sehe mich um. Der Hauptmann hat die Pistole auf eine Leiche angelegt, die in einer zerfetzten Baumkrone hangt, und schieBt. Der GnadenschuB eines I r r e n . 2 2

It seems that the only defense against such a development is to attempt somehow to direct one's thoughts elsewhere. Paul's diary entry describing his leave-taking

of Dresden shows him conjuring up an idyllic scene to

distract himself from the horrors: Die ist grau, ich gehe iiber die Brücke, sehe mich nicht um. Dresden ist Asche, das Vergangene wurde Asche, ich denke nur an den Augenblick, jetzt, die Baume am Loschwitzer Ufer, das zerstorte Gartenhaus, in dem Schiller den Carlos schrieb. Gedanken- freiheit.23

Paul had to leave Dresden since despite being wounded he had been called back to the front. He finished the war

in an American internment camp. The Jewish philologist

Victor Klemperer and his non-Jewish wife Eva chose to leave

the city, for its destruction represented their chance to

escape deportation to a concentration camp. Klemperer

described the situation in Dresden in two texts, a letter

to writer Auguste Lazar dated May 29, 1945 and the notebooks which he published in 1946 under the title Die Unbewaltiate Snrache. Aus dem Notizbuch eines Philoloaen. 52 "LTI".24 In the notebooks Klemperer recorded events from the beginning of February, 1945, as occurring, "Noch ganz wenige Tage vor unserm dies ater, den 13. Februar 1 9 4 5 ,"25 but for him personally the outcome of that day proved, ironically, life-saving: Am Morgen des 13. Februar 1945 kam der Befehl, die letzten in Dresden zuriickgebliebenen Sterntrager zu evakuieren. Bisher vor der Deportation bewahrt, weil sie in Mischehe lebten, waren sie nun dem sicheren Ende verfalien; man muBte sie unterwegs abtun, denn Auschwitz war langst in Feindeshand und Theresienstadt aufs schwerste bedroht. Am Abend dieses 13. Februar brach die Katastrophe iiber Dresden herein; die Bomben fielen, die Hauser stürzten, der Phosphor stromte, die brennenden Balken krachten auf arische und nichtarische Kopfe, und derselbe Feuer­ sturm riB Jud und Christ in den Tod; wen aber von den etwa 70 Sterntragern diese Nacht verschonte, dem bedeutete sie Errettung, denn im allgemeinen Chaos konnte er der Gestapo entkommen.26

In the letter to Lazar, Klemperer described the situation after the raids as "ein unsaglicher Hollen- zustand" and elaborated on his escape:

Wir muBten fiir tot gelten; da riB ich den Judenstern herunter, und wir flohen. Was wir in den nachsten Wochen an Gefahren und Strapazen erlitten, immer neue Gefahr der Entdeckung durch die Gestapo, immer neue Bomber- und Tieffliegerangriffe, ergabe einen R o m a n . 27

At the time of the bombing of Dresden, Erich Kastner was living in Berlin, but in his diary he wrote of his anguish at not hearing from his parents who were in

Dresden. Confined to his basement he attempted to glean information about Allied bomber movements from the

"trockene Rundfunkdurchsage." As the days wore on he

feared the worst, since Berlin was full of rumors as to the

fate of various Dresdeners:

Begreiflicherweise kursieren tausend Geriichte. sei, um sich zu retten, aus dem Fenster 53

gesprungen und habe sich die Beine gebrochen. Peter Widmann, der einen Film drehte, werde vermiBt. Gunther Lüders, der zufallig driiben war, habe Viktor de Kowas Mutter heil herausgebracht.28

On the 23rd he heard of his parents' survival, but also of the terrifying scenes in the city: Dresden sei ausradiert worden. Der Feuersog des brennenden Neuen Rathauses habe aus der Waisenhaus- straBe fliehende Menschen quer durch die Luft in die Flammen gerissen, als waren es Motten und Nachtfalter. Andere seien, um sich zu retten, in die Loschteiche gesprungen, doch das Wasser habe gekocht und sie wie Krebse gesotten. Zehntausende von Leichen lagen zwischen und unter den Trümmern. [...] Ein Urlauber, der zum Bodenpersonal in Klotzsche gehort, erzahlte, in der MarschallstraBe hatten die Leichen noch vorige Woche [it is now March 3] auf dem Pflaster gelegen, und allein in der Altstadt habe es zwanzigtausend Tote gegeben.29 Kastner was filled with conflicting emotions at hearing this and knowing his parents to be safe: "Trauer, Zorn und

Dankbarkeit stoBen im Herzen zusammen. Wie Schnellzüge im

Nebel.” Tales of army generals committing suicide prompted Kastner to mourn, not for them but for Germany: "Das Dritte Reich bringt sich um. Doch die Leiche heiBt Deutschland.”30

On March 6, Kastner reported a rumor which subsequently, despite no basis in fact, became so entrenched in the public consciousness that, over thirty

years later, Bergander was still trying to lay it to rest: Ernst von der Decken hat gehort, daB ein GroBteil der Dresdner Altstadt, unter Verwendung der Trummerziegel, zugemauert werden s o l l e . 3 1

It is not difficult to imagine how a rumor could

quickly become "established fact" when the information which came through official channels was possessed of its 54 own ideological agenda. Kastner's reaction to the article by Robert Ley is evidence of the healthy degree of skepticism with which he regarded the Nazi media. It was understandable that the population should have paid more attention to "unofficial” sources of information.

Two artists who were in Dresden on the night of the

13th and who subsequently responded in greater detail to the devastation wrought, producing artworks which will be discussed later in this chapter, were Otto Griebel and

Wilhelm Rudolph. Both men also wrote of their experiences.

Griebel's account, which appeared posthumously as two chapters ("Der Untergang einer Stadt" and "Inmitten von

Ruinen") of a volume entitled Ich war ein Mann der StraBe: Lebenserinnerunqen eines Dresdner Malers [1986], is much

the longest, reaching a length of almost forty pages. The artist committed his thoughts to paper in July, 1945, by which time he had already produced a cycle of ten pictures,

using varyious techniques, with the title "Der Tod von

Dresden," and his best-known response to the raids

"Selbstbildnis vor dem brennenden Dresden mit Âhre in der

Hand." The writing bears the hallmarks of a piece composed

at a distance from events described therein. Information

which Griebel gained subsequently to his experiences is blended in with the reconstruction of his thoughts and action from the time. Despite the benefit of distance from

the events described, there is much which remains beyond comprehension:

So schaurig und ungeheurlich war das allés, daB ich es nur mit den Augen, kaum aber mit den Sinnen zu erfassen 55 vermochte.32

The artist relates how he returned several times to his home after the first raid in order to salvage what he could, principally the tools of his trade,33 and how the second raid made a mockery of his efforts as it left his house completely destroyed. Now destitute, Griebel drew spiritual strength from his faith in nature's regenerative powers:

Arm wie ein Settler und mit versengten Sachen wandte ich mich vom Hause fort, und mein Trost blieb, daS die Tages- und Jahreszeiten unbeirrt kommen und gehen, daB die Wiesen wieder griinen würden ünd ailes einst auch wieder gut werden musse.34

This theme is also present in the self-portrait mentioned above, which contains a very clear depiction of the regeneration of the seasons (the ear of grass in his hand). The stern countenance of the painter staring out of the self-portrait, ear of grass held deliberately high, against a background of Dresden's burning skyline, serves to give the portrait an air of reproof. The painter admonishes the world for its inability to live the harmonious life of the natural world as symbolized in the grass. Yet at the same time the grass is obviously a

symbol of regeneration — the painter's fixed stare should thus also be regarded as a challenge to the world not to repeat the mistakes which led to the destruction in the

background.

To return to Griebel's text, the painter describes how he escaped from the inner-city and witnessed its burning

from the banks of the Elbe. The scene puts him in mind of 56 a grotesque pyrotechnic display as he tries to relate what he sees with an event from the normal course of life: So ahnlich war es drauBen an den Elbwiesen zugegangen, wenn das gro&e Feuerwerk abgebrannt wurde; nur gab es diesmal ein Feuerwerk, das die ganze Stadt verzehrte, das Menschen in Fackeln verwandelte und ganze Kaskaden von Phosphor von den Fassaden der Hauser herabflieSen l i e B . 3 5

Yet his attempts to describe the scene in the city are always tempered by reflections on the impossibility of doing justice to his experiences:

Es war wirklich ein Bild des Unterganges und des Todes, wie man es sich nicht grausiger ausmalen k o n n t e , 36

Griebel's text demonstrates perhaps better than any other of this time, the difficulty of imaginatively coming to grips with an atrocity. In his own diary of the immediate post-war years. remarked upon the function served by writing at that time and the deformation of the truth which that function necessarily entailed:

Im Grunde ist allés, was wir in diesen Tagen aufschreiben, nichts als eine verzweifelte Notwehr, die immerfort auf Kosten der Wahrhaftigkeit geht, unweigerlich; denn wer im letzten Grunde wahrhaftig bliebe, kame nicht mehr zuriick, wenn er das Chaos betritt - oder er müBte es verwandelt haben. Dazwischen gibt es nur das Unwahrhaftige. 37

For Frisch, writing served as a mediation between himself and a reality so chaotic that without some form of mediation the experience of it would prove mentally destabilizing. Quite clearly this was the case for scenes in Dresden. Paul left the city without looking back;

Griebel, after he had found accommodation with friends outside the city, noted that an enforced return to the city had convinced him that the sights there should be avoided 57 whenever possible: Es kostete mich, abgesehen von der Gefahr eines neuerlich einsetzenden Angriffs, dieser Gang durch Dresden die groBte Überwindung, und das, was ich dort sah, wirkte bis zur Schwermut in mir nach, so daB ich es vermied, die so grausam hingemordete Stadt unnotig auf zusuchen.^ ® In the aftermath of the bombing, Griebel managed, to his credit, to maintain a coherent political analysis of the situation and showed, at least in his writing, none of the recriminatory attitude of a Gerhart Hauptmann: Der Wirt des nahen "Englischen Gartens," welches eine der nobelsten Dresdner Gaststatten gewesen war, sprach mich an und fragte, an wen er sich wegen des Schadenersatzes zu wenden habe. Da konnte ich nur noch bitter lacheln und sagte: "An den Reichsstatthalter Mutschmann, beziehungsweise an Herrn ."39

Wilhelm Rudolph was one man who was able to face the chaos of destruction. He remained in Dresden after the bombing to produce an impressively comprehensive body of art works depicting the destroyed city. He took it upon

himself to document the devastation and his works represent perhaps the finest eye-witness documentation which has been

left to us. Later he wrote:

Instinktiv flohen und mieden die Menschen die tote Stadt. Gesindel machte sie unsicher. Mich aber zwang es, hineinzugehen und die toten WohnstraBen aufzusuchen und sie zu zeichnen, die Unabsehbarkeit der zerstorten Flachen festzuhalten. This proved more difficult than he had supposed:

Mein erster Versuch, die Triimmerstatte meines einstigen Zuhause zu zeichnen, miBlang. Soldaten, die ich nicht vermutet hatte, verwehrten mir die Weiterarbeit; Dresden sei F e s t u n g . 4 0

In a 1981 interview Rudolph recounted how he had not

been the only one to have experienced such problems: 58

Hahn hat die Leichenverbrennungen photographiert. Auf dem Altmarkt. Auf dem Altmarkt hatte man die Toten zusammengetragen in den Tagen darauf; zusammengekarrt aus alien Stadtteilen, fuhrenweise; wie Kadaver-Fuhren. Dann wurden die Menschen verbrannt, in solchen Stapeln; immer zwei-, dreihundert auf einem Haufen. Schwellen dazwischen, solche Trager, damit es besser brennt; brannte aber schlecht. Da hat man diese Leichenstapel mit Flammenwerfen verbrannt. Hahn hat das photographiert. Man hat ihn auch festgenommen, daB er solches Grauen dokumentiert; dann wieder freigelassen. Kompetenzstreitigkeiten. Man dachte wohl, daB man das spater mal verwenden konnte. Nach dem Endsieg.41 Even after war's end problems persisted:

Nach der Besetzung blieb es nicht weniger schwierig. Ausgebombt, hungernd, mit meiner Frau nur in provisorischen Bleiben hausend, geringgeschatzt in meiner Not, fand mein Vorhaben keinerlei Verstandnis und wurde bestenfalls belachelt. Das Wort "Dokument" lieB man einigermaBen gelten fur meine Arbeit, so daB ich weiterarbeiten konnte.

In his sketches, which thus enjoyed the status of documentary works in progress, Rudolph conjured up a pervasive atmosphere of mourning while his limited writings on the raids display an eye for the telling detail. His account of the aftermath of the bombing begins conventionally enough:

Das heraufdammernde Licht des 14. Februar 1945 erhellte nur noch eine gliihende Brandstatte an der Elbe, da wo am Vortage Dresden gewesen war.

As he continues, however, his evocation of the still burning fires suggests the completeness of the destruction:

Langezogene Flammenhalse leckten an den Triimmerfassaden hintastend den letzten Sauerstoff aus Lochern und Abgriinden.

Yet in the midst of this devastation Rudolph chooses to document a seemingly insignificant detail which in fact

communicates only too forcefully the horror of the raids: Der in der Flammenglut flüssig und klebrig gewordene Asphalt hielt die Schuhe der vor dem Tode fliehenden 59 unbaritiherzig fest. Noch nach Monaten fand ich immer wieder diese Zeugen der Todesnacht, immer wieder Frauen- und Kinderschuhe.

Further, his depiction of the ruined buildings, he encounters goes beyond a chronicling of damage done, to suggest the pall of mourning which hangs over the city after its destruction;

Der Sandstein, das bevorzugte Baumaterial des alten Dresden, gab den Trümmern viel Skelettartiges. Seine Oberflache war in den Flammen in schonen gelben und roten Farben verglüht. Den Fassaden schien die Haut abgezogen zu sein. Aber immer noch, auch im Tode, bewahrten sie den groBartigen Formwillen ihrer Schopfer. Als Zeugen einer groBen früheren Epoche waren sie führend schon und einsam in tiefer T r a u e r . 42

The majesty of the city, even in destruction, impressed itself upon others also, especially those who returned after the bombing. Erhart Kastner wrote to a friend in

June, 1947:

Dresden erinnerte mich auch an Romisches, aber in ganz anderem Sinn: wie am Palatin, lieblich-groB und traurig, schon überblüht und bewachsen.43

Two months later, the painter Curt Querner noted in his diary:

Die tote Stadt war schon, graBlich schon, die roten Ruinen, das grUne Gras wuchert überall auf den StraBen, Mauerreste, allés sah so graBlich, phantastisch aus - wie tote Seelen - ich war begeistert davon! Ich sah, die Trümmer langsam durchschreitend - Totenstille ringsum.44

Unlike the above, others who bore witness to the city in ruins were unable to do much more than chronicle. Upon her return from exile in Palestine, the painter noted the extent of the damage:

Hier ist die OstbahnstraBe einmal gewesen. Hier schaute ich auf das Stellwekhauschen - Trümmer -, der Kirchturm dort von der WerderstraBe eine kaputte Rohre, und diese kleine Kirche an der BeuststraBe, das kleine 60

anspruchslose Kirchlein - Trümmer auch s i e . 45

Writer Hans Krey also resorted to compiling a list of the buildings destroyed as the only method by which to convey the devastation: Die Pavilions im Zwinger sind zerstort; sein Kleinod, die geniale Gemeinschaftsarbeit Poppelmanns und Permosers, der Wallpavillon, ist zertrümmert. Die Sempersche Gemaldegalerie ist wie die benachbarte Oper dès gleichen Bauschopfers leblose Hülle um leere Raume, in denen einst die Welt in Demut vor der Sixtina verharrte und den Klangen lauschte, welche die Stabführung der groBten Kapellmeister aus dem Orchester hervorzauberte. Die Schinkelsche Hauptwache bietet den Anblick einer antiken Trümmerstâtte. Als hatte der Teufel einen Zornesschlag geführt, sind die Schiffe der Hofkirche zermalmt. Im SchloB der Wettiner hat das Feuer reiche Nahrung gefunden, ebenso im benachbarten Taschenbergpalais. Unter dem neuzeitlichen Aufbau der fielen die letzten mittelalterlichen Reste des alten Franziskanerklosters zusammen. Das edle Renaissance-Portal der ehemaligen SchloBkapelle wurde am JUdenhof ein Raub der Flammen. Zertrümmert ist das feinsinnige Dinglinger-Haus, sind die baulichen Kleinode Knoffels, das Kurlânder-, das Cosel-, das Hoymsche Palais, das Altstadter Rathaus; auch das reprasentativste Haus Dresdens, das "Palais de Saxe" ist nicht mehr. Und schweift der Blick weiter, beklagen wir drüben auf dem rechten Elbufer die Vernichtung der Baudenkmaler des Franzosen Longuelune, das als Porzellanmuseum gedachte Japanische Palais, in dem die Schatze aus den Bibliotheken der Wettiner, Brühl und Bünau eine ideale Heimstatte fanden, und das imposante Blockhaus am Elbbrückenkopf. Eine der schonsten Parkanlagen der Welt, der GroBe Garten, ist tausendfaltig zerfetzt und verstümmelt, sein Juwel, das Palais von Johann Georg Starke, ist nur noch beschadigte P a s s a d e . 46

Dramatic advisor Hugo Hartung made the following note

in his diary upon his arrival in Dresden in July, 1945; Beim Alberttheater in der Neustadt fangt die Zone volliger Vernichtung an, setzt sich über den Neustadter Markt fort - zerstort ist der Blick auf die herrlichen Turmsilhouetten, der sich von der Brücke aus bot-, und dann kommt die Hofkirche, einst fast sinnlich elegant mit dem Schmuck ihrer bewegten Simsfiguren, nun verstümmelt durch eine eingestürzte Wand. Der Semper- bau der Staatsoper - ausgebrannt der festlichste Theaterraum Deutschlands. Der Zwinger, Poppelmanns Werk, grazios und spielerisch wie der Uhrenschlag des 61

Porzellanglockenspiels - zerstort, zerstort!! Ich stehe auf dem Postplatz und schaue fast stumpf in dieses Grauen. Alle grofien Hauser rundum - Amtsgebaude, Wohnungen, Geschaftshauser, Hotels - sind Triimmerhaufen, Steinbriiche einer vernichteten Kultur. These chronicles of destruction, although they tell us little more than historical texts which also chronicle, do communicate the shock at the extent of the devastation which a first time visit to the city after the raids made plain. Confounded by finding destroyed buildings wherever they looked, Grundig, Krey and Hartung simply began lists.

Yet in the very monotony of these lists one senses not only the devastation wrought but also the numbing of the senses which it occasioned in these returnees. In his diary Hartung employed but one image to describe the scene and in view of his theatrical background it is an unsurprising one: Selten nur, daB eine Passade noch ein gespenstisches Kulissendasein vorgaukelt.47

Yet in the midst of the ruins Hartung and his three fellow travellers were the beneficiaries of great

generosity on the part of some survivors. They were plied with coffee and fed handsomely:

Und das in einer Stadt, wo Brotschnitten kostbar sind und die Rationen mehr als klein! Keiner aus dem Mietshaus, der sich sehen lieBe, ohne daB er sich nicht in einem schoneren Sinne "sehen lassen" wollte. Ja, es wollte jeder noch ein biBchen mehr tun als der andere.48

The resilience of the population was a quality much vaunted in the ensuing writings of East German historians

but was also stressed by, among others, in 1946, in talking about the renewal of the cultural scene: 62 Das Wiedersehen mit meiner alten Wirkungsstatte Dresden hat mich erschiittert. Diese Triimmerwelt, die an Pompeji erinnert, wiirde mich vollig deprimiert haben, hatte ich nicht schon in den ersten Tagen gesehen, welch reger und nimmermüdé Geist und Aufbauwille hier am Werk sind. Ich fand hier einen Optimismus, der mich bewegt und mir beweist, daB die alte aktive Dresdner Kunstatmosphare auch noch zwischen Ruinenfeldern wirksam i s t . 49

It is important to note, however, that Dix made his remarks during an interview with a reporter from the Taqliche Rundschau. Privately, other visitors to the city expressed grave doubts about the mental health of the population. Both artist Conrad Felixmiiller and writer Erhart Kastner identified many similarities between the modes of thinking they encountered and those they remembered from the Nazi period, but they are at odds in their diagnoses of this predicament. Felixmiiller saw no evidence that the population of Dresden, or for that matter the population at large, had made any attempt to confront honestly the past. In a letter of January 7, 1946, he

expressed his opinion that past events had been taken far too lightly: Als ich in Dresden war, erschiitterten mich doch die Trümmer unsrer lieben Heimat; dennoch ist das Volk noch nicht kuriert - es steckt noch in der Begriffs- verwirrung, die zum Nazismus fiihrte - fur mein kurzes Leben gebe ich die Hoffnung auf, eine Anderung zu erleben; vielleicht ware es doch besser gewesen den gar nicht immer schweren "Heldentod" zu sterben, um vor diesem materiellen und geistigen Trümmerhaufen verschont zu bleiben. Man hat den Eindruck, dass die gesamte Welt den deutschen Unsinn zu leicht nimmt — Oder sollen wir (nach Churchill) im eignen Saft schmoren?50

He continued in this pessimistic tone in a letter to his sister, dated February 27. He despaired at finding anything more than a ready-made response to the raids — a 63 response which saddened and angered him and left him feeling very alone in his reaction; Ich sah Dresden -, neben den zermalmten Stadten und Dorfern des Ostens ein wirkliches Ende unsres Lebens, um das man eben lebte. Die Menschheit im Einzelnen wie im Ganzen ist ohne jede tiefe Ernsthaftigkeit - es ist grotesk, wie dieses furchtbare Geschehen keinerlei tiefe Wirkungen hervorgerufen hat. Schon bei der Truppe fand kaum Einer ein Verhaltnis zu diesen Ereignissen, rund um uns herum. Und ich finde mich deshalb nicht mit dieser Leichtfertigkeit ab. Es ist ja nicht einmal Menschenliebe die mir diese Leichen und Verwundeten, von Panzern Zerfahrenen oder seit Wochen nicht Beerdigten aus dem inneren Bilde nicht mehr verschwinden lasst: ich sehe und erlebe nur, dass man tut, ganz wie an der Front, als müsste das so sein. Vielleicht bin ich irre - denn ich hasse seitdem die Menschen, die mir mein Herz immer mehr verschliessen. Ich kann nach diesen Dingen nicht zur Tagesordnung übergehen - und finde, die Menschheit muss noch sehr lange stumm vor diesem Schrecken verweilen. Der Anblick dieser Dinge, sowohl die Vision vor dem Tatsachlichen wie dann als ich mitten drin war, wird den Rest meines Lebens bestimmen. Sodass Allés, was ich hier und ringsherum erlebe und unter Menschen mit- machen muss, mich abstosst; ich bin eben einsam geworden und darin eigentlich glücklich; es stôrt mich, was mich dabei herausholt.51 FelixmUller placed the burden of responsibility for coming to terms with the raids squarely on the shoulders of

the individual. He remained incredulous that the

destruction of Dresden had not brought the population to question the nature of a society in which such a thing

could have happened. Erhart Kastner, on the other hand, ignored the issue of personal responsibility and placed the blame for Germany's predicament (pre and post-bombing) on "external" factors. First it was the Nazis and then the Soviets:

Die Deutschen leben unter einem finsteren Druck, und Du kannst sprechen mit wem Du willst, alle werden Dir sagen: es ist in Weg und Ziel dasselbe wie unter Hitler, nur weit darüber hinaus. Alle psychischen Folge-Erscheinungen sind deshalb auch dieselben wie 64

damais: die graue Apathie, das dumpfe Geschehenlassen, das vollig sinnlose, aber hartnâckige Glauben an ein Wunder, ganz wie damais.52 Implicit in KSstner's reasoning is a belief that during the Nazi years there existed two Germanies: a passive, non- Nazi Germany to which things happened and an active Nazi

Germany which caused those things to happen. Felixmiiller subscribed to no such distinction. For him, Nazi crimes were German crimes and responsibility for them could not be simply brushed aside. Blind to the notion of collective responsibility, Kastner did not hesitate in coming to

Gerhart Hauptmann's defense and in the letter to Elisabeth Jungmann cited above he continued in his mentor's tone, giving full rein to a description of the terror of the night of the 13th: Die Menschen sind aus den engen Gassen zu Zehntausenden nicht mehr herausgekommen, wenn man es nicht sonst wüBte, würde man es an der Lage der Dinge, wie sie heut noch ist, erkennen. Man sieht ja oft gar nicht mehr, wo eine Gasse war, und die Hauser in der Innenstadt waren uralt und sehr hoch, auch war in Dresden gar nichts vorbereitet, die Leute wiegten sich sehr in Sicherheit und glaubten, die Stadt werde wegen ihrer berühmten Schonheit verschont. AuBerdem waren ja bekanntlich in diesen Tagen und Wochen doppelt so viel schlesische Fliichtlinge in der Stadt als sonst Einwohner, das war die groBte Katastrophe. The senselessness of the bombings is stressed repeatedly; Soldat war sozusagen keiner in der Stadt, und Industrie auch nicht, wie die Welt weiB. Auch war der Krieg schon gewonnen.53

As Hauptmann, Kastner was most concerned with his own small corner of the world which, more specifically than

Dresden, was represented by the library where he had worked and which he visited: 65

Man kann nicht einmal sagen, daB einen Schrecken und Schmerz erfiillt bei solch einem Gang. Was man sieht, hat mit dem, was war, fast nichts zu tun. Der Wider- sinn ist zu groB, das Herz antwortet kaum. [...] Wenn nun an Stelle einer solchen geradezu zum Pedantischen erhobenen Ordnung bloB noch ein Haufen Schutt da ist, kann man gar nichts dazu sagen. Es ist ebenso sinnlos wie das Chaos, das Nichts, die Barbarei es ist.54

The description concludes with the dramatic image of time itself having been brought to a standstill;

Und es schlagt keine Glocke mehr über der Stadt, auch wo die Türme noch stehen; die Uhren sind alle in der Entsetzens-Stunde stehen geblieben, die SchloBkirchen- Uhr zeigt immer noch auf dreiviertel e l f . 55

Final note should be made of Kastner's casualty figures which, as one might suspect, erred on the very high side and trusted to rumor: Es ist niemand, der die Toten dieser beiden Stunden in einer und derselben Nacht niedriger schatzt als auf 200,000, die meisten nennen mehr, das Doppelte, die damais offiziele geheime Zahl war 265,000. Genau wird es sich nie feststellen l a s s e n . 56

The amount of space devoted to this one letter of

Kastner's may seem disproportionate to its obviously limited circle of readers (it was not published until 1984) but Kastner's sentiments were symptomatic of those which found wide acceptance in Germany after the war. He was not alone in declaring himself to have been an opponent,

although not actively, of the Nazi regime, who was merely

doing what was necessary to survive. In order to sidestep questions of complicity, these self-proclaimed opponents elevated the suffering endured by the "non-Nazi" Germans to the position of defining characteristic of experience

during the Nazi period. Kastner elevated the bombing of Dresden above everything else which occurred in the twelve 66 years previous, as did Hauptmann. The writings of these two men must be viewed against the background not only of denial but also of the.re-writing of personal and, by extension, communal history. They are, quite clearly, attempts to wipe the slate clean. Dresden was pressed into service as a counter-balance to Nazi crimes in the same way as it would later be employed by the revisionists in the

Historikerstreit. But just as there are those today, such as Habermas, who reject such a usage, so too were there writers in the post-war period who did not succumb to selective amnesia. Heinrich Boll, writing in 1952 on the topic of the so-called "Trümmerliteratur" of the immediate post-war years, reminded writers that, "Das Auge des

Schriftstellers sollte menschlich und unbestechlich sein,"57 and that individuals were responsible for acts committed in their name. These acts could not be simply forgotten:

Es ist unsere Aufgabe, daran zu erinnern, daB der Mensch nicht nur existiert, um verwaltet zu werden - und daB die Zerstorungen in unserer Welt nicht nur auBerer Art sind und nicht so geringfügiger Natur, daB man sich anmaBen kann, sie in wenigen Jahren zu heilen.58

Boll confronted what he saw upon his return from active service and wrote about it unflinchingly: Die Zeitgenossen in die Idylle zu entführen würde uns allzu grausam erscheinen, das Erwachen daraus ware schrecklich, oder sollen wir wirklich Blindekuh miteinander spielen?59

Erich Kastner, who it will be remembered was away in

Berlin at the time of the raids on Dresden, returned to his native city in September, 1946 and, like Boll and 67 Felixmüller, refused to look away. He prefaced the account of his return visit, an account which was published in the

Neue Zeitunq of November, 1946, with an appeal to his readers to do the same; Es gibt wichtige und unwichtige Dinge im Leben. Die meisten Dinge sind unwichtig. Bis tief ins Herz hinein reichen die fur wahr und echt gehaltenen Phrasen. Gerade wir müBten heute wie nie vorher und wie kein anderes Volk die Wahrheit und die Luge, den Wert und den Unfug unterscheiden konnen. Die zwei Feuer der Schuld und des Leids sollten allés, was unwesentlich in uns ist, zu Asche verbrannt haben. Dann ware, was geschah, nicht ohne Sinn gewesen. Wer nichts mehr auf der Welt besitzt, weiB am ehesten, was er wirklich braucht. Wem nichts mehr den Blick verstellt, der blickt weiter als die andern. Bis hinüber zu den Hauptsachen.60

Having made his intention in dealing with the destruction clear, he could then continue with a description of what he saw. As with other returnees it was the sheer extent of the devastation which impressed itself upon him:

In dieser Steinwuste hat kein Mensch etwas zu suchen, er muB sie hochstens durchqueren. Von einem Ufer des Lebens zum andern. Vom Niirnberger Platz weit hinter dem Hauptbahnhof bis zum Albertplatz in der Neustadt steht kein Haus mehr. Das ist ein FuBmarsch von etwa vierzig Minuten. Rechtwinklig zu dieser Strecke, parallel zur Elbe, dauert die Wustenwanderung fast das Doppelte. Fiinfzehn Quadratkilometer Stadt sind abgemaht und fortgeweht.61

He compared what he saw to the aftermath of a natural catastrophe which left behind only chaos. Yet the destruction went beyond even that. The changes wrought by latter-day technology were equivalent to those which the natural world requires considerably more time to effect:

Die steinernen Wanten und Planken der gestandeten Kolosse sind im Gluthauch des Orkans wie Blei geschmolzen und gefrittet. Was sonst ganze geologische Zeitalter braucht, namlich Gestein zu verwandeln - das 68

hat hier eine einzige Nacht zuwege gebracht. Remembering back to his childhood and life as a student he realized that the devastation of the city had also meant the destruction of the dreams he had had of one day returning to the city to live out an idyllic existence. To salvage what he could of his childhood memories he scoured the city for those places formerly so familiar to him and found them in ruins. Like Hartung and Grundig he was able to do no more than chronicle the destruction and once again we become aware of the numbing of the senses which such a vista occasioned: Ich lief einen Tag lang kreuz und quer durch die Stadt, hinter meinen Erinnerungen her. Die Schule? Ausgebrannt ... Das Seminar mit den grauen Internatsjahren? Eine leere Passade ... Die Dreikonigskirche, in der ich getauft und konfirmiert ymrde? In deren Baume die Stare im Herbst, von Übungsflügen erschopft, wie schrille, schwarze Wolken herabfielen? Der Turm steht wie ein Riesenbleistift im Leeren ... Das Japanische Palais, in dessen Bibliotheksraumen ich als Doktorand biiffelte? Zerstort ... Die Frauenkirche, der alte Wunderbau, wo ich manchmal Motetten mitsang? Ein paar klagliche Mauerreste ... Die Oper? Der Europaische Hof? Das Alberttheater? Kreutzkamm mit den duftenden Weihnachtsstollen? Das Hotel Bellevue? Der Zwinger? Das Heimatmuseum? Und die anderen Erinnerungsstatten, die nur mir etwas bedeutet batten? Vorbei. V o r b e i . 6 2

With bitter irony he noted that of the few buildings intact, the army barracks was one. This prompted Kastner to wish that events had transpired differently: Hatte stattdessen nicht die Frauenkirche lebenbleiben konnen? Oder das Dinglingerhaus am Jiidenhof? Oder das Coselpalais? Oder wenigstens einer der friiheren Renaissance-Erker in der SchloBstraBe? Nein. Es muBten die Kasernen sein! Such a rumination may well have prompted Erhart Kastner to launch into an accusation of Allied barbarism but Erich 69

Kastner would not make that convenient leap: the destruction came as a consequence of "dem modernen

Materialkrieg. "63 what is important now is to prevent such an event ever re-occurring and to that end Erich Kastner finished his piece with a plea for mutual understanding: Trotzdem und alien Ernstes, - ich glaube, daB es hülfe, wenn wir einander kennen und verstehen lernten. Das hat bereits sein Gutes, wenn vier entfernte Verwandte [meaning the four Allies] ein ruiniertes Bauerngut erben. Und kein Mensch wird mir einreden konnen, daB das zwischen vier Parteien und unserem hochsten Gut, der Heimat, anders zu sein hatte. 1st es so? So ist es.64

THE VISUAL ARTS

"Dresden ist eine ausgesprochene Malerstadt."65

Before the Nazi ascension to power, Dresden, along with Berlin and Munich, had been one of Germany's principal artistic centers. Already in this chapter visual artists have featured prominently: Dix, Felixmüller, Glôckner, Griebel, Lea Grundig, Rudolph and Volwahsen have all been cited and there were many more who called Dresden home.66

Between the years 1945 and 1949 three trends emerged in the works of Dresden artists. The first was the creation of

cycles of works depicting the destroyed city which aimed for a comprehensiveness impossible to achieve in the single work. These cycles mirrored the attempts of those writers

who tried to communicate the extent of the destruction through the act of chronicling. The second was the employment of Christian iconography in works which eschewed

topographic specificity in an attempt to provide allegories 70 for the suffering of Dresden's population. The third was the self-portrait — artists taking stock of the situation at the personal level.

CYCLES OF WORKS: THE EXAMPLE OF WILHELM RUDOLPH.

Since the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the defining characteristic of modern warfare has been bombardment from

the air. The First World War featured aerial combat but

the massive devastation which advanced military technology had made possible was first witnessed by the inhabitants of

Spanish towns and cities. Picasso's memorial for the Basque town of Guernica dates from this conflict (1937, the

bombing of Guernica took place on April 26 of that year)

and represents the first treatment of the new style of war­ fare. The six years of World War which followed the Spanish conflict saw an escalation in the tactic of aerial bombardment to the point that no city, however far from the

front it might be located, could consider itself safe. The city in ruins thus represented an apt symbol for the

destructive capabilities of modern-day warfare. After May, 1945, German artists found this symbol irresistable,

testimony to which fact is the prodigious number of ruin-

pictures which were p r o d u c e d , 67 so many in fact that the

East German journal of the arts, Bildende Kunst. published

an article in 1948 with the title "Ruinenromantik:

Ruinendamonie" in which the author, a certain E.L., attacked the trend as having reached saturation point. 71

E.L. compared the ruin-pictures of the post-war years with late baroque paintings which romanticized the ruins of ancient, deserted cities and found the two genres not dissimilar: Im Grunde hat die Kunst noch immer kein neues Verhaltnis zu den Ruinen gefunden. Sie "gereichen" nicht mehr "zum Schmuck" der Guten Stube und der Sonntagsnachmittags-Ausflugsgegenden, aber sie schmiicken als fast erwünschte Versatzstücke, ein morbid gewordenes, sich psychoanalysierendes Innenleben. Die Romantiker waren in das Memento mori malerischer Trümmer verliebt, die heutigen Maler sind es in die zerfaserte, bizarre Abscheulichkeit der Bombehkriegsfolgen.68

The defining characteristic of modern warfare had become the defining content of the visual arts, a situation which cultural authorities in the Soviet zone of occupation sought to change. Depictions of ruins, after all, were hardly compatible with the forward-looking art called for by these authorities. E.L. accused the "ruin-artists" of

remaining, "hinter der Zeit und ihren progressiven Tendenzen zurück,"69 but such a charge ignored the very

real need of the population to mourn its loss. In conversation in 1981, artist Wilhelm Rudolph remembered back to the period after the bombings: "Zum Trauern war gar

keine Zeit; 1945 hat keiner getrauert; da ging es ums

Überleben."70 It was principally this consideration which motivated Rudolph to create as comprehensive a survey of

the destruction as he was able, working in the belief that

once the fight for physical survival had been won, his

works would remain as lasting testimony — they would serve as a repository for the consciousness of destruction. 72 Rudolph created a cycle of sketches in 1945/46 which finally totalled 150 works and bore the title "Das zerstorte Dresden." He followed this cycle with a second, "Dresden als Landschaft," 200 watercolors depicting the erosion of the ruins by the elements. These cycles then served as the raw material for three further cycles of woodcuts: "Dresden 1945 - Nach der Katastrophe" (35 wood­ cuts, completed in 1949), "Aus" (47 woodcuts, also finished in 1949) and "Dresden 1945" (20 woodcuts and lithographs, first published in 1955). The majority of the works from each cycle are topographically specific: Rudolph documented the state of the city from a myriad of vantage points. That the expressive power of these woodcuts has not diminished over time, was demonstrated by the release, in 1972, of a newly-screened selection of 55 of the works under the title "Dresden 1945."

The achievement of the sketches alone is considerable.

They document not just the state of the city after the raids but also the oppressive air of collapse and silence. It is not the details of destruction which Rudolph records but rather its atmosphere. Beneath an overcast, gray sky, indistinct ruins gape at each other across streets filled

with hills of rubble. Rudolph's eye is directed upon the city after the blazes have died out; and although the

majority of the sketches show a seemingly uninhabited environment, he does depict individual people, bundled up amorphous forms waiting in line, sleeping on park benches

or trudging heavily through the snow and rubble, carrying 73 what they have managed to salvage in sacks slung over their shoulders. These are sad pictures of mourning and yet despite the bleakness, life is continuing, albeit under wretched circumstances. While the woodcuts might recall the expressionists stylistically, Rudolph does not project agony and pain but rather a muted suffering. The emphasis on chronicling the state of the city, so much to the fore in the sketches, gives way, in the woodcuts, to a complete depersonalization of human beings and their surroundings. Buildings, people, trees and the sky are atomized through the use of short, sharp cuts. A destruction such as this reduces everything

to its most basic of components. Rudolph's cycles are well-known works which have

enjoyed repeated public showings and represent the point of departure for almost all published histories of East German art. Karin Thomas, a West German art historian/critic, has

labeled Rudolph's sketches and woodcuts, "das Erschiitterndste, was zu diesem Thema [the destruction of Dresden] geschaffen worden ist,"71 while East German Lothar

Lang, writing in 1985, expressed the belief that Rudolph's

work, "erweist sich erneut als künstlerisch wichtigste Reaktion auf die fiirchterliche Realitat des 13. Februar."?^ Rainer Zimmermann numbered the cycles among, "den

bleibenden Zeugnissen unserer Zeit" and continued, "die Wirklichkeit spricht ihre ungekünstete Sprache gleichsam

ohne Medium - ein Vollkommenheitsgrad, den Kunst nur selten erreicht."73 74

Other cycles from the period, more stylized than Rudolph's, received less attention. Willy Wolff, a former Meisterschiiler of Otto Dix, was no less busy than Rudolph, producing approximately 200 drawings of Dresden after the raids that exhibit a vaguely surrealistic, graphically highly-detailed style. Wolff's focus is on the absurd detail: the twisted metal girders of a furrier's shop which now hang uselessly in the open air; concrete gate posts which no longer serve any function, since the gate itself is missing. These details make clear the absurdity of the devastation while at the same time distancing us from it.

Wolff's landscapes are much more open than Rudolph's and thus less oppressive, but chillingly desolate. Some drawings take identifiable landmarks as their subject matter, but most are anonymous: "Irgendwo in Striesen," •'Lagerhalle," "Eingang Nr. 5." The overall impression thus left is not of mourning but of a bleak, unfriendly world, bearing only the most tenuous resemblance to the world before the destruction. Two further artists aspired neither to the comprehensiveness nor the realism of Rudolph, choosing instead to include allegorizing components in their reactions to the bombing. Ernst Hassebrauk's "Dresdner

Visionen” [1 9 4 6 -1 9 4 9 ] , tended towards a magical verism.

Grotesque figures of death, skeletons and war furies performed a dance of death over the heads of the beleagured population amid an urban jungle of destroyed buildings. Yet despite the obviously non-realistic intent, it has not 75 been uncommon to find GDR critics of Hassebrauk's work basing their criticisms on the criterion of faithfulness to detail: Hassebrauk steigerte die Farben in der graugewordenen Stadt noch einmal impressionistisch-expressionistisch, [...] er halluzinierte ein Farbenglück, das es gar nicht gab im zerstorten und im neuen Dresden.

Hassebrauk also displayed a fondness for baroque-style depictions of the memento mori theme and in "Tod mit MeiBner Vase" the fragility of the elaborate vase and the crudity of the figure of Death provide an effective metaphor for the ruthlessness of the destruction of his native city.

Edmund Resting, like Felixmüller a one-time collaborator on Der Sturm and later considered "degenerate" by the Nazis, created a series of photo-montages entitled "Totentanz von Dresden" [1945]. Far and away the most experimental of all artistic reactions to the raids from these early years. Resting's work consisted of combination photographs of the ruins, human forms and faces, shadows

and a skeleton. Resting actually borrowed the skeleton

from the anatomy section of the city's art academy and then

posed it on a balcony overlooking the city. Possessed of a

seemingly laughing countenance, the skeleton appears as the figure of Death, gleefully lording over his dominion. Death is master here, there is no inkling of an imminent

rebirth and it is undoubtedly on account of this bleakness that Resting's cycle did not receive the attention accorded other works. Uncomfortable to view. Resting's photo­

montages disappeared from view until the artist's work as a 76 whole underwent a re-evaluation in the late 1980's.76

CHRISTIAN ICONOGRAPHY

Farbe und Form allein konnen nicht das fehlende Erleben und die fehlende Ergriffenheit ersetzen. Ich bin bemüht, mit meinen Bildern zur Sinngebung unserer Zeit zu gelangen, denn ich glaube, ein Bild muB vor allem einen Inhalt, ein Thema aussprechen. (Otto Dix, 1948)7? Otto Dix was probably Dresden's best-known painter of the pre-Nazi years and certainly the city's most controversial. In 1923, following the exhibition of his painting "Das Madchen vor dem Spiegel," he had been brought to trial accused of disseminating obscene pictures. In

1925 the then-mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, blocked the purchase by the city's Wallraf-Richartz museum of the artist's "Der Schiitzengraben," a stark portrayal of the horrors of World War I combat, on the grounds that the painting was "offensive to German sensibilities."?8

Approximately 260 of his works were impounded by the Nazis, one tenth of which were included in Munich's "Entartete Kunst" exhibition of 1937. He himself was imprisoned briefly in 1939 as an "unreliable intellectual." The persecution continued after the war when the

Kulturministerium of Rheinland-Westphalia withdrew an offer of a teaching position at Düsseldorf's Academy after examining the works which had so outraged the National

Socialists.79

Although Dix had created works on Biblical themes during his earliest creative periods, these themes began to 77 dominate after 1933 when it became impossible for him to engage in social/political criticism. In 1939 he created a work of eerie prescience. As the third in a projected series of seven portrayals of the Seven Deadly Sins, Dix painted "Lot und seine Tochter" to represent lust. The series was begun in 1933 and Dix had hoped to provide allegories for the state of German society:

Das christliche Motiv gewahrt die Freiheit der Gestaltung. Jeder kennt und versteht es, nun gilt es, daS es neu erlebt wird, erlebt aus dem Leben heraus, nicht aus illusorischen Bilderbogen. Christliche Thematik bezieht sich auf unsere Gegenwart ebenso wie auf unsere Vergangenheit und Zukunft, sie hat etwas das bleibt.80

What makes the 1939 picture uncanny is the fact that

the backdrop to the debauched bacchanal of the foreground is not the burning Sodom and Gomorrah of the Old Testament, but a burning Dresden - the silhouettes of the city's most famous landmarks are clearly identifiable. Dix's metaphor for the inevitable consequences of Germany's Nazi

intoxication became fiery reality six years later.

After the war the painter embarked upon a series of paintings on themes from the Bible, portraying in gruesomely expressionistic style the Passion of Christ.

For Dix it was only through this "realistic" portrayal of the true extent of Jesus' suffering agony that the miracle of the resurrection could be truly appreciated. In an

interview, he stressed his rejection of the attempts of the church to tone down the element of suffering in the

crucifixion in order to make it "irgendwie verdaulich":

Da hângt man ihn dann als, als, als Ballettanzer hângt er am Kreuz, nicht wahr, schon und poliert und schon. 78 wunderbar gewachsen, nicht wahr. Und wenn man dann 'ne genaue Beschreibung liest, wie ein Kreuzestod ist, ja, das ist so etwas GraBliches, so etwas Fiirchterliches. Wie die Glieder anschwellen, nicht wahr. Wie der Atemnot kriegt. Wie das Gesicht sich verfarbt. Wie der einen gra&lichen, ganz graBlichen Tod stirbt. Da hângt man den als wünderschônen Knaben da dran. Also, es ist allés Schwindel. Allés Schwindel. Anstatt allés genau, ganz realistisch genau zu sehen, um das Wunder der Auferstehung noch viel groBer zu machen. Nein, da muB man ihn dann als Schonling da dranhangen. Das ist aber wohl, was ich ablehne. Das ist - die Kirche will das -, aber ich lehne das ab. Ich werde das immer ablehnen, immer ablehnen. Ich sehe das ganz real und will das ablehnen.

Following his return to Dresden, and his first encounter with the destruction wrought. Dix portrayed allegorical Biblical figures against the background of ruins. Job, the personification of "des schuldig- unschuldig Leidenden,"82 was portrayed in 1946 ("Hiob") as

a boil-infested figure lying amongst ruins which bore down upon him. Most commonly, however, it was the figure of Christ that Dix employed to convey extreme suffering. The Passion of Christ dominated his work from this time:

Christ as the man alone, derided and physically abused by

those around him. It was sometimes the case that his torturers were depicted in modern-day dress: in "Christus

am Kreuz" [1946] for example, it was a soldier in battle

dress who stood at the foot of the cross and in "Verspottung Christi" [1948], the Christ figure suffered the taunts and abuse of elegantly dressed citizens.

"GeiBelung Christi" [1948] showed an officer in military uniform and a convict in prison garb viciously flaying and

beating a hunched-over Christ figure. Dix included a self- portrait in "Ecce Homo II" [1949], which depicted a lonely. 79 suffering Christ behind barbed wire. The figure of the painter, also behind the wire, is pointing at the Christ figure as if to make clear the similarity of their predicaments.

Although Dix's work of the post-war period did not evince the stinging social criticism of his output during the Weimar Republic, these pictures were clear indictments of those aspects of German society which the artist viewed

as having abetted the Nazi rise to power: militarism and bourgeois intolerance. The Christ figure in these paintings can be directly related to the victims of National Socialism. Dix appears possessed of a new-found

faith in humankind to create a new life from out of

suffering, for implicit in these paintings is the promise

of redemption and resurrection (even forlorn Job looks skyward in hope for the future) and indeed the Resurrection itself featured prominently in the artist's work from this

time. In the "GroBe Auferstehung" of 1949 it is a smiling, resurrected Christ who is depicted against a gaily colored background. The painting is clearly hopeful and life-

affirming, testimony to the artist's belief in the ability of an embattled population to overcome the suffering which

it had endured. Germany's lot is elevated to a mythical level, which begs the question as to the legitimacy of Dix's

allegorizing. The painter's own suffering at the hands of

the Nazis has been documented yet the association of the

suffering Christ with a suffering humanity remains 80 problematic. While one can certainly sympathize with the artist's attempt to communicate with as wide a public as possible, the use of Biblical imagery in so general a fashion left no room for a critical coming to terms with the past. Since the suffering is universal, the particular suffering of Nazi victims becomes submerged and is eventually no more than a symptom of an evil world. Dresden native , a veteran of the

Association Revolutionarer Bildender Künstler Deutschlands of the Weimar Republic, created two works which in both form and content borrowed heavily from medieval religious art. The first, "Das tausendjâhrige Reich" [1935-1938], dating from before the Second World War, is a tryptich replete with a mournful depiction of a dead Christ-like figure in the predella (lowest, length-wise configured panel), which thus reminds one strongly of medieval altar- pieces. The other three panels chart the progress of

Germany under fascism in grotesque-surreal style. The left panel, entitled "Karneval," shows celebration, the right one is entitled "Chaos" and depicts opposing forces fighting in the street beneath banners billowing in the wind. The center panel, "Brennende Stadt," shows figures fleeing from the destroyed city. "Den Opfern des Faschismus" [1946-49], along with Horst Strempel's "Nacht über Deutschland" [1946/47] and Wilhelm

Lachnit's "Der Tod von Dresden" [1945], represent the three best-known memorials to the victims of the Nazi period produced during the immediate post-war years in the Soviet 81 zone of occupation. Grundig himself spent four years in Sachsenhausen concentration camp and chose to depict in his memorial the corpses of two internees. The two figures lie side by side with one's feet at the other's head. They are partly covered with blankets but the concentration camp uniforms (with Grundig's own number) are clearly visible. In death one figure is attempting to cover his face with his hand, a gesture repeated in both Strempel's and

Lachnit's paintings to suggest mourning and shame. Around the figures stretch the wire fences of the concentration camp and above them swoop large black birds of death. The rust-gold background is reminiscent of medieval altar paintings while the horizontal configuration of the figures echoes strongly the predellas of those altar pieces depicting the dead Christ. Specifically the painting recalls Grünewald's Aschaffenburg predella. Strempel's triptych "Nacht über Deutschland" also refers back to a work of Grünewald's, the rather more famous altar of Isenheim. The form immediately draws comparisons with the medieval work but so too does the content. In the middle panel a figure is "crucified" on the barbed wire surrounding a concentration camp. All of the figures are dressed in the uniform of the camps and, with the exception of three children in the center panel and the mother figure in the left side panel, all have

shaven heads. The two side sections and the "predella" depict anxiety and fear: a family group clings together as the father looks up at the sky as if expecting further 82 danger; a group of five hunched men cower in the darkness of a cell/camp barrack; a figure steps hesitantly out from a barrack doorway, its hollow eyes looking out from the picture while two indistinct figures hover in the back­ ground. The middle panel contains the gesture of mourning and shame mentioned above, while a central figure, although bent over from suffering, looks up, suggesting more explicitly than does the "Christ figure" in Grundig's painting, the notion of resurrection. The children by his side reach their arms upwards, a gesture which adds to the theme of resurrection while at the same time displaying the concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms. In these two paintings suffering is not universalized as it is by Dix but is the domain of the victims of Nazism. Hence, through the Biblical imagery it is clear that those victims are the ones who are now resurrected and are emerging from twelve years of brutal repression. Of the three memorials here under discussion, Lachnit's "Der Tod von Dresden," a variation on the Pieta motif, is of most direct reference to the topic at hand. Lachnit, like Griebel and Grundig, a painter whose roots lay in the proletarian revolutionary arts movement of the pre-Nazi years, created in "Der Tod von Dresden" the most f successfully resonant work of the first major post-war exhibition in Dresden, "Freie Künstler - Ausstellung Nr. 1" [December-January, 1945/46]. The large oil painting

depicts a seated mother crying into her hand against the backdrop of a chaotic, expressionistic, angular jumble of 83 ruins. Behind the woman sits the figure of Death, wrapped in a blanket, seated in an almost identical pose, repeating the gesture of the hand covering the face. The destruction of life which had taken place here was too much even for Death himself and he must hide his face in his hands. At the knees of the mother is a small child staring out of the picture. The mother is a picture of abject desolation and yet the child represents hope for the future. The painting is overwhelmingly red. Some interpretations of the painting view the Christian iconography as extending beyond the Pieta motif: Die Linien des glühenden Gebalks laufen im oberen Teil so zusammen, wie die Rippen eines Kirchengewolbes. Die Art, wie Mutter und Kind aufgefaBt sind, laBt zudem an jene mythischen Vesperbilder des 14. Jahrhunderts denken, in denen Christus als "kleiner Erwachsener”, als Kind, das jedoch schon alle Qualen der Passion durchlitten hat, der Mutter im Schofi l i e g t . 8 3

The child does indeed emanate a wisdom beyond its years and even if the analogy with "Vesperbilder des 14.

Jahrhunderts" is not immediately apparent to all, the

Christ imagery is made manifest through the more obvious Pieta pose. However, the emotive power of the picture stems overwhelmingly from Lachnit's inspired portrayal of

Death himself weeping at the destruction of the city and its inhabitants. This is indeed a scene from the aftermath of the most terrible apocalypse. Lachnit's painting was a powerful memorial for the dead of Dresden and its immediate popularity attested to the need which the city's population had for such memorials. 84

In the immediate post-war years Christian iconography presented itself as an ideal visual language with which to communicate with the population at large.84 The twelve years of Nazi rule had debased the function of art to a glorification of the regime and all things German. In an attempt to once again communicate with a public while avoiding the trappings of Nazi art, artists turned to a visual language predating the Nazi period and familiar to all. The search for new modes of expression was effectively postponed.

SELF-PORTRAITS

Of the three styles of art-work here under discussion, the self-portrait is the one which would seem to be the least appropriate in the context of the present study. The city of Dresden appears explicitly in but one of the

portraits to be looked at and then only as background. Yet

when examining the output of Dresden artists between 1945 and 1949 one cannot but be struck by the number of self-

portraits produced. The phenomenon itself is as enlightening as the works created. The motivating factor behind the creation of a self- portrait is most likely to be the desire on the part of the

artist to take stock of his or her own personal situation.

Any comment which the self-portrait may be making on society at large is, in most cases, dependant upon the viewer's awareness of the historical context of the 85 portrait's production. Otto Griebel's "Selbstbildnis vor dem brennenden Dresden" [1945] is an example of a work which provides the viewer with that context. Erich Gerlach's self-portraits are less specific but do feature backgrounds which hint as to the circumstances of production. The rest of the portraits, however, provide no such information. Griebel's portrait has been discussed above. The motif of the flower in hand of that portrait is also to be found in Gerlach's self-portrait of 1947, in which the artist holds a sprig of hazel. The forward-looking moment is tempered, however, by a certain tansitoriness: the artist is not moving towards the viewer but across the painting. In the next moment he will be gone. The world in which the artist finds himself is an inhospitable one, characterized by the snow-coverd background in which dead trees line a road. It is not a world from which the artist is emerging but one in which he is having difficulty finding permanent hold. An earlier self-portrait from 1945 situated the artist against a background of ruins. In that picture the figure almost fills the entire space, confronting the viewer with a wary, distrustful stare. The artist's hand gesture bespeaks a nervous unease. Hans Grundig, whose memorial to the victims of fascism was discussed above, appears less disoriented in his self- portrait than does Gerlach but he is careful to temper his hope for the future through the use of lighting which places the artist half in the light and half in shadow. 86

The shadow represents the real, existing situation and the light the hope for the future, as is evident from a letter Grundig wrote to his wife, the painter Lea Grundig, in which he compared the portrait with an earlier one; Beide Bilder, jedes fur sich, umreiBen Situation und Anschauung jener und der heutigen Zeit. [...] Das heutige, trotz Schwere und Schattenhaftem, ist voiler Hoffnung, so wie ich unser Dasein empfinde. Allés liegt noch in Triimmern, überlagert von ausgestandenen Schrecken. Trotzdem liegt Kraft und ZielbewuBtsein darinnen, aus der eine neue menschliche Ordnung wachsen wird.85

Bernard Kretzschmar and Curt Querner both chose to depict themselves at work painting but it does not seem to be a joyful occupation. Both stare out at the viewer from within confined spaces; both are hesitant, appraising what they see before continuing with their work. At this

juncture in their lives neither man was prepared to make a definite statement, preferring to project a mistrustful air

of wait and see.

Eugen Hoffmann spent the war years in England and did not return to Dresden until 1946. The self-portraits he created upon his return were painted using water-colors.

The contours of the artist's head are blurred and

indistinct, the facial features likewise. The expression, however, is always pained. In one portrait from 1946 the painter's head is reduced, skeleton-like, to its most basic form, the eyes are boring pools of blue. These are

unsettling portrayals suggesting a man in search of his true appearance, in search of a certainty which has been lost. 87

Like Hoffmann, Eva Schulze-Knabe, who had spent time in Hohnstein concentration camp, also chose water-colors as the medium for her self-portrait but there the similarities end. The expression on the painter's face is composed and sternly confident. The gesture of the right hand placed over the heart, oath-pledging style, makes plain Schulze-

Knabe' s commitment to the revolutionary cause.Not all of her works were so openly didactic in intent. Schulze- Knabe also used water-colors to paint the bombed city;

"Ruinenlandschaft” evokes an oppressive air of collapse, as if the sky itself were pressing down on the city's ruins. A solitary figure picks its way through an otherwise deserted landscape. Plainly, it would require all the resolve of the self-portrait to overcome such desolation.

SUMMARY

With the coming of the founding of the FRG and the GDR

and the publication of the first literary treatments of the Dresden raids, production of texts and art works such as

those discussed all but came to a halt. The level of response to the bombing switched.from the informative to the interpretive. Thus it is that we can draw certain conclusions, based on this overview, as to the extent of

the consciousness of what had happened in Dresden, prior to

the appropriation of the subject matter by literature. Clearly, there were no widely-known accounts of the bombing and the best-known eulogy to the city remained the 88

Gerhart Hauptmann wartime text. The visual arts produced no lasting memorials after Rudolph and Lachnit as the emphasis in the Soviet zone came to be placed most emphatically on producing forward-looking works. In short, the Dresden raids received little attention outside of the city and thus it should not appear surprising that the only people to write of them in the years following were either survivors or returnees to the city. When Werner's Die Galeere was published, it instantly became the most widely available treatment of the raids and doubtless formed the basis for the consciousness of the bombing which many Germans developed. The process of coming to terms with the raids would necessarily have changed in approach at some point after 1945, regardless of political considerations, due to the passage of time, but it would appear legitimate to argue that 1949 represented a curtailment of a process only incompletely accomplished. The headlong rush into the creation of new societies left a coming to terms for some future date, but as we shall see in the next chapter, that date continued to be postponed throughout the 1950's. 89

Notes 1. Bergander, Gotz, Dresden im Luftkriea. (Cologne & : Bohlau, 1977), 122f.

2. Weidauer, Walter, Inferno Dresden: Über Lüaen und Leqenden um die Aktion "Donnerschlaa". (1965), (Berlin: Dietz, 1987), 182. 3. In England, the rumor and news of the destruction provoked the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Ipswich, Richard Stokes, to speak out in the House of Commons on March 6, against the tactic of "blanket bombing." He noted that the Soviets were not employing such tactics and that the Western capitalist Allies would pay dearly for the raids in propaganda terms after the war. This did indeed prove to be the case. Stokes cited a report from the Manchester Guardian which asked:

What happened on that evening of 13th February? There were a million people in Dresden, including 600,000 bombed-out evacuees and refugees from the East. The raging fires which spread irresistably in the narrow streets killed a great many for lack of oxygen. The politician then asked: What are you going to find, with all the cities blasted to pieces, and with disease rampant? May not the disease, filth and poverty which will arise be almost impossible either to arrest or to overcome? I wonder very much whether it is realised at this stage. When I heard the minister [Sir Archibald Sinclair] speak of the "crescendo of destruction," I thought: What a magnificent expression for a Cabinet Minister of Great Britain at this stage of the war. He concluded by calling the raids a "blot on our escutcheon." The reply from Commander Brabner, Joint Under-Secretary of State for Air, was blunt: We are not wasting bombers or time on purely terror tactics. It does not do the Hon. Member justice to come here to this House and suggest that there are a lot of Air Marshals or pilots or anyone else sitting in a room trying to think how many German women and children they can kill.

The bombing of Dresden was destined to remain a contentious issue in Britain thereafter. All citations from Irving, David, The Destruction of Dresden. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 225ff.

4. Bergander, 131f. & 138f. Rodenberger, Axel, Der Tod von Dresden: Ein Bericht über das Sterben einer Stadt. 90

(1951) , (Frankfurt am Main: Franz Miiller-Rodenberger, 1963), 155f. 5. Goebbels, Joseph, Taaebücher 1945: Die letzten Auf- zeichnunaen. (: Hoffmann und Campe, 1977), 142. 6. Cited by Kastner, Erich,,"Notabene 1945: Ein Tagebuch” in Gesammelte Schriften fur Erwachsene. Band 6. Vermischte Beitraae 1 . (Munich, Zürich: Droemer Knaur, 1969), 93f. 7. Goebbels, 163. 8. Goebbels, 164.

9. Kastner, Erich, 94.

10. Hauptmann, Gerhart, "Die Untat von Dresden. Gerhart Hauptmann klagt an", Deutsche Alloemeine Zeitunq 4/6/1945, Hamburger Zeitunq 4/7/1945, Münchener Neueste Nachrichten 4/12/1945. 11. Hauptmann, Gerhart, "Dresden", Samtliche Werke Band XI. Nachqelassene Werke Fragmente, ed. Hans-Egon Hass and Martin Machatzke, (Frankfurt am Main: Propylaen, 1974), 1205f. 12. Mann, T h o m a s TagebUcher 1944 - 1.4.1946. (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer,* 1987), 206.

13. Alfred Kerr, a one-time friend and admirer of Hauptmann, became his most insistent critic. From his London exile, where he headed the German PEN Group, Kerr intensified his criticisms towards the end of the war. In a commentary for the BBC transmissions he lamented Hauptmann's about-face after 1933: Mein früherer Busenfreund Gerhart Hauptmann ist, nach den sozialistischen Webern und nach dem groBen Drama Florian Geyer. das gegen die Brutalitat für Menschlich- keit kampft, ein unterwUrfiger Nazidiener geworden - er hat die Begegnung mit Hitler als den "groBten Tag seines Lebens" bezeichnet; (er soil freilich manchmal, nach zwei Flaschen Rheinwein, sich unbefangen in anderen Sinn auBern). (Cited by Huder, Walter, "Alfred Kerr. Ein deutscher Kritiker im Exil", Sinn und Form 4/1966, 1278.) In a letter written after the war Kerr applauded the treatment accorded Hauptmann by the British and Americans:

Die Besatzungsbehorden in der englischen und in der amerikanischen Zone haben mit Recht über Gerh. Hauptmann den Bann verhangt: wegen seines elenden Verhaltens unter den Nazis. 91

(Kerr, Alfred, "Brief an Walter A. Berendsohn: London, 18.4.1946", in Per deutsche PEN-Club im Exil 1933-1948. ed. Gunther Pflug, (Frankfurt am Main: Biichhandler Vereinigung, 1980)). After the war, Hauptmann's Dresden piece was grist to the critic's mill. As Mann, they wondered why Hauptmann had waited so long to shed his tears. Yet Hauptmann was feted by, among others, Johannes R. Becher, President of the Kulturbund in the Soviet zone. So determined were the cultural officials of the East to claim the younger Hauptmann's works for the socialist-humanist tradition, they passed over the older writer's behaviour during the Third Reich. 14. Kastner, Erhart, "Brief an Elisabeth Jungmann: Augsburg, 22. Juni 1947", Briefe. ed. Paul Raabe, (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1984), 76.

15. As an example of the former, Hans Krey portrayed the elderly Hauptmann as a tragic figure, alone and apart from the political realm. Krey's piece represents perhaps the most emotive exploitation of the by-then dead Hauptmann for the purpose of portraying the full terror of the bombing:

Es ist ein Feuer angeziindet von Menschenhand, das sengend und schonungslos über geheiligte Erde rast. Auf der sanft ansteigenden Hohe des rechtseitigen Elbufers im südôstlichen Ortsteil Loschwitz steht ein ehrwürdiger Greis. Seine Glieder zittern in der Aufwallung innerster Erregung. Der heiBe Sog des flammenden Feuersturms zerzaust das weiche, weiBe Haar. Der grau-schwarzliche Qualm, von Feuersaulen und Funkenschweifen grausig durchglüht, walzt sich in immer neu quellenden Schwaden aus dem Zentrum der Stadt gegen den im rotlichen Schein stehenden Nachthimmel. Die Not der Stunde laBt keinen Gedanken zu über den Sinn des Geschehens; denn jetzt taucht in dieses Hollenbild von Glut und Asche der betaubende, erschreckende Larm der Schwarme von Flugzeugen, die in niedriger Hohe von neuem die Stadt umkreisen und ihre vernichtenden hasten von Sprengladungen und Phosphorkanistern in das todwunde Herz Dresdens schütten. Es ist hell, denn der Feind hat seine Totenlichter entzUndet; der Strahlenkranz der schwebenden Christbaume umgaukelt festlich das Vergangnis eines Kulturzentrums der Welt. Der Rauch laBt keine Einzelheit erkennen; nur seine Ausdehnung verkündet das MaB des todlichen Werkes. Der Feuersturm tragt Papierfetzen mit sich, die angekohlt und vergilbt über das Haupt des Greises fliegen. Sind es Teile der wertvollen Jacob-Krause-Bande aus den Schatzen der Bibliothek im Japanischen Palais? Erinnern diese gespenstigen Blatter für Sekunden daran, daB in den Mauern dieser Stadt Friedrich von Schiller, , , Otto Ludwig, Wilhelm von Kügelgen, E. Th. A. Hoffmann und viele andere 92

solche Papierseiten mit unvergânglichem Gedankengut beschrieben? Wie welt geht die Vernichtung? Die Gestalt des Greises bleibt unbeweglich. 1st sie zu Stein erstarrt, da kein Ausbruch des Schmerzes über die gottlose Tat an der vielgeliebten Stadt den schmalen, zusammengeprefîten Lippen entweicht? Da rinnen Tranen über ruBgeschwarzte, faltige Wangen und ohne HaB spricht Gerhart Hauptmann am Grabe des ihm fast liebsten Teiles seiner Welt das stille Gebet: "Gott moge die Menschen mehr lieben, lautern und klaren zu ihrem Heil als bisherl”

Krey, Hans, "Die Namenlose Nacht", Jahrbuch zur Pfleqe der Künste. 1. Folge, (Dresden: Wolfgang Jess, 1951) , 51ff. Additionaly, GDR art historian Karl Max Kober praised a painting of 's, to be discussed below, with reference to Hauptmann's piece:

Auch über dieses Bild wurde schon vieles geschrieben, über den mitleidenden Tod als gewiB ganz auBergewohnliche Erfindung, über das Kind und seine Bedeutung und über die Geste der Frau, bei der einem unwillkürlich der Satz Gerhart Hauptmanns einfallt: "Wer das Weinen verlernt hat, der lernt es wieder beim Untergang Dresdens." Kober, Karl Max, 1945-1949. Die Kunst der frühen Jahre. (: E.A. Seemann, 1989), 40. See also Weidauer's Inferno Dresden. 56. As examples of the latter, Axel Rodenberger placed the complete Hauptmann text at the beginning of his Der Tod von Dresden. Wolfgang Paul also cited the entire text in: ...zum Beispiel Dresden: Schicksal einer Stadt. (Frankfurt am Main: Wolfgang Weidlich, 1964). Alexander McKee entitled a chapter of his work on the raids: "'Learn How To Weep' Aftermath, and the Fourth Attack: 15-23 February 1945." The sad figure of the elderly Hauptmann is put to full emotive use: The old man in the sanatorium on the hill of Loschwitz looked out across the Elbe to burning, smoking Dresden. He was almost eighty-three years old and had come back to Dresden, the dream city of his youth, to die. Now he knew that it was a miracle that he was alive after witnessing its fall. He was a writer, a poet, a dramatist, surely he, Gerhart Hauptmann, could find some words to convey what was in his heart. "Those who had forgotten how to weep learned again when Dresden fell..." he began. But how to end? He was so helpless, like everyone else surviving in the city whose life had been extinguished "I will soon stand before our Lord with my bequest. It comes from the depths of my heart, but is so useless. I shall beg Him to love and purify mankind more than he ever did 93

before, for their sakes." McKee, Alexander, Dresden 1945; The Devil's Tinderbox. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982), 243. 16. McKee, 21. 17. Bailey, Ronald, Rev. of Dresden 1945: The Devil's Tinderbox by Alexander McKee, New York Times Book Review 3/3/1985, 23. 18. Paul, Wolfgang, "Veranderungen: Aus dem Tagebuch 1945", in 1945. Ein Jahr in Dichtuna und Bericht. ed. Hans Rauschning, (Frankfurt am Main/Hamburg: Fischer, 1965), 54. 19. Paul, 55. 20. Griebel, Otto, Ich war ein Mann der StraBe. Lebens- erinnerunqen eines Dresdner Malers. ed. Matthias Griebel and Hans-Peter Liihr, (Frankfurt am Main: Roderberg, 1986), 458. 21. Paul, 54. 22. Paul, 53. Further examples of insanity appear in other accounts of the bombing, such as that of the dancer Gret Palucca: Ein mir ganz fremder Mann fiel mir buchstablich an und wollte von mir wissen, wo seine Frau hingekommen ware. Als ich die Schultern zuckte, lieB er von mir ab, als ob er trotz des aus seinen Augen leuchtenden Wahnsinns erkannt hatte, daB ich genauso hilflos der Pein ausgesetzt war wie er selbst. "Die Tanzerin Palucca erlebte das Inferno im GroBen Garten" in Seydewitz, Max, Zerstorung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden. (Berlin: KongreB, 1955), 128. One of McKee's eye-witnesses spoke of finding her parents alive after the bombing: They had survived the second air raid - what a miracle - in a burnt-out car. Not so our nanny, who must have lost her reason, for she simply ran into the burning house. McKee, 190 In his memoirs the painter Otto Griebel mentions two incidents of suicide in the aftermath of the bombing. The first occurred, he presumes, on the morning of the 14th:

Wir beobachteten mehrere Leute, die an den Rand der Fichtenschonung liefen, wo hochstwahrscheinlich in der Friihe dieses Tages, ein alter Mann seinem Leben durch 94 Erhangen ein Ende bereitet hatte. The second involved the manager of Dresden's resident Circus Sarrasini: Frau Stosch-Sarrasini, die das Unternehmen bis zum Tage des verheerenden Angriffs leitete, beging vor Kummer und Verzweiflung Selbstmord. Ihr sonst so bewunderungs-würdiger Mut ertrug diesen allzuharten Schlag nicht.

Griebel, 449, 460.

23. Paul, 56. 24. Klemperer, Victor, Die Unbewaltiqte Sprache. Aus dem Notizbuch eines Philoloqen. "LTI". (1946), (Darmstadt: Joseph Melzer, 1966). The notebooks documented the language of the Third Reich. LTI stands for Lingua Tertii Imperii.

25. Klemperer, 270. Dies ater: black i.e. unlucky or ill- omened day. Often used to imply day of death. 26. Klemperer, 284. In the letter to Lazar, Klemperer described events using very similar language: Am 16.2.1945 sollten die Mischehen getrennt werden. Wir letzten, etwa siebzig überlebenden Sterntrager in Dresden - rings um uns war allés teils in der Deportation, teils in Dresden selber "liquidiert” worden: man kam sich immer vor wie Odysseus bei Polyphem: "Dich freB ich zuletzt!" Die Gestapo drangte bei jeder Haussuchung: "Kauf dir doch endlich für zehn Pfennige Gas, wir qualen dich ja doch zu Tode, nimm uns die Arbeit abl" Wir letzten also sollten am 16.2. abtransportiert werden, in den sicheren Gastod. Am 13.2. aber brach Dresden in vierzig Nachtminuten zusammen, unser Juden- haus in der ZeughausstraBe war in zwei Minuten eine Fackel und in fünf Minuten ein TrUmmerhaufen. Eva und ich wurden im letzten Augenblick getrennt. Ich wurde vom Splitter einer Stabbrandbombe im Gesicht und am Auge verwundet, konnte mich aber in einer riesigen vor dem Haus aufgerissenen Trichter stürzen, konnte dann zwischen Flammen auf die Brühlsche Terrasse klettern. Dort sprang ich die Nacht über zwischen dem Funkenregen von rechts und links hin und her; es gab stundenlang keine Moglichkeit, aus der Feuerzange herauszukommen. Klemperer, Victor, "Brief an Auguste Lazar, 29. Mai 1946", in Lazar, Auguste, Arabesken. Aufzeichnunqen aus beweater Zeit. (1957), (Berlin: Dietz, 1977), 376. 27. Lazar, 377. 95 28. Kastner, Erich, 81. The actor published his memoirs in 1955. He described therein his sister's first visit to their mother after the creation of the GDR. In ihren Augen sah man zwar immer bisweilen das Erschrecken über das Inferno in Dresden, das sie zweimal miterlebte. Allés hatte sie verloren und hatte keine Trane vergossen. Heine Schwester hatte sie besucht und erzahlte, was sie so macht und wie sie jetzt lebt. Man sagt "leben.” Man nennt das noch immer so. Und da hat sie die alte Frau weinen sehen. "Der Mut ist so mUde geworden. Und die Sehnsucht so groB. Nichts wagt aufzustehen hatte sie mir erklart. De Kowa, Viktor, Als ich noch Prinz war von Arkadien. (Nuremberg: Clock und Lutz,1955), 45f. 29. Kastner, Erich, 82-86.

30. Kastner, Erich, 82.

31. Kastner, Erich, 90. 32. Griebel, 431.

33. Griebel's account is conditioned in large part by his concentration on details relating to his art. When he returned to his house after the first raid, half of the description of what he finds is devoted to the fate of a particular painting:

Nur das groBe Selbstbildnis, welches über der Kredenz gehangen hatte, war vom Luftdruck herabgeschleudert worden und wies einen dreieckigen RiB auf, der durch den Aufschlag auf die Ecke der Kredenz entstanden war. 434.

Constructivist painter Hermann Glockner's memories of the bombing, committed to paper in 1982/83, evince an even more pronounced concentration on the art-related. His chief memory of the first raid is of the fate of a sculpture:

Im Atelier war das Fenster zerborsten, und durch den Luftdruck war eine kleine Plastik, ein Gipsabdruck des Amenophis, durch verschiedene Zimmer geflogen, rechtwinklig durch die Türen von einem Raum in den anderen.

Having found refuge outside the city he returned several days later to survey the damage done to his house:

Fünf Tage spater sahen wir es selbst. Es war ein einziger Schutthaufen, auf dem ich nichts weiter fand als eine kleine Porzellanfigur, die am Fenster meines Ateliers gestanden hatte. Allés andere war zerstort. 96

Glücklicherweise hatten wir aber schon einige vorsorglich ausgelagert, Tafeln, Bilder, Grafiken zu einem Baumeister in einem Dorf in der Lausitz.

Even Glockner's description of fleeing the firestorm contained a reference to the art world: Wir sind also hinaus, ich habe meine Frau fast getragen, weil der Feuersturm so stark war. Es gibt Barlach-Figuren, die dem Sturm entgegenlaufen, so muB das ausgesehen haben.

Glockner, Hermann, "Meine Arbeit ist mein Leben", in Hermann Glockner. Ein Patriarch der Moderne, ed. John Erpenbeck, (Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen, 1983), 66f. 34. Griebel, 437.

35. Griebel, 442. 36. Griebel, 451.

37. Frisch, Max, Taaebücher 1946-1949. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), 39.

38. Griebel, 462. 39. Griebel, 461.

40. Rudolph, Wilhelm, "Das zerstorte Dresden" in Wilhelm Rudolph. Gemalde Aquarelle Zeichnunqen Holzschnitte Catalogue, (Düsseldorf: Stadtische Kunsthalle, 1975), 18.

41. Drescher, Horst, "Der alte Wilhelm Rudolph", Sinn und Form. 33, 1981/5, 970. 42. Rudolph, 18.

43. Kastner, Erhart, Briefe. 78. The writer used the same comparison in his Zeltbuch von Tumilat [1949]:

Und doch mu6 ich dir sagen: hab keine Sorge, wieder- zukommen. Vielleicht kannst dus nicht glauben, aber die Stadt ist immer noch stark und groBartig in ihrem Ruin. Lieblich sogar. Du muBt es dir vorstellen wie in Rom, wie den Palatin: überblüht. (110) 44. Kober, 460. Kober also cites a text by the sculptor Herbert Volwahsen who was positively enchanted by what he saw in the city as he made his way to the employment office: Dresden 29.10.1948. [...] Es war wohl zwei Jahre her daB ich zum letzten Male den Weg vom Postplatz zum Arbeitsamt gegangen war. Dieser Weg gefiel mir heute ausnehmend gut, denn er führt durch einen jener Teile 97

Dresdens, der zu den Kraterlandschaften zu rechnen ist. Von diesen jedoch dadurch merklich unterschieden, daB zwischen den Ziegel- und Gesteinsmassen sâuberlich Pfade angelegt sind, die aile zum Arbeitsamt führen. Es handelt sich hier eigentlich um GraberstraBen, denn man sieht dem groBen Teil der Trümmer an, daB sie dem Versuch, die unter ihnen Begrabenen zu bergen, erfolgreich widerstanden haben. Auch zeugt die klagliche Flora, die sich auf den Halden ansiedelt, von ihrer Unberührtheit. Heute früh also, auf einer dieser GraberstraBen - der früheren RosenstraBe - dankte ich der Fürsorglichkeit des Staates, die mich hierher führte, denn dieser ehedem dicht besiedelte Stadtteil bewegte das empfângliche Gemüt auf verschiedene Weise. Im kalten Frühlicht des regnerischen Herbstmorgens stimmten die aufgeweichten Schuttmassen so vorzüglich zu dem nebligen Rimmel, daB mir offenbar wegen der vollkomraenen Harmonie dieser Landschaft allerlei Metaphern einfielen. Darùnter auch Banales wie: "Frisch gewagt ist halb gewonnen!" Es ist offenbar, daB jenes zerspaltene Treppenhaus da drüben, das so unvermittelt in den bleiernen Rimmel führt, seine Einladung zum Spaziergang in die luftige Unendlichkeit nur im Scherz meint, und daB die aufgerissenen Mauler einiger Kellerôffnungen auch nur vergessen haben, sich zu schlieBen, weil der Tod so unerwartet kam. Am Totensonntag aber wird diese Landschaft des Vergessens mit regelmaBig verstreuten Krânzen verziert sein, zur kurzen Augenfreude, bis Wind, Regen und Schnee sie we^ischen, bis im Sommer der herbeigeflogene Samen in ihrer Verwesung .willkommene Nahrung findet. Man sagt, daB der verrottende Ziegelstaub einen guten Nâhrboden abgabe. So legten bereits die Einsichtigen auf den Hügeln der Totenstadt kleine Gârtchen an, wo sie Sellerie, Schnittlauch, Tomaten und anderes Gemüse ernteten. An einem Tag wie heute aber meidet der Mensch diese Gegenden und die selten dahinhuschenden Schatten kônnte man eher für die ruhelosen Seelen der Abgeschiedenen haiten als für Menschen, die wie ich zum Arbeitsamt eilen um sich registrieren zu lassen.

Kober, 460. 45. Grundig, Lea, Gesichte und Geschichte. (1958), (Berlin: Dietz, 1971), 357.

46. Krey, 57f. 47. Hartung, Hugo, Schlesien 1944/45. Aufzeichnunqen und Taaebücher, (Munich: DTV, 1976), 150.

48. Hartung, 151. 49. Dix Otto, Die Tagliche Rundschau. 11/16/1947. 98

50. Felixmüller, Conrad, "Brief an Famille Bôckstiegel, 1/7/1946" in Conrad Felixmüller. Werke und Dokumente. (Nuremberg; Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 1981), 166.

51. Felixmüller, Conrad, "Brief an seine Schwester Hanna, 2/27/1946", 168. 52. Kastner, Erhart, 75. 53. Kastner, Erhart, 79f. 54. Kastner, Erhart, 77.

55. Kastner, Erhart, 80.

56. Kastner, Erhart, 79. 57. Boll, Heinrich, "Bekenntnis zur Trümmer1iteratur" in Werke. Essavistische Schriften und Reden I. 1952-1963. ed. Bernd Balzer, (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1977), 34. 58. Boll, 35. 59. Boll, 31.

60. Kastner, Erich, "...Und dann fuhr ich nach Dresden" in Gesammelte Schriften für Erwachsene. Band 7: Vermischte Beitraqe II. (Munich, Zürich: Droemer Knaur, 1969), 84f. 61. Kastner, Erich, 85.

62. Kastner, Erich, 86f 63. Kastner, Erich, 87.

64. Kastner, Erich, 88. 65. Kirsten, Wulf, "Die Stadt als Text" in Czechowski, Heinz, Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt. Gedichte und Prosa 1958-1988. (, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1990), 144.

66. Kober cites Rolf Stachowski, who has calculated that between 1945 and 1949, 368 Dresden artists exhibited their works. Stachowski adds: "Die tatsachliche Zahl lag sicher noch hoher." 451. 67. Only a partial listing is possible of some of the better-known depictions of Dresden in ruins: Siegfried Donndorf: "Blick aus dem Fenster (Das zerstorte Atelier) [1946]; Lea Grundig: "Dresden, Neumarkt" [1949]; Alfred : "Zerstortes Barock" [1948]; Karl Kroner: "Dresden in Trümmern I" [1946]; Erna Lincke: "Der Weg aus der Stadt" [1946]; Hans Mroczinski: "Frauenkirche und Akademiegebaude" [1948]; Eva Schulze-Knabe: 99 "Ruinenlandschaft" [n.d.]; Albert Wigand: "Drei Palmen" and "Zerstorte Speisewirtschaft in der Brühlschen Gasse" [n.d.]; Fritz Winkler: "Johanniskirche Pillnitzer StraBe" [1946].

68. E.L., "Ruinenromantik. Ruinendamonie", Bildende Kunst. 2/7, 1948, 18.

69. E.L., 18. 70. Drescher, Horst, "Der Alte Wilhelm Rudolph" in Sinn und Form 33, 1981/5, 963.

71. Thomas, Karin, Zweimal deutsche Kunst nach 1945. 40 Jahre Nâhe und F e m e . (Cologne: DuMont Buchverlag, 1985), 29. 72. Lang, Lothar, "Dresden - Bekenntnis und Verpflichtung", Die Weltbuhne 12/1985, 357f. 73. Zimmermann, Rainer, Die Kunst der verschollenen Generation. Deutsche Malerei des Expressiven Realismus. (Düsseldorf, Vienna: Econ, 1980), 148. 74. The cycle is variously described as consisting of between twelve and fifteen works.

75. Hoffmann, Dieter, Kunst im Aufbruch. Dresden 1918-1933. Catalogue, (Dresden: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 1980), 55. 76. see Werner, Klaus, ed., Edmund Kestina. Ein Maler fotoqrafiert. (Leipzig: Fotokinoverlag, 1987). 77. Dix, Otto, Die Taaliche Rundschau. 11/16/1947.

78. Barron, Stephanie, ed., "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germanv. Catalogue, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 225.

79. Barron, 226f. 80. Loffler, Fritz, Otto Dix. Bilder zur Bibel und zu Legenden. zu Verganglichkeit und Tod. (, Zürich: Belser, 1987),

81. Loffler, 7.

82. Loffler, 69. 83. Kober, 40.

84. Kuhirt lists some of the better-known works from the Soviet zone. These included, along with those of Dix, Grundig, Lachnit and Strempel: 100

Hermann Bruse: "Ecce Homo” [1948]; Bernhard Kretzschmar; "Gottsucher" [1946]; Reinhold Langner: "Bittender” and "Heiliger Sebastian” [1946 - woodcuts]; Rudolf Nehmer: "Barmherziger Samariter” [1946]; Hans Orlowski: "Heimkehr des verlorenen Sohnes" [1946 - woodcut]; Erich Reuter: "Jakob und der Engel" [1946 - sculpture]; Karl Rossing: "Passion unserer Tage" [1946 - cycle of woodcuts]; Karl Volker: "Apokalyptisch" [1946]. Kuhirt, Ulrich, Kunst der DDR 1945-1959. (Leipzig: E.A. Seemann, 1982), 50.

85. Schmidt, Diether, ed., Ich war, ich bin, ich werde sein. Selbstbildnisse deutscher Kiinstler des 20 Jahrhunderts. (Berlin: Henschel, 1968), 226f.

86. Many artists took as their subject matter these very tasks. See for example the following works depicting the rebuilding of the city: Rudolf Bergander: "Das Jahr 1945" [1946]; Siegfried Donndorf: "Augustusbrücke in Dresden im Bau" [1946]; Josef Hegenbarth: "Arbeitende in Trümmern" [1949]; Alfred Hesse: "Beraumung am Neumarkt" [1949]; Erna Lincke: "Und neues Leben blüht aus den Ruinen" [n.d.]; Georg Nerlich: "Aufbau der Hofkirche Dresden" [1948]; "Aufbau der Augustus-Brücke Dresden" [n.d.]; Paul Wilhelm: "Brückenfeier" [1949]. CHAPTER III

DRESDEN: THE COLD WAR YEARS

The GDR and the Ideology of the Aufbau: Max Zimmering

In the address Otto Grotewohl delivered upon the founding of the GDR in October, 1949, the first Minister- President stressed the necessity of fostering close ties between the new state and the Soviet Unoin: Frieden und Freundschaft mit der Sowjetunion sind Voraussetzungen für ein Aufblühen, ja für die nationale Existenz des deutschen VoIkes und Staates.1 Writers too, were expected to play their part in instilling in the population a friendly attitude towards the Soviet Union while also encouraging that population to take an active role in the construction of the GDR; Zu den Aufgabenstellungen gehorte ebenso die Überwindung von "Lethargie, Gleichgültigkeit, Untertanengeist und politische(r) Passivitat" in der Bevolkerung wie konkretes Eingreifen in die deutsche Politik.2

As in other spheres of activity, writers were subject to the demands of the planned economy: Sie sollten ihr Soil im Rahmen des Zweijahrplans erfüllen und durch eine gegenwartsorientierte, positive Kunst "Arbeitsfreude und Optimismus bei den Arbeitern in den Betrieben und bei der werktatigen Land- bevolkerung entwickeln. As a consequence of this policy, works which had been produced since war's end depicting the devastation of the

101 102 country and its people in unrelenting fashion were suppressed. An artist such as Wilhelm Rudolph, for example, not only saw his Dresden works removed from public view but was also relieved of his teaching post at the Dresden art school. Of the writers who responded to the appeals for a

future-oriented literature, Dresden native Max Zimmering stood out as one of the most enthusiastic. As a member of the KPD before 1933, Zimmering had already started to publish poetry and short prose in Die Arbeitsstimme. the

Sachsisches Volksecho (Dresden's daily communist

newspaper), the Rote Fahne and the Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung before being forced into exile. His many places of refuge included , Palastine, and London, in

addition to forced stays in British internment camps in

Australia and the Isle of Man. Thanks to the intervention of Egon Erwin Kisch, Zimmering was able to obtain a Czech visa in the summer of 1946 and to travel from there back to

his native Dresden, where he immediately began working in the editorial office of the bi-weekly Zeit im Bild. a publication which he described in his "Kleine

Autobiographie" as, "das erste Einheitsorgan der beiden

Arbeiterparteien, noch vor der Vereinigung zur BED gegründet."4 Despite the literary ambitions which

Zimmering had been pursuing during his years of exile this switch to journalism in no way disappointed him. In a

telling sentence from the "Kleine Autobiographie" he explained why: "Zeitungsarbeit hatte ich schon oft gemacht. 103 und sie lag nicht alizu fern von der Schriftstellerei. With regard to the writer's own literary output, this remark holds very true. The vast majority of his work, including his stories for children, for which he became best-known, centered on contemporary events and aimed to explain historical development from a strictly

Marxist/Leninist perspective. Rarely did Zimmering rise above the level of the dogmatic on the one hand, or the pathetic on the other. These two characteristics were more often than not combined, as in the early poem

"Hygieneparadies Dresden" (1930), which took Dresden society as its subject matter and concluded with the following strophe: Denn Dresden, die Hygienestadt, hat nur das Geld, um plump zu prahlen. Doch den Proleten, die verhungern, kann man nicht einen Pfennig zahlen! So ist's Hygieneparadies, und so wird es so lange bleiben, bis wir das satte Heuchlerpack erbarmungslos zu Paaren treiben.®

The concern with documenting the inequalities between rich (capitalist) and poor (proletarian/communist), evident in "Hygieneparadies Dresden," was a defining characteristic of Zimmering's pre-1945 poetry. A further clear distinction was drawn between the imperialist West and the

Soviet Union. The development of the Soviet Union was held up as a model by Zimmering and so it was that after his return to Dresden in 1946 he immediately responded to Otto

Grotewohl's call for a rapprochement with that state. The destroyed city of Dresden presented him with an ideal

subject matter for illustrating both the destructive intent 104 of capitalism and the regenerative powers of . However, in the first phase of post-war development, before the intensification of the Cold War, we find Zimmering, like the visual artists of the second chapter, more concerned with creating a memorial for Dresden than with ideologizing. The single Dresden poem from this period, "Schnee über Dresdens Trümmern" (1946), could not avoid sentimentalizing, a trait evident in the final few lines of the poem when the poet is awakened from his reveries in the midst of the destruction by the voice of a child:

Fast unbezwingbar dünkt mich da des Todes Macht, bis mich die Stimme eines Kindes weckt, das da im Schnee ganz unbekümmert lacht und ohne Scheu die Hand entgegenstreckt. Wo eben nichts als Hauch vergangnen Sterbens war, ist ungestümes Leben, lacht ein Kind; und wachend traumend schau ich eine Kinderschar, und starkend kost die Stirn ein herber Wind. This hopeful moment, as we shall see below, was a constant factor in Zimmering's post-war work. The rest of the poem communicated the writer's sadness at so much death and devastation and the image of the fallen snow as a "Leichentuch" covering the city was one of his more

succesful images. The huge number of deaths was conveyed

in the following lines: Es fallt der Schnee, fallt wie zum Zeitvertreib und spendet einen weiBen NelkenstrauB für jede Graberstatt, und Grab ist jeder Stein, ein jeder Mauerrest ein Sterbemal; und jeder welke Garten ist ein Trauerhain für namenlose Tote ohne Zahl.?

This poem represented something of an exception in

Zimmering's output. There followed three years of much-

reduced literary production, during which time the writer 105 concentrated on his duties at Zeit im Bild and on publishing those works which he had written during his exile years. (A collection of poetry spanning the years 1930-1946, Im Antiitz der Zeit. appeared in 1948). With the coming of 1949, however, Zimmering returned to poetry with renewed vigor, his ideological stance dogmatically fixed: Blieb die Forderung des Tages, das Geschehen des schweren, umwalzenden Neubeginns seit dem 8. Mai 1945 literarisch zu erfassen. Inzwischen waren ja wieder ein paar Jahre, die es in sich hatten, ins Land gegangen. Aus der "Ostzone" war die souverane Deutsche Demokratische Republik geworden, und die antifaschistisch-demokratische Ordnung entwickelte sich langsam und folgerichtig auf eine sozialistische Ordnung hin. Das Gestern war, im Gegensatz zum westlichen Teil Deutschlands, wo an der Wiederbelebung des Nazismus eifrig gearbeitet wurde, bei uns weitgehend überwunden, ausgemerzt worden. Dieser ProzeB gab "Stoff" in Fiille, und da meldete sich auch das offentliche Bedürfnis.B Although Zimmering's overriding concern became the writing of a novel on the subject of Dresden's regeneration, he did not begin the task until 1952. Between 1949 and 1952 he continued working at Zeit im Bild and used the shorter, poetic form, to meet the call of the cultural authorities for a positive, forward-looking literature. Poems such as "Herbst über Dresden,” "Dresden” and "Hier Stand ein Haus” (all 1949), depicted the devastated city before concluding with the ever-present image of resurrection. In "Herbst über Dresden" it was spring, in "Dresden," the city's nameless son: Doch aus den Trümmern stand auf dein Bohn und fragte weder nach Dank noch Lohn. Man sah ihn schweigend zu Werke gehn, sah StraBen, Brücken aus Schutt erstehn.® 106

"Hier Stand ein Haus" concluded with the image of the new house which would take the place of those destroyed:

Ein neues Haus wird sich zum Himmel recken zum Zeichen, daB der Mensch den Tod bezwingt.lO Beginning in 1950 the theme of guilt for the raids began entering the poetry. In "Frage und Antwort" it was at least somewhat balanced: the first strophe asked who was to blame for "dieses Triimmerfeld" and the second began the answer: "Als erstes sei die eigne Schuld erkannt!"

However, there was more: "Doch ist damit des Fragens schon genug?" The bombings were, after all, carried out, "als man den Krieg zu Grabe trug!": War Dresdens Sterben letztes Strafgericht? War es gerechten Zornes letzter Fluch? War da kein Stempel auf dem Leichentuch? Kein Dollar-Zeichen? Sagt, wer sah es nicht?ll

Another poem from the same year, "Du Stadt am Strom," made reference again to "die eigne Schuld" and to the "Dollar-Zeichen," in slightly altered forms: Der Glanz, der einst in deinem Augen lag, die von Musik und Malerei erhellt, er muBte weichen durch die eigne Schmach und durch die Schmach, die Wallstreets Namen trug.12 From this point on, the guilt of the Allies began to gain the upper hand and two attitudes asserted themselves increasingly strongly in Zimmering's poetry: the anti- Western and the pro-Soviet. The beginning of Dresden's resurrection was linked directly to the Soviets' occupation of the city: DaB neue Kraft aus deinen Quellen flieBt, begann am Tag, 107 an dem der Rotarmist in deine Mauern eingezogen 1st, von alien freien Herzen froh begrü6t.l3

The sentiments expressed in this poem were considered apropriate for the preface to a collection of photographs of the destroyed city and of the rebuilding: Richard

Peter's Dresden: Eine Kamera Klaot An (1 9 5 3 ?).14 Peter's

extensive collection of photographs is a systematic depiction of the ruins from all angles. Each of the city's

landmark buildings is included and these photographs are

augmented by others of shockingly disfigured corpses, shrunken in size to a mere two or three feet by the intense heat.15 There are also photographs of the chalked messages

left by survivors on destroyed houses and other telling

details. Living people appear only very rarely in this desolate landscape. Peter's collection of images was not published in book

form until several years after the event and thus, in line with the demand for a forward-looking attitude, the photographs were juxtaposed with pictures taken after rebuilding had begun. The second section of the volume is

entitled "...und so begann DER AUFBAU," and includes photographs of people hard at work rebuilding the city with

captions that read "in den Fabriken," "Freiwilliger Sonntagseinsatz," "Es wuchsen Wohnblocks aus dem

Triimmermeer, " "In den Konstruktionssalen und Montagehallen wird wieder fleiBig gearbeitet," and "DAS DRESDENER RATHAÜS

wuchs empor! Weiter im Neuaufbau" etc. The book concludes with the "Aufruf des Standigen Komitees des 108 Weltfriedenskongresses," an appeal "an alle Menschen" to sign a declaration outlawing the use of nuclear weapons and to treat those who would use them as war criminals. The book is a moving testament to the destructiveness of war, marred only by the ideologizing of the question of guilt in Zimmering's prefatory poem. In 1951 Zimmering composed his long (nine sections)

"Dresdner Kantate," which was put to music by Johannes Paul Thilman. The piece was an extended reflection on the

"Untergang und Aufstieg einer Stadt," conceived as an appeal to humanity to secure a peaceful future. The

following refrain concluded each of the nine sections; Ihr Menschen, ihr habt selbst die Wahl: Ihr selbst wahlt Tod und Leben. Die Zukunft, Menschen, ist allein in eure Hand gegeben. Despite such lofty sentiments, the piece quickly turned

into a paean of praise to the Soviet Union and the German communists who served early in the city's administration and initiated the rebuilding (mentioned by name: "Rudolf

Friedrichs, Kurt Fischer und Hermann Matern"). Blame for the destruction wss placed incontrovertibly on the West, as in the following strophe which talked of the bombing: Als Wallstreet diesen GruB gesandt, war schon das letzte Wort gesprochen, war Hitlers Macht schon langst gebrochen- drum trug der Tod das Kainsgewand.i® Addressing the city directly, a device used in earlier

poems, the poet called the Nazi years "dein Leidensweg" and

described the Soviets, arriving "Auf Stalins Panzern," as bringing with them a new "Lebensglaube." The post-war 109 years of hardship are described as a time of "ernstes Streben" which has resulted in the city's rebirth. The task now is to continue the building of bridges, both across the Elbe and across the divide separating Germans and Soviets: Briider, wir miissen die Briicke errichten, die die Faschisten im Wahnsinn zerstorten, als sie, betrunken von Tod und Vernichten, schon die sowjetischen Marschschritte horten. LaBt uns Brücken bauen, denn wir wollen leben! LaBt uns voll Vertrauen zueinanderstreben.17

The seventh section took the name of the children's miniature railway line recently built in the city, "Frohe

Zukunft,” and used it both literally and figuratively:

Die frohe Zukunft bauen ist unser groBes Ziel. Wir denken dran beim Lernen, wir denken dran beim Spiel. Hei, mutig in das Leben geht unsre Fahrt voran; es fahrt zur "Frohen Zukunft” die Kindereisenbahn.18

That this happy future was already beginning to manifest itself was attested to in the eighth section, which spoke of the city's cultural regeneration, and in the ninth also, which described how nature itself was now once again in harmony and bestowing its blessings upon the city: Seht, das Antlitz Dresdens lachelt wieder, und die Garten tragen neue Pracht, und es strahlen Sterne in der Nacht auf die Ruhe seiner Bürger nieder. Und die Sonne warmt die neuen Dacher, und die Arbeit hat ein neues Haus, und sie loscht des Krieges Male aus, und des Todes Schatten werden schwacher.19 The topic of Dresden's growth was one of which

Zimmering never tired, but the most numbing aspect of his 110 work was his adherence to the same basic sentiments. The nature imagery of the earlier poetry was still employed in 1952's "Melodie an der Elbe,” in which the appearance of lilac flowers in the city's gardens was employed as a sym­ bol of rebirth. The poem, like its predecessors, began with the scene immediately after the bombing, proceeded to the arrival of Soviet troops, alluded to the guilt of the Western Allies, praised the hard work of the early activists and finished with an affirmation of the bright future ahead. The difference in these later poems was one of degree: the reverential tones in which Zimmering spoke of the Soviet troops became increasingly sentimental:

War das der Feind? Es waren die Befreier, wenn auch noch Grimm auf ihren Stirnen ruhte und ihre Blusen rot vom eignen Blute und vor den Augen noch ein letzter Schleier von HaB, der aus Gerechtigkeit geboren, von Trauer um die Heimat, die gequalte, um einen Freund, der mit beim Siege fehlte... vielleicht im teueren Stalingrad v e r l o r e n . 20

The hostility towards the Western Allies became more

propagandistic: Der Zwingerbau mit seinen Todesschwaren, er, den Barbaren aus den "freien" Staaten mit ihren Bombenstiefeln niedertraten, begann dem Licht sein Antlitz zuzukehren.21

In these later poems Zimmering's concern with stressing only the positive led him to omit altogether any reference

to the Dresden population's complicity in National Socialism. Those who emerged from the ruins at the end of

the war were described as "Geduckte” and "Schatten” who had been breathing "Kerkerluft." This accentuation of the positive reached its apotheosis in the 1955 poem "Lied von Ill der Schonheit," where the words "schon” or "Schonheit” appeared no less than fifteen times in a poem which was only twenty-four lines long. Everything about the city was now "schon,” but the best was saved for the end: Doch am schonsten ist die Hand, die sich regt dem Volk zum Lohne - daB in unserm schonem Land Wohlstand, Frieden, Schonheit w o h n e . 2 2

Zimmering's novel Phosphor und Flieder appeared in

1954. Subtitled "Vom Untergang und Wiederaufstieg der Stadt Dresden,” it actually had very little to do with the city's destruction, since the raids were over within the first thirty pages of a novel which stretched to five hundred. One would be hard-pressed indeed to find a better example of a schematized "Aufbauroman,” those novels produced in the GDR between 1951 and 1956,23 which took as their models early Soviet novels and which aimed to illustrate the success of East German post-war development. The novel which ushered in the period of "Aufbauliteratur” was Eduard Claudius' Menschen an unserer Seite (1951), but, as Wolfgang Emmerich has reported, Claudius himself later expressed his thoughts on the genre's considerable shortcomings: Der literarhistorische Stellenwert dieser Romane ist problematisch. Sie waren belastet von dem, was Claudius einmal die leidige "Anwendung des Verpflichtungswesens auf die Literatur" nannte. Einige glaubten, so Claudius, "der Schriftsteller sei einem Computer ahnlich, in den man die Programmierungskarte hineinstecken konne, und blitzschnell, ehe man sich's versehe, komme der fertige, nach Wunsch geschneiderte Roman heraus: ein Teil positiver Held in strahlend heller Sonne, zur notwendigen Kontrastierung ein wenig gewolkt, ein Teilchen wohldosierter Liebe, wie sie halt iiblich ist, natiirlich ein Gegenspieler, dieser aber schwach, schlecht und zuletzt unterliegend.”24 112

Claudius' likening of the "Aufbauroman'' author to a machine is most apt with regard to Zimmering. Phosphor und Flieder exhibits all of the traits listed by Claudius and at no time rises above the level of the formulaic. A further characteristic of the novels of this type is their thematization of "production," a characteristic noted by critic Anneli Hartmann: Ob sie [the novels] von den neuen Verhaltnissen auf dem Lande handeln oder im industriellen Bereich angesiedelt sind - bei beiden Typen wird der Realismus des Faktischen nur allzu oft der Agitation geopfert; das Lob des Kollektivs und die Feier der Arbeitsmoral waren eindeutig dem Primat der Produktionssteigerung untergeordnet. Die Bestleistungen Stachanows lieBen sich auf das Aktivistenkonto Henneckes^S umbuchen.26

In this respect, Zimmering's novel was so true to type that it actually included a chapter detailing a record- breaking attempt at wall-building. In place of Hennecke we see Dresden's "Held der Arbeit" Hermann Hampacher and his two co-workers feted at the end of a strenuous day of brick-laying: "Kollegen!" sagte der BGL-Vorsitzende, als er die Kurzversammlung im Freien neben dem Arbeitsplatz der Dreiergruppe eroffnete. "Der heutige Tag ist ein groBer Tag, nicht nur für die drei Kollegen, die durch ihre siebeneinhaIbfache Erfüllung der Norm einen personlichen Triumph feiern konnen, sondern für uns alle, denn auf diesem Bau wurde der Beweis geliefert, was kollektive Arbeit vollbringen kann. Vor allem aber haben die Kollegen auch gezeigt, daB die Arbeiterklasse es versteht, ihre schopferischen Krafte zu entfalten, wenn sie nicht mehr Ausbeutungsobjekte, sondern Bauherr und Bauender zugleich ist."2? Hampacher is indeed a positive role-model but the truly

exemplary figure of the novel is protagonist Georg Reichold. Reichold's communist background is documented as is his five year internment in Buchenwald concentration 113 camp and subsequent assignment to a Strafbataillon. The reader first encounters him as he languishes in a Dresden prison, only to be set free as a result of the bombing. Thus it is that the raids serve a liberating function in the scheme of the novel. However, it quickly becomes apparent that this positive moment is nothing more than a device of the plot, for as soon as Reichold has time to reflect on events he casts them within his doctrinaire, anti-capitalist world-view:

Wie wenige ahnten, daB der Tod in den deutschen Konzentrationslagern nur der Bruder des Todes aus den anglo-amerikanischen fliegenden Festungen war. Und wie wenige hatten begriffen, daB die Flamme von Auschwitz, in der die Millionen vergaster Juden, Polen, Tschechen, Russen, Zigeuner und auch Deutsche verbrannten, die Schwester der Flamme war, die Dresden und Hunderttausende Dresdner erstickte und verbrannte.28

This passage makes it clear that the bombing is not to be seen as having been part of the fight against fascism but rather as a further manifestation of that ideology. As throughout the rest of the novel, the actions of the capitalist Allies are equated with those of the National Socialists. Zimmering serves as mouthpiece for the state- sanctioned view of history. One year after the book appeared, on the tenth anniversary of the Dresden bombing, Otto Grotewohl had the following to say about Germany's destroyed cities: Sie wurden von den anglo-amerikanischen Imperialisten aus dem gleichen Macht- und Eroberungswahn zerstort, aus dem die deutschen Faschisten den zweiten Weltkrieg inszenierten. [...] Dieses unsinnige Verbrechen diente ebenso wie die Zerstorung von Brücken, Talsperren und anderen lebenswichtigen Einrichtungen durch die SS dem Zweck, eine Trümmerzone zu schaffen, die den siegreichen Sowjetarmeen das weitere Vordringen unmoglich machen sollte.29 114

Although the novel is concerned only ostensibly with the raids themselves, their function is a dominant one: they not only provide the impetus for the novel's real subject matter - the rebuilding of Dresden under Soviet/German communist leadership - but also serve to legitimize Zimmering's subsequent thesis that capitalism/fascism must necessarily lead to destruction, whereas communism promises renewal. Zimmering's paean of praise to communism is linked to a concertedly hostile attack on the Western Allies. In places this attack spills over into the realm of crude propaganda, as in the final pages of the novel when the discussion turns to the lot of a young woman who has fled the GDR for the FRG and subsequently become engaged to an American soldier: "Ausgerechnet einen Amerikaner," zischte Eberhard, der mit gerunzelte Stirn dastand und auf die Erde starrte. "Auch unter Amerikanern soil es anstandige Menschen geben,” brummte Wolf-Dieter gedehnt. Es war nicht ganz klar, ob er es ernst oder ironisch meinte. "Ich hab' ja nichts gegen Auslander," verteidigte sich Eberhard, "aber für diese Besatzungshengste ist das ja bloB eine bequeme Form, um über die vorübergehende Einsamkeit, die ihr Dienst mit sich bringt, hinwegzukommen."30

What we see in Zimmering's Dresden novel is an attempt to massage an historical occurrence, which seems ideally suited to the task, into an officialy proclaimed, but crudely executed, literary model. Where it is warranted, there is surely nothing amiss in heralding and praising the work of reconstruction, nor is it harmful to use the example of devastation such as occurred in Dresden as a constant reminder of the results of modern warfare. To take this one stage further, the employment of Dresden in 115 the struggle to prevent a resurgence of fascism, the ultimate cause of the Second World War and hence of the bombings, would also appear legitimate. However, the equation of fascism with capitalism completely undermines Zimmering's claims of being a "Dichter im Dienst [...] des

Friedens."31 Before examining the legacy of Zimmering's

Cold War logic, I should like to look first at parallel developments in the West.

ANTI-EASTERN LITERATURE IN THE WEST

Dresden did not present so easily adapted a symbol for

Western writers determined to play their part in fanning

the flames of the Cold War, as it did for their Eastern counterparts. Since the Soviets had played no part in destroying the city, such writers concentrated their attentions on other aspects of the Second World War, most

notably the occupation of the Eastern territories by Soviet troops in 1944/45. One such writer was Jürgen Thorwald. Thorwald (b. 1916) spent the war years in the German

navy writing reports on the maritime war for Germans at home. Once the war was over he turned his attention to

documentary literature. His works on contemporary history, medicine and, above all, sensational criminal cases, made

him a widely-read author whose works were translated into twenty languages. He was so successful that he divided his time after 1958 between his three residences in Munich, Lugano and Beverly Hills. In 1966 he travelled to New York 116 to receive the Edgar Allan Poe Prize for his writing on crime. Thorwald's first book after the war. Es beaann an der Weichsel (1949), was an attempt to reconstruct, in the form of a narrative, the history of Eastern Germany in the spring of 1945: Dieses Buch ist kein Roman, sondern ein Bericht von geschichtlichen Ereignissen, auch dort, wo es die Form der Erzahlung benutzt. Es ist geschichtliche Wahrheit, soweit sich solche Wahrheit heute einem einzelnen Menschen erschliefien kann, der nach ihr sucht. Das Buch stützt sich auf rund 2000 Dokumente.32

Thorwald's aim in writing the book, he continued, was not to place blame or proclaim innocence. Rather, "es wurde geschrieben, urn auf alien Seiten die Wahrheit zu

finden."33 With regard to Dresden, it is difficult to

refute Thorwald's claims, for his four page depiction of the raids displays a remarkably high degree of historical

accuracy for a report written so shortly after the war. The number of victims is placed at 40,000 which, if it errs at all, is only out by a few thousand, no mean feat when one recalls that in the 1960's some writers were still

making claims for over 200,000 dead! The unfolding of events of the 13/14 February tallies with later reliable

historical studies and Thorwald's questioning of the motive for the raids is indeed legitimate:

Denn gab es fur diesen morderischen Angriff auf Dresden in dieser Stunde eine andere Deutung als die kalter, wohlberechneter Vernichtung? Genvigte es zu sagen, hier sei es darum gegangen, das groBte noch vorhandene Nachschub- und Verkehrszentrum hinter der deutschen Ostfront lahmzulegen? Nicht nur in den Bahnhofen - das mochte angehen, obwohl gerade sie - wuBten dies die Luftmarschalle driiben nicht? - Verkehrszentren fur die Gejagten, Heimatlosen waren; sondern auch in der 117

bewohnten Stadt und auf den Wiesen der Elbe?l However, at the end of the Dresden account comes a sentence which is an indication of Thorwald's aim in writing such a book: MuBten 40,000 Menschen in einer Nacht und einem Vormittag sterben, um einen Nachschubstrang zu unterbinden und die sowjetischen Armeen noch zu unterstiitzen in ihrem Sturmlauf der Zerstorung, Plunderung und Schandung?34

Thorwald's depiction of the Dresden bombing belies the

overall tone of the novel, since the raids offer little

opportunity to attack the Soviets but are impossible to omit from a history of the period. The rest of the novel is, in fact, a stridently anti-Soviet tract for which the author makes no apology:

Das Buch wird ebenso seine Feinde finden, nicht nur in der Sowjetunion und bei den kommunistischen Werbern in aller Welt, die das geschilderte diistere Kapitel sowjetischer Geschichte schnell und für immer der Vergessenheit überantworten mochten. Sie wissen, daB die Sowjetunion, die schlimmsten Instinkte unter den primitivsten ihrer Volker auf europaischen Boden entfesselnd, sich selbst traf und die moralische Stellung untergrub, die sie seit 1941 in der ganzen Welt teils zu recht, teils zu unirecht erworben hatte. Sie werden nicht anstehen, dieses Buch als anti­ sow jet isch, antidemokratisch und als eine Storung des Friedens zu bezeichnen. In diesem Buch wird geschichtliche Wahrheit dargestellt, und die Sowjetunion wurde dem Frieden und sich selbst und ihren Volkern besser dienen, wenn sie die Wahrheit nicht ableugnete, sondern sich zu diesem fürchterlichen Irrweg bekennte, ebenso wie sich Deutschland zu seinen furchtbaren Irrwegen zu bekennen hat. Es gâbe ohne Rache und ohne HaB viele Wege für eine wenigstens annahrende Wiedergutmachung; sie waren zwischen einfachen Menschen in einer Stunde auszuhandeln; sie sind allerdings nicht zu finden in einer Atmosphare des Imperialismus oder des Nationalismus.35

Evident here is an attitude later adopted by the

revisionist historians, namely that of balancing the crimes of the Nazis with those of the Soviet Union. While there 118 can be no refuting of Thorwald's call for the investigation of those Soviet crimes, the ferociousness of his attack and his novel's concentration on the lot of the hapless Germans of the eastern territories at the expense of any discussion of other aspects of the twelve years of Nazi rule, ensured that his own investigation remained wholly ahistorical. The groundless allusion to the Dresden raids as having been carried out in support of the advancing Soviet army was a myth which proved persistent in the writings of

Western historians and novelists. Theodor Plievier (b.

1892), a writer who initially settled in the Soviet zone after the war, having spent most of the Nazi years in

Soviet exile, left the East in 1947 for Switzerland. His novel Berlin (1954), the third in a trilogy with the col­ lective title Der Feldzuf im Osten (Stalingrad [1945] and

Moskau [1952] being the first two novels of the trilogy), included a description of the destroyed city of Dresden in its opening pages. While Plievier did not shy away from putting the word "Terrorflieger” into the mouth of one of his characters,36 his protagonist. Colonel Zecke, raises the issue, with qualifications, of the raids having been carried out at Stalin's request:

So also sah das aus - ein riesiger Pflug war über die Erde gegangen und hatte eine trostlose Triimmer- landschaft hinter sich gelassen. Von den groBen Hotels - dort hatten doch fünf oder sechs nebeneinander gestanden - war nichts geblieben. Eine Dune aus Backsteinbrocken und geronnenem Mortel, dahinter wieder eine Dune und wieder, Woge nach Woge, in jâhem Lauf stehengeblieben. Im Schuttbett eine Saule, ein Fensterbogen, mal ein Haus, die hohle Halfte eines gespaltenen Turms, eine gekopfte Kirche, die berühmten Dresdener Fassaden im Sturze erstarrt, gespenstisch verandert und iiberzogen von RuB und Qualm. 119 Ausradiert. [...] MuBte das sein, muBte die Forderung Stalins - man sagt, daB die Bombadierung auf die russische Offensive abgestimmt war - solche Erfiillung finden? Plievier was even-handed in his perpetuation of the myths surrounding Dresden, for he then went on in the text to state as fact a grossly inflated death-toll, a myth which has been used since to attack the Western Allies: Die Endphase der groBen Schlacht an der Wolga - nun zwei Jahre zuriickliegend - hatte zweihunderttausend Opfer gekostet, und ganz Deutschland war betroffen, über ganz Deutschland wehten schwarze Fahnen. Hier war die Zahl der Opfer, die in zwei Nachten in den Schutt sanken, nicht kleiner, war groBer. Dort waren es Soldaten - hier waren es Pensionare, Arbeiter, Angestellte, alte Frauen, junge Frauen, Kinder und Flüchtlinge, und kein AnlaB war gegeben für einen nationalen Trauertag.^?

on balance, however, Zecke, as a German and a colonel felt in no position to cast the first stone:

War wirklich nichts einzuwenden...Oradour-sur-Glane, Lidice, Treblinka, Auschwitz, das Gas Zyklon B, der ”Nacht-und-Nebel"-ErlaB, Berge menschlicher Skelette aus der Verbrennungsofen und den Gaskammern und ungezahlte Hundertausende für die Vernichtung noch vorgemerkt, die Ausrottung zum Staatsprinzip erhoben, da steht es uns schlecht an, von Terror zu reden. Aber...wo ist das Ende, wie soil das allés einmal aufhoren? Stehe Gott uns bei und auch den anderen!^®

While Plievier's contribution to the ideological debate surrounding Dresden was no more than the keeping in the public consciousness of two myths about the bombing, Wolfgang Paul's contribution was of a very different nature. Paul, whose wartime diaries were cited in the sec­ ond chapter, shared a common history with Plievier, in that he too settled in the Soviet zone after the war, (in

Dresden), but left, in his case for in 1948, after a public disagreement with Johannes R. Becher. 120

Unlike Plievier, however, whose work after his move to the "Sfestniia^i:irtaxnedr“ar“certaxn~bal:ancH7 Paot~tlirew“^imse±f^T:nto anti-Eastern propagandizing. Unable to find much mileage in the subject of the Dresden raids, but equally unable to

leave the subject of his beloved Dresden, he published in 1953 a novel entitled Dresden 1953. the theme of which was

that the city had been destroyed twice:

Einmal in der Nacht, in der sie Bomben zerstorten, und noch einmal unter den fremden Truppen, die sich in der Stadt auf Jahrzehnte einrichteten.39 The novel actually makes scant reference to the raids,

and when it does so it is only to highlight the lack of any

rebuilding which had been done in the intervening eight years. In almost all regards, Dresden 1953 is the inverse

of Phosphor und Flieder. Instead of the helpful Soviet

officers of Zimmering's novel, we read of Soviet secret

police officers who make such proclamations as: "Für mich sind alle Deutschen amerikanische Agenten,"40 and:

Wir sind nicht nach Deutschland gekommen, um barmherzige Samariter zu spielen. Wir haben Mitteldeutschland, wie ihr unsere Zone nennt, erobert. Ein erobertes Land ist kein brauchbares Objekt für sentimentale Humanitât. Damit wir es erobern konnten, haben Millionen Sowjetmenschen ihr Leben gegeben. Ihr habt uns angegriffen, wir muBten euch schlagen. Wir müssen diese Menschenopfer ersetzen. Wir haben sie ersetzt durch die Deutschen, die in unsere Hande fielen. Übrigens - es ist ein schlechter Ersatz, die Deutschen denken zu viel, die Russen gehorchen besser. Wenn wir nun den Deutschen eine Verwaltung geben, dann konnen wir verlangen, daB diese Verwaltung nach unserer Pfeife tanzt.41

The German administration spoken of is portrayed as a

tyrannical, power-hungry clique, which simply imprisons those who disagree with the regime, while the true- believers in a communist state, those who rushed to begin 121 the formation of such a state, are left tired and beaten: Ich will nicht mehr leben. Die Partei ist tot, der Sozialismus ist tot, mein Herz schlagt sinnlos weiter, ich kann es nicht mehr schlagen h o r e n . 4 2 Such are the words of Becker, a once-famous writer who now, bereft of all hope, has no place to go. He cannot even leave the system which has failed him, since in the West he is viewed as one former talent who prostituted himself for the Soviets: "Wir sind tote Seelen, Gogols

'Tote Seelen'."43 Those artists who had not yet com­ promised themselves in the eyes of the West dreamed only of leaving: Hollywood muB ein Paradies sein, dachte Karin, wenn man in den letzten Jahren nur Rollen in russischen Stücken gespielt hat.44

Meanwhile ordinary citizens were leaving the country in their thousands: Man lebte von schmalen Rationen, kaufte die Butter grammweise auf Karten, als ware noch Krieg, stand stundenlang nach einem Paar Strvimpfe, einem dünnen Mantel an. Das Elend wuchs, breitete sich aus, überfiel nun auch diejenigen, die es bisher übersehen hatte. Die Bauern flohen von ihren Hofen, die Arbeiter wichen nachts aus ihren Stadten, die Bürger sammelten sich auf den Bahnhofen, um das andere Deutschland zu erreichen. Auch die Funktionare reihten sich ein, erschienen mit verdrossenen Gesichtern in den Berliner Flüchtlingslagern, baten um Schütz vor einem Regime, das sie errichtet hatten.45

The hopes which fired the imaginations of those involved in the earliest stages of reconstruction had been perverted by the institution of a one-party system.46 just

as Zimmering attacked West Germany by pointing to its political policies which he perceived as no more than continuations of National Socialist policies, so Paul drew

comparisons between the new regime in the East and the 122

Third Reich. There is, for example, the youthful supporter of the SED regime who prophesies:

Hitler hat es falsch gemacht. Wir werden es besser machen. Wir werden starker als Hitler sein. Die Sowjetarmee ist unser Verbündeter.47

Or, again Becker the writer who warns a younger writer: Sie sind in Gefahr, ich fühle es. Sie sind ebenso in Gefahr wie ich in Gefahr war, als die anderen damais, 1933, mich suchten, fanden, einsperrten und iiberreden wollten, einer der ihren zu werden. Es wiederholt sich manches auf dieser Welt, in diesem Land.48

The reconstruction of the city, which formed the backbone of Zimmering's novel, is decried by Paul. The enthusiasm with which Zimmering's characters gave up their Sundays to help with the task of clearing away the city's rubble is nowhere to be found in Dresden 1953:

Der Sonntag leerte die Fabriken, aber die Arbeiter mit ihren Familien durften nicht den Sonntag feiern, wie es noch ihre Eltern getan hatten, sie muBten die freiwillige Aufbauarbeit leisten, die das Regime seit Jahren verordnete.49

Eight years after the end of the war there are finally building materials in the city, but instead of housing, the

Party decides to build a one hundred and fifty meter high tower^O in honor of itself:

Acht Jahre hatte die Partei gewartet, bis sie das Hochhaus bauen konnte. Jahre ohne Zement, ohne Stahl. Jedes Jahr lieB Oberbiirgermeister Mittelsmann einem Aufbauplan entwerfen, der niemals durchgefiihrt wurde. Es wurden keine neuen Wohnungen gebaut, denn die Behorden, die über die Zuteilung von Baustoffen zu entscheiden hatten, arbeiteten für den Aufbau von Minsk Oder Kovel. Dresden rangierte am SchluB, eine vergessene, verlorene Stadt, in der die Steine auf das Brot warteten und das Brot auf die Steine.51

As construction of the tower begins, the workers are observed by a Party functionary in the company of the mayor: 123

Er sah diese hageren, verschlossenen Bauarbeiter, mit denen nichts anderes anzufangen war, als sie arbeiten zu lassen. Er sah neben den Mannern die Triimmerfrauen, die nun endlich, nach jahrelangem eintonigem Ziegelputzen eine Arbeit erhalten hatten, die als Aufbau zahlte. Er sah die schmutzigen Kopftücher der Frauen, die diirren Arme, die mageren Heine in den klobigen Arbeitsschuhen. Er sah, wie sie sich bemühten, die Norm zu erfiillen, das Soil der Schicht zu erreichen, hier, unter den Augen des Oberbürgermeisters, den sie nie gewahlt hatten.

The norms which had been a source of inspiration for the workers of Phosphor und Flieder. lead here to shoddy work and, as the reader has long ago come to expect, the crashing to the ground of the Babylonian tower represents the climax of the novel. The symbolism of the tower's inevitable collapse is underlined at every opportuntiy, as in the following exchange between the artist Hensen and the mayor Mittelsmann. Hensen raises the issue of the reports prepared by experts which question the reliability of the foundations upon which the tower is being built, but Mittelsmann will hear nothing of them:

"Unsinn, allés Unsinn. Oder besser: reaktionare Umtriebe. Man will uns einreden, wir bauten auf, wie es schon in den Gutachten heiBt, 'triigerischem Grund'." Hensen erwiderte: "Ich habe mich auf der Baustelle umgesehen. Die Fundamente sind zu schnell gelegt worden. Das Aktivistentempo hat auch seine Nachteile. Was unter den Fundamenten ist, weiB ich nicht. Aber man sagt, der Boden ware nicht in Ordnung."53 The artist Hensen is the polar opposite to the artist Riemeyer of Zimmering's novel. Whereas Riemeyer found

inspiration in the new state,54 Hensen is unable to bring

any worthwhile work to completion;

Ich muB trinken, weil ich seit Jahren kein Gedicht mehr geschrieben habe, vor dem ich mich nicht zu ekeln brauche.55 124 As if this proclamation of the death of culture in the East were not enough, Hensen, who has sold his soul and acquiesced to the Party's request for a relief for the tower, is actually caught inside the tower when it collapses and is crushed to death, but not before he has time for one last thought:

Das Parteihaus war, wie er vorausgesagt hatte, eingestiirzt. Weder die Macht, die diese Partei besaB, noch die Gewalt, mit der die Partei diese Macht gebrauchte, konnten das Haus retten. Es fiel, weil es auf unsicheren Fundamenten errichtet worden war. Es muBte fallen, weil die Stadt dieses Parteihaus nicht tragen konnte. Daran dachte Hensen, bevor er starb.56

The formal parallels between Dresden 1953 and Phosphor

und Flieder are striking, a similarity which can be

attributed to both novels' commonality of purpose. In

seeking to define what can only be described as an enemy

image, either directly, or indirectly by way of contrast, both writers fell prey to the excesses of propaganda. The novels added little to an historical understanding of the

Dresden raids but were rather instances of the desire in

both halves.of Germany to allow the bombings to slip into a murky history. Paul and Thorwald, in dealing with the raids only fleetingly, while dwelling on Soviet/East German

actions, demonstrate a pronounced reluctance to provide

anything which might serve as political capital for the East. Zimmering, in his avowed concentration on the

future, can be expected to tell us little of the past. Yet the literature of the Cold War despite its obvious

weaknesses, has been of lasting effect and there are traces of this effect in the Historikerstreit: as outlined in the 125

Introduction, one argument of the revisionist historians has been that National Socialist crimes lose their unique­ ness when viewed in the context of the times during which they were committed. (The concentration by writers such as Paul and Thorwald on Soviet/Eastern crimes at the expense of discussing Nazi crimes doubtless helped to create an atmosphere in which such an argument would find resonance). An equation is made between the crimes of the Nazis and

those of their adversaries. Zimmering's equation of Western Allies equals Nazi, became, in the Historikerstreit. Western Allies plus Soviet Union equals Nazi: to the crimes of the Western Allies (Dresden, Hamburg etc.) were added the crimes of the Soviet Union (Stalin's

purges, the persecution of Soviet Jews, etc.). The new equation had some interesting repercussions. The most immediate aim behind it was clearly the de-emphasizing of the magnitude of Nazi/German crimes in order that German history might be rewritten without viewing the Third Reich

as a defining characteristic of that history. It was an aim which was obviously of great appeal to those Germans who would like to see their own Nazi past or that of their country reduced in its notoriety. (Again the West's Cold

War policy of anti-communism above all else had only left the way open for such a re-evaluation). If we take the

revisionist argument to its logical conclusion, we can see that there is in fact scope for more than just a reduction of notoriety, since the equation of Nazi crimes with Allied

(Western and Eastern) crimes leaves one section of society 126 completely untouched, namely non-Nazi Germans. According to the equation, no other group has a greater right to the moral high-ground than this one. While there can be no denying that a not inconsequential number of Germans belonged to this group, the following section will deal with two writers whose aim in the post-war years was to inflate that number substantially. The chief repercussion of their writings was to forestall an investigation of the

level to which National Socialism pervaded German society. (Once again, this forestalling was greatly aided by the

Cold War). Within the last twenty years history writing has increasingly taken as its subject matter the degree of pervasiveness.57

DRESDEN AS JUSTIFICATION;

ERHART KASTNER AND BRUNO WERNER

Erhart Kastner (b. 1904) and Bruno Werner (b. 1896),

although by no means major literary figures of the post-war period, contributed to the creation of an alternative

history of the Third Reich which largely excused the

actions of those Germans who remained in Germany after 1933 and, at the very least, made their peace with the Nazis. Both Kastner's Das Zeltbuch von Tumilat. and Werner's Die

Galeere. proved popular successes. They represented history as a large number of people would like it to have been. The novels' lack of popularity outside of Germany

attested to the outside world's reluctance to accept such a 127 wish-history. Some Western writers who emerged from twelve years of

"inner emigration" initially looked backwards. The first order of the day became the justification of their own histories, the creation of a sound base upon which to build. With regard to Dresden, these writers were not in

the position to lay the blame for the raids at the door of

their ideological opponents. Werner's and Kastner's works were not anti-Soviet as Zimmering's were anti-capitalist, but strove rather to present an anti-extremism of whichever hue.

The revisionist history created by Kastner and Werner necessarily excluded any discussion as to how the Nazis came to power or the enthusiasm with which they were

greeted, since such a discussion would indict the very people they were seeking to excuse. Kastner's Zeltbuch von Tumilat covered the time spent by the author after the war in an English internment camp in Egypt. Werner's Die

Galeere. which spanned the twelve years of Nazi rule, began

in the days immediately preceding Hitler's appointment as Chancellor: Nazi rule was already a fait accompli. Kastner's narrator and Werner's protagonist, Georg Forster,

have been trapped by historical circumstances not of their own making. Kastner, who had much time to ponder his situation as he sat in the desert, thought back on the past years and arrived at astonishingly few insights. He

wallowed in the suffering which the times occasioned while

Werner wove one long tale of woe. There was, in short. 128 very little room for free will in either work. In 1935 chose to enter the military in order to escape the public eye and the persecution which he feared would result from his stated anti-Nazism.58 Werner ascribed to a character in his novel Benn's explanation as to his choice of escape route, having the character call the military, "die aristokratische Form der Emigration."59 Kastner would also come to say that he had chosen the army over civilian life, since it had given him the opportunity to get away. In fact, the army sent him to Salonika,

Greece, and then on to Athens, where he was to write a book

for the troops on the country which they were occupying. No expense was spared for the book, to the extent that

Kastner was provided with an airplane so that he might

include his impressions of the country from the air. Griechenland; Ein Buch aus dem Kriecre was presented to the

troops at Christmas, 1942, and was subsequently published

in Berlin by the Verlag Gebriider Mann in 1943. In his book about Kastner displayed his considerable familiarity with Ancient Greek society and its

culture. He travels around the mainland and islands, seeking out those sites familiar to him from his Classical training, and then describes them rhapsodically. However, the book oversteps the bounds of the traditional travel

narrative and makes explicit comparisons between Classical times and the contemporary occupation of Greece by the

German army. The reality of the war of occupation is

almost completely overlooked; the shootings of hostages and 129 the reprisals against civilians for acts of resistance find no place in this work. Instead, the reader is treated to descriptions such as the following, of German soldiers waiting by the sea for a train connection: Da waren sie, die "blonden Archaier” Homers, die Helden der Ilias. Wie jene stammten sie aus der Norden, wie jene waren sie groB, hell, jung, ein Geschlecht, strahlend in der Pracht seiner Glieder. Alle waren sie da, der junge Antenor, der massige Ajax, der geschmeidige Diomedes, selbst der strahlende, blondlockige Achill. Wie anders denn sollten jene ausgesehen haben als diese hier, die gelassen ihr Heldentum trugen und ruhig und kameradschaftlich, als ware es weiter nichts gewesen, von den Kampfen auf Kreta erzShlten, die wohl viel heldenhafter, viel kiihner und viel bitterer waren als alle Kampfe um Troja? Wer auf Erden hatte jemals mehr Recht gehabt, sich mit jenen zu vergleichen als die hier - die nicht daran dachten? Sie kamen vom schwersten Siege, und neuen, unbekannten Taten fuhren sie entgegen. Keiner von ihnen, der nicht den Kameraden, den Freund da drunten gelassen hatte. Um jeden von ihnen schwebte der Fliigelschlag des Schicksals. Es wehte homerische Luft.Go"*

This mythologizing of the German troops was a transparent attempt to direct attention away from the contemporary situation. When, ten years later, the author republished his first book under the new title of Olberqe. Weinberqe [1953], passages such as the above were omitted.

Kastner defended his work with the argument that he personally had committed no crime and had used his literary

talents to escape from the time: "So war ich aus der Zeit

ausgestiegen. MuB man schon in der Zeit sein, ist es gut wenn man hie und da aussteigen kann."61 Nowhere in the

revised edition of Griechenland does the author reflect on

the implications of writing at the behest of the Nazi military. The pretense of somehow not being of the time was only maintained by Kastner in Griechenland/Olberae. 130

Weinberqe through his ignoring of the reign of terror instituted by the German military in front of his very eyes. One might argue that such an oversight is "excusable” in light of the circumstances of Griechenland^s composition, but no such excuse can be made for Olberqe. Weinberqe or Das Zeltbuch von Tumilat [1949]. It is with a measured degree of skepticism that one approaches Kastner's texts composed upon his return to Germany after internment.

Casting him as a representative of the literature of "inner

emigration" is out of the question, and even the

designation aesthetic escapism is highly problematic in light of passages such as the one above.

Time at first hangs heavy on the internees of the camp

at Tumilat, but after several months Kastner comes to enjoy

the emptiness of his existence. Imagination and memory become the two cornerstones of his life along with his

friendship with another internee, Paul, with whom he conducts endless discussions on the arts. Together with Paul he sets about the task of collecting as much information as can be found about the destroyed cultural

treasures of Europe: "einen Katalog dessen zu machen, was nicht mehr da war - einen Unkatalog also."62 The reasoning

behind undertaking such a project is enlightening; Wir begannen also eine richtige Kartothek des Verlorenen. Wir wollten nicht im Ungefahren der Trauer verbleiben. Wir glaubten, es gehore Zur Achtung, die wir dem Entschwundenen schuldig waren, wenigstens genaue Kenntnis davon zu erwerben. Wir schamten uns einer Zeit anzugehoren, in der so etwas geschah. Aber wir schamten uns auch, wenn wir feststellen muBten, daB wir von manchem Kunstwerk erst dadurch erfuhren, weil es jetzt nicht mehr da war. Es ist Unrecht, etwas zu besitzen, ohne daB man es sich durch Kenntnis 131 erwirbt.63

There is no room for human suffering in Kastner's project. In order to maintain the inviolability of the ivory tower which he had created for himself, Kastner had to ignore that aspect of the war. Concomitant with this attitude is Kastner's obvious refusal to see any connection between his own actions and the destruction of life and property which took place. The guilt of which he writes is that of being of the time during which the bombings occurred. His own participation in events is nowhere acknowledged. Pride of place in the catalogue of devastation goes to

Kastner's beloved Dresden:

Am meisten aber zehrte der Gram um die Stadt Dresden an uns. Den Untergang dieser Stadt schien sich der Satan als etwas Besonderes bis zum Schlusse aufgehoben zu haben. The invocation of Satan as agent of the destruction clearly illustrates Kastner's refusal to come to terms with the real genesis of the bombings. We shall see the same technique much more fully exploited in Werner's novel. There the theme is not just the devastation of Dresden but the whole history of the Third Reich being somehow guided by the machinations of other-worldly beings. For Kastner it is Satan, for Werner, God. In addition to betraying both authors' desire to escape culpability, this technique also shows them to be stuck in modes of thinking perpetuated by the Nazi regime which encouraged a belief in mythic destiny. The willingness to ascribe mythic significance to earth-bound events betrays the degree to 132 which such symbolism permeated the reasoning powers of the German population. In writing about opposition poetry which cast the struggle against Nazism in religious terms, Charles W. Hoffmann has made plain the thin line which the poets trod: Religiose Dichtung, die Hitler als Antichristen und sein Erscheinen als die Stunde gottlicher Priifung definiert [...] la&t sich als leidenschaftliche Aufforderung begreifen, dem falschen Gott abzuschworen. Aber diese Dichtung kann auch einer Art von Fatalismus angeklagt werden, ahnlich der nationalsozialistischen Auffassung von Hitler als dem Schicksal Deutschlands. Eine solche Resignation weicht dem eigentlichen Problem, ihm als politischer Realitat entgegenzustehen, aus.65

The idea of destiny as it was used by the Nazis to herald the arrival of Hitler is converted by Kastner and his friend Paul into a fatalistic understanding of history as a cyclical process, beyond the realm of human action.

In a discussion which the two friends have after learning of the extent of Dresden's devastation from letters which have arrived, they disagree as to what follows from such an act. Kastner is mortified: Wenn das geschehen war, hatte es noch einen Sinn, übrig zu bleiben? Weiterzuleben war offenbar nur in sinnloser Leichtfertigkeit môglich.66

Further: "Mir kommt mein Weiterleben oft vor wie gestohlen.” Paul, conversely, sees the destruction as presenting the opportunity to start afresh and castigates

Kastner for his resignation: Aber das ist doch toricht und irr [... ] Damit ware der Wille der zerstorenden Machte ja gerade erfiillt, und du hattest ihre Macht nur vermehrt!®' Kastner, in turn, chastises Paul for his too easy acceptance of the devastation to which Paul replies: 133 Kein Wort zur Verteidigung dieser Verbrechen. Sie sind Mord im allerechtesten Sinn. Mord, um so gemeiner, je edler das Gemordete ist. Austilgung so vornehmer, wehrloser Geschopfe, wie es Kunstwerke sind, nennt niemand Mord; aber er ist es. BesaBen wir wirklich Humanitât, so trafe die Schandung von Schonen dieselbe Strafe wie vielfachem Mord. Aber hat man je von solchen Tribunalen gehort? Leaving aside the troubling equation of the destruction of things with the murder of human beings, there is in this statement still no identification of the destructive forces about which the two friends have been talking. That is saved for Paul's next pronouncement, with which Kastner agrees, which identifies the forces of devastation as forces which always accompany historical change. Since change is inevitable, so too is destruction:

Zerstorung [...] war immer, solang es ein Aufrichten gab. Zerstoren im Krieg und Zerstoren in friedlichem Eifer: immer wurde munter zerstort [...] Wann hat man begonnen, unsere alten Stadte ohne Sinn zu zerstoren? Etwa erst in diesem scheuBlichen Krieg? Keineswegs; schon lang, lang vorher, als man die alten Tore einriB und die guten Biirgerbauten, um an ihre Stelle etwas Falsches, Geprahltes zu setzen: Ungestalt für Gestalt. Die Geschichte der Kunst ist die Geschichte der Zerstorung der Kunst. Wir erleben nichts Neues: bilde dir das nur nicht ein.68

Critic Anton Krattli described Das Zeltbuch von Tumilat as the work with which Kastner achieved his breakthrough ("Durchbruch”69) onto the literary scene, a breakthrough which I believe can be attributed to the presence in the work of passages such as the above. The sentiments contained therein provided the German reader a most convenient reading of history which absolved him or her of all culpability for acts committed in the name of Germany by the Nazis, since it effectively dismissed the notion of free will. Further, Kastner's opinion as espoused in this 134 conversation with Paul, was an attempt to reconnect with a humanist tradition which had been broken by the intrusion into the historical continuum of "die zerstorenden Machte." In his mourning for what has been lost and his appeal to the reader not to forget, there is a positive moment: although there has occurred a great deal of devastation, the incursion of "die zerstorenden Machte" is now past and the way is open to close one chapter of history and begin again. Mourning for the dead is replaced by mourning for a tradition, and whereas the dead cannot be resurrected,

Kastner hopes that a tradition can. The very style of the book, a style which is a polar opposite to the contemporaneous writings of the "Kahlschlag" authors, is itself an attempt to forge a link with the German humanist tradition, a fact which was remarked upon by the reviewer from the Neue Zeituna. none other than Bruno Werner:

Was so entstand ist ein sehr deutsches Buch, ganz beheimatet in der Bildungswelt, deren Gestirne Goethe und Hofmannsthal heiBen, bis in die gemessene Sprachform und -zucht hinein, abseits vom politischen Geschehen (was dem Buch Vorwürfe eintragen mag), aber doch sinnlich-lebendig erfiillt von einem groBen abendlandischen Menschenbild, wie es seinem gewahlten noblen Vorbildern entspricht.70

On the face of it, Werner's own novel. Die Galeere. does not avoid the political reality of the day as Kastner's does. It begins immediately before the Nazi ascension to power and ends with Allied tanks rolling into

German cities. The Rohm Putsch, the Night of the Pogroms, the July 20th, 1944 plot to kill Hitler all figure in the author's narrative, as does the bombing of Dresden.

However, the framework within which these events are set 135 precludes a political analysis, since it, like Kastner's understanding of history, is profoundly ahistorical. Werner's overriding concerns in this novel are twofold. The first is to demonstrate to a post-war readership the impossibility of a non-Nazi individual within Nazi Germany ever having been able to challenge the regime actively. Having established this, Werner can proceed to his second concern, an unstinting exposition of the physical and spiritual sufferings of an individual who finds himself in the position of the impotent opponent.

Werner's method in establishing the impossibility of resistance is to stress from the outset the hopelessness of the position of the non-Nazi German. The novel's title.

Die Galeere. is a symbol for the relationship between the

Nazi leaders and their subjects: "das ist unsere Perspektive," [says a character from the novel] "gesehen von einer Galeere, einem lecken, übelriechenden alten Kasten mit Ausguckritzen durch verfaulte Planken, einer Galeere, die durch die grofie Nacht fahrt." "Die Galeere", nickte Georg und starrte in den blauen Schatten der Kastanienbaume. "Die Galeere, nicht schlecht. An Ketten geschmiedet im Dunkel des Schiffsbauchs und nur zwei Hoffnungssterne der Befreiung; Der Untergang des Schiffes oder seine Überwâltigung durch den Feind. Aber schlieBlich ist es auch vorgekommen, daB man den Kapitan überwâltigt, und die Mannschaft half dann mit." "Die Galeere", wiederholte Hebenstreit, "nur der Ruder- sklave weiB was das ist. Eine Revolte? DaB ich nicht lache! Das hatte man sich uberlegen sollen, bevor sie einem die eisernen Kugeln an die Heine hangten, aber jetzt, wo der Kahn gerammt wird? Und wenn der alte Kasten absackt, dann gibt es drei Moglichkeiten: zu ersaufen, als Sklave auf eine andere Galeere gebracht Oder befreit zu werden, - bis zur nachsten Kaperung. Das ist dann eine Angelegenheit des privaten Horoskops. Nun, vielleicht ist Ihr Horoskop in Ordnung."?! 136 Throughout the novel we hear the voice of Forster's conscience as in the above. We are constantly reminded that his hope for a toppling of the regime remains intact, but it is a hope which is always countered by responses such as Hebenstreit's. The novel's motto, "Wer wenn ich schriee, horte mich aus der Engel Ordnungen?"72 (the opening line of the first of Rilke's Duineser Eleaien), compounds the idea of the individual's being very much isolated and hence powerless.

In the text itself we follow the experiences of

Forster, a journalist turned author of art books, and his circle of friends who, once the Nazis have come to power, reject opposing them by violent means out of moral convictions and reject emigration because such an act would constitute a betrayal of the country of one's birth. Both Forster and his best friend Heinrich Jagemann served during the First World War, and Jagemann chooses the same option again when Germany goes to war for the second time in his

lifetime. This "aristocratic emigration" is, however, not open to Forster on account of his wife's Jewish ancestry,

and hence he chooses the only option which he feels to be

ethically valid, namely a withdrawal into the private

sphere, making only those accomodations to the regime necessary for his own survival. Werner's hero keeps his

anti-Nazi sentiments to himself and his small circle of

intimate friends and opts to have nothing to do with the

time in which he is living: "Wir haben mit dieser

Geschichte nichts, gar nichts zu t u n ! " ^ 3 _ this in response 137 to Britain's declaration of war! When the wife of a friend agonizes over her forced hospitality towards an old friend who has become a rabid Nazi, Forster consoles her by advising that people such as themselves have only two possible courses of action: the first is to speak out and in all probability be carried off to a concentration camp, Die andere Moglichkeit: klug zu sein wie die Schlangen...- Das klingt etwas pathetisch. Aber man kann nur auf dem kleinen bescheidenen Gebiet seines Berufes das mit einer gewissen Blastizitat verteidigen, was man als recht erkannt hat.74

The creed by which Forster comes to live is one of remaining personally untainted: die Hauptsache ware, daB man sich eines Tages beim Rasieren wieder in dem Spiegel sehen konne, ohne das Kotzen zu bekommen.75

Disturbed by the brutality of the Nazis, the intellectuals fear for the future of their country and occasionally voice a despair at their own inability to resist, but Forster himself admits early in the text that he lacks the "Mut zum Martyrer."76 The reader's sympathy for such a predicament is elicited at the earliest possible moment when, early in 1933, Forster is arrested. His crime is to have prevented the lynching of a communist by a gang of proto-Nazis back in May, 1919. The leader of that gang, now a high-ranking Nazi official, has maintained a grudge against Forster for fourteen years. The implications are

clear: nothing escapes the Nazis, resistance is futile. The enforcement of this continues throughout the course

of the novel as Werner details the reprisals meted out

against those who try, in however small a way, to work 138 against the Nazis actively. The communist printer who works at Forster's publishing house warns Forster about the dangers of rash actions; Es war keine Zeit für Mârtyrer. Man wurde verhaftet und verschwand unsichtbar, und der Offentlichkeit wurde gesagt, daB man silberne Loffel gestohlen habe. Fast alle, die vor das Volksgericht oder ins Konzentrations- lager kamen, hatten vorher die Überzeugung gehabt, schlau zu sein und nicht entdeckt zu werden. Sie unterschatzten das System oder hatten Pech.??

Despite his precautions the sly old printer is then hauled away by the Gestapo for helping a man on the run. A Jewish woman who tries to flee the country is likewise met by the Gestapo. A newspaper editor who incurs the wrath of the authorities is taken away in the middle of the night. When his wife goes to the police station to make enquiries, she is handed a vial containing his ashes. The fates of the July 20th, 1944 conspirators are detailed.

In the light of the oft-stressed futility of martyrdom

and the concern with the morality of opposition to one's own country, the desire for an "inner emigration" is elevated to the position of the only honorable course of

action open to the non-Nazi German and the reader is urged

to recognize the hardships which such a choice entailed. The story of non-Nazi Germany becomes the "true" during the Nazi years, told in the form of a

tragedy. A tragedy, over the course of which Forster and

his circle have no control: "man tappte im Nebel, hilflos den weltgeschichtlichen Gewalten ausgeliefert, die sich

aller Ratio entzogen."?8 This feeling of impotence is

similar to Erhart Kastner's fatalistic interpretation of 139 history and indeed Die Galeere contains conversations which mirror those between Kastner and Paul. In arguing for the cyclical nature of history a friend of Forster's takes the part of Paul: So ein europaischer Krieg soli eben die natürlichste Sache der Welt für das deutsche Volk sein. Sie konnen doch an jeder Ecke horen: die Geschichte lehre, daB der Krieg der normale Zustand zwischen den Volkern sei, der nur gelegentlich von kurzen Friedensepochen unterbrochen wurde. Das lehre die Weltgeschichte geradeso wie die Naturwissenschaft.79

Werner, however, goes beyond the use of characters as

mouthpieces for such views, by incorporating the other­

worldly controlling forces of history into the form of the

"tragedy" itself. Divided into five chapters, the first, the exposition, introduces the reader to the various

characters of the novel and sets the scene in Germany of

1933. The second jumps to March, 1939 and the build-up to war. In the form of reminiscences Forster recapitulates

the events from the intervening six years as Germany prepares feverishly for war. The final incident to be

recounted is the Night of the Pogroms of November, 1938. Chapter three is set in 1943 and again Forster recapitulates events between 1939 and the spring of that year, spelling it out to the reader that winter 1942, with

the arrival of the war at the home front, represented "wohl

der dritte Akt des groBen Welttheaters."80 chapter four

documents the increase in physical suffering experienced by the population as the bombing raids over German territory

intensify, until we arrive at chapter five and the

apotheosis of suffering, the tragic climax, the bombing of 140

Dresden. The portrayal of physical suffering represents only one aspect of the tragedy, for there is a second spiritual aspect which runs through the novel and casts the Nazi years, and the war in particular, as having been a Divine test of the "inner emigrants." Werner invents two angels, Metos and Seragul, who are sent down to earth by God and

who appear before Forster at his times of greatest suffering when his faith may show signs of faltering. That it never does is to be understood as a testament to the moral fortitude of the sufferers.

The angels are introduced in the prologue to the first chapter and appear in all subsequent prologues as well as

those points in the text mentioned above. They are

introduced thusly; Der Erzengel stand vor dem Herrn, und sein Schwert, das soeben noch gerotet gewesen war, funkelte wieder blank im Strahl des ewigen Lichts. Da winkte Gott, und aus der Reihe der himmlischen Heerscharen traten die Engel Metos und Seragul. Metos war der lachelnde und trug eine goldene Maske in der Hand, Seragul aber hatte schwarze Locken, und das Glas mit den Stürmen und eine Trommel waren ihm anvertraut. Da winkte Gott der Herr zum zweiten Male, und Metos verneigte sich und machte sich auf den Weg.81

Having thus been dispensed to earth, Metos makes an

early appearance in the narrative as the herald of impending doom. Unbeknownst to Forster and his friends, Heinrich and Anette, a taxi in which they ride during

January, 1933, is chauffeured by Metos. The symbolism is unmistakable:

Der Wagen windet sich immer schneller in Serpentinen hinauf [...] Auf der Grund eines Bergrückens bemerkt Georg, daB der Chauffeur die Arme über die Brust 141

gekreuzt halt und gibt Heinrich hinter Anette, die zwischen den beiden sitzt, einen kleinen Stofi. Heinrich kratzt sich ironisch hinter dem rechten Ohr. In diesem Augenblick versinkt die Strafie unter ihnen, so daB die beiden Freunde rechts und links an den Türen festhalten, wie wenn man bei einer Berg- und Talbahn im Lunapark plotzlich in die Tiefe gleitet [...] Ob der Chauffeur die Hande am Steuer hat, ist nicht mehr zu sehen. Er sitzt breit auf dem Fiihrersitz, seine Kontur hat eine goldene Aureole. Sie riihrt anscheinend von den Lampen des Schaltbretts her.82

The appearance of Metos during the particular month of January, 1933 signifies not only the onset of society's

"Fahrt ins Nichts," but also the beginning of Forster's own descent. A few days after this encounter with Metos, Forster dreams of the incident from 1919 which would later cause him to be arrested by the Nazis. The first appearance of Metos is clearly a foreshadowing of the tragedy to come. It signifies the onset of the descent into chaos and, as we shall see, the Divine test of Forster's (and by extension, non-Nazi Germany's) resolve. Later in the first chapter when, on the evening of

Hitler's becoming Chancellor, Forster's friend Fedor Schneider commits suicide in a restaurant, Metos appears again, this time as a waiter. The suicide is a further example of the foreshadowing of the tragedy to come, since Heinrich had only just labelled Schneider "eine Kassandra im Frack."83

In the prologue to the second chapter the angel Seragul is also dispatched to earth, bringing with him his glass of storms. Wherever he rests tragedy ensues and the prologue concludes on an ominous note:

Er schlug auf der Trommel einen Wirbel, und aus dem Glas brachen von neuem die Stürme aus und stoben gleich 142

weifien Wasserfallen hinab in die T a l e r . 84

The third chapter, in which we learn of the destruction which is now being meted out to the German civilian population, finds the two angels together on European soil as the archangel himself is set loose by God; Seragul überschritt die Pyrenaen und die Garonne, zu seinen Fü&en lag die Griine der Languedoc und Isle de France, und er holte den Engel Metos ein auf einem Hügel mit verrottetem Holz, verfilzten Gewachsen und klaftertief in der Erdrinde übereinander lagernden Toten, den die Bewohner la fille morte nannten. Die beiden schritten gemeinsam weiter aus. Metos trug in der Linken die goldene Maske und hatte die Rechte auf die Schulter seines Begleiters gelegt. Seragul aber riihrte die Trommel. Die beiden Geier flogen vor ihnen her, und die Stürme peitschten die groBen Eichen- und Buchenwalder, als sie den Rhein überschritten hatten. Am Nachmittag rasteten sie in einem schillernden Gestrüpp inmitten der Libellen, smaragdenen Fliegen, rotaugigen Kroten und wuchernden Erlen des Oderbruchs. Die Geier hatten sich auf ihre Schultern niedergelassen. Windstille herrschte um sie, und die Stürme zogen vor ihnen her. Aber um Mitternacht erhoben sie sich abermals, und ihre Haupter ragten nun in die Wolken, und sie spürten, wie ihre Locken feucht wurden von den Nebelfahnen, die aus ihren geoffneten Mündern wehten. Die beiden Geier verdunkelten den ostlichen und westlichen Himmel, die Trommel erfüllte die Luft mit dumpfen Brausen, schwarzer Qualm stieg unter ihren Sohlen auf, und wenn sie die Fersen hoben, brachen Flammen aus dem Boden, deren gelbe Zungen die Wolken beleckten. Metos setzte den linken FuB auf den Felsen von Dover und erfaBte die Hand Seraguls, der mit der Rechten die Trommel schlug und in dem zerklüfteten Gestein des kaukasischen Gebirges stand. Durch Flammenschein, Rauch und feuchtnasse Schwaden nickten die beiden einander zu und sahen, daB die Welt klein war. Unter ihren FüBen schwelte, knisterte und splitterte es, die Sonne ging auf und unter, die Stürme trieben peitschende Eiskristalle vor sich her, die weiBe Gischt floB schaumig über die Steppe, und der Frost stieg an ihren Knocheln empor. Aber das Eis zerdampfte in der Hitze des geschmolzenen Metalls, glühender Stahl krauselte sich, sickerte in die Felsplatten und zerfiel in mausgraue Asche, die Flüsse farbten sich rot, der Geruch des verbrannten Fleisches mischte sich mit dem Duft der in Glut zerfallenen Walder, und wahrend die Flammen immer hoher stiegen, heulte und sang es in den Lüften. Gott lieB den Erzengel, den Engel mit dem Schwert, über die Erde schreiten. 143

Da kehrten die Geier mit versengten Flügeln zurück und suchten Schütz unter den blonden Haaren des Engels Metos und den schwarzèn des Engels S e r a g u l . 85

The war is at its peak but far from being over. In the prologue to the fourth chapter Metos shows sympathy for the suffering he sees but Seragul steels his resolve: Das Heulen in den Lüften war die Stimme der Sterbenden, und die Sterbenden schrien:. Wo ist Gott? Der Gesang in den Lüften aber war die Klage der Toten, es war ein einziger gellender Ton, und er rüttelte am Gewolbe des Himmels. Da überkam es Metos wie ein f e m e s Erinnern, er frostelte in den Flammen, neigte das Haupt und berührte den Erdboden mit der Rechten. Und wo seine Hand ruhte, verloschte das Feuer, erstickte der Rauch, und die Sterbenden lachelten. Der Engel Seragul aber erinnerte sich nicht und zog Metos mit sich fort. Er hielt das Haupt nach oben gerichtet und deutete streng auf die Gestirne um sie her. Metos folgte seinem Blick und sah, wie die Himmelskorper im GleichmaB ihre Bahn zogen, stürzten und zersprangen, wahrend andere an ihre Stelle traten, und für einen Augenblick vernahm er nicht mehr die Schreie der Sterbenden und die Klage der Toten, sondern nur noch den Hall der Âonen.86

The rememberance of God on the part of the sufferers prompts Metos' sympathy but the decision to stop the pain

is not one which can be made by the angels but only by God Himself. Metos continues in his role as Divine messenger appearing next at the death of Forster's Jewish grandmother-in-law. The old woman has been hounded to death by the Nazis who were preparing to transport her to a death camp in the coming days. From behind his mask Metos

taunts Forster who cannot understand the severity of the test he is being put through:

"Warum verziehen Sie den Mund?" fragte Georg, "helfen Sie lieber. Dazu sind Sie doch da." "Meinen Sie", lachelte der Engel, "unser Auftrag lautet anders."8? 144 The old woman has been freed of her earthly troubles, observes the angel, but Forster must continue, still at a loss to understand the Divine scheme. At their next meeting, Metos appears even more coldly calculating than the previous time, describing to Forster in graphic detail a scene which he is about to encounter in the aftermath of an air raid: Der Engel Metos stand an der Zimmertür. "Die Frau schreit nicht, sie weint nicht," sagte er, "sie sitzt auf einer Bank, aber nur ihr Oberkorper ragt noch aus dem Schutt. Die Manner, die sie zu befreien versuchen, haben rote Kopfe und keuchen. Ihr eigener Mann spricht trostend auf sie ein. Er weiB nicht, daB unter dem Schutt auf ihren Knieen ein totes junges Madchen liegt, einen Kontoristin aus dem Gartenhaus, siebzehn Jahre alt, der Brustkorb ist ihr zerquetscht worden, sie liegt quer über den Knien der Frau, aber die Frau weiB es nicht."88

When he does indeed arrive at the scene to find it

exactly as described, Forster is prodded into action by Metos while the angel stands back and coldly watches. Yet there is still more in store for Forster. The angels'

final encounter with Forster comes in the midst of the burning city of Dresden as Forster seeks his wife. Supporting him on either side, they help him through the

ruins so that he might not perish before the final tragedy. Despite their physical assistance the angels offer no spiritual comfort: "Wer hier gestern atmete, der ist nicht mehr", sagte der Engel Seragul, und Metos fügte hinzu: "Wie der Rauch vergeht."89

The angels repeat this couplet several times over the course of Forster's futile quest as if to taunt him. They

tell him of the last time they saw his wife but refuse to 145 say if she survived the raids or not. The despairing Forster implores the angels; "Wo ist Gott, meine Herren?" "Wie der Rauch vergeht..." sagte der Engel Seragul, aber der Engel Metos beugte sich zu Georg hinab: "Gott ist gro6."90 The sympathy of both angels becomes evident. When they

speak out of Forster's hearing they both show themselves to be troubled by the severity of the Divine test that is the bombing. They recount tales of the fearful suffering which they have witnessed and agree, "Unerforschlich sind seine

Wege."91 m order to gain admittance for Forster into a

still-standing but overcrowded house Metos assumes the form

of the house owner's neighbor, a Geheimrat. When asked by

one of the people seeking shelter why God has shovm no

pity, Metos still in the form of the Geheimrat replies:

"Seine Wege sind unerforschlich. Gott ist g r o B ! " 9 2

Forster speaks with Metos one further time after he has

learned of the death of his wife. His faith has been severly shaken but it is still intact: "Ihr habt es uns nicht leicht gemacht", sagte Georg. Der Engel nickte: "Das ist der erwahlte Platz, auf den der Mensch gestellt ist."93

With this, the depiction of Forster's suffering is complete. Both the physical and the spiritual realms have been detailed. The final act of the tragedy, the bombing

of Dresden, is portrayed in apocalyptic terms. In his quest to find his pregnant wife Forster makes his way

through the devastated city: Die brennenden Hauser rechts und links von ihm schienen jetzt alle wie pendelnde Riesenkulissen hin- und her- zuschwanken. Er riB sich von neuem los, rannte und 146

sprang über Flammen, die aus dem Boden schossen, und erreichte den offenen Platz, wahrend hinter ihm Fassaden einstürztén und ein gelbglühender See mit stinkendem Rauch sich über die StraBe breitete, die er eben verlassen hatte.94

Flames shoot from the ground as if from hell itself and a later description makes clear the analogy with the realm of the dead: Quer über den Weg schimmerten zwei Kbrper. Es schienen Kinder zu sein, die kreuzweise übereinander lagen. Georg machte einen Bogen, aber gleich darauf stolperte er über ein weiches, undeutliches Gebilde, das unter seinen FüBen nachgab. [...] Jetzt sah er deutlich, daB auch zwischen den Baumen Leichen umherlagen. Sie lagen verstreut, kreuz und quer in kurzen Abstanden, als ware von den Stammen groBe Herbstblatter herabgeweht. Es muBten Hunderte sein, und die Rander des Totenfeldes verloren sich im schwarzen Dâmmer. [...] Die Augen schlieBend, lieB er sich an einem groBen Stamm herabrutschen und hatte, auf dem feuchten, kalten Boden sitzend, das Gefühl, nun selber ein Toter unter Tausenden von Toten zu sein.95

Forster determines to leave the city for the nearby town of Diessen. However, before he can get out he experiences a further raid and as he lies face down on the ground he completes the story of the slave ship: Finale, dachte er, Untergang des Schiffes, der Sog in die Tiefe, gleich schlagen die Wellen zusammen. Er preBte seinen Kbrper tief in die Erde und spürte nur noch, wie ihm Gras und Sand zwischen die Zahne drangen.96

The emotive power of the Dresden sequence is undeniable and it is for this reason that Werner's name still crops up

occasionally in literary studies. As recently as 1982 Gordon Craig described the sequence as having "caught in

shattering detail the ultimate horror at the end of the

National Socialist d r e a m . "97 others too have ignored

Werner's myth-making and praised the novel for its "detail" or " realism." Writing in 1954, Eva C. Wunderlich praised 147

Werner for having "drawn a very informative picture of Germany and the Germans during the Hitler regime." She labeled the novel an "almost photographically realistic presentation of the period" and talks of Werner's "sober realism" in this "entirely realistic n o v e l . "98 in his 1958 history of , Fritz Martini bestowed praise upon the novel: Gerade dadurch, daB hier ailes aus eigenem Teilnehmen, Fiirchten und Erleiden entstand, erhalt diese Darstellung der "deutschen Tragodie" ihren ergreifenden Ernst und Sinn.99

Kindlers literary history is more cautious in its treatment of the novel, praising it for its "menschlichen Authenzitat"100, while identifying its underlying theme: Die Galeere schildert einen Kreis von Journalisten, Kiinstlern, burgerlichen Politikern in Berlin der Nazizeit, die sich - "unfahig zum Bosen und nicht stark genug zum Guten" - auf der "Galeere" des Dritten Reiches eingerichtet haben. Mit gutem Grund wurde der Roman verstanden als eine Rechtfertigung der inneren Emigration.101

Other critics, such as Karl August Horst, have raised the question of Werner's understanding of historical development:

Gelegentlich fügen sich im Nachkriegsroman Einzelgeschichten in einen aperspektivischen Zusammen- hang. Man denke an Bruno E. Werners Roman Die Galeere [...] Die Schuldfrage wird nicht mehr geschichtlich gefaBt. [...] Die theoretische Kritik der geschichtlichen Entwicklung wird für den konkreten Fall abgelehnt.102

In the East the novel received short shrift indeed: In die sehr zahlreichen Versuche einer pseudo humanistischen Sinngebung und mystifizierenden Deutung des Geschehenen reihen sich jene Bemühungen ein, ein unmittelbares Verstricktsein in politische, soziale und moralische Vorgange der jüngsten Vergangenheit wieder- zugeben und eigenes Versagen als verstandliches Eingehen auf die Versuchungen der Zeit zu 148

rechtfertigen. Im Gegensatz zu Wolfgang Borchert wird Schuld hier nicht aufgenommen, um auf Grund radikaler Kritik am Faschismus einen neuen Anfang zu suchen, sondern sie wird aufgelost in einer Vielfalt von Abhângigkeiten. Der deutscher Faschismus wird dabei zwar nicht offen gerechtfertigt, er erscheint aber als ein unbegreifbares und allmachtiges Schicksal, so in den Romanen von Werner Die Galeere (1949) und Kramer- Badoni In der groBen Drift (1949). Bruno E. Werners Roman, der starke auto- biographische Züge hat, erzahlt von den Erlebnissen des Journalisten Georg Forster, der sich den Nazis verdingt, "um das Schlimmste zu verhindern." Als dies nicht gelingt und auch der "Glaube an die Sauberkeit, Charakterstarke und innere Haltung des Soldaten" erschüttert wird, bleibt für den Offizier des Ersten Weltkrieges nur die "geheime Bruderschaft" der Kameraden als Festpunkt. Durch Verknüpfung mit Elementen des christlichen Weltbildes wird diese "Bruderschaft" in einem Zusammenhang gestellt, der eine Enthistorisierung des Geschehens zur Folge hat. Krieg erscheint als Prüfung Gottes; das naturalistisch wiedergegebene Leben im alltaglichen Faschismus wird eingebettet ins Irrationals, in ein fatalistisch zu ertragendes Geschick, vor dem die Verantwortung des einzelnen nichtig wird.103 For the purposes of the topic at hand, however, the most instructive reactions to the novel are those which appeared in the form of reviews. The popularity of the novel during the early years of the FRG has been cited as evidence for the eagerness of large sections of the population to claim Forster's story as their own, and nowhere was this eagerness more apparent than in the following review from the Rheinischer Merkur of January, 1950:

Von der deutschen Katastrophe berichtet ein Buch, das weder vom Romanstoff noch der Deutelust angetrieben wird, sondern als ein nur obenhin romanhaft arrangierter Erlebnisbericht des Autors erscheint: Die Galeere von Bruno E. Werner (bei Suhrkamp). Wiewohl auch hier das Ziel des Romans, seine ganze Welt in Gestalten von eigensten Gewicht auszublühen, nicht erreicht wird, und die Lust am genüBlichen Leben nicht nur als GegensatzreiB den Beginn des Katastrophenbuchs anfarbt, so wirkt doch die scharfaugige Schilderung des Personlich-Erlebten und die ungeschonte 149

Rechenschaftsablage je langer, desto bezwingender. Ja das Buch, indem es den Alltag des Hitlerreichs und seine blutige Hôllenfahrt im Kriege ohne Klage, ohne Diskussion, ohne Glorifizierungsversuche von viel Leid und mancherlei Widerstand, einfachhin aufzeichhet, gewinnt den Stempel des Echten und Wahren, und man môchte es nicht nur wegen seiner erschütterndsten Stellen, sondern als Ganzes, als erlebte Chronik einer Epoche, in die Hande ail derer wünschen, die inzwischen eine wahre Kunst daraus gemacht haben, das Gewesene zu vergessen, vor sich selbst totzuschweigen oder es auf die mit Anklagen gespickte Manier zu verreden.104

It is the last sentence which is particularly misleading, for it was precisely Werner's aim to forget the past, at least certain uncomfortable details of it, by rewriting it. The reviewer's desire to accept that rewriting was indicative of West Germany's institutional refusal to come to terms with German history. The novel was accorded a documentary value which it simply did not deserve.

When the novel appeared in English translation in 1951, the critics were not nearly so predisposed to accept

Werner's version of events. Robert Pick's review from the Saturday Review of Literature of June 9, 1951 credits

certain scenes from the novel (including the Dresden sequence) as being "filled with genuine power" but rightly

describes Forster as "smaller than the sum total of his

sufferings." Pick compares Forster's protestations of his impotence with "the protestations of their own littleness

with which Germans so exasperated Allied interrogators in 1945." Forster's weakness is made "very credible" by Werner but, as Pick continues:

It is in his all too early preconception of that futility [of resistance] that Georg Forster reveals his guilt; and I am at a loss to say whether Mr. Werner is 150

fully aware of it, so occupied (understandably) is he with Georg's growing despair. Even so, Mr Werner convinces us that civil courage - a commodity at a premium everywhere, when it comes down to it - was something no one ever should have expected from the slaves on Hitler's galley. The enigma as to how they, the German intellectuals, fell into that slavery is not solved satisfactorily. To my mind the reason for this is the fact that Georg is not as thoroughly representative of the German anti-Nazi intelligentsia as he is supposed to be. By and large that class was far from being as consistent in its feelings as poor Georg. Hitler's success together with the shameful apathy of the outside world argued many a decent German intellectual out of his qualms. Once the war was on the "patriot's dilemma" immediately complicated the situation even of those who until then had not compromised with their consciences. On the other hand, the unspeakable calamity that befell Germany in the end caused many of those tortured men to believe that they had always resisted the lure of the powers that were to bring about the catastrophe. It is, I submit, that fallacy - the German readers' self- identification with the helpless but never wavering hero - which made this novel a best seller in Germany.105

That reviewers should disagree about a literary text is certainly not uncommon, but the contradictions between these last two critiques is nothing short of stunning. Tailor-made for readers who wanted to forget, the novel proved anathema to those who insisted upon remembering. The useful (for Werner and his West German readers) life of the novel was short, for as West Germany threw itself into creating the economic recovery which came to be known as the "Wirtschaftswunder," the Nazi past was gradually allowed to sink further and further back into the darkness

of an under-researched history. Werner had laid a solid foundation block for the institution of the "Stunde Null" or Year Zero legend which essentially affirmed the

forgetting of history and encouraged the notion that West

Germany was a nation which had started without o n e . 106 151 Notes 1. Grotewohl, Otto, Im Kamof um die einiae Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Reden und Aufsatze I . (Berlin: Dietz, 1959), 496. 2. Hartmann, Anneli, "'Erneuerung der deutschen Kultur?' Zur sowjetischen Kultur- und Literaturpolitik in der SBZ und friihen DDR", in Frühe DDR-Literatur. Traditionen. Institutionen. Tendenzen. ed. Klaus R. Scherpe & Lutz Winckler, (Hamburg, Berlin: Argument, 1988), 40. Hartmann is citing Doernberg, Stefan, "Die Tatigkeit der Sowjetischen Militarverwaltung - deutsch-sowjetische Freundschaft in Aktion", Zwei Jahrzehnte deutsch- sowietische Beziehunaen 1945-1965. ed. A. Anderle, G. Gorski, H. Heerdegen, (Berlin: Staatsverlag der DDR, 1965), 40.

3. Hartmann, 36. Hartmann is citing from "MaBnahmen zur Durchfvihrung der kulturellen Aufgaben im Rahmen des Zweijahrplanes" (1949), Dokumente der Sozialistischen Ein- heitspartei Deutschlands. Beschlüsse und Erklarunoen des Parteivorstande. des Zentralsekretariats und des Politischen Büros. II. (Berlin: Dietz, 1951), 206.

4. Zimmering, Max, "Kleine Autobiographie" (1968), in Lied von Finsternis und Licht. Gedichte und Nachdichtunqen 1928- 1973. (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1986), 387f. 5. Zimmering, 388.

6. Zimmering, 29. 7. Zimmering, Max, Im Herben Morqenwind. Ausaewahlte Gedichte aus fiinfundzwanzia Jahren. (Berlin: Dietz, 1958), 275f.

8. Zimmering, "Kleine Autobiographie", 391. 9. Zimmering, Im Herben Morqenwind. 281.

10. Zimmering, 283. 11. Zimmering, 277.

12. Zimmering, 278.

13. Zimmering, 279. 14. Peter, Richard, Dresden: Eine Kamera Klaqt A n . (Dresden: Dresdenpr Verlagsgesellschaft K G, 1953?).

15. One of these photographs, entitled "Durch Hitzeeinwirkung mumifizierte Frau," was later employed by Rolf Hochhuth as a back projection for his 1967 Churchill drama Soldaten. At that point in the drama when the figure 152 of Death enters, a reproduction of the photograph is inserted into the text and the following stage direction:

Hinter Borland - und die Orchesterprobe hat geholfen, durch bestimmte Klange diesen Moment vorzubereiten, dieses sehr reale Foto transparent zu machen: steht riesig wie die Triimmerfassade der durch Feuerwind mumifizierte Schadel, dem unerklarbarerweise sein Haar geblieben ist, die sitzende Tote auf einer Strafie in Dresden.

Hochhuth, Rolf, Soldaten. Nekroloa auf Genf. Eine Traaodie. (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1967), 21. 16. Zimmering, 287. 17. Zimmering, 291.

18. Zimmering, 293.

19. Zimmering, 294. 20. Zimmering, 297.

21. Zimmering, 299.

22. Zimmering, 296.

23. In his literary history of the GDR, Wolfgang Emmerich sets the time span as "zwischen 1952 und 1956," but since Ernst Claudius' novel Menschen an unserer Seite appeared in 1951, I have used the earlier date. Emmerich, Wolfgang, Kleine Literaturaeschichte der DDR. (1981), (Darmstadt and Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1984), 94. 24. Emmerich, 95. 25. Adolf Hennecke was the GDR's first 'Held der Arbeit': "Eine ausgedehnte Aktivisten- und Wettbewerbsbewegung wurde stimuliert, für die im Herbst 1948 der Bergwerkshauer Adolf Hennecke das Signal gegében hatte, als er seine Schichtnorm um 387% überfüllte." Emmerich, 71. 26. Hartmann, 54.

27. Zimmering, Max, Phosphor und Flieder. Vom Untergang und Wiederaufstehung der Stadt Dresden. (Berlin; Dietz, 1954), 434f. 28. Zimmering, 59.

29. Cited in Bergander, Gotz, Dresden im Luftkrieg. (Cologne/Vienna: Bohlau, 1977), 220. 153

30. Zimmering, 486f. 31. Zimmering, Max, ’’Kleine Autobiographie” , 397. Auguste Lazar (b. 1887), mentioned in the first chapter as a correspondent of Victor Klemperer, is the one example of an East German writer I found who wrote on the subject of Dresden at the same time as Zimmering but stopped short of making this last equation of capitalism with fascism. Her children's story, ’’Was Reni in der Dresdener Brandnacht 1945 erlebte” (1953), is a tale simply told which spares the reader none of the horror of the child's ordeal. Reni's father has been imprisoned by the Nazis: Reni wuBte, daB er im Gefangnis saB. Sie wuBte auch, daB das ein furchtbares Unglück, aber keine Schande war. Sie wuBte, daB ihr Vater nichts Boses getan hatte, daB er im Gegenteil etwas Gutes gewollt und das Bose hatte verhindern wollen. Deshalb hielten die bosen Menschen ihn fest. Und dieselben bosen Menschen waren schuld daran, daB jetzt Krieg war und daB so viele Menschen sterben muBten. Sie wuBte auch ganz genau, wer diese bosen Menschen waren, ohne daB man es ihr geradezu erklart hatte. Es war gefahrlich, so etwas auszusprechen. Sie merkte wohl, wie der GroBvater vor jeder schwarzen oder braunen Uniform erschrak, deshalb hatte auch sie Angst vor ihnen. Lazar, Auguste, ’’Was Reni in der Dresdener Brandnacht 1945 erlebte” in Kamnf um Kathi. Vier Madchen - vier Schicksale. (Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag, 1967), 170f.

It is Reni's grandfather who takes care of her while her mother works at a factory and it is he who takes her on frequent trips to the zoo, where the monkeys are her favorite animals. On the night of the raids the grandfather awakens Reni and carries her through the firestorm. As she is being carried, she loses consciousness and when she comes to her grandfather is gone, too weak at his advanced age to survive the experience. Again she loses consciousness and when she next awakens, sees animals from the zoo running through the park and realizes that one of the chimps has crept under her blanket. Taking the monkey with her, she encounters a colleague of her mother who tells her that the factory received a direct hit and that her mother must surely be dead. The story ends with Reni and the monkey being found asleep on a bench by the Elbe by an elderly woman. The story is uncompromising in its depiction of the desolation which war leaves in its wake. Reni's world is rent asunder by the bombings and there is no false optimism at the conclusion of the tale. However contrived the meeting of girl and monkey might be, the image of the two helpless victims alone at the story's end is a poignant one and encapsulates movingly the plight of the non­ comprehending, innocent victim. 154

32. Thorwald, Jürgen, Es beaann an der Weichsel. (Stuttgart: Steingrüben, 1949), 354.

33. Thorwald, 358.- 34. Thorwald, 129.

35. Thorwald, 356f.

36. Plievier, Theodor, Berlin. (Vienna, Munich, : Kurt Desch, 1954), 12 and 13. 37. Plievier, lOff. 38. Plievier, 13.

39. Paul, Wolfgang, Dresden 1953. (Esslingen: Bechtle, 1953), 36 • 40. Paul, 45. 41. Pàul, 122f.

42. Paul, 54.

43. Paul, 90. 44. Paul, 116. 45. Paul, 285.

46. In a later, non-fiction work which chronicled the history of Dresden from its founding to the 1960's, Paul wrote of the immediate post-war years as ones of real hope, of freedom of expression and enlightened policy-making by Soviet cultural officers. He cites the Berlin blockade of 1948/49 as marking definitively the end of the short-lived period of freedom, but its erosion had begun before that: Es gibt aber auch schon die Feinde der Freiheit, Funktionare der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei, die 1946 entsteht. Erst sehr vorsichtig, dann schon selbstbewuBter versuchen sie, die Doktrin ihrer Partei über die Freiheit des Ausdrucks zu setzen, die Propaganda über die Kunst. In den Zeitungen, die nicht mehr im Titel den Namen der Stadt tragen dürfen, machen sich seit 1947 diese Einflüsse der neuen Partei bemerkbar: Im Angriff oder in der Replik. Aus der sozialdemokratischen Volksstimme und der Sachsischen Volkszeitunq der Kommunisten ist die Sachsische Zeituna geworden, die nun vom Parteistandpunkt aus die anderen Blatter abkanzelt. [...] Die Geschichte der Freiheit in Dresden von 1945 bis zu ihrem Ende wahrend der Berliner Blockade 1948/49 bleibt eine schone Illusion vom Gebrauch der Macht durch ein Besatzungsregime, das sich 155 aus deiti besetzten Gebiet Vollstrecker ihrer Macht auswahlt. (Paul, Wolfgang, ...zum Beispiel Dresden. Schicksal einer Stadt. (Frankfurt am Main: Wolfgang Weidlich, 1964), 174).

As evidence of the very cautious optimism of the early years, Paul cites the following poem by Erich Ponto, actor and director, which appeared in the first issue of Dresden's Dramaturqische Blatter. February, 1946: Mein Demokrat, mein Kommunist: wenn heil'ge Liebe in euch ist und ihr den Tempe1 haltet frei von Meinungsstreiten und Partei - sei auch der Weg noch lang, ist mir urns Ziel nicht bang. (173) 47. Paul, Dresden 1953. 245. 48. Paul, 290.

49. Paul, 263. 50. With regards to this tower, Paul prefaces his novel thus :

Die Personen des Romans sind frei erfunden, sie sind mit lebenden Personen nicht identisch. Zustande und Handlungen sind jedoch fast unverandert der Wirklich- keit entnommen, nur beim Einsturz des Parteiturmes auf dem Dresdner Altmarkt machte der Verfasser vom Recht der dichterischen Freiheit Gebrauch. (4) Although no such tower was ever built, Paul maintains in ...zum Beispiel Dresden that in 1951 there were indeed plans for such a building:

Der Altmarkt soil jetzt zum Roten Platz werdert, den ein Parteihaus mit einem Turm im Moskauer Zuckerbackerstil beherrscht, der alle Tiirme Dresdens überragt. Aber fehlende Rohstoffe, die katastrophale Lage auf dem Baumarkt machen diesen Plan zunichte. (185) 51. Paul, Dresden 1953. 48f. 52. Paul, 66. 53. Paul, 207.

54. In a scene from the novel which borders on the comical, the painter Riemeyer recognizes the error of his "formalist" ways when workers visit an exhibition which includes some of his works, and express their reservations. Riemeyer returns home determined to do better work: 156 "Kruzitürken, das waren ordentliche Genickschlâge, die sie mir versetzt haben,” berichtete er, mit schweren Schritten auf und ab tigernd. "Und das schbnste ist, daB sie mir trotzdem meinen Schinken abkaufen wollten. Aber ich hab nicht mitgemacht...Nee, meine Lieben, das Ding wird noch mal abgekratzt, und dann geht's von vorn los...Wenn ihr einbildet, Jochen Riemeyer hat keinen Stolz in den Knochen, dann irrt ihr euch." Zimmering, Phosphor und Flieder. 463.

55. Paul, 202f. 56. Paul, 321. 57. See for example the series of publications of the Institute for Contemporary History, Munich, entitled Bavern in der NS-Zeit. Six volumes were published between 1977 and 1983. 58. Benn, Gottfried, Gesammelte Werke in vier Banden. ed. Dieter Wellershoff, (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1958-61), IV 94.

Oskar Loerke commented on Benn's entering the army in his diary: Schlechter Nachruf auf Benn. Es sei hochster Zeit gewesen, daB er sich zuriickgezogen habe. Flucht in die Reichswehr. Loerke, Oskar, Taaebvicher 1903-1939. ed. Herman Kasack, (Heidelberg/Darmstadt: Lambert Schneider, 1955), 313. 59. Werner, Bruno E., Die Galeere. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1949), 118. 60. Kastner, Erhart, Griechenland: Ein Buch aus dem Krieqe. (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann, 1943), 9f. 61. Kastner, Erhart, Olberae. Weinberce: Ein Griechenland- buch. (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1953), 36. 62. Kastner, Erhart, Das Zeltbuch von Tumilat (1949), (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976), 103.

63. Kastner, Erhart, 104.

64. Kastner, Erhart, 106. 65. Hoffmann, Charles W., "Opposition und Innere Emigration. Zwei Aspekte des Anderen Deutschlands" in Exil und Innere Emigration II. Internationale Taauna in St. Louis. ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Egon Schwarz, (Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1973), 123f. 66. Kastner, Erhart, 107. 157

67. Kastner, Erhart, 112. 68. Kastner, Erhart, 116f. 69. Krattli, Anton, "Erhart Kastner" in Kritisches Lexikon zur deutschsprachioen Gegenwartsliteratur. ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold, (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1989), 8. 70. Werner, Bruno E., rev. of Das Zeltbuch von Tumilat by Erhart Kastner, Neue Zeituna. 2/4/1950.

71. Werner, Die Galeere. 332. 72. Werner, 5.

73. Werner, 212. 74. Werner, 237. 75. Werner, 399. 76. Werner, 136. 77. Werner, 320.

78. Werner, 462. 79. Werner, 212. 80. Werner, 279.

81. Werner, 9.

82. Werner, 23f. 83. Werner, 64. 84. Werner, 109. 85. Werner, 175.

86. Werner, 295.

87. Werner, 312. 88. Werner, 446. 89. Werner, 514. 90. Werner, 518.

91. Werner, 519. 92. Werner, 523. 158

93. Werner, 540. 94. Werner, 516. 95. Werner, 518f. 96. Werner, 541. 97. Craig, Gordon A., The Germans. (New York and Scarborough, Ontario: Meridian, 1983), 216.

98. Wunderlich, Eva C., "Saint Joseph in the Slaveship”, Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht. deutsche Sprache und Literatur. XLVI, 5, October 1954, 278, 280.

99. Martini, Fritz, Deutsche Literaturaeschichte. Von den Anfanaen bis zur Geqenwart. (Stuttgart: Alfred Kroner, 1958), 587. 100. Lattraann, Dieter, ed., Kindlers Literaturaeschichte der Geqenwart. Die Literatur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland I/Einführunq/Prosa (1973), (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1980), I 23. 101. Lattmann, I 232. 102. Horst, Karl August, Kritischer Führer durch die deutsche Literatur der Geqenwart. Roman Lvrik Essay (1957), (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1962), 138. 103. Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. Literatur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1983), 104.

104. Braun, Hanns, "Die deutsche Menetekel-Literatur”, Rheinischer Merkur. 1/28/1950, 17.

105. Pick, Robert, "Intellectual Walk-ons" review of The Slave Ship by Bruno E. Werner, Saturdav Review of Literature. 34, 6/9/1951, 9f. 106. Werner himself served as the FRG's cultural attaché in Washington DC between 1954 and 1961. From 1962, until his death in 1964, he was President of the German PEN center. CHAPTER IV

HISTORY WRITING IN THE GDR IN THE 1960'S AND '70'S

Through the example of his own "Halberstadt” text, Alexander Kluge called for historical analysis which approached pivotal points in history from as many angles as could be incorporated. In Die Patriotin he depicted, quite literally, the "digging" necessary to get past superficial history. In attempting to cast Dresden as either belonging to an era now past, or as the work of a political system which stood in opposition to their own, Erhart Kastner, Werner and Zimmering contributed to a superficial historiography, underplaying the true import of an historically revealing moment with consequences for the future. In the limited Dresden literature of the early

1950's, it became impossible to see the wood for the trees. Writings from both East and West made clear the mutually- desired evolution of Dresden into an ideological battlefield, where the opposing "sides" would attempt to

score points against the other, while at the same time

avoiding the central issue of incorporating an understanding of 1945 into the foundations of their own post-war societies.

159 160

Such avoidance can be explained, psychologically, by the fact that 1945 represented a culmination of certain

inherently destructive historical processes. These same processes were once again identifiable in the arms-race between the Super Powers. In dwelling on past destruction, both German societies would be effectively reminding them­

selves of the possibility of future devastation. Thus it was that following the period of superficial historicizing, best exemplified by Axel Rodenberger's Der Tod von Dresden [1951] in the FRG and Max Seydewitz's Zerstorung und

Wiederaufbau von Dresden [1955] in the GDR, Dresden disappeared into the margins of history. The consequences

of starting out down an already travelled road, were

repressed. For the Western Allies, a silence tantamount to denial had always been the key to marginalizing the raids.

Dresden had been hushed over from the very beginning, evidence of which can be seen in the British government's handing out of Campaign Medals, in 1945/'46, to combatants

from all branches of the military services with the one

exception of Bomber Command.1 Similarly, the FRG, which after 1949 co-existed as a partner of the wartime Western Allies (the FRG joined NATO in 1955), looked to construct a history which stressed only

those aspects of its past that could somehow be made to seem in line with the ideology of the Western Alliance. It

created a history for itself under the guiding star of

anti-communism. Historian Eberhard Jackel has written of 161 how this new history not only smoothed the path to acceptance by the Western Alliance, but also provided for the establishment of historical continuity. Denn auch der Nationalsozialismus war antikommunistisch gewesen. Ehemalige Nazis konnten sich gerechtfertigt fiihlen. Was immer sie falsch gemacht hatten, in diesem Punkt hatten sie recht behalten, hier konnten sie weitermachen. Und die anderen Deutschen, die sich vor- warfen, nicht mutiger widerstanden zu haben, konnten sich nun rechtfertigen, indem sie im Kampf gegen den Kommunismus nachholten, was sie in der NS-Zeit versaumt hatten. Wolfgang Paul's Dresden 1953 was an attempt to wring anti-communist sentiment from the legacy of the raids. The

author's relativizing of the Nazi state against the GDR

state remained a common approach to history: Geschichtsbilder sind am besten in den Parolen greifbar, die sie verbreiten. Einen SchluBstrich ziehen, lautete die Devise der fünfziger Jahre. Intellektuelle waren wie immer dienstbar. Nur wenige widersprachen dem herrschenden Geschichtsbild. Die meisten lieferten lieber die Beweise. Das Ergebnis war die Totalitarismustheorie: Die beiden Diktaturen waren gleich, und da die eine untergegangen, die andere aber eine aktuelle Bedrohung war, konzentrierte sich die offentliche Meinung auf sie. Der 17. Juni wurde zum Symbol. Der 20. Juli diente als Alibi. Man war auf der richtigen Seite gewesen und konnte die übrige eigene Vergangenheit verdrangen.2

In the 1950's, the comparative historicizing which aimed to legitimate the new state in the eyes of its

partners, had no place for Dresden. In the

Historikerstreit of the 1980's, when the same methodological approach was again applied to relativize the history of the by-then firmly-established FRG, Dresden was

once again called into service. In the GDR, in the 1950's, it is possible to see a similar development to that of the FRG, in terms of the new 162 state's desire to distance itself from its predecessor.

However, unlike in the FRG, where marking a break with the past became the motto, in the GDR, that break was proclaimed as fact. The state claimed for itself the tradition of anti-fascist Germany which had supposedly been interrupted in 1933. It pointed to its treatment of former

National Socialists after 1945 as evidence of a commitment to anti-fascism: approximately 200,000 ex-Nazis had been removed from administrative posts, from the judicial system and industry, while 20,000 teachers were debarred from classrooms. Further, approximately 30,000 Germans had been called before Soviet or, after 1947, German tribunals, to answer for their past. Of these 30,000, over 500 were executed while thousands were imprisoned or removed to Soviet internment camps. This purging reached its peak in the spring of 1950 when, during the so-called "Waldheim trials" in , the SED instructed judges and attorneys that the guilt of those who were to come before

them had already been ascertained and there was therefore no cause to interview witnesses, investigate evidence or even provide the accused with legal defense. In closed sessions lasting no more than thirty minutes twenty-six

death penalties were handed down. These facts and others were cited in an article in in March, 1992 which appeared as a companion piece to a lead article on

the newly-resurfaced allegations that East German SPD politician Gustav Just, had been a member of an unlawful

Nazi firing squad which had murdered six Ukranian Jews in 163

July, 1941. The allegations were subsequently proved true and forced Just's resignation. The lead article wondered at the suppression of this fact during the life of the GDR and concluded that, despite appearances, the purging of former Nazis which had been carried out in the GDR had, in fact, been nothing more than an orchestrated window dressing: Antifaschismus wurde zur Tarnformel für eine antikapitalistische Revolution nach bolschewistischem Vorbild. Former Nazis, whose complicity in administering the National Socialist state was beyond question, were admitted into the administration of the new state on the strength of proclamations of support for the new regime:

In der Provinzverwaltung Sachsens etwa, das als Musterland radikaler Selbstreinigung gait, safien Ende 1946 immerhin 25 ehemalige Parteigenossen, darunter Prasidialdirektoren und Oberregierungsrate. [...] Denen, die bei der "Durchsetzung des kommunistischen Machtmonopols" mitspielten, wurde die braune Vergangenheit rasch nachgesehen. In looking at the case of Gustav Just, it is hard to

dispute such an assessment: he joined the SED as early as 1946, served as head of the GDR writers' organization for a

year during the 1950's and then became editor of the weekly newspaper Sonntaq. The important thing for the new state

had been the appearance of de-nazification — the reality was different. The culmination of the process in 1950 represented also the final closing of the book bn

de-nazification: Danach erlahmte der Verfolgungseifer der DDR-Behorden. Bis zum Jahre 1957 gab es nur noch zwei NS-Verfahren. Beim "Aufbau des Sozialismus" prasentierte sich die DDR als vergangenheitsbereinigter Staat, der sich von der 164

Verantwortung für die deutschen Verbrechen exkulpiert hatte.3 All history writing from this time was based on the premise that a decisive break with the past had been acheived. Max Seydewitz' Zerstorung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden [1955], the first historical text to appear in the

GDR on the subject of the bombing, allotted a disproportionate amount of consideration to the rebuilding of the city under the star of anti-fascism, at the expense of an investigation of the raids themselves. Like

Zimmering, Seydewitz also seized the opportunity to equate the actions of the Allies with those of Nazi Germany: In dem Artikel, den Goebbels am 4. Marz 1945 unter der Überschrift "Der Tod von Dresden" in Das Reich veroffentlichte, schrieb er, "daft man von dem, was den Begriff Dresden ausmacht, nur noch in der Vergangenheit sprechen kann, daB im Zwingerhof keine Abendmusik mehr erklingen wird." Das war der Wunsch der Nazifuhrer. Sie wollten, daB das von ihnen gemeinsam mit den anglo- amerikanischen Imperialisten gemordete Dresden für immer tot sei.4

The ideology behind such an argumentation is clear: in

attributing to the population of Dresden the status of

double victim, the way is left open for it to create its own blameless history. In return for this opportunity, the

population was asked to support the building of the new state, hence Seydewitz' concentration on that rebuilding.

In the early 1950's, Dresden represented the ideal opportunity to turn attention away from the past and toward the future. Yet, ideal as it may have been in 1955,

Dresden was not the subject of another historical study for a full ten years. This state of affairs is to be explained

by the fact that after the initial period of rebuilding. 165 Dresden ceased to be a suitable topic for even Aufbau history, owing to the slow pace of further rebuilding which did not match up to the early promise. Writing such as that produced by Zimmering and Seydewitz could only serve

the state's needs for as long as the much-vaunted regeneration of Dresden remained at least imminent, a not altogether certain fact. As late as 1966, the Israeli

journalist Amos Elon wrote of the slow pace of

reconstruction which he encountered on a visit to the city. He noted that the Zwinger had already been rebuilt and the Altmarkt reconstructed, although according to a very

different architectural plan, of which, "no one [could] be

proud."5 As for the rest of the city, however, Elon

learned that the projected date for the completion of the

rebuilding had been put back to 1970. There had been problems, mayor explained to the journalist; We haven't had it so easy as over there in the Federal Republic, [...] We've had a more difficult time... everything here was destroyed, nothing was leftover, literally nothing....We first had to build factories to give people work, and housing, housing and more housing. At the same time, he said, the West had tried to undermine reconstruction, they tried to steal our boys away from the Technical Institute so that we wouldn't have any engineers.® Such a tone would certainly be out of place in a hymn

of praise to the regenerative powers of socialism. Nevertheless, it is still striking to note that it was not until 1965 and the publication of Walter Weidauer's

Inferno Dresden, that a second historical text on the

bombing was published in the GDR. (In the West, 1963

marked the re-emergence of Dresden, as that was the year of 166

David Irving's The Destruction of Dresden). Yet the silence did not go unnoticed, as is evident from passing references to the bombing in two works of 1957 : Erich Kastner's Als ich ein kleiner Junqe war, and Louis Ferdinand Céline's Castle to Castle fD'un Chateau L'Autrel.

Although these two writers shared very little common political ground - Kastner had been banned from publishing by the Nazis while Céline had served as official doctor to the Vichy government in France - they did share a humanity which recoiled at the silence which had enveloped Dresden and the attempts by the parties involved to score ideological points at the expense of the others. Both prefaced their remarks on post-war attitudes with an evocation of the extent of the devastation which had been visited upon the city, Céline in typically vitriolic fashion:

...the tactic of total squashing and frying in phosphorous...American invention!...really perfected! the last "new look" before the A-bomb...first the suburbs, the periphery...with liquid sulphur and avalanches of torpedoes...then general roasting...the whole center. Act II!... churches, parks, museums...no survivors wanted!...?

Kastner's tone in Als ich ein kleiner Junae war was

more restrained, as one might expect from a work written

for children, but no less unstinting in its depiction of the extent of the devastation: Ja, Dresden war eine wunderbare Stadt. Ihr konnt es mir glauben. Und ihr müBt es mir glauben! Keiner von euch, und wenn sein Vater noch so reich ware, kann mit der Eisenbahn hinfahren, um nachzusehen, ob ich recht habe. Denn die Stadt Dresden gibt es nicht mehr. Sie ist, bis* auf einige Reste, von Erdboden verschwunden. Der zweite Weltkrieg hat sie, in einer einzigen Nacht und mit einer einzigen Handbewegung, weggewischt. 167 Jahrhunderte hatten ihre unvergleichliche Schonheit geschaffen. Ein paar Stunden geniigten, um sie vom Erdboden fortzuhexen. Das geschah am 13. Februar 1945. Achthundert Flugzeuge warfen Spreng- und Brandbomben. Und was übrigblieb, war eine Wiiste. Mit ein paar riesigen Triimmern, die aussahen wie gekenterte Ozeandampfer. Ich habe, zwei Jahre spater, mitten in dieser endlosen Wiiste gestanden und wuBte nicht, wo ich war. Zwischen zerbrochenen verstaubten Ziegelsteinen lag ein Strafienschild. "Prager StraBe” entzifferte ich miihsam. Ich stand auf der Prager StraBe? Auf der weltberiihmten Prager StraBe? Auf der prachtigsten StraBe meiner Kindheit? Auf der StraBe mit den schonsten Schaufenstern? Auf der herrlichsten StraBe der Weihnachtszeit? Ich stand in einer kilometerlangen, kilometerbreiten Leere. In einer Ziegelsteppe. Im Garnichts.® Both writers angrily denounced developments since the bombings. Céline raged at the silence:

They talk about fires in mines...illustrations and interviews 1... they weep, they jerk off about the poor miners...those treacherous fires and explosions!...shit!...and poor Budapest, the ferocity of the Russian tanks!...they never say a word...and they're wrong!...about how their brethren were roasted alive in Germany beneath the spreading wings of democracy... one doesn't speak of such things, it's embarrassing!...the victims?... they shouldn't have been there, that's all!^ Kastner directed his anger at the ideologizing which

followed 1945: Noch heute streiten sich die Regierungen der GroBmachte, wer Dresden ermordert hat. Noch heute streitet man sich, ob unter dem Garnichts fiinfzig- tausend, hunderttausend oder zweihundertausend Tote liegen. Und niemand will es gewesen sein. Jeder sagt, die anderen seien dran schuld. Ach, was soil der Streit? Damit macht ihr Dresden nicht wieder lebendig! Nicht die Schonheit und nicht die Toten! Bestraft künftig die Regierungen, und nicht die Volker! Und bestraft sie nicht erst hinterher, sondern sofort! Das klingt einfacher, als es ist? Nein. Das ist einfacher, als es klingt.10

At this point in post-war historical development Céline

and Kastner remained voices in the wilderness. Their call for a recognition of the falsified historicizing of Dresden 168 showed no sign of being heeded. Indeed, with the publication in 1960 of the novel Die Feuer Sinken by East German novelist Eberhard Panitz [b. 1932], it became clear that the situation, at least in the GDR, had altered very little since 1954.

EBERHARD PANITZ AND DRESDEN

Panitz is the first of three writers to be discussed in this chapter, all of whom experienced the raids in person. However, unlike the other two, and despite the author's 1979 assertion that the bombing was, "das herausragendste und erschreckendste Erlebnis,"H of his life, the raids virtually disappeared from his writing after Die Feuer Sinken. not to re-appear until 1979. Die Feuer Sinken shared with Phosphor und Flieder the casting of the raids as "pre-history." As in the earlier novel, the narrative begins with the bombing but then jumps forward to tell a different story. Where Panitz differs from Zimmering is in his choice of story. Panitz used the raids as impetus for a narrative which, rather than focusing on the rebuilding of the city, dramatized the final few months of Nazi rule as experienced by the teenage protagonist, Andreas Heyne. At the time of the bombing he was a tabula rasa of naive innocence:

Andreas Heyne hatte in den knapp vierzehn Jahren seines Lebens wenig gelernt, aber im Schatzen von Entfernungen war er geübt. Nun stand er vor dem Haus am Stadtrand und maB mit seiner schmalen Hand den Feuerschein am Nachthimmel: zwei Handbreit in die Hdhe und neuneinhalb zur Seite, nein zehn, nein zehneinhalb. Er war ratios 169

und wandte sich zu seinen Eltern um. Doch weder Vater noch Mutter beachteten ihn, niemand gab Antwort auf seine Fragen.12 Against the background of the destroyed city, Andreas begins to see the ugly truth behind National Socialism's façade, as the city authorities struggle to retain control. Panitz focuses on the myopic outlook of the S3 officers, who expend considerable energy in tracking down a prison escapee while all around them the city's residents are in

desperate need of help. Yet when Andreas discovers the

escapee, a communist activist, he realizes that, contrary

to the picture of the man painted by the S3, he has found a

kindred spirit.13 Towards the end of the novel, the 33 are

shown meting out savage punishment to their prisoners

before beating a hasty retreat westwards. Andreas' eyes are opened by his experiences, and he is

left at the end of the novel to return home from his hiding

place at the outskirts of the city in the wake of the

liberating 3oviet army. Although Panitz' novel evinces

none of the hymn-like praises to communism so prevalent in Zimmering's work, the novel clearly embodies the

anticipation of salvation.

One year later, in the novella Das Madchen 3imra. Panitz would again use Dresden as a backdrop and a mirror.

In this tale of a youthful love affair which brought pain but also a lesson for the future, there is also the

anticipatory moment of better things to come and Dresden is

employed to reflect the emotions of the protagonist: Jede StraBenzeile eine vertraute 3trophe und die zernarbte 3ilhouette der 3tadt eine Melodie aus Trauer 170 und Hoffnung, die mich immer verfolgen wird.l4

For the following eighteen years Panitz published nothing more referring to Dresden, concentrating instead on travelling to nations such as and North Vietnam and writing journalistically of his experiences there. Dresden did not lend itself to the type of literature which Panitz had come to regard it as his duty to produce: Der historische Auftrag der Schriftsteller dieses Landes ist klar und eindeutig: Es gilt, die Errungenschaften unseres sozialistischen Weges zu bewahren und zu verbessern. [...] dazu gehort vor allem der unermeBliche menschliche Gewinn, der an den Taten der Menschen an unserer Seite ablesbar ist. Dariiber lohnt es sich heute, morgen und übermorgen zu schreiben - darin liegt das Gluck, ein Chronist dieses Landes und dieser Zeit zu sein.15

Yet in directing his energies elsewhere, Panitz only

managed to repress the memory of February, 1945. Unable to forget his past he returned to the subject matter in 1979 in the autobiographical novel Meines Vaters Stra&enbahn. The novel was Panitz's attempt to come to terms with

his unhappy relationship with his now dead father. In the form of ah imagined tram ride in latter-day Berlin, with his father acting as conductor (as he had during his lifetime), Panitz recounted various stages of his youth in

an attempt to understand actions of his parents which at

the time had seemed incomprehensible. With the benefit of hindsight the narrator is able to recognize the stress

which an already unsatisfactory marriage suffered during the war years and the years following. The anger which

Panitz the child had felt at his father for being the one who finally left the marriage, is greatly mollified as he 171 reconsiders the psychological damage wrought by the experience of physical and moral collapse. The abiding memory of this collapse is of the raids. In evoking memories of the time before the bombing, Panitz illustrates how ill-prepared Dresden's population had been for its immersion into Total War. At school instruction still centered on Germany's mythic destiny;

In der Schule hatte uns der Oberlehrer Knornschild ein paar bunte Bilder gezeigt, auf denen zu sehen war, wie Hermann der Cherusker mit seinen Cimbern und Teutonen, Lanzen und Streitaxten, gepanzerten Pferden und gehornten Helmen, Riistungen, Schilden und Schwerten die Romer im Teutoburger Wald besiegt hatte. Vorher hatten die Romer die Griechen besiegt, erklarte er uns, und noch friiher die Griechen die Trojer und die Agypter und die Âgypter die Perser. Deshalb sei die Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald, im Jahre neun nach der Zeitenwende, ein Datum, das wir uns einpragen müBten, ailes in der Geschichte laufe auf diesen deutschen Sieg hinaus wie jetzt wieder.16

Such pronouncements were still possible in a city which had remained virtually untouched by the war to that point. Even as short a time as six months before the bombing the narrator was still enjoying excursions into the countryside around Dresden and listening to his Aunt Mia tell him of how much more terrible the Thirty Years War had been, since "der kam iiberall hin. "17 The bombing brought this time of delusion to a crashing close. The narrator's description of his reunion with his mother and grandmother on the morning of the 14th after the raids evokes well the utter incomprehension with which the survivors were left to face the future:

Erst gegen Morgen sah ich die beiden kommen, nachdem schon Hunderte, Tausende aus der Stadt auf unserer StraBe vorübergezogen waren, viele mit leeren Handen, die Kleider von Brandflecken durchlochert, schwarz im 172 Gesicht Oder kalkweiB, manche zogen einen Leiterwagen, auf dem rauchgeschwarzte Biindel lagen, alle stumm und verstort wie Mutter, die mich kopfschüttelnd, weinend in die Arme nahm. The aftermath of the bombing is equally paralyzing. The narrator describes his mother's attempts to return to work; Tage und Wochen gab es keinen elektrischen Strom, kein Gas, kein Wasser. Die Strafienbahnen und Eisenbahnziige fuhren nicht mehr. Deshalb lief Mutter zu FuB durch die verschütteten, ausgebrannten StraBenzüge der Stadt bis zum Kaufhaus Renner, wo sie jahrelang gearbeitet hatte. Aber nur schwarze, eingestiirzte Ruinen umgaben den Altmarkt, Tote wurden aus den Kellern geholt und mit unzahligen anderen Toten auf Pflastersteinen und sinnlos gewordenen StraBenbahnschienen gestapelt und verbrannt. Auch zum Heidefriedhof am Wilden Mann fuhren Pferdegespanne mit Leichenbergen, Wehrmachtsplanen darübergespannt, jedoch am bestialischen Gestank zu erkennen. "Ich kann nicht mehr," sagte Mutter, als sie aus der Stadt zuriickkam und davon erzahlte. "Wir sind machtlos, nicht einmal den Schmutz kann man sich von seinen Handen waschen." Yet a semblance of order did ensue, albeit under straitened circumstances:

In unserer kleinen Wohnung war es eng geworden, GroBmutter schlief in Vaters Bett, Mutter auf dem Sofa in der Wohnstube. Eine halbe Woche blieb auch Tante Lotte bei uns, weil sie nicht allein in dem ausgebrannten Mietshaus inmitten von Ruinen bleiben wollte, wo nur noch das Keller bewohnbar war.18

In the light of Panitz's previous writings on the raids, one might now expect the narrative to jump forward to tell the story of Dresden's rebuilding, but no such jump occurs. Rather, the legacy of six years of war is shown to

be paralyzing both physically and emotionally. The narrator's father does not leave the house for months after

returning from internment camp, and his parents are never

able to live harmoniously together again and eventually separate. The notion of the end of the war representing a 173 clean break is undercut by the narrator's recounting of certain incidents, such as the greeting given a new young teacher at his school by a student with lingering Nazi sentiments: "Sind Sie auch Kommunist?" fragte Sir und machte ein schlaues Gesicht. "Oder stimmt es, daft in den KZ-Lagern alle vergast worden sind?"^® Moreso than incidents such as the above, it is Panitz' own return to the subject matter which is the clearest evidence that, however much his prolonged avoidance of coming to terms with the raids might have led one to believe otherwise, he had not managed to convince himself that GDR history began in May, 1945. As recently as 1987

Panitz published another novel, Leben fiir Leben which is much broader in scope than Meines Vaters StraBenbahn and chronicles the fortunes of a Dresden family, beginning in the pre-war Nazi period and ending in the post-war 1940's.

Leben fiir Leben goes beyond Meines Vaters Strafienbahn in its incorporation of a questioning of events. In phrasing the questioning in such a way as to defy a simple answer, Panitz leaves the reader to consider the long term effects on the survivors of the devastation. A child, for example, sees the city in flames and is at a loss to explain what he sees : "Warum?" fragte Michael, so wie er als Kind gefragt und sich allein gelassen gefvihlt hatte, wenn die Eltern uneins und zerstritten gewesen waren. Oder wenn es Dinge gab, die sie ihm nicht erklaren wollten oder konnten - eine verschwundene Puppe, einen Teddybar, den niemand in seinen Handen sehen durfte.20

In the mouth of an old man who had maintained an apolitical stance throughout the Nazi years, the naively 174 posed question gains more concrete form but still evades an answer; War nicht langst allés auf den Kopf gestellt, was gut und richtig gewesen war? Jetzt hatte eine Mauer mindestens bis zu den Wolken reichen miissen, um etwas Schütz zu bieten. Aber kam die Bedrohung nur von dorther? Wie viele waren drangsaliert und gemordet worden, ehe sich das Unheil da oben zusammengebaut hatte? Nun fügte sich Tod zu Tod, Feuer zu Feuer, und ein Ende war nicht abzusehen. LieB sich überhaupt noch etwas gegen diesen Wahnsinn ausrichten?21

For an opponent of the Nazi regime, the bombing at first seemed just: Als die ersten Bomben fielen, dachte er noch grimmig: Das geschieht recht! Obwohl er gar nicht wunderglaubig war, hoffte er darauf, daB diejenigen, die all das Unheil verschuldet hatten, getroffen und ausgeloscht würden.22

Once the extent of the devastation was realized, however, this hope began to fade, only to evaporate altogether when it became apparent that control of the city was still in the hands of the National Socialists: Was nun? Wohin in dieser Holle, wo noch immer die Hollenhunde auf die Lauer lagen? Es sah nicht so aus, daB die Pest an sich selber verreckt war.23

Panitz provides an example of an author who came to realize over the course of time that it was only possible to move forward on the basis of a past which has at least been confronted. His later works on Dresden show him trying to come to terms with his early life by recognizing that unanswered questions remained after his father's death. The implications for society of an unmastered past are not the focus of Panitz's novels; he is concerned rather with coming to terms with his own past. His reticence in linking these two levels was as much a result 175

of an ideological blindness which made Panitz simply unable to regard the personal as political, as it was of a feeling of time lost, of having to catch up with his own repressed past first. The two writers to be looked at next, recognized much earlier in their lives the dangers lurking

in a postponed confrontation with history.

HEINZ CZECHOWSKI: FROM ENTHUSIASM TO DEPRESSION

Wir haben eine Verpflichtung gegenüber der Vergangenheit auch in Hinsicht auf die Zukunft, deren Charakter wir ja mitbestimmen.24

When Heinz Czechowski was invited to the University of

London in 1985 to participate in a symposium organized by the Institute of Germanic Studies on the subject of the

development of lyric poetry in the GDR, he elected to deliver a lecture entitled "Die Zeit der Wunder ist

vorbei...Zur Lyrik der zwischen 1935 und 1940 G e b o r e n e n . "25

The generation of writers of which he spoke and to which he himself belongs represented in the 1960's a significant departure for East German literature. When it first began

to publish, there was no shortage of ecstatic receptions

for its work, such as Gerhard Wolf's exclamation from an introduction he wrote to an anthology of the new young writers' work - Bekanntschaft mit uns selbst (1961) - that;

Eine neue Generation von Lyrikern ist da! [...] Mit Freude wird man beobachten, wie Becher, Brecht und Fiirnberg hier aufgenommen werden. Fuhren sie manchmal noch ihren Nachfahren die Hand, so machen die Jungen doch schon ihre eigenen Schritte.26 176

Four of the leading lights of this new generation hailed from Dresden: Czechowski, Karl nickel (b. 1935), B.K. Tragelehn (b.l936) and (b. 1939), and a further five from other parts of : Richard Lessing (b. 1934, Chemnitz), Rainer Kirsch (b. 1934, Dobeln),

Rainer Kunze (b. 1933, Oelsnitz), Bernd Jentzsch (b. 1940,

Plauen), and Wulf Kirsten (b. 1934, MeiBen). This commonality of birthplace led and Georg Maurer to speak of a "Sachsische Dichterschule"2? but beyond this geographically-specific denomination there existed a feeling among the poets themselves that they had more in common, a feeling best expressed by 's affectionate labelling of the new generation (including non-Saxony poets Uwe GreBman [b. 1933], [b.

1936], and Kurt Bartsch [b. 1937]) as "unsere T r u p p e . " 2 8

This feeling arose not because of birthplace but because of the shared history of having been born under National

Socialism and having come of age in the GDR. Unlike earlier generations of GDR poets, the new generation had not been part of the struggle for the creation of a socialist state, but had been presented with such a state as a day-to-day reality. Perhaps most importantly, they all, at least initially, had shared an enthusiasm for the goals of that state, though it was an enthusiasm which differed from that of earlier generations. Any attempt to codify what differentiated the writings of the younger generation from those of its predecessors is doomed to simplify a multiplicity of voices.29 At the 1985 177 symposium Czechowski spoke with the benefit of hindsight of the difficulty of naming what connected the work of the various writers but nevertheless articulated the essence of the new direction in poetry when he said: Den Gedichten jener Lyriker, von denen ich hier zu sprechen gedenke, eignet bei alien Unterschieden durchaus etwas Gemeinsames, das ich zunachst erst einmal als "die Wiederentdeckung der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit" bezeichnen mochte.30 The neutral tone of "Wiederentdeckung" belies the radical implications of this choice of subject matter. In writing of existing socialist society and not of a projected society, the poets who began publishing in the 1960's created a forum for a critical debate on the results of the socialist experiment to that point in time. Yet it would be misleading to imply that utopianism was abandoned altogether. Indeed, the earliest published works of the young writers exhibited that "undialektisches Vertrauen in die Krafte der Aufklarung"^! so characteristic of

Aufbauliteratur. As the period after 1949 represented a time of great hope for the Aufbau generation, so did the years after 1961 for the younger writers. As Peter Geist has written: Das Beiwort "naiv" ist schnell bei der Hand - und taucht in selbstkritischen Rückblicken bei Rainer Kirsch, Volker Braun und anderen auch auf -, wenn die Zeit unmittelbar nach dem Mauerbau ihnen (so paradox das heute klingen mag) als eine der gro&en Erwartungen erschien, daB nun ernst gemacht werden konne mit dem "Hiniiberarbeiten in die freie Gesellschaft" (Volker Braun). Noch faszinierte das Versprechen auf eine Zukunft, deren Projektion vom "Prinzip Hoffnung" (Ernst Bloch) zehrte und in sich Entwiirfe unentfremdeten Daseins in Naturvertraglichkeit, menschlichem Miteinander bei ungehinderter Entfaltungsmoglichkeit des einzelnen versammeln konnte. Noch spiegelte sich das Unternehmen Sozialismus den meisten jungen 178

Intellektuellen als ein grundlegend Anderes: In diesem besseren Land hiefi die von Karl Mickel und Adolf Endler 1966 besorgte Lyrikanthologie, und das war keineswegs blasphemisch gemeint.32

Czechowski himself cast a critical eye over his earlier work and prefaced his 1985 remarks with a plea for an understanding of the historical situation of poets in the early and mid 1960's: [Sie] schrieben in der Tat ihre Verse nicht als Alternative zum wirklichen Leben, wie es sich in jenen Jahren in der DDR darstellte. Sie kamen aus den Schreckensjahren des Krieges und des Nachkriegs. Hunger und Kalte waren noch nicht vergessen. Die neue Gesellschaft war fiir sie Realitât, taglich gelebtes Leben, Irrtiimer und Traume waren oft identisch. Die geistigen Vater dieser Lyrikergeneration waren Marx und Lenin, aber auch ein preuBisch-geschichtsoptimistischer Hegel, dessen Dialektik bis in den Satzbau ihrer Verse hineinwirkte. Zweifel am Bestehenden waren nicht opportun. Und dort, wo sie sich leise anmeldeten, waren sie ins Private zuriickgenommen : melancholischer Ausdruck unbestimmter Sehnsiichte und Erwartungen.33 Czechowski went on to describe the poetry of the early/mid 1960's as containing, "Embleme [...] mit denen

sie [the poets] ihre Übereinstimmung mit der geschiehtlichen Stunde zum Ausdruck brachte."34 He viewed

this first stage in the poets' development as an act of self-positioning or stock-taking which preceded the much

more critical literature the poets went on to produce,

highlighting the contradictions between the theory and

practice of the East German socialist state. Once this

initial self-positioning had been accomplished, the need for such emblematic poetry disappeared and Czechowski pinpointed the Mickel/Endler anthology. In diesem besseren Land [1966] as a clear example of that recession and of the

beginnings of a literature concerned with dialogue rather 179 than rhetoric: Die relativ schmale Auswahl der Gedichte jener Lyriker, die damais bereits das Ansehen der heutigen DDR-Lyrik zu bestimmen begannen, verdeutlichte die Bemühungen um die Thematisierung solcher Erfahrungen, die bisher in den Gedichten der alteren Dichter kaum Gestalt gewonnen hatten. Bemerkenswert war in diesem Zusammenhang die sich immer deutlicher markierende Distanz zur emblematischen Lyrik der sechziger Jahre. Immer mehr trat die vereinfachende heroische Geste in den Schatten der Auseinandersetzung mit einer gesellschaftlichen Realitât, die allés andere als idyllisch war.35 Despite this marked development, Czechowski made it clear in a 1984 interview that his own work from that period was, "mit stilistischen und gedanklichen Schlacken versehen":

Diese Schlacken erwiesen sich im Kern als jene Illusionen, mit denen die Welt des Sozialismus automatisch als eine bessere und vo1Ikommenere besungen wurde. Damit fielen entscheidende Widerspriiche unter den Tisch, die es durch Gedichte eigentlich zu treffen gait.36

These prefatory remarks on the appearance of the new generation of poets are intended to provide a context for

the treatment of the bombing of Dresden and its relevance for the contemporary GDR in the works of Czechowski and, to a lesser extent, Karl Mickel. In the case of Czechowski we

are presented with a body of work on the subject matter which spans three decades. Indeed, such has been

Czechowski's concern in coming to terms with the

"Grunderlebnis"37 of his life that when a collection of his

work on the city was published in 1990 under the title Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt. Gedichte und Prosa 1958-

1988. editor Wulf Kirsten was able to assemble no less than

fifty-eight pieces. However, it is not my intention here

to focus as much attention on Czechowski's work of the 180

1980's. Czechowski's most important contributions to the topic of Dresden came in the 1960's and 'IQ's when he re-introduced the subject matter of the raids into East German literature in such a way that their relevance for the future development of the GDR was stressed. This connection made by Czechowski stemmed from his belief that an individual's history was inextricably linked to the history of the landscape in which he/she lived. Unlike Panitz, Czechowski extended this understanding of history to include the societal level. Just as the bombing was a defining incident from his own personal development, so too was it of crucial importance in understanding the situation of the GDR. The future of that state depended upon the manner in which it dealt with its own history. In other words, in looking back Czechowski was also looking forward. Throughout the 1960's and '70's he actively attempted in his writings to agitate as the unsatisfactory historical consciousness of the nation. In providing a critique of history writing heretofore, he hoped to be able to secure a solid base for future development. This progressive

attitude is nowhere present in the poet's work of the

1980's. By that decade, as we shall see below, Czechowski no longer felt himself able to contribute by writing on an historical subject to the determination of the future of a

society seemingly reconciled with repeating past mistakes.

Examples have been given of writers of Aufbau1iteratur recasting the history of Dresden in order to symbolize the new state's rising from the ashes. Aspects of this 181 approach are evident in Czechowski's earliest writings (the collection Nachmittaa eines Liebespaares. 1961); but they were soon superceded by a critical coming to terms with his own history and that of the GDR fWasserfahrt. 1967, Schafe und Sterne. 1974). This second, or middle period of the poet's output represents the most fruitful with regard to this study. Czechowski's mood during this time was combative as he attacked those who would crudely recast history in order to justify an unsatisfactory present. His work of this middle period exhibited the "archaeological" quality of "digging" deeper, which Kluge personified in

Gabi Teichert and which Reiner Müller would later ascribe

(in an interview published in English) to his own 1957 drama, Der Lohndrücker:

Der LohndrUcker. my first published play, was very much an archaeological work. I wanted to dig up things that had been covered by dirt and history and lies.38

Müller was a much more radical explorer of the role of

history in the GDR, but Czechowski's attempts to re-focus

attention on the destruction in 1967's Wasserfahrt volume

represented a bold choice of subject matter. The sharper

tone of Schafe und Sterne [1974] was doubtless encouraged by events after Wasserfahrt. which had led to the point

where, by December, 1971, at the 4th Conference of the Central Committee of the SED, new Party leader Erich

Honecker seemingly prepared the way for a greater openess in society;

Wenn man von der festen Position des Sozialismus ausgeht, kann es meines Erachtens auf dem Gebiet von Kunst und Literatur keine Tabus geben. Das betrifft sowohl die Fragen der inhaltlichen Gestaltung als auch 182 des Stils - kurz gesagt: die Fragen dessen, was man die künstlerische Meisterschaft nennt.39

The fierce ideological debates which followed the conference resulted, however, not in a more open society but in a divided leadership which ultimately retreated from reform. Instead it instigated a repressive backlash which culminated in the expatriation of Wolf Biermann in 1976.

The silencing of Biermann, a writer of the same generation as Czechowski, clearly represented a serious attack on the right to dialogue of that generation of writers. Rather than accept such conditions, many writers left the GDR for the West.40 Czechowski stayed but his post-1976 work, described by the poet himself as characterized by a "lakonische Niichternheit, "41 revealed in the Dresden pieces a pronounced resignation. The work as a whole lacked the tension of his earlier writing as his increasing despair led him to question the very point of writing. In "Tag im Februar" from the 1989 collection Mein Venediq. (the third volume of Czechowski's poetry to be published in the FRG), the poet positively wallowed in self-doubt:

Im MaB der Beliebigkeit Konnt ich noch immer Zeile an Zeile fügen. Wer aber Will schon noch lesen. Was keine Botschaft mehr ist? Von Fernsehprogramm zu Fernsehprogramm MeB ich den Tag, die Bûcher, Die ich zur Hand nehm, Werd ich nicht lesen. Und was interessiert denn die Welt Mein Innenleben und Meine unbeantworteten Briefe, Die mich nicht q u a l e n ? 4 2 183

"Inspiration Gefühl Poesie" from the same volume posits the idea that depression is maybe the lot of the

Dresdener: Wenn ich absehen konnte von mir, dem Dresdner, konnte ich sagen:

vielleicht neigen die Dresdner seitdem das Feuer die Stadt einfach frafi zu Depressionen?43

However, the following two lines of this poem (and the changed tone of the post-1976 poetry in general) suggest that it is not the experience of the bombing alone which has caused depression. In these two lines Czechowski links the rampancy of all-consuming fire with that of the process of forgetting: FriB, Feuer, friB, Dresdner vergiB. In these later poems Czechowski has seemingly resigned himself to having failed in his quest — as he had stated it in the poem "Auf den Platzen am FluB" — to resist the

loss of memory and the re-casting of history: Ich bin geboren, zu widerstehen Den Erfolgsberichtsschreiben, Auch denen, die ihre Vergangenheit redigieren, um einzugehen In die Geschichte, Die sie vergessen wird Wie die ausgegrabenen Helden, Die wieder den Sockel besteigen^^ It is in the light of this resignation and loss of idealism that Czechowski's 1984 criticism of his own early

work must be viewed, for that early work was still

characterized by hope. Nowhere is his loss of hope more 184 apparent than in the later Dresden poems, for the subject matter of Dresden always represented Czechowski's most important forum for coming to terms with German history. As the poet's desire to contribute to the debates on the writing of history increased during the 1960's, so too did his output on Dresden. Kirsten's anthology of Czechowski's Dresden pieces included five poems from the earliest volume

(1961), six from the second (1967), a prose piece from 1968 and no less than fourteen poems from the 1974 volume. The volume which followed these. Was mich betrifft of 1981, contained only three Dresden poems and of those only one mentioned the bombing. The raids did not disappear from

Czechowski's work, but resurfaced in the late 1980's in a different context. In this later work Czechowski attacked the GDR authorities. He no longer argued for an incorporation of the raids into GDR history, since he no longer considered the authorities capable of such an incorporation. His disillusionment turned into opposition. The poem "Atelier" from the 1989 collection bluntly refuted the ideologized treatment of the bombing, Czechowski displaying none of the desire for dialogue of his earlier works :

Im Tod der Stadt War Auferstehung nicht beschlossen.45

While "Ein biBchen zuviel" ominously attacked those who had encouraged such a simplified view: Nicht allés Schreckliche 1st der Anfang des Schonen. Ich fiirchte, Ihr habts euch zu einfach gemacht, Wenn ihr noch immer 185 Glaubt: Wenn hier jemand Das Sagen hat, Dann seid es ihr. Eure fiir heute und morgen Gepachtete Wahrheit 1st vielleicht Nur jene von gestern. Aber sie ist Auch nicht die jener Ahnen, Auf die ihr euch immer beruft. Und vielleicht sind die. Die heute zu reden begehren, Jene, Die morgen gehort werden?

Und manchmal Solltet ihr auch daran denken, DaB der Andersdenkende Nicht nur dort anders denkt. Wo ihr nicht s e i d . 46

The poet himself still refused to accept the simplified history handed down to him and continued to write, as he felt impelled to, of Dresden. Yet it was a Dresden of the past: Ich beginn, wo ich immer beginne: am Rand Dieser Stadt, wo das Kalb mit zwei Kopfen Zu sehn war und unten. Gut vorstellbar. Die brennende Stadt, wo Allés so war, wie es sein sollte, also Wie Gott es wollte oder der Führer Und der rohseidne Hermann. Plotzlich Zerfiel die Welt In ihre Bestandteile, doch heute 1st auch schon das Vergangenheit, und Am Rande der Hochflache:4?

Czechowski's feeling of being alone in his undertaking, of working at the margins, was unmistakable: he was writing

of a subject matter for which nobody else was showing any interest; 186 Jeder der Überlebenden Tragt eine Chronik in sich, Die niemand mehr aufschreibt.48

In the final analysis, he was writing only for himself, writing "Lyrik / Fiir keine / Anthologie."49

Czechowski's pre-1976 poetry offers the opportunity to look at the work of a writer who felt he had recognized the "Unheimlichkleit der Zeit" but who encountered resistance in "organizing." He tried to make known the dangers

inherent in distorting history but was resisted. In one

sense, Czechowski's consciousness of an impending catastrophe which might have been avoided has been confirmed by the collapse of the GDR. The state's refusal

to come to terms with its own history should certainly be seen as a contributing factor in its demise.

The Dresden poems from Czechowski's earliest published collection, Nachmittaa eines Liebespaares (1961), evinced

those "Schlacken" of which the poet would later be so critical. In "Frühe" the dawning of a new day over the river is followed by an image which harks back to Zimmering's use of "Flieder" as a symbol for regeneration:

Damit wir es nicht vergessen, Woher wir gekommen sind, Duldet der Tag keine Luge: Zwischen verbrannten Steinen Blüht gelb der Ginster im W i n d . 50

The first strophe of "Aus der Kindheit" tells of the

"stahlerne Schreie"51 of annihilation which reduced "Haus

und Kindheit zu Asche." The second strophe begins with the "Tage des Wartens" which followed and proceeds to the image, as in "Fruhe," of a new day dawning: 187 Erster Schritt aus dem Dunkel, Zaghaftes Morgenlicht, Wenn hinter der Biegung der Berge Der Tag durch die Baume bricht. The final stanza contains the rhetorical device of an injunction to "Entscheide dich! Jetzt oder nie!" and goes on to evoke the struggle which still lies ahead: Und nach der Entscheidung der weite, Unendlich sich dehnende Weg, Oft iiber schnellende Strome Ein schwindelnd zerbrechlicher Steg.

Just four years later in the poem "Brief” Czechowski referred back to ideologically simple formulations such as this. In this poem, which appeared in the Mickel/Endler anthology In diesem besseren Land [1966], Czechowski drew attention to his earlier, blinkered view:

Einmal, vor ein paar Jahren, War meine Welt sehr klein. Mikrokosmus meines Gefiihls, Spiegel der Welt, HandtellergroB.52

His belief in the system under which he lived was still very much intact, (the last line of this poem provided the title for the anthology), but it was no longer so unquestioning as it had been in Nachmittaa eines Liebespaares♦ This poem was the first to focus not on the past, but on the process of forgetting to which the past is prey. In the fourth stanza the poet writes of a personal experience which he is no longer able to recall successfully: Wo 1st das Stuck unsrer Liebe, das Nicht mehr gespielt wird? Schon Verklart sich das Bild, o Gefahr des Vergessens... 188

By the eleventh stanza the level of experience has shifted from the personal to the societal, where the poet sees the process of forgetting being abetted by the reconstruction which had been taking place since 1945: Und nicht das glanzende Bankhaus verbirgt Und nicht der Atem des Weihrauchs in deinen Wiedererstandenen Kirchen Den Modergeruch der verbrannten Standarten.

At this point in his development Czechowski viewed the situation as a challenge: reconstruction was inevitable and desirable, yet it was being achieved thanks to a repression of history. The recognition of this parallel development was the cause of Czechowski's awakening critical perspective: "Widerspruch seh ich. / Zweifel spur ich."

Yet there was still time to play a role in altering this state of affairs:

DaB weiB ich, daB die Welt wirklich ist, DaB ich begreife, nicht nur, was meine Hand begreift, DaB ich denken kann über mich hinaus in Gesetzen, DaB ich mich einordnen kann unter den Sternheeren In die Heere der Menschen, daB ich ein mich Ândernder bin, Ein Veranderer.

In diesem besseren Land. While this poem hinted at the uneasiness with which

Czechowski viewed the sanitized role which had been allotted to Dresden in the official history of his State, a

year later a poem by Karl Mickel appeared which contained a considerably more radical distancing from that official history. "Dresdner Hauser," from the volume Vita Nova Mea

[1967], is a long poem of 130 lines which seems to begin as

an "Epistel iiber Dresden," [Frank Trommler] but soon turns into "eine kritische Vergegenwartigung des 189

Nachkriegsaufbaus in der DDR. The poem begins curiously indeed: Seltsamer Hangl die Hauser stehn, als sei Hier nichts geschehen, als sei das Mauerwerk Von Wind und Regen angegriffen, als Hab nur Hagel Fenster eingeschlagen. Die schongeschnittenen Raume! ihr Verfall Riihrt, scheint es, vom ungehemmten Wachstum wilder Kirschen im Parterre Langsam, scheint es, haben die Bewohner Sich eingeschrankt, um endlich ein Zimmer Noch einzunehmen mit dem Blick zum F l u B . 54

To the poet, viewing the results of the raids some twenty years after their occurrence (the poem is dated

1958/1965), the destruction appears as the result of the

incursion of nature and the desire of the houses' occupants

to restrict their living quarters to one room. The scene is peaceful, a depiction of harmony between man and nature. This is immediately followed by a change of perspective to the first person and the stated desire of the poet to live

in such a house: Das also gibt es! Sagen will ich: Freundin Dies Haus ist ruhig, hatt ichs hâtt ich Ruhe Ruhe brauch ich, also muB ichs haben Ich mach was Geld bringt. Yet this peace and tranquility is shattered in the very

next stanza, as attention is switched to the former

residents of these houses; Die hier wohnten Inmitten groBer Industrie, erhabener Natur, die Stadt zu FüBen, setzten in Gang Des Todes FlieBband: welke Lausejungen Kommerzienrate, mordgeil vor Alter, Nutten Zahnarm mit fünfundzwanzig, Buckelkôpfe In sicheren Bunkern, westwarts weg, bevor Gestein und Fleisch zu schrecklichen Gebirgen Zusammenglühten stadtwarts, menschenwarts. 190

Das neue Leben blüht nicht aus Ruinen Da blüht Unkraut. At work here is an historical consciousness which dismisses out of hand the grossly over-simplified historical associations which had become attached to Dresden's name. As Frank Trommler has argued, Mickel is not concerned with making a case for Dresden's innocence at the time of the bombing, quite the opposite: "es [geht] um die Verurteilung des Bürgertums insgesamt, also auch in

Dresden."55 Mickel's historical digging goes beyond viewing Dresden as victim, to viewing it as the site of a much more complicated turning point of history. In a 1980 interview, when asked about the poem, Mickel had the following to say:

Was wissen wir von den Hausern, die wir bewohnen oder denen wir gegenüberstehen? [...] Es tut aber not zu wissen, was da spuckt - denn es spukt ja, ob wir wollen Oder nicht.56

In asking such a question, Mickel broadens the field of historical inquiry beyond the compartmentalizing of Dresden as an act of Allied barbarism. The two lines at the end of the above citation scorn the platitudinous slogan of the Aufbau p e r i ^ and replace it with a harsh observation. How

is it possible, the poet goes on to ask, to continue mouthing such a slogan when the "Unkraut" which grew up amongst the ruins was replaced with;

kahle Hauser, reizlos Bins wie's andre, buntgemalt, mit dünnen Wanden, niedern Zimmern. Bad Ungekachelt 191

The utter lack of charm of these new buildings stands in stark contrast not only to Zimmering's metaphorical "Flieder" or Czechowski's "Ginster," but even to the "schongeschnittenen Raume!" of the first stanza. The only possible justification for such buildings is the expediency of creating new housing; schon, dafi sie dasind Und angemessen dem Finanzplan, schliefilich Weil sie den Krach mit den Vermieterinnen Gewaltlos hindern. Weil ich Ruhe liebe Sag ich zu dieser Bauart: Ja. Das Neue.

Even this relativization, however, cannot stand up to scrutiny since these new buildings with their thin walls are unable to provide the peace and quiet which the poet requires for his work. The type of quiet they afford is like that "Zwischen Blitz und Donner," which is to say that it is a quiet one knows is soon to be shattered. In changing perspective once again, Mickel makes it clear that the problem of a lack of peace and quiet is not his alone: Unrast hat Locher Pflicht geht nicht durch, eh MuBe Pflicht wird.

Those short intervals of peace and quiet which the poet experiences living in a Neubau mirror the short respites which society in general has been able to wrest from the grueling schedule of rebuilding after the war. Again Trommler: GewiB war die DDR-Gesellschaft der Nachkriegszeit allés andere als eine Freizeitgesellschaft. Im Mangel an Ruhe, die mehr als nur ein Intervall der Stille bedeutet, gelangt all die Unrast, Unbequemlichkeit und Mvihsal zum Ausdruck, die den Aufbau des Landes begleitete.57 192

What to this point has been expressed metaphorically is given concrete form in the ensuing section of the poem, where a woman tells of the collapse of her marriage owing to her husband's single-minded dedication to the cause of the Aufbau. Such is the husband's dedication to future goals that the here and now passes without his partaking of it. The woman takes a lover who refuses to work himself to death. Mickel's unflinching "Wiederentdeckung der gesellschaftlichen Realitat” and his depiction of the effects of the public sphere on the private, resulted in his being roundly criticized by Hans Koch among others. Writing in the journal Forum. he accused Mickel of creating

"Ha&lichkeitsorgien":

Es bedarf kaum einer Erklarung, wie sehr all diese schwer- und kaumverstandlichen Gedichte ein 'Zeitgefühl' groBer Bedriickung und Bedrohung menschlicher Existenz signalisieren.58

Koch's critique is a disavowal of Mickel's prerogative to write anything other than hopelessly optimistic poetry, which the poet refused to do. The final stanza of the poem contains Mickel's own assessment of the role which he believes he can perform. Referring back to the houses of the first section of the poem, he declares that he himself wants to be a "house.” He can incorporate into his poetry the reality of peoples' lives, give it expression and thus provide a forum for a critical coming to terms with that reality. The house which Mickel wants to be is constructed of sturdier stuff than the Neubauten. for the poet is

determined to resist unwanted intrusions and provide a safe

haven: 193

Ich selber will ein Haus sein, sterbe ich Stein durch und durch, der Frost Glut Sturm Unfiihlend abweist, weist sie fur euch ab. Nach auBen leit ich eure Stiirme willig In mir ein Herz wird schlagen wie der Donner Waldungen stürzen, fliegt ein Fenster auf Mit euren Gluten heize ich die Stadt, und Sobald euch friert, den Kontinent vereis ich. Wer in mich eindringt, bricht sich das Genick Bevor er euch behelligt, auf der Treppe

Much more effectively than Czechowski at this time, Mickel used Dresden as a route by which to approach contemporary GDR reality. Yet as we shall see in looking at more of Czechowski's poetry, the two writers shared an underlying belief that only by stripping away a simplistic, ideologically-charged assessment of the past could one hope to reform the present. The past and present are

inextricably linked. The attacks made on Mickel for making that link are important to bear in mind when considering the cautious, but nevertheless critical poetry of Czechowski's second volume, Wasserfahrt. which appeared in

1967. Wasserfahrt included Czechowski's first major Dresden poem, "Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt," where the

uneasy memory of the raids with which the poet lives comes

strongly to the fore. The poem is divided into two sections. The first begins in the present before taking the reader back to the writer's childhood before the bombing; the second begins with the raids and then moves to

the present. The formal arrangement of the poem mirrors

its sentiment: in order to illuminate the present, one needs to look at the past. Unlike the earliest poetry,

this poem does not portray the bombing as a point of 194 departure for a new state, but as a traumatically defining incident from the individual's own history. Memories of childhood are inextricably linked with memories of devastation. For Czechowski, personally experienced "world history" led to the end of innocence, a prematurely truncated childhood, and thus to a world-view conditioned by the ever-present knowledge that the destruction of everything with which one is familiar can occur very quickly.

The poem begins in a frustrated tone as the poet, speaking in the first person, tells how he can learn nothing from those people who speak of fire as if it were happening on television. His own experience has taught him that the reality is very different and he returns to that experience. The memory begins with an idyllic evocation of the woods around Dresden in springtime, followed by a depiction of the scene at the time of the poet's birth:

Zwischen den Kurven der Mordgrund, da Bin ich gezeugt: wo ein Beamter erlag, Und eine Frau wusch noch in nachtlicher Stunde Die Wasche; da war sie Beamtin.59 Yet this idyll was not destined to last:

Da war die Stadt schon den Feuern geweiht.

If there should be any question in the reader's mind as to why destruction was so certain, the appearance of Goebbel's name in the following stanza makes clear the

historical fact that the poet had been born into a time bent on destruction. The final stanza of the first section concludes with the city's population descending into its

cellars: 195

Hinab in den Keller, atmen Den Mordgeruch der eigenen Verwesung. The second section begins with a description of the devastation wrought by the bombing:

Dann drohnten die Pauken iiber Dem nachtlichen Himmel. Da fielen Phosphor, Thermit Da blieb nicht viel von der Stadt. Da floB nicht Wein Auf Europens Terrasse. Da wurden nie schneller Graber gegraben. Da krampften sich Nagel wie nie In die hartesten Steine. Da wurden Menschen wie nie Von klassisch behauenen Steinen erschlagen.

Despite the magnitude of this event, Czechowski looks at present-day Dresden and sees no signs of his experience: Und wo jetzt die sanften Reptilien der Flüsse Platschern und weiB ist die Stadt Mit ihren guten Vergessern, Laufen die Hange hinab Die Tochter verdienter Erfinder. Just who these "Tochter verdienter Erfinder" are is not clear, but one possible interpretation is that they are the daughters of those former inhabitants of Mickel's "Dresdner

Hauser" who "invented" the machinery of death of the Second World War. What is clear is that not only has the city's history been unsatisfactorily covered over, but the same process is underway in the minds of its inhabitants. The

question implicitly posed by Czechowski is about the health of a society which has attributed little significance to an

event such as the raids. The poet himself is unable to make an easy

accommodation with the past and hence the headlong rush

into the future is a source of uneasiness: 196

Manchmal, Ich gebe es zu, Steht es nicht gut urn mich: Die Stadt sehe ich im Feuer, aber Die Zukunft kommt mir entgegen, Sicher berechnet, Doch die Zeit, Der wir entronnen sind. Weint. In 1968 Czechowski turned his attention to prose and wrote of his childhood in "Landschaft einer Kindheit: Wilder Mann,” a piece thirty pages in length and divided into twenty-six sections. Here he was intent on recalling as much as he could in the face of memories which always seemed to "verfliichtigen.Similarly to a later prose piece written in 1973, "Radebeul, Oberlofinitz, Augustusweg

48: Haus Sorgenfrei,” the Dresden piece was a work of documentation which aimed to record history so that it would not fall prey to the process of forgetting lamented in the poems of Wasserfahrt. In the "Radebeul” piece

Czechowski recorded an interview he conducted with the Dresden painter Gussy Hippold, then over sixty years old. Subject matter of the interview was Hippold's life in Dresden, her friendships with other Dresden artists, the career of her recently-deceased painter-husband Erhard (1909-1972) etc. The biography of Hippold was not a topic which had received much attention in the GDR, since neither she nor her husband had found favor under the official

state cultural policy during their productive years. After the exhibition of some of Erhard's works in 1946 there ensued a long period of anonymity for both painters: Fur beide ist es jedoch unmoglich, in eine gefallige, blofi affirmative Malweise abzugleiten, wie sie 197

zeitweilig gewünscht wird. Man kommt, wie Gussy Hippold sagt, einfach nicht zum Zuge. - Keine Ankaufe, keine offentliche Anerkennung, kaum Intéressé bei Fachleuten und Kollegen. Ablehnung. Eine hoffnungsvolle Entwicklung, unterbrochen durch Faschismus und Krieg, scheint in der Anonymitat zu enden. In the form of a glowing tribute to an under-recognized artist Czechowski called in this piece for a recognition of a history other than the one officially recorded, in this case "dem Leben von Gussy und Erhard Hippold, gelebt jahrzehntelang im Verborgenen, abseits von jeder Offentlichkeit."62 He squarely challenged the marginalization of history by recording that history. In a mirroring of the actions of Dresden's surviving population after the raids, Czechowski salvaged and recorded as much as he could in his Dresden piece; Ich sehe die Stadt, von der ich hier spreche, zwischen Feuer und Frost, ein Steinmeer in beunruhigender Gestaltlosigkeit zwischen lieblichen Hügeln, von einem sommerlichen Rinnsal durchflessen, bewohnt von Ratten und Toten, ausgetilgt in einer Nacht, dem Vergessen anheimgegeben, dem Vergessen entrissen, weil eine Stadt, zwar zum Sterben verurteilt, so lange nicht stirbt, wie es Menschen gibt, die nicht vergessen, die aus den Vororten kommen mit rasselnden Bahnen oder mit selbst-gebauten Gefarten, um aus dem Meer, das die staubblasenden Sommerwinde überziehen, zu bergen, was ihnen, den Überlebenden, noch gut dünkt und brauchbar zum Flicken ihrer Gehause.63

Nine years of age at the time of the bombing, Czechowski recalls standing on the roof of his parent's house after the first attack:

Auch auf den Dachern benachbarter Hauser stehn Leute. Zurufe gehen durch die Nacht: Wir sind verschont! Man zieht sich zurück in die Betten der Vorstadthauser. Kaum einer hier drauBen, fünf Kilometer von Stadtkern entfernt, ahnt, daB auf den StraBen Menschen verbrennen. 198 The second wave of bombers passed much closer to Czechowski's position on the edge of the city, but it was not until after the raid had passed that he became aware of the extent of the devastation: Die Angst macht uns stumm. Dann, irgendwann, ist es zu Ende. Niemand weiB, wie. Nur die Berichte jener Leute, die bald danach aus der brennenden Stadt hierherkommen und die nicht mehr und nicht weniger als ihr nacktes Leben retten konnten, sagen uns, daB es die Stadt nicht mehr gibt. The devastation of the city represented the destruction of the landscape of the writer's childhood; the scenes to which Czechowski subsequently became privy, marked a baptism of fire into a very different world and marked the end of innocence:

Ein süBlicher Geruch zieht von der Stadt herüber und dringt bis in unsere StraBe. [...] Kleine zottige Panjepferde ziehen die Wagen, auf denen, bedeckt mit einer dünnen Schicht Chlorkalk, die Toten liegen, die zum Heidefriedhof gebracht werden. Gleichgiiltig sitzt ein SS-Mann vorn auf dem Wagen und raucht. Die Hand eines Toten schleift auf dem Stahlkranz eines Rads.G4

In a single night Dresden had become, "ein Steinmeer in

beunruhigender Gestaltlosigkeit [...] bewohnt von Ratten

und Toten." Yet life did continue. In looking back at the period after the bombing, Czechowski realizes how already then certain factors began to mitigate against the act of remembering; the improvised teaching of history, for

example, which had no place for the raids: In Geschichte kommen.wir unter Altlehrer Schmidt bis Luther. In einem kühnen, jedoch miBlungenen VorstoB auf die Geschichte der neueren Zeit wird uns die Notwendigkeit der Oktoberrevolution aus dem Verlangen RuBlands nach eisfreien Hâfen e r k l a r t . 6 5

Of greater consequence was the very real preoccupation of the survivors with their continued day-to-day survival. 199 This, combined with the onset of the relentless push forward into a new system, left history unresolved. The image which Czechowski employed to convey the implications of such a lack of resolution was ominous: "Der Alltag verdrangt die Toten, die in der Dunkelheit hinter den ausgebrannten Fassaden lauern". An unresolved history will lie in wait. Those who experienced the bombing will never completely forget, even if their memories are never given an adequate forum. Instead those memories will live on as the "zugebautes Trauma," as Kluge phrased it. At the time of the raids there was every evidence that the survivors did not want to forget, that the desire to obtain corroborative documentary evidence of what they had experienced was strong:

Die kursierenden Fotos, einen sauberlich geschichteten Leichenberg zeigend, iiber dem die wilhelminische Germania des Altmarkts triumphiert, bekommen Seltenheitswert, was ihren Marktwert betrachtlich erhoht.66

Yet when the writer returned to the city of his birth

in the mid-1960's, he found little to remind him of his experiences there:

Dresden hat sich verandert, fiigt sich ins Zeitalter des Tourismus, will Prag, Warschau, Budapest nicht nachstehen an Attraktivitat. He thus determined to record his own history. His

evocation of the rebuilt city focuses on its changed

appearance. Like Mickel, Czechowski finds the buildings

which have been erected since the war to be functional but

aesthetically lacking:

Jetzt ist auch hier nicht nur Gras gewachsen, sondern hier stehen nun Hauser schmuck- und phantasielos.67 200

Unlike in "Dresdner Hauser," the depiction of present- day Dresden in "Landschaft der Kindheit" functions more as a postscript. Czechowski will go on to write poetry on that subject but the prose text is much more concerned with serving as a repository for memory. It fills a gap analogous to that left by the Frauenkirche: Von der Kuppel der Frauenkirche ist nichts zu sehen, so, als habe es sie nie g e g e b e n . 6 8

If the impression gained from "Landschaft einer Kindheit" was one of a man struggling to gain control of his memories, then the poems of Czechowski's next collection, Schafe und Sterne [1974], showed him fighting for a recognition of those memories. Remembering is an essential component of life for Czechowski and for other

Dresdeners, as demonstrated in the poem "Alt Kaditz":

Hier am Rande der Stadt Sprechen wir uns zurück In die Brande Und in die Zeit, Die uns aus der Angst Hinüber lanciert hat Ins neue Jahrtausend, Das zu benennen Nicht mUde wir werden, Jeder Auf seine eigene Weise.69

Remembering is necessary in order to resist the

"postkartenreife Idyllen"?^ which had supplanted the

collective memory of the survivors in official histories. Elsewhere, in the poem "Stadtgang," Czechowski states his

refusal to create such idylls:

2. Dichten ist schwer. Was Soli ich bedichten: die Baume, Die an den Hangen stehn. 201 Die milde Landschaft, Die sanften Hügel? - Hier Bliebe ich gern! 3. Die StraBen, Mit Leichen geschandet, Beleben sich langsam: Den Toten ein Kreuz, oben Hinter den Waldern viber der Stadt, Den Namenlosen.71 Confronting the past includes recounting a conversation with an elderly woman in "Niobe," who tells the poet of the three daughters she lost to the war and the husband who was killed by the b o m b s . 72 Nowhere in this volume is there a vision of happiness or contentment which is not tempered by fear, doubt or questioning. The poem "Heimweg" presents an idyllic picture of the poet as a boy walking home along the banks of the Elbe with his father, only to conclude;

Verloschender Glanz, Ehe die Bomber Die Wehrlose zahmen.73

The poet's use of the present tense throughout "Heimweg" prompted critic Adrian Stevens to make the following observation: Die Zerstorung Dresdens wird nicht als einmaliges, von der glücklicheren Perspektive der Gegenwart aus ruhig in die Vergangenheit, in die Geschichte zu bannendes Ereignis projiziert: sie wird im Gegenteil zum zeitlos (d.h. iramer noch) gültigen Beispiel fur die Hinfalligkeit menschlichen Glucks angesichts der destruktiven Krafte, die im Krieg jederzeit wachgerufen und entfesselt werden konnen. Insofern die Moglichkeit einer zweiten und voraussichtlich totaleren Zerstorung Dresdens und Europas durchaus noch gegeben ist, dauert die Angst, die in den drei letzten Versen des Gedichts der naiv-zuversichtlichen Kindheitsperspektive der vorangehenden Strophen ein traumatisches Ende setzt, in die aktuelle Gegenwart des berichtenden Ichs wie des Lesers unvermindert h i n e i n . 7 4

Concrete support for Steven's hypothesis that Czechowski had a second destruction of Dresden in mind is 202 to b e ,found in later poems, such as ”Abendblatt” from Was mich betrifft (1981): Jede Stunde aus alien Radiolautsprechern das Sabelrasseln ertont Und taglich Ein neues Damoklesschwert Über unsere Kopfe gehângt wird. "75

Throughout Schafe und Sterne there are poems which construct idylls only to posit their destruction. "FluBfahrt" is another example; Friihnebel. Die Dorfer Eingegrenzt vom FluB und den Bergen. Gutgestimmte Hahne Wechseln den MorgengruB. Uferzonen, Besetzt von wiederkauendem Vieh, Treiben dahin. Die Sonne, Ein randloses Licht, Erscheint dem Tag: Brandsatze fallen, da 1st die Welt gegenwartig In sachsisch-bohmischen D o r f e r n . 7 6

In both "Heimweg” and "FluBfahrt," Czechowski is certainly making reference to the fact that, just as in 1945, the possibility of very real devastation as the poet himself experienced, is present. Yet he is not deterministically proclaiming a cyclical theory of history since he leaves two options open. Both the raids in

"Heimweg" and the idyll are described in the present tense,

which is to say that both outcomes remain plausible, though a realization of the latter is predicated upon a

recognition of the existence of the former. An idyll

cannot simply be declared. In these poems Czechowski is

rejecting the "allzu fertigen Geschichtsbild"?? officially proclaimed in the GDR. No longer can "GewiBheiten" be

allowed to stand "ganz ungepriift an ihrem P l a t z . " 7 8 The 203 poet demands the right to ask questions: Natürlich ihr fragt mich Warum diese Traurigkeit Warum immer wieder die Riickkehr Zu diesen Statten des Unmuts Doch ihr müBt schon gestatten DaB Fragen gestellt werden Nach all eueren vielen Antworten?^

One year after the publication of Schafe und Sterne. Karl Nickel's volume Eisenzeit appeared. Included here is a poem entitled "Die Elbe" which testified in its citation of an earlier poem of Czechowski's, "An der Elbe," to the sense of community felt by the poets. "Die Elbe" parallels the regeneration of humanity through reproduction with industrial production; and, in much the same way as does Kluge, Mickel undercuts the notion that history represents progress, especially history as it is understood in the GDR. Mickel reminds the reader that the devastation which occurred in Dresden was inherent in the history of industrial production to that point and in describing the destruction in the present tense warns of the foolhardiness of simply ruling out the possibility of a re-occurrence. The poem begins, as does "Dresdner Hauser," in the natural world, as the depiction of the eternally flowing Elbe parallels the continual procession, since time immemorial, of inumerable pairs coupling in the "Gras und Heu"®0 of the river's banks. A third progression, that of industrial production, is invoked in the second section of the poem, as Mickel makes a transition from speaking of sexual "Verkehr" to invoking the other meanings inherent in that term. Critics Ursula and Rudolf Heukenkamp: 204

''Verkehrsform" ist bel Marx die Gesamtheit der Bedingungen von Produktion und Austausch in einer Gesellschaft. Als "FluB neben dem FluB" bewegt sich der Vekehrsstrom; mehr noch als bei der natürlichen Reproduktion sind Selbststandigkeit und Selbsttatigkeit der Verkehrsteilnehmer annulliert, wie sich schroff im Falle des "Verkehrsunfalls" zeigt. Wer den Verkehrsstrom erzeugt, nimmt auch dessen Storung in Kauf, obwohl er selbst das nachste Opfer werden kann. ...wer ein Auto kauft Kauft den Autounfall, weiB er das?81

This is no purely theoretical point, for having situated his poem in the geographically-specific area of

Dresden, Mickel is able to cite the concrete example of the destruction of that city as a result of the progression of industrial production. He thus illustrates how that progression has been of enormous impact on the human progression described in the first section of the poem.

The scene he employs to invoke the senselessness of the raids contains a citation from Czechowski and refers back to Auguste Lazar's childrens' story "Was Reni in der

Dresdner Brandnacht 1945 erlebte," discussed above in

chapter II. In both that story and Nickel's poem the somewhat surreal image of Dresden's zoo animals, innocent victims of the bombing, fleeing the devastation along with the people, makes clear that this is a world turned on its

head:

Glimmend um die Trümmer Kreist das Volk von Weixdorf bis Pesterwitz Sanft wie die Berge neben dem FluB (Czechowski) kriechen Bestien in die, aus dem Zoo, bei Kindern, nach dem Angriff Achselhohlen. The writings of Czechowski and Mickel from the 1960's

and '70's serve still as powerful warnings of the dangers

which lurk in an unmastered past. The collapse of the GDR 205 has not decreased their appropriateness, since the warnings are still valid. The particular form which repression of the raids took in the GDR may have been more obvious, but its counterpart in the FRG has been no less effective. It is not yet time to resign oneself as Czechowski did, but neither is it time to celebrate the end of the Cold War as the antidote to an unhappy history. To do so would be to make the same mistakes as were made in 1945. 206

Notes 1. David Irving cites a speech made in the House of Commons on March 12, 1946, by a certain Wing Commander Millington who had become a Member of Parliament after the war. Millington, speaking on the subject of Bomber Command's operations during the war, expressed the disappointment felt by the men who served under Harris at the treatment of their superior:

This matter is precipitated in my mind by the signal fact that in the terminal honours, at the end of last year, in the New Year's Honours List, the name of the chief architect of Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, was a conspicuous absentee. I know it will be agreed that in the Honours List six months previously, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command received the Order of the G.C.B. But he retired from the without any public expression of gratitude for the work - not that he had done - but which his Command had done under him. He left the country in a bowler hat for America (en route to South Africa) without having been included in the terminal Honours List. There is a feeling amongst the men who have served in Bomber Command that what appears to be an affront to the people who served in that Command, and of course to those who suffered casualties. We feel that if our organisation did a good job of work in all respects, as we believe it did, the least that should be done is that an honour should be conferred on its head, comparable to the honours paid to commanding officers of similar units, particularly in the other services. Irving, David, The Destruction of Dresden. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 228ff.

2. Jackel, Eberhard, "Die doppelte Vergangenheit", Der Spiegel 45/52, 12/23/1991, 39.

3. "'Freund der kleinen Nazis': Wie die DDR die NS- Vergangenheit bewaltigte", Der Spiegel 46/12, 3/23/1992, 101. 4. Seydewitz, Max, Zerstorung und Wiederaufbau von Dresden. (Berlin: Kongress, 1955), 254. 5. Elon, Amos, Journey Through A Haunted Land. The New Germany. trans. Michael Roloff, (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), 140.

6. Elon, 138f. Elon took a dim view of the housing indeed: The richly sculptured façades of Housing Installation II are reminiscent of Moscow subway stations; it would be difficult to choose in which of the two you would be prepared to live. Symbolic figures crouch beneath 207 gabled roofs, but plaster is crumbling as in the ruins, the floors are buckling, the stairs are either broken or already worn. A young girl was coming up from the cellar with a bucketful of coal. There was no central heating, but expensive mosaics decorated the lobby.

Elon, 142. In 1970, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the raids. Time correspondent Eric Schaal described the state of rebuilding at that time; Today Dresden's cultural artistic monuments are finally rising again. Despite critical food and housing shortages right after the war, the East German Communist government made the restoration of Germany's Florence a top priority. Ultimately the project will cost $27.3 million.

After revisiting Dresden, a second Time correspondent, George Taber, reported:

Standing in the Theaterplatz, you see the rebuilt Hofkirche and the art gallery with the Zwinger Museum in the back. But you also see the bombed-out skeletons of the opera and the royal palace. It is not a morose but an ambivalent feeling one has in Dresden. The restoration of the old masterpieces is encouraging and uplifting, but the sight of the unreconstructed ones reminds one of the senselessness of the attack. [...] The first task in the reconstruction was restoring the Baroque 18th century Zwinger. In 1946, 150 master stonemasons went to work; it took them 16 years to complete the work. Alongside the Zwinger, Semper's famous Gemaldegalerie once again exhibits Raphael's "Sistine Madonna”, twelve Rembrandts (including his "Portrait of Saskia"), 16 Rubenses, five Titians and two Vermeers. Gaetano Chiaveri's Baroque 18th century Hofkirche is finished and used regularly for Catholic services. The old Landhaus, an imposing mansion reminiscent of Versailles, has been turned into a museum. The exquisite Kronentor on the moated Zwinger has been restored to its original splendor. The royal palace and the opera house are to be rebuilt by 1980. Then there is the Frauenkirche, whose majestic 310-ft. dome once dominated the center of Dresden. Like Hiroshima's Industrial Promotion Hall, it will be left in ruins, a mute reminder of the thought expressed by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in his Dresden novel. Slaughterhouse 5: "There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.”

Schaal, Eric, ". Dresden Rebuilt", Time 2/23/1970, 32. 208 7. Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, Castle To Castle, trans. Ralph Manheim, (1957), (New York; Delacorte Press, 1968), 246. 8. Kastner, Erich, Als ich ein kleiner Junqe war. (1957), Gesammelte Schriften. Band 6. Romane für Kinder. (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1959), 42f. 9. Céline, 246. 10. Kastner, 43. 11. Panitz, Eberhard, "Auskünfte", Die Verlorene Tochter. Erzahlunaen und Auskünfte. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1979), 471.

12. Panitz, Eberhard, Die Feuer Sinken. (Berlin: Militarverlag der DDR, 1960), 5.

13. Panitz, 194. 14. Panitz, Eberhard, "Das Mâdchen Simra", (1961), Die Verlorene Tochter. Erzahlunaen und Auskünfte. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1979), 47.

15. Panitz, "Auskünfte", 493. 16. Panitz, Eberhard, Meines Vaters StraBenbahn. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1979), 45. 17. Panitz, 46. 18. Panitz, 49ff. 19. Panitz, 95. 20. Panitz, Eberhard, Leben für Leben. Roman einer Familie. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1987), 159f. 21. Panitz, 165.

22. Panitz, 160.

23. Panitz, 163. 24. "Konflikte sichtbar machen. Gesprach mit Heinz Czechowski", Neue Deutsche Literatur 26, 1978/5, 112. 25. Czechowski, Heinz, "'Die Zeit der Wunder ist vorbei...' Zur Lyrik der zwischen 1935 und 1940 Geborenen", in Ein Moment des Erfahrenen Lebens. Zur Lvrik der DDR. Beitraae zu einem Symposium, ed. John L. Flood, (: Rodopi, 1987), 22-35.

26. Czechowski, 23. 209 27. Emmerich, Wolfgang, Kleine Literaturaeschichte der DDR. (Darmstadt und Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1981), 166. See also: Emmerich, Wolfgang, "Heinz Czechowski” in Kritis- ches Lexikon zur deutschsprachioen Gegenwartsiiteratur Band II, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold, (Munich: Text und Kritik, 1989), 2. Also: Kirsten, Wulf, "Die Stadt als Text", in Heinz Czechowski. Auf eine im Feuer versunkene Stadt. Gedichte und Prosa 1958-1988. ed. Wulf Kirsten, (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1990), 143. 28. Emmerich, Kleine Literaturaeschichte. 167.

29. Peter Geist warns against viewing the poets of the 1960's as a group, since such a characterization can serve to de-emphasize their differences:

Jedoch sollten die Gemeinsamkeiten in Werdegang, Poetik und Dichtung (Dialogizitat, gegenseitige Bezugnahme in Gedichten, gemeinsame literarhistorische BezugsgroSen wie Holderlin und Klopstock, vom Lehrer Maurer befordertes Achten auf die "Genauigkeit in der Behandlung des Gegenstands" [Rainer Kirsch], Synthèse von Subjektivitat und politisch-moralischem Engagement) nicht iiber die tatsachliche Divergenz der einzelnen Schreibkonzepte hinwegtauschen. Die Bezeichnung "Gruppe" halte ich zumindest für die jungere Vergangenheit für fraglich. Geist, Peter, "Nachwort", Ein Molotow-Cocktail auf fremder Bettkante. Lvrik der siebziqer/achtziaer Jahre von Dichtern aus der DDR. Ein Lesebuch. (Leipzig: Reclam, 1991), 381. 30. Czechowski, 23.

31. Emmerich, "Heinz Czechowski", 4. 32. Geist, 371. 33. Czechowski, 23f.

34. Czechowski, 24. 35. Czechowski, 26f.

36. "Gesprach mit Heinz Czechowski" in Deutsche Bûcher 14, 1984/4, 253.

37. "Konflikte sichtbar machen. Gesprach mit Heinz Czechowski", 112. 38. Müller, Heiner, "Walls", interview with Sylvere Lotringer, in Germania. (New York: Semiotexte, 1990), 67. 39. Honecker, Erich, "Hauptaufgabe umfaBt auch weitere Erhohung des kulturellen Niveaus", Neues Deutschland 210

12/18/1971. In: RüB, Gisela, éd., Dokumente zur Kunst-. Literatur- und Kulturnolitik der SEP 1971 bis 1974. (Stuttgart: H. Seewald, 1976), 287.

40. Noch 1976 gingen Thomas Brasch, Siegmar Faust, Bernd Jentzsch, Ulrich Schacht, Hans Joachim Schadlich und , und 1977 bis 1981 verlieBen Jürgen Fuchs, Gerulf Pannach, Christian Kunert, Sarah Kirsch, Wolfgang Hinkeldey, , Frank Schone, Bernd Markowski, Frank-Wolf Matthies und Thomas Erwin endgültig die DDR, auBerdem mehrere renommierte Regisseure (u.a. Adolf Dresen, Gotz Friedrich, Einar Schleef), Schauspieler (u.a. Katharina Thalbach, Angelica Domrose, Hilmar Thate, Eva-Maria Hagen), Musiker und Komponisten (Tilo Medek, Klaus Renft, Nina Hagen). Hinzu kommen all jene Autoren, die sich langfristig Visa für westliche Lander erkampft haben, u.a. Jurek Becker, Rolf Schneider, Klaus Poche, Günter Kunert, Klaus Schlesinger, Kurt Bartsch, Erich Loest, Karl-Heinz Jakobs, Stefan Schütz. Emmerich, 187.

41. "Gesprach mit Heinz Czechowski", 253. 42. Czechowski, Heinz, Mein Venedia. Gedichte und andere Prosa. (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1989), 69. 43. Czechowski, Ilf. 44. Czechowski, Heinz, Ich und die Folqen. (Reinbek bei Hamburg; Rowohlt, 1987), 38.

45. Czechowski, Mein Venedia. 15.

46. Czechowski, 32. 47. Czechowski, 19.

48. Czechowski, 14. See the discussion below of Czechowski's 1973 piece on painter Gussy Hippold, in which the poet recorded the painter's "Chronik."

49. Czechowski, 26. 50. Czechowski, Heinz, An Freund und Feind. (Munich/Vienna: Carl Hanser, 1983), 8.

51. Kirsten, 11.

52. Endler, Adolf and Karl Mickel, ed., In diesem besseren Land. Gedichte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik seit 1945. (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1966), 283f. 211 53. Trommler, Frank, "Die Miihen des Nachkriegaufbaus. Zu Karl Mickels Gedicht "Dresdner Hauser"", in Walter Hinck, ed., Gedichte und Interpretationen Band 6; Gegenwart. (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), 292.

54. Mickel, Karl, Vita nova mea. (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1967), 45-49.

55. Trommler, 288. 56. "Aufklaren heiBt umstülpen: Karl Mickel im Gesprach", Neue Deutsche Literatur 28, 1980/1, 54.

57. Trommler, 289.

58. Koch, Hans, "Haltungen, Richtungen, Formen", Forum. 19 (1966), 15/16. Koch compiled the book Cultural Policy in the German Democratic Republic for UNESCO in 1975 and, according to the brief biography was a Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences under the direction of the Central Committee of the SED and Chairman of the Scientific Council for Artistic and Cultural Studies in the GDR. It is thus safe to assume that his critique of Mickel represents the Party line. 59. Czechowski, An Freund und Feind. 2Of. 60. Czechowski, Heinz, "Landschaft der Kindheit: Wilder Mann" in Herr Neithardt aeht durch die Stadt. Landschaften und Portrats. (Halle/Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1983), 5. 61. Czechowski, Heinz, "Radebeul, OberloBnitz, Augustusweg 48: Haus Sorgenfrei", in Herr Neithardt aeht durch die Stadt. Landschaften und Portrats. (Halle/Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1983), 131f. This piece also appeared under the title "Die Malerin Gussy Hippold" in Joachim Walther's anthology Mir scheint der Kerl lasiert; Dichter iiber Maler. (Berlin: Aufbau, 1978) , 34-55.

62. Czechowski, 113.

63. Czechowski, "Landschaft der Kindheit: Wilder Mann", 14.

64. Czechowski, Ilf.

65. Czechowski, 14f.

66. Czechowski, 16.

67. Czechowski, 28f.

68. Czechowski, 32. 212

69. Czechowski, Heinz, An Freund und Feind. (Munich/Vienna: Carl Hanser, 1983), 53. 70. Czechowski, Heinz, Sanft gehen wie Tiere die Berae neben dem FluB. (: Neue Bremer Presse, 1989), 33. 71. Kirsten, 42. 72. Kirsten, 53. 73. Czechowski, An Freund und Feind. 51.

74. Stevens, Adrian, "Dichtung und Geschichte: Bemerkungen zur Lyrik Heinz Czechowskis", in Ein Moment des Erfahrenen Lebens. Zur Lvrik der DDR. Beitrâae zu einem Symposium, ed. John L. Flood, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), 40f. 75. Czechowski, Heinz, Was mich betrifft. (Halle/Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1981), 14.

76. Geist, 300. 77. Heukenkamp, Ursula, "Unsere Sprache ist vielleicht nicht die eigentliche. Der Lyriker Heinz Czechowski", Weimarer Beitraqe 34, 1988/5, 828.

78. Heukenkamp, 828. 79. Czechowski, An Freund und Feind. 40. 80. Mickel, Karl, Eisenzeit. (Halle: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1975), 36.

81. Heukenkamp, Ursula and Rudolf, ""Die Elbe". Eine Interpretation", Schriftsteller der Gegenwart. Karl Mickel. (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1985), 25f. CHAPTER V

ROLF HOCHHUTH'S SOLDATEN. NEKROLOG AUF GENF. TRAGODIE:

FOCUSING ATTENTION ON THE PERPETRATORS

To describe the second half of the 1950's in Western

Europe as a time of complete silence with regard to the Dresden raids, would not be entirely accurate. Although no new historical works were published during this time, Axel

Rodenberger's Der Tod von Dresden, originally published in 1951, enjoyed enduring attention as its subsequent eight reprintings testified. Rodenberger's book was more a work of dramatic re-enactment than of historical documentation.

Historian Gotz Bergander summarized it as follows in his 1977 volume, Dresden im Luftkriea;

Der Text ist noch unter dem Eindruck des Geschehens geschrieben worden. Deshalb wohl enthalt diese erste zusammenfassende Darstellung der Februar-Angriffe viele Fehler; sie sollte als eine auf wahren Vorkommnissen beruhende Erzahlung verstanden werden. Die Voraussetzungen für einen Tatsachenbericht werden nicht erfüllt, weil sich Tatsachen mit Horensagengeschichten und falschen Behauptungen vermischen, vor allem aber nicht, weil die entscheidenden allierten und deutschen Dokumente noch nicht greifbar waren. Dennoch wurde die Arbeit von anderen Autoren herangezogen, und sie wurde auszugsweise auch in die amtlichen "Dokumente deutscher Kriegsschaden" aufgenommen.

Of particular irritation to Bergander was the wide range of acceptance which the book had found:

Gegen Rodenbergers Buch ware weniger einzuwenden, wenn es von Anfang an etwa als zusammengefaBte Wiedergabe 213 214 persônlicher Eindrücke vorgestellt und mit dem Hinweis versehen worden ware, daB es keinen Anspruch auf historische Exaktheit erhebt. Die Erzahlung erschien zuerst im "Grünen Blatt" - und von diesem journalistischen Genre führt der Weg dann bis in die Geschichtsbücher, so auch noch 1973 in das Schwarzbuch der Weltaeschichte.i

Bergander regarded Rodenberger's text as the source of many of the legends which subsequently grew up around

Dresden, in particular those which exaggerated the extent and results of the destruction. During the 1950's and '60's no Western historians took issue with Rodenberger's text, of which the author himself had written in the foreward: In schonungslorer Offenheit und getreu der Wahrheit wurde dieser Bericht von mir niedergeschrieben. [...] Der Bericht ist vollig frei von Tendenzen. Er soli auch keine Anklage sein, nicht gegen diesen oder jenen. Was er sein soli, ist die Anklage gegen den Krieg und eine eindringliche Warnung an die Menschheit, die voiler Sorge schon wieder die Flammenzeichen eines neuen Weltbrandes vor sich sieht.2 In such a context the tendency to overstate might even appear a lesser evil, since there is surely no loftier enterprise than that of speaking out against war. However, when one considers the subsequent history of the book's reprintings and the alterations which were made to the text, one can see that Rodenberger's motives were perhaps not so lofty as they initially appeared. Consider, for example, the following: 1955 saw the publication of the fifth edition of Der Tod von Dresden, to which the author added a new foreward: Ohne Propaganda sprach dieser Bericht [the first edition] vom Sterben einer Stadt für sich selbst. Tausende von Briefen erreichten mich aus dem In- und Ausland, Stimmen der ErschUtterung und des Dankes für den Versuch einer objektiven Schilderung jener 215

entsetzlichen Schreckenstage von Dresden. In uneigenniitziger Weise setzten sich Freunde Deutschlands in alien Teilen der Welt für ein Bekanntwerden des Huches im Ausland ein.3 A little further on Rodenberger noted that nothing had changed in the fifth edition with the exception of the inclusion of information supplied by survivors subsequent to publication of the first edition, and "einige

AusfUhrungen über den 'Bomber' - Marschall Harris." These "Ausführungen" did much to change the impact of the book, since they undermined Rodenberger's claim that his work was not an "Anklage." He cited Harris;

"Wir werden das Dritte Reich mit der GeiBel des Luftkrieges von einem bis zum anderen Ende züchtigen. Wir bombadieren Stadt auf Stadt mit zunehmender Schrecklichkeit." Am 28. Mai, demselben Tag, an dem der stellvertretende britische Ministerprasident Attlee im Parlament erklart hatte: "Nein, es findet kein unterschiedsloses Bomben statt. Wie in diesem Hause wiederholt festgestellt wurde, werden nur solche Ziele bombadiert, die vom militarischen Standpunkt aus hochst wichtig sind," auBerte sich Luftmarschall Sir Arthur Harris wie folgt: "Was es (Deutschland) in der Vergangenheit zu spüren bekommen hat, war nur Hühnerfutter im Vergleich zu dem, was es nun bekommen wird." [...] Und im Mai 1950 bekannte er sich in einer Rede vor 5000 Fliegersoldaten der britischen Luftwaffe noch einmal eindeutig zu seiner Vernichtungsstrategie, als er erklarte: "Ich personlich - und ich bin sicher, Sie alle - würden mit Vergnügen gesehen haben, daB jeder Stein in Deutschland zu Schutt verwandelt worden ware.

It is enlightening that Rodenberger should have chosen to add material such as this while ignoring the findings of Max Seydewitz, whose 1955 book on Dresden, mentioned at the

beginning of chapter IV, had reduced the estimate of the number of deaths resulting from the raids from Rodenberger's 1951 total of 250,000 to 35,000.5 The effect of such selective amendments to the text was obvious: the 216 extent of the exaggerated devastation was not diminished at all. Indeed the reprintings of the text served to add to its credence, only it was no longer war which was being indicted but the identifiably guilty partner of Harris. When the book was reprinted for the eighth time in 1963, two years before the twentieth anniversary of the raids, Rodenberger added an afterword: das eine offen gebliebene, aber auch berechtigte Frage beantwortet: "Wer gab den Befehl zur Vernichtung Dresden?”® The difference in tone between this afterword and the introduction to the first edition of the text was unmistakable. Rodenberger began by justifying the posing of the question: Als ich das Buch Per Tod von Dresden veroffentlichte, urteilte nicht nur die deutsche, sondern die Weltpresse iibereinstimmend, daB es frei von Tendenzen und Leidenschaften sei. Inzwischen sind aber mehr als zehn Jahre vergangen; inzwischen wurden die Erkenntnisse erweitert und Tatsachen veroffentlicht, die bei der Abfassung des Manuskriptes noch nicht bekannt waren.? Again, it is important to remember that only new sources which suited Rodenberger's aims were incorporated into the text — Seydewitz still did not merit inclusion. Rodenberger cited British historians Noble Frankland and Sir Charles Webster's official history of the Allied air campaign The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germanv [1961]8; Sofort nach Erscheinen des Werkes erklarte der englische Generalmajor Benett: "Die Regierung sollte dieses Werk zurückziehen,” und diese Erklarung hatte seinen guten Grund. Nach zehn jâhriger Forschungs- arbeit kamen beide Verfasser zu dem gleichen Urteil, wie es schon langst vor der Vernichtung deutscher Stadte und insbesondere Dresdens im englischen GeneraIkommando bekannt war, namlich daB der 217

Boitibenkrieg in keiner Weise kriegs-entscheidend war, er die Moral der Bevolkerung nicht untergraben konnte, im Gegenteil, daB trotz schwerster Terrorangriffe Deutschland im Jahre 1944 die hochsten Produktions- ziffern auf kriegswichtigem Gebiet erreichte. In diesem Geschichtswerk wird unwiderlegbar festgelegt, daB Churchill den AnstoB zur Vernichtung Dresdens gegeben hat, ebenso wie es historisch festliegt, daB die Englander die Nachtangriffe flogen. Hierbei ist festzustellen, daB die Begründung für die Terrorangriffe, namlich des deutschen Fliegerangriffs auf Coventry, nur ein Vorwand war. In diesem Geschichtswerk ist auch zu lesen, daB wahrend des ganzen Luftkrieges in England nur so viel Menschen umgekommen sind wie in einem Zeitraum von drei Wochen wahrend der massierten Luftangriffe auf Deutschland.9

Rodenberger called Frankland and Webster's work, "eine moralische Ohrfeige für die englische Kriegführung" before

shifting his focus to link the raids with the territorial decisions arrived at by the Allies at Yalta in early

February, 1945. These he condemned as having resulted from

a blind hatred of all things German:

Blindwürtiger HaB gegen allés, was deutsch war, trübte den Blick derer, die die Verantwortung für die weitere Zukunft der Erde bestimmten. Mit dem Yaltaer Vertrag wurde der Grundstein zu einem im Bereich des Moglichen liegenden dritten Weltkrieg gelegt.

Having thus set the requisite tone, Rodenberger

proceeded most disingenuously to offer the following comparison:

Durch diesen Vertrag wurden aber auch Millionen Deutscher entrechtet und Millionen gezwungen, ihre Heimat zu verlassen. Die Erklarung der Kollektivschuld aller Deutschen ergab das scheinbare Recht der Vertreibung, das genausowenig eine Berechtigung hatte, als wenn man den noch in der Ostzone verbliebenen Deutschen eines Tages die Kollektivschuld für Ulbrichts Regime auferlegen wollte.lO

It is as if the National Socialists had never been

elected into office in Germany. 218

Three factors emboldened Rodenberger to step up his charge of Allied (British) war-time crime. The first was the success of his own book. In a field so under­ researched Rodenberger could claim in the West to be a lone campaigner for truth whose quest was obviously of interest to a large number of readers, particularly in view of the fast-approaching twentieth anniversary of the raids. Second, the changed nature of relations between Britain and an economically-recovered FRG — from victor and vanquished to equals — allowed for an airing of issues which had formerly been considered taboo. Third, the British themselves provided Rodenberger with plenty of ammunition as they made hesitant steps towards documenting an uncomfortable chapter of war-time history. The information presented by Webster and Frankland certainly shocked many and led to a much more public investigation of the roles played by Winston Churchill and Arthur Harris in the bombing campaign. Labour Member of Parliament for Coventry (twin-city with Dresden), R.H.S. Crossman, called the official history a "masterpiece" which,

at long last provided a documented and circumstantial proof to confirm the worst charges made by the wartime critics of the bomber offensive. As to the reasons which had been put forward by the British government to justify the raids. Crossman wrote:

The four volumes of the official history conclusively confirm the suspicions that their lies were not even justified by success. During the heaviest and most successful period of area bombing, German war production steadily increased; so did the efficiency of the German air defences.11 219

With the publication of Webster and Frankland's history, the topic of Dresden slowly began to emerge from the period of British silence. Yet the public debates which accompanied the publication of the history would pale beside the furor unleashed by David Irving's 1963 study, The Destruction of Dresden. Writing about Irving in 1992 presents a number of problems owing to the historian's development subsequent to 1963 which eventually saw him become a full-blooded revisionist.12 As recently as July,

1992 Irving told the English Guardian newspaper:

As an historian you get a kind of gut-feeling about things. In six to 18 months Gorbachev will be gone. He will either be dead or in exile. I also predict that one year from now the Holocaust will be discredited. That prediction is lethal because of the vested interests involved in the Holocaust industry. As I said to the Jewish Chronicle, if a year from now the gas chambers legend collapses, what will that mean for Israel? Israel is drawing millions of dollars each year from the German taxpayer, provided by the German government as reparation for the gas chambers. It is also drawing millions a year from American taxpayers, who put up with it because of the way the Israelis or the Jews suffered. No one's going to like it when they find out that for 50 years they have been believing a legend built on baloney.13 With the publication of The Destruction of Dresden^^

Irving became a cause célèbre overnight, appearing on talk shows and in newspapers and magazines. The reason for so

much attention was his contention that Winston Churchill

had ordered the bombing of Dresden and then attempted to distance himself from it once he had seen the extent of the

destruction wrought. Irving detailed how Dresden

represented the first example of a firestorm being deliberately planned, how the raids had been extremely 220 effective in killing the largest number of people possible (Irving set the death toll at 135,000).15 He claimed that the raids had been of no military importancel® and that they had been carried out in order to impress Stalin with a show of brute strength.1? In contrast to Rodenberger, Irving retained his respect for Air-Marshall Harris, who, he believed, was unfairly scapegoated by the British authorities so that Churchill's name would not be dragged through the mud.18 Harris' crime was to have carried out the War Cabinet's orders with a ruthless efficiency.

There are, however, some proven inaccuracies in the book. When it was published in Germany in 1964, it was reviewed in the bi-weekly Die Welt der Literatur by

Hans-Joachim Kausch whose opinion was that, "Irving's Buch sollte jeder Deutsche lesen."1® Kausch also cited Irving's death toll of 135,000. Five issues later a certain Rulf Neider in a letter to the editor of the same publication expressed the opinion that Irving's figure was too high:

Diese Zahl Irvings ist eine Utopie. Urn es kurz zu sagen; Die "1" ist zuviel. [...] Es wird hier durch Irvings Buch in sehr leichtfertiger Weise einer Legendenbildung Vorschub geleistet, der im Intéressé der Wahrheit scharf entgegengetreten werden muB.20

Irving lost no time in writing his own letter. In the very next issue of the journal he catalogued his reasons for citing the figure of 135,000 dead and concluded: Und doch behauptet Herr Neider, daB die Zahl der Luftangriffstoten in Dresden weitgehend niedriger als die in Hamburg liegen muBl Man fragt sich, was er mit diesen Behauptungen zu erreichen hofft.21

This same question should, most fittingly, be asked of

Irving himself, for in 1966 in a letter to The Times of 221 London Irving admitted having erred in his figure: The east German authorities [...] have now supplied to me a copy of the 11-page "final report" written by the area police chief about one month after the Dresden raids, and there is no doubt as to this document's authenticity. In short, the report shows that the Dresden casualties were on much the same scale as in the heaviest Hamburg raids in 1943. The document's author, the Hohere SS - und Polizeifiihrer Elbe, was responsible for civil defense measures in Dresden, it should be noted. These figures are very much lower than those I quoted. [...] A total of 35,000 people were listed as missing.22

Irving went on to cite another document which had come into his possession, a Berlin police summary of "Air Raids on Reich Territory" (3/22/45), with the same statistic of 35,000 missing. This admission of error must necessarily call into question Irving's attempts in The Destruction of

Dresden to "document" as many of the 135,000 dead as possible. There was, for example, his vague estimate of

"between ten and twenty thousand"23 wedding rings which had been taken from the fingers of the dead for identification.

Or his assertion that the Abteiluna Tote in Dresden, "was able to clear up the identity of some 40,000 of the dead."24 one wonders how such an assertion is to be squared with the revised death toll. With the benefit of hindsight it is possible to see in Irving's study the first stage of a revisionist argument which would subsequently encompass the whole history of the

Third Reich and include contentions which now number among some of the cornerstone arguments of the full-scale revisionists. This information is not offered with a view to criticizing Hochhuth for his reliance on information 222 obtained from Irving for Soldaten. for the playwright was quick to distance himself from the historian when he began to stretch the bounds of credible research, as in a later claim that Hitler knew nothing of the gassing of Jews until

1943. In his 1977 introduction to the newly-published Goebbels diaries of 1945, Hochhuth documented evidence clearly contradicting Irving and added: Fast jedermann bestritt nach Hitlers Tod, von der Ermordung der Juden gewuBt zu haben. Aber ihren eigentlichen Triumph erlebte die Geschichtsschreibung erst in unseren Tagen, 1977 - und seitdem hat man den Verdacht, daB Geschichtsschreibung die Fortsetzung des Krieges mit schlimmeren Mitteln ist -, als von einem bedeutenden Historiker, keinem Deutschen, ernsthaft bestritten wurde, daB es Hitler gewesen sei, der die Ausrottung der Juden angeordnet habe. Ja, mehr noch, selbst Hitler habe erst 1943 davon erfahren, daB die Juden in Europa vergast w u r d e n . 25

Of importance for this study is a taking into account of the atmosphere at the time of the appearance of Soldaten. Set against the background of Irving's breaking of historical taboos, the controversy which surrounded the publication of the drama in 1967 should not appear surprising. The drama's subject matter alone, the bombing of civilian populations during World War Two, was enough to

ensure an outcry. Yet it would be doing Hochhuth a grave injustice to impute that his drama was intended as simply one further contribution to the debate about the allotment of guilt. Hochhuth set out in Soldaten to address a much

broader issue of relevance to all. It was his contention that the tactics of the bombing of civilian centers, as they had been formulated by the Allied Air Command during the air war against Germany between 1942 and 1945, and the 223 downplaying of those tactics after 1945, had laid the foundations for an unstable post-war situation. The military strategy of the Western Alliance was based on the acceptance that such bombings would, in the event of a conflict between the nations of NATO and those of the , represent a legitimate method of conducting warfare. Given the nuclear arsenals of both East and West, such a situation harbored terrifying destructive potential. Hochhuth^s drama centered not on the victims of the raids, but on the perpetrators of the destruction. Unlike almost all of the writers discussed thus far, Hochhuth did not bring personal experience of the raids to his writing, since he was not in Dresden in 1945.

Hochhuth's morality drama Soldaten. Nekroloq auf Genf. Traaodie. premiered in October, 1967, at the Berlin Freie Volksbühne. The theme of the drama is that even though there exists a moral distinction between a murderous act

executed during wartime in the name of the greater good and the barbarism of a murderous act committed for no other reason than to punish the enemy, the outcomes of those

different types of acts are indistinguishable. Further, that in neither case is the bombing of civilian centers in accord with even wartime morality. Hochhuth details how Winston Churchill's decision to bomb the civilian

population of Hamburg in July, 1943, was borne out of the necessity of providing Stalin with the second front which had been promised since 1941. Likewise, he argues that the "murder" of the Prime Minister of the Polish Government in 224

London exile. General Wladyslaw Sikorski, was motivated by

Churchill's well-founded fear that Sikorski intended to appeal to the International Red Cross for an investigation into the mass graves of 4,000 Polish officers found at

Katyn in western Russia in 1943. This would seriously imperil the British-Soviet Alliance and perhaps encourage

Stalin to sue for a separate peace with Hitler, Churchill reasoned. In contrast to these two actions Hochhuth portrays

Dresden as an action for which no such necessity existed.

He claims that the bombing constituted nothing short of a war crime which yet contains a lesson for the future. That lesson, simply stated, is that Dresden (and then of course

Hiroshima and Nagasaki) proved that aerial bombardment represented the most ruthlessly efficient method by which to kill the largest number of civilians. Given the Cold

War situation and attendant likelihood of another conflict, the probability that such bombings might be repeated would remain high because the Geneva Convention contained no provisions governing the conduct of aerial warfare. This eminently humanistic reading of events of the Second World War caused a controversy, the likes of which had rarely been seen in the theatre. An inkling of how high passions ran in 1967/68 can be gleaned from the titles of articles on and reviews of the play: "A Playwright Who Drops

Political Blockbusters," "Hochhuth und seine Verachter,"

"Sabotage in hoheren Spharen," "Anklage gegen Hochhuth," etc.26 In the climate which had been created by the 225 attempts of Rodenberger and Irving to rewrite history,

Hochhuth's humanistic plea was overshadowed by bickering as to Second World War guilt. Critics either lambasted Hochhuth for his depiction of Churchill (the editor of the

Neue Züricher Zeitung regarded Churchill as an "Opfer [der] zeitgeschichtlichen Sensationsdramatik”)27 or praised the

author for his illumination of heretofore suppressed chapters of wartime history. Jack Kroll, writing in Newsweek. heralded Hochhuth as "the first dramatist [...]

to obtain a real purchase on the overwhelmingly dense and apocalyptic events of our time."28

The furor was not confined to the pages of newspapers

and magazines. , literary manager of the

National Theatre in London, had become interested in the

play as early as July, 1966, when Hochhuth's agent had informed him of the work then in progress. Tynan aroused the interest of the theatre's artistic director, Laurence

Olivier, and a production was planned to coincide with the

Berlin premiere. This planning came to naught, however, when the National Theatre's government-appointed Board of

Directors voted against staging the play. The chief mover

behind this decision, was the board's chairman, Lord Chandos, who had served as Churchill's Minister of Production during the war. Announcing the decision,

Chandos stated that the play grossly defamed the characters

of Churchill and Lord Cherwell and that the board thus considered the play unsuitable.29 226

The appeals subsequently made against the board's decision by Tynan, Olivier and renowned director Peter Hall were to no avail, and thus an alternate plan was conceived to stage the drama at a theatre not subject to a board's power of veto. At this point Tynan ran up against another obstacle; Britain's antiquated system of theatrical licensing. At that time all of the country's theatres were

legally bound to secure a license from the Lord Chamberlain's office for each and every play produced. In the case of Soldaten the Lord Chamberlain declared that no

such license would be forthcoming "unless permission was obtained in writing from all the surviving relatives of all the historical characters."30 Immediately, this system of

censorship by another name was decried by both British and overseas critics. When Soldaten received its first English language production at Theatre Toronto in March of 1968,

the clamor in Britain was such that Labour Member of Parliament Strauss moved a motion to abolish the Lord

Chamberlain's two hundred year old power of veto. The motion was duly carried in September and followed three months later by the first London production of the drama at the New Theatre.

Thus it is that Soldaten can be seen to represent something of a milestone in British theatre history, a fact

which Hochhuth recalled some twenty years after the events described:

[...] einen Nebeneffekt, einen juristischen, hatte mein Drama: Es bewirkte das Ende der britischen Theaterzensur, die seit anno 1737 in GroBbritannien amtiert hatte. Die Zensur wurde abgeschafft - weil sie 227 zuvor meine Soldiers abgeschafft hatte, die dann doch erlaubt und allein in London 122 mal gespielt w u r d e n . 31

Yet the trials and tribulations to which Hochhuth was subject did not end with the abolition of censorship. Once that attempt at silencing the author had failed, there appeared the prospect of a court case initiated by a Czech wartime pilot, Eduard Prchal. He claimed that the drama and subsequent essays by Hochhuth falsely implicated him and Churchill in the "murder" of General Sikorski. This case, initiated in 1969, was concluded in 1972 with a

London court's verdict that Hochhuth was indeed guilty as charged and subject to a fine of 50,000 pounds. Reinhardt Stumm, writing of the verdict in the Easier Nachrichten. suspected foul play;

Prchal wurde von Mitgliedern der Familie Churchill nach London geholt, auf Partys wurde Geld gesammelt, [...], um einen Mann als Klager hinzustellen, der von Anfang an ein Strohmann war. Wie ist ein ProzeE zu beurteilen, der historischen Figuren einer entscheidenden Epoche der Weltgeschichte aus dem Bereich zeitgeschichtlicher Kritik herauszieht und sie ausgerechnet einer biirgerlichen Rechtsprechung unterstellt, die in jenen Jahren auEer Kraft stand, stehen muEte, weil die Umstande Entscheidungen forderten, die mit menschlichem MaE nicht zu messen sind? Das Gericht habe den Namen Churchill und auch seinen eigenen vom Verdacht gereinigt, frohlockte Prchal nach der Urteilsverkvindung. Irrtum: Jener Name war nicht zu reinigen, er steht iiber dem wie immer gearteten Urteil eines koniglichen Gerichts. Prchal aber ist nicht anderes als ein Staubkornchen, das eine Sekunde im Licht der Geschichte aufflimmert.32

Hochhuth has never paid the enormous fine, but neither has he dared return to England.

In light of the fact that the verdict in the Prchal case was not handed down until 1972, some four years after

the first production of Soldaten on an English stage, it is 228 difficult to view it as anything but punitive revenge exacted after the fact. Yet it is also difficult to decide

exactly what was being avenged. Once the play had been performed and audiences given the opportunity to see for themselves the treatment accorded Churchill, the overwhelming impression was that that treatment had been

even-handed and that the drama evinced a great deal of

respect for the former Prime Minister. The task for the latter-day commentator on the play

lies in separating the hyperbole from the import of

Hochhuth's work and in illuminating the relationship of the writer to the writing of history. From a literary standpoint it is important to pinpoint those weaknesses of

the play which mitigated against its humanistic message's receiving due attention. Soldaten is a drama which was intended by its author to act as a catalyst in opening the debate as to why aerial warfare was still, in 1967,

excluded from the regulations governing the conduct of warfare as outlined in the Geneva Convention.33 In other words, Hochhuth conceived his drama with an expressly

political goal in mind. In the light of the devastation of cities such as Dresden, Hochhuth found it incredible that the bombing of civilian centers would still be technically legal if war were to break out again. He set out to

demonstrate that during a time of warfare justifications can be found for the most destructive of actions, that both

Hamburg and the "Sikorski affair" were indeed rationalized,

and that the solution was therefore to deny by law the 229 option of civilian bombing. Hochhuth's relation to Churchill's legacy is ambivalent. On the one hand he recognizes in him the man who, moreso than any other, saved Europe from Hitler's designs. On the other Churchill is also the man who exacted a terrible revenge after military victory was all but certain. The playwright does not focus his play on the destructive events from the end of the war for which

Churchill has been most often criticized, but rather on the period between April and July of 1943, which saw the devastation of Hamburg and the death of Sikorski. Dresden is not present on stage except in the Prologue, but its shadow hangs over the entire drama, as the genesis of its destruction, Hochhuth suggests, is to be found in the Hamburg raid.

Yet here we encounter the first major flaw of the drama's design. Of the two "tragically necessary" decisions chosen by Hochhuth to highlight the discrepancy with Dresden, only the first is historically verifiable; the bombing of Hamburg. The second, Hochhuth's implication

of Churchill in the "murder" of General Sikorski, is based

on Hochhuth's own highly controversial reading of events. It was this aspect of the play that received most attention and ultimately detracted from Hochhuth's stated intention

of focusing attention on the barbarism of bombing civilian populations. One factor which contributed greatly to the

controversy was Hochhuth's refusal to name his source for much of his information on the "Sikorski affair," claiming 230 that to protect his informant the conclusive documents would remain in a bank vault for the fifty years following publication of the drama.

The structure of the drama also suffered for the inclusion of the Sikorski plot, since Hochhuth, as if realizing the risk he was taking in proposing the theory of

murder, went to great lengths to demonstrate the valid rationalization for the unproven act. Those great lengths

led to the dominance of the Sikorski affair in the drama.

Hochhuth presented as much in the way of evidence for his

theory as he could fit into three acts. As Ludwig Marcuse

so succinctly wrote of the playwright; "Leider wollte er zu

Beginn noch nicht, was er spâter s c h u f . " 3 4

Leaving this structural weakness aside for the moment to concentrate on the genesis of Soldaten. it is

illuminating to go back to the year 1964 and a letter

Hochhuth wrote to then FRG President and patron of the German Red Cross, Heinrich Lübke. This letter was written

on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first Geneva Convention and also of the approaching twentieth anniversary of the Dresden raids. It began with Hochhuth's

citation in full of a Dresden police report of March, 1945,

detailing the extent of the destruction in the city. The

death toll was set at 250,000. Hochhuth cannot be held entirely responsible for citing in good faith this report

which subsequently proved to contain some gross inflations,

for at the time he had it on good authority from David Irving that the report was genuine. In the context of the 231 letter the report was utilized as a prologue to Hochhuth's asking the President to intervene to secure the inclusion of aerial warfare in the Geneva Convention: Im Hinblick auf die zwei Gedenktage, das Datum von Genf und den 20. Jahrestag der Vernichtung Dresdens (13. Februar 1965), gestatten Sie bitte die Frage, sehr verehrter Herr Bundesprasident, ob Sie jetzt nicht doch noch der alten Anregung von Nobelpreistrager Max Born folgen und als Schirmherr des Roten Kreuzes personlich vor aller Welt dafür eintreten wollen, daB endlich das langst fallige Gesetz zum Schütz der Zivilisten (und Piloten) im Bombenkrieg auf internationaler Ebene verabschiedet wird, als Zusatz-Abkommen zu den Genfer und Haager Land- und Seekriegs-Gesetzen. Der Entwurf eines solchen Gesetzes wurde, wie Sie Herr Bundesprasident, wissen, bereits 1957 auf der Weltkonferenz von Neu-Delhi einstimmig durch Delegationen aus 85 Staaten gebilligt - ohne daB in diesen vollen sieben Jahren ein entscheidender Schritt getan worden ware, diesen Entwurf zu den humanen, vielleicht bedeutsamsten internationalen Gesetz unserer Generation durch die Parlamente ratifizieren zu lassen.35

Hochhuth was aware that his raising of the issue of Dresden would in all probability lead the one-time combatants of the National Socialist military machine to

question the right of a German to cast such a stone. But this attitude, he argued, could very well lead to further

devastation; Nur weil jene Partei - Gott sei Dank! - den Zweiten Weltkrieg gewonnen hat, deren Stratégie die Ausloschung der gegenerischen Stadte miteinbezog, wurden Stadtevernichtungen durch Flieger niemals zum Gegenstand der Kriegverbrecher-Prozesse gemacht. Das hat schlimme Folgen. Wir Deutschen hatten 1945, als unsere Mordlager in ihrer ganzen Niedertracht die Welt beschaftigten, alien Grund, uns selber anzuklagen - und haben noch immer Grund dazu, in einem AusmaB, das es uns fast verbietet, die Verbrechen der Sieger auch nur zu erwahnen. Darum geht es mir auch nicht. Doch heute nur deshalb von Auschwitz zu sprechen, um Dresden und Hamburg und Nagasaki verschweigen zu konnen, wie es viele Englander und Amerikaner tun: das kann, das muB wieder zu Orgien führen, wie sie in der Phosphornachten gefeiert wurden.36 232

As to those who attacked Hochhuth after the appearance of Soldaten for raising such an issue, the playwright would later (1968) remind them that he had not embarked upon a writing career in order to distract attention from German crimes:

Wer wie ich als erster Autor übefhaupt Auschwitz zur Endstation eines Dramas wahlte, seines ersten Dramas, der hat das doch sicherlich nicht getan, um abzulenken von - Auschwitz, auf die Verbrechen anderer Volkerl^^

Rather than casting stones, Hochhuth claimed that he wanted to open up discussion of the past in order that the present might be illuminated. Suppression of the past had led to a situation, where NATO military strategy envisioned the annihilation of civilians as a legitimate method of defending the West. German territory was not something to be defended in the event of a military confrontation with the forces of the Warsaw Pact but as territory to be sacrificed so that a buffer zone might be created to forestall an invasion of Western Europe. In other words, in subscribing to NATO defense policy. West Germany's own leaders were stating their willingness to bring about the destruction of civilian centers and of open cities once again:

"Lieber tot als rot" - das mag für Graf Baudissin [German General at NATO defense college in Paris] als Soldat Oder Privatier verbindlich sein. Es als verbindlich auch über die Kolner Oder Stuttgarter Arbeiter - oder Arztfamilien Müller und Schulze zu verhangen - dazu fehlt jedem jedes Recht. Folglich: kann eine Armee nur solche Defensiv-MaBnahmen ergreifen, deren Anwendung die Massentotung ihrer Bürger herbeiführte, so hat sie diese MaBnahmen zu verwerfen, damit nicht die Regierung sich langer auf einem illusionaren "Schütz" durch die Truppe verlaBt, sondern andere Wege sucht - was sie bei uns ja nicht 233

tut. Warum verhandeln wir nicht über eine atomwaffenfreie Zone oder kampfen für eine international gesetzliche Verankerung des Genfer Entwurfs zur Unantastbarkeit offener Stadte?^®

The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from such a situation was that the West German population could not possibly have cause to place its trust in the political views of its own military, since that military was prepared to destroy the very people it was to defend. Thus it was that Hochhuth viewed as dangerous the image of itself projected by the German army since 1949 but particularly since the FRG's entry into NATO in 1955:

DaB die Bundeswehr heute vorgibt (wie lange noch?), vom Geist der Attentâter des 20. Juli 1944 beseelt zu sein, stimmt hoffnungsvoll, und doch ist es gefahrlich: Mit jeder Feier dieses Gedenktages wachst die Legende, die schlechthin habe sich Hitler widersetzt, wahrend sie doch sein entscheidendes Werkzeug war. Weder seine Partei, die auf innenpolitischen Terror beschrankt blieb, bis die Armee ihr die Grenzen offnete, noch die Waffen-SS, die selbst nach Frankreichs Kapitulation kaum hunderttausend Mann stark war, sondern die Wehrmacht, kommandiert von Offizieren des Ersten Weltkriegs, unterwarf ihrem Führer den Kontinent, zerstorte Europa und ermoglichte Stalin den Marsch bis zur Elbe. Das ist nur eine Feststellung - nicht etwa der Vorwurf eines deutschen Zivilisten. Denn die Armee wurde ja nicht schuldiger als das ganze Volk, sondern sie war die beispielslos populare Verkorperung, die orgiastisch geliebte (und geopferte) Klinge des allgemeinen Willens und Machtrausches. Nur soli daran erinnert werden, daB wir Deutschen keinen AnlaB haben, in den politischen Blick unserer Militars Vertrauen zu setzen.

Hochhuth maintained that it was hypocritical to criticize the GDR as a Soviet puppet state without

examining West Germany's own alliances:

DaB in der ostlichen Halfte Deutschlands die Regierung ihre Existenz nicht auf den Willen der Mehrheit, sondern auf russische Panzer stützt, empfinden wir mit Recht als Verrat. Aber Verrat ist es nicht weniger, wenn westdeutsche Politiker sich zu Verbündeten von Auslandern machen. 234 deren offen erklartes Ziel es ist, Westdeutschland - auch nur eventuell! - bei Ausbruch eines Krieges mit RuBland in eine atomar verstrahlte Kraterwiiste zu verwandeln, um Frankreich oder amerikanische Basen in Frankreich vor der Roten Armee zu schiitzen. Auch das ist Verrat am deutschen V o l k . 40 In Hochhuth's view such devastation could only be avoided if the bombing of open cities were outlawed. An essential first step in the process of such an outlawing was a rewriting of history to include a considered coming to terms with the bombings of the Second World War. In order for pressure to be exerted on governments to change post-war military strategy the tremendous loss of life which had been occasioned by the bombing of cities would have to gain a higher profile in the history of the Second World War.41 Such an uncovering of the past would necessarily focus on the conduct of the Allied air war; and it is with an appeal for this to happen that Hochhuth closed his letter, citing by way of support historian :

"Man sollte ruhig zugeben, daB Dinge wie Dresden oder Hiroshima doch bedeuteten, daB man sich auf Hitlers Niveau herabbegab. Ich habe manchmal den Verdacht, daB solche menschlichen Verirrungen, solche unvorstellbaren Verbrechen nachwirken müssen auf eine Weise, die wir uns vielleicht gar nicht richtig vorstellen konnen, und daB sie sich spâter irgendwie rachen werden." Sie wirken heute nach - dadurch, daB Dresden wie Hiroshima ganz offiziell von West wie Ost als Modelle erfolgreicher Stratégie betrachtet werden. Wahrend jeder Luftwaffenoffizier emport ware (und das ist ein historisches Verdienst der Kriegsverbrecher- Prozesse), dem Kommandanten von Auschwitz moralisch an die Seite gestellt au werden, stellen sich ihrer viele ihm tatsachlich, noch ohne es zu bemerken, heute selbst an die Seite, indeiti sie Tokios Vernichtung nicht nur statthaft finden, sondern beispielhaft für das, was sie selber in einem dritten Weltkrieg zu tun gedenken. Das ist unheimlich. Das ist die Rache, die Professor Mann vorausgesehen hat.42 235

Hochhuth argued that the role which Churchill had played in defeating Hitler could not be allowed to obscure

the facts of the bombing campaign; Wir Deutschen zuerst bleiben dieser Jahrhundertfigur für immer verpflichtet, weil sie - neben den russischen Soldaten - wohl das hochste Verdienst hat an der Befreiung Europas von dem durch uns heraufbeschworenen Hitler. Aber der bose Geist von Dresden, die entsetzlichen Verirrungen Churchills, die unzahligen Zivilisten den Tod brachten, ohne beizutragen zum Sieg der Allierten, sie mogen dann mit ihm ins Grab sinken.43

Writing over twenty years later, Hochhuth commented

that history writing was much the poorer for the blindness occasioned by Churchill's glorious reputation: Churchill [...] wurde, da sein Gegner der Installateur von Auschwitz war, zum Mann "nach dem Herzen Gottes ... welchem alle Ruchlosigkeit nachgesehen wird". So wird auch Dresdens Wegbrennung ein familiër-deutscher Trauertag bleiben; die Welt, die Geschichte aber interessieren sich nicht im geringsten für die dort Eingeascherten. Denn Churchill, der das anordnete, schaffte den Hitler von der Erde, und dies allein wird die Zukunft noch beschaftigen.44

As the twentieth anniversary of the attack on Dresden

rolled around, Hochhuth saw his worst fears confirmed,

albeit in a very different theatre of war. On February 13, 1965, the very day of the anniversary, the U.S. Air Force

launched Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained air war against North Vietnam. The war in Vietnam is invoked in

both the Prologue and the Epilogue to Soldaten as an uncomfortable reminder of lessons not yet learned. Thus it was against the background of the escalation of

hostilities in Vietnam but more explicitly against the uneasy truce of the Cold War that Hochhuth aired his proposal before a more.public forum; 236

Mein Nekroloq auf Genf ist mit anderen Mitteln, mit dene'n der Biihne, die Fortsetzung der Bemiihungen des Roten Kreuzes, dieses fehlende Luftkriegsgesetz zu schaffen. Schaffen wir dieses Gesetz nicht - so lebt die Zivilisation auf Abruf in den Tod.45 The connection between the letter and the drama is evident even without this statement of intent. The title given the letter when it was published in a collection of

Hochhuth's prose pieces was "Vom Soldaten zum Berufsverbrecher." In the drama's Prologue that development is plainly stated, as the role of the modern- day soldier in the execution of mass indiscriminate killings is indicted as plainly contrary to military e t h i c s . 46 The very title of the drama signalled Hochhuth's intention to write a play which would focus on the role of the modern-day soldier. That this intention ultimately became submerged in a play which centered on the actions of an individual statesman during wartime resulted, I believe, from two firmly-held convictions of the dramatist which were difficult to reconcile with the plan of writing a play about those who carried out orders, as opposed to those who gave them. The first was Hochhuth's belief that the course

of history was determined by the actions of "great men." In 1964 Hochhuth had stated this belief in an interview published in the Partisan Review (in English): "the history of World War II would have looked very different if Hitler

and Churchill had never been born."4? Over twenty years

later he returned to this same theme, citing both Stalin

and Jacob Burckhardt; "...ich kenne [said Stalin of Churchill] nur wenige Beispiele in der Geschichte, wo der Mut eines einzigen 237

Mannes von so groBer Bedeutung für die Zukunft der ganzen Welt gewesen 1st." Jacob Burckhardt hat in seinen Betrachtungen den Eindruck Stalins, daB an einem das Geschick der Welt hângen kann, vorweggenommen: "Schicksale von Vôlkern und Staaten, Richtungen von ganzen Zivilisationen konnen daran hângen, daB ein auBerordentlicher Mensch gewisse Seelenspannungen und Anstrengungen ersten Ranges in gewissen Zeiten aushalten kbnne...Ailes Zusammenaddieren gewôhnlicher Kôpfe und Gemüter nach der Zahl kann dies nicht ersetzen."48

The second conviction can be seen to follow from this view of history. It is that Hochhuth, in line with the dramatist whose technique his own most resembled, namely

Schiller, thought it imperative that he personalize the issues he wanted to tackle:

Ein Problem, das nicht auf eine personliche Ebene zurückgeführt werden kann, bleibt ein intellektuelles Zusammensetzspiel.49

In the devastation of Dresden Hochhuth found the ideal historical background against which to illustrate the tragedy of the loss of civilian lives occasioned by aerial bombardment. In Churchill he found a protagonist who personalized the execution of such devastation. Hochhuth found the essential third component for his Schillerian tragic constellation in his reading ôf David Irving's Destruction of Dresden. Hochhuth needed for his drama an embodiment of the morally-superior counter-view which argued against Churchill's actions, and thus it was that he incorporated the figure of Dr. Bell, Bishop of Chichester.

Schematically, the pieces fell into place:

Hochhuth hatte seinen Ste1Ivertreter nach der Dramaturgie von Schillers Don Carlos aufgebaut: Der junge Jesuitenpater Riccardo stand vor Papst Pius wie der Marquis Posa vor Konig Philipp. Diesmal sollte - das war offentsichtlich Hochhuths Absicht - der Dr. Bell gegen Churchill auftreten als ein neuer Riccardo 238

und Marquis Posa. Gegen den Premierminister, der als erster den Plan eines terroristischen Bombenkrieges gegen eine feindliche Zivilbevolkerung durchgeführt hatte, und iibrigens dabei, wie er erkennen muBte, militarisch gescheitert war.5° Formally, the play was organized into five acts: a Prologue, three acts which together constituted a play- within-a-play, and a brief Epilogue. The Prologue is set in Coventry, England, in 1964. Delegates from around the world have arrived in the city to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Geneva Convention. In the ruins of the old Cathedral the actor/director Borland is putting the finishing touches to a play which he is to present the next day. That play is "Das Londoner Kleine Welttheater" — the middle three acts of Soldaten. The first of the three acts depicts Churchill on board a battleship in the North Sea.

The two main plots of the drama are introduced in this act: Churchill is seen both giving the go-ahead to the plan to bomb Hamburg and arguing with General Sikorski as to the

best way to handle Stalin. Throughout the second act Churchill surveys the scene from his bed. The two plots are advanced: Churchill is shown photographic evidence of the raid on Hamburg ("erstaunlich"51 is his response) and receives news that Sikorski had approached the Red Cross

about Katyn, causing Stalin to break off diplomatic relations with the Poles. The third act contains the dramatic highlight, a confrontation between Churchill and Bell as to the morality of bombing civilians, and the news

of Sikorski's death is relayed to the Prime Minister. The Epilogue functions principally to lend the play closure. 239 but in returning to the present day it gives Borland the opportunity to defend his depiction of Churchill. In an ironic touch added by Hochhuth during the last stages of writing the play, Borland also receives the news that the National Theatre would not be presenting the play as had been planned.52

In the body of the drama as represented by the play- within-a-play Hochhuth presented a play about a truly unique individual. But in the Prologue, which has a

stronger connection with the play's title, the theme of the role of the soldier, indeed of all of us, is uppermost. In that Prologue the character of Borland, a former soldier, now playwright, is introduced as a latter-day Everyman;

Everyman denkt nicht mehr wie jener im Spiel des Jahres 1529 "on fleshly lustes and his treasure," sondern er ist Soldat geworden, so wie bereits ab 1550 verschiedene Autoren den "reichen Mann" des Peter Borland und des in den mehr oder weniger christlichen Ritter verwandelt hatten, dessen Taten vor seinem Tode gemessen werden an dem Auftrag, den der Apostel Paulus den Inhabern des Schwertes gab. Benn im Zeitalter der allgemeinen Wehrpflicht und der vorwiegend auf Wehrlose gelenkten Bomben und Raketen wird das Gewissen des Mannes der heikelsten Belastungsprobe wahrend seiner Soldatenjahre ausgesetzt. BaB er personlich als Bomberpilot zu einem der exemplarischen Sunder der Epoche wurde, hat den Regisseur Borland - wir geben ihm diesen verschollenen Namen, weil vermutlich der Autor des frühesten Everyman so geheiBen hat - an der Schwelle zu seinem Tod produktiv gemacht.53

"Bas Londoner Kleine Welttheater" makes reference of

course to both Calderon's El Gran Teatro del Mundo and to 's Jedermann. Bas Salzburger GroBe

Welttheater, and Bas Salzburger Kleine Welttheater. Yet in

Hochhuth's drama the Everyman theme disappears after the 240

Prologue. The reviewer for Der Soieael noted: Als Jedermann-Spiel 1st [das Drama] jedoch nicht [...] auszumachen, denn beim Schreiben verlor Hochhuth den Jedermann Dorland aus dem Auge, und Churchill, "der Mann, der mit der Stirn den Erdball bewegt", drangte sich vor. [...] So entstand eine Art Charakter- Tragodie um einen bulligen, bissigen Kriegspremier Churchill, in hoher Rede und freien Rhythrasn, mit gefliigelten Worten und sinnreichen Maximen ("Ehe ist Liebe ohne Sehnsucht"), mit sentimentalen, kolportagehaften und funkelnd gescheiten Passagen - Theater auf halbem Wege zwischen Schillers Weimar und dem Radebeul Karl M a y s . 54

"Das Londoner Kleine Welttheater," owing chiefly to its sensational claim of Churchill's complicity in murder, drew most attention. The configuration of historically verifiable figures placed against the background of an historically verifiable series of events prompted observers to conclude that Hochhuth was offering his work as documentary drama. This was the direction which debates surrounding the play took. Hochhuth maintained that as a latter-day author of historical dramas, he was reaching beyond an incorporation of the specifically documentary into drama to an illumination of the typical. Which is to say, that he selected his material based on his belief in its enduring illumination of the human condition:

[...] a historic drama today, I believe, is legitimate only when the author makes use of history merely as a blueprint from which to construct the behavior of man in our time. When he is, in other words, not merely giving a picture of the times, a giant fresco of the past, but is concerned with something indicative, with characters who behave in a way significant of our actions and f e e l i n g s . 55

With history as his "blueprint" Hochhuth set about

fashioning from that history dramatic situations which would lead to an understanding of the motivations behind 241 certain verifiable, yet inadequately understood historical events, and thus to an understanding of the present. Replying to a critic of Soldaten. he had this to say of the relationship of his play to historical accuracy: Wenn ich [...] das Schlagwort vom "Dokumentations- theater" ablehne, so deshalb, weil ich - anders als die Autoren der Ermittluna oder In Sachen Robert Qppenheimer - nicht überzeugt bin, daB man als Stiickschreiber die [ • • • ] Mahnung Thomas Manns auBer acht lassen darf, die mir zum asthetischen Gesetz wurde: "Allés Stoffliche ist langweilig ohne ideelle Transparenz." Dieser Satz laBt der Phantasie ihr Recht auch im historischen Drama - er lizenziert zum Beispiel, was das 'reine' Dokumentarstüçk ausschlieBen würde, die Erfindung von Personen, die Übertragung geschichtlicher Vorgange auf andere Schauplatze (Sikorski war niemals mit Churchill auf dem HMS "Duke of York") [...] Aber das Gegenteil von Kunst und von Wahrheit, die Synonyme sind, ist nicht Natur und nicht Phantasie - sondern W i l l k u r . 5 6

The distinction drawn between "Phantasie" on the one hand and "Willkür" on the other seems plain enough in the dramatist's theoretical statements. Yet his claims to be a "Knecht der Geschichte" (as opposed to Lessing's definition of the poet as "Herr der Geschichte")^? and his denial of the right of an author to invent "entscheidene Vorfalle,"58 are undercut in Soldaten by his inclusion of the

Sikorski/Churchill confrontation. The Churchill/Bell clash was overshadowed by the more controversial suggestion that Churchill did indeed have Sikorski murdered. One wonders why Hochhuth chose to include the "Sikorski affair" in his drama, since he must have known what sort of attention it would receive. Hochhuth himself, in numerous

essays on the "Sikorski affair" published since Soldaten (the most recent of which, "Sikorski und Churchill", appeared in 1987), has insisted on the logic of his 242 speculations and suggested that the hostility with which his reading of events had been met was a result of the reverence in which Churchill's name was still held. To

Martin Esslin he expressed surprise that his first two dramas had proved so controversial.59 Such naivete is disingenuous. There were, I believe, two reasons for

Hochhuth's decision to include the "Sikorski affair" in his drama; and the first was that it was precisely the dramatist's hope to create a drama so controversial that he would be instantly catapulted into the media spotlight. Once there he would have an ideal forum in which to promote discussion of the Geneva Convention. Had Hochhuth chosen instead of the "Sikorski affair" an unquestionably verifiable tragic conflict involving Churchill, (such as

that with Draza Mihailovic, the leader of the Serbian

"Chetnik" resistance group in Yugoslavia) ,50 the drama

would not have raised such ire. Yet the price paid by Hochhuth for accomodating such a provocative thesis was an unwieldy dramatic form. Even Esslin, an admirer of Hochhuth's work, noted that the dramatist had included in

Soldaten so much by way of circumstantial evidence in support of his Sikorski theory, that the structure of the drama had suffered. It had become "far too long to be performed without enormous cuts."51 Esslin noted that he

personally remained unconvinced of Hochhuth's case but nevertheless resolutely defended Hochhuth's achievement in Soldaten;

On the other hand, the tragic conflict which [Hochhuth] wanted to dramatize is a real one. There can hardly 243

have been a major statesman who has not had to take decisions of this kind. The question is not whether the facts are as they are depicted in the play, but whether, in the play, they are wholly convincingly d e p i c t e d . 62

Such an argument can, I believe, only serve to confuse the issue, precisely because it can be read as support for the right of the dramatist to deal with historical facts arbitrarily, a right which Hochhuth disavowed. Writing in much the same vein as Esslin, Jack Kroll in Newsweek did not see anything sensational in Hochhuth's reading of history; So Hochhuth is not accusing Churchill of murdering Sikorski; he is saying that in the terrible eye of power there are reasons of fact, fate and logic to think that Churchill might have done so. If historians establish beyond any doubt that Churchill had nothing to do with Sikorski's death, that would not disturb the force of Hochhuth's play one iota, any more than recent "rehabilitation" of Richard III disturbs the force of Shakespeare's p l a y . 63

Quite apart from the fact that in the play and other writings Hochhuth did in fact implicate Churchill in

Sikorski's "murder," Kroll's analogy with Richard III is confusing. Kroll was reviewing the Toronto production of Soldaten and in 1968 passions were much less likely to be

inflamed by a play about a character who had been dead for several centuries than by a play about a figure only recently deceased. The sensationalism inherent in treating recent history of a controversial nature was quite

obviously absent from Shakespeare's play in the context of the 1960's. The contemporaneity of Churchill was essential

for Hochhuth's dramaturgy; Richard the Lion Heart or

Richard III were "museum pieces" who simply did not fit 244 into the dramatist's provocative agenda: die Biihne ist kein Museum. Historié ist dramatisch statt museal nur dort, wo sie die Bedrohung des Menschen durch den Menschen - die Formel für Geschichte - heute demonstriert. Lowenherz, so tot, weil ungefahrlich, ist nur noch Kostüm.64

The second reason for Hochhuth's inclusion of the "Sikorski affair" is to be found in the playwright's recognition of the ideal opportunity which the figure of the Pole offered for personalizing a tragic conflict. It was an opportunity too good to miss. Sikorski is a dramatic device included by Hochhuth to illustrate the moral predicament of Churchill in maintaining the Allied alliance.

The play was permeated by such devices and they detracted from its effectiveness as a coherent dramatic work. Reviewer Brendan Gill found very little of value in the form of the drama: From a dramatic [...] point of view. Soldiers also suffers from being cast in the clumsy, old-fashioned form of a play within a play, and from being so unresourcefully put together that most of the events upon which the plot turns take place offstage and are announced, with a dulling regularity of breathlessness, by a single puppetlike bearer of good and evil tidings. Very Greek? No, just very inept, because Hochhuth is a polemicist first and an artist second, and he cares more for the opinions he expresses than for how and where they are expressed.65 While one could argue in Hochhuth's defence that those

off-stage events, such as the bombing of Hamburg, the death

of Sikorski in an airplane crash, the sinking of a

battleship etc., would be extremely difficult to present on stage, it is difficult to argue with Gill's use of the term

"puppetlike.” With the exception of the figure of 245

Churchill, the characters of Soldaten are little more than mouthpieces for the arguments surrounding the morality of the conduct of warfare. The characters enter, bring news to the Prime Minister, and exit. Any reader familiar with Hochhuth's letter to Lübke would have little trouble in locating in Soldaten almost all of the arguments offered there. Borland clearly represents Hochhuth's position. We

encounter him in the Everyman Prologue in his role as director of his own play. Its production has been occasioned by the same anniversaries which prompted

Hochhuth to write his letter to Lübke: Dieses Spiel ["Das Londoner Kleine Welttheater"], hofft Borland, soil unter seinen Zeitgenossen, Feinden und Mitpiloten aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg und in der Generation seines Sohnes darum werben, dem vom Roten Kreuz entworfenen Luftkriegsrecht zum Schütz der Stadte internationale Geseteskraft zu g e b e n . 6 6

At the personal level the production has been planned by Borland because of his knowledge of his own imminent

death. He has been diagnosed with a fatal unnamed illness and has thus determined to use the little time left to him to atone for his earlier sins. As a result of his wartime

experiences, which included having to bail out over Dresden

and then being pressed into service clearing away the corpses of his own victims, Borland now advocates a banning of the bombing of civilian centers. This invented but nevertheless eminently plausible scenario is offset by the

shadowy character of the sculptor. As commissioner of the

play from Borland, the sculptor is likened by Hochhuth to the stranger who supposedly appeared before a similarly ill Mozart in 1791 and commissioned from the composer his own 246 requiem. The provocative questions posed by the sculptor send norland into reveries in which the former bomber pilot encounters figures from his past. The first such is represented on stage by a giant back projection of the photograph of a Dresden victim, a photograph which was also included with the published text of the drama: Der Tod erscheint. Das Licht hat schlagschnell den Steinmetz und seine Statue verlassen. Hinter Dorland - und die Orchester- probe hat geholfen, durch bestimmte Klange diesen Moment vorzubereiten, dieses sehr reale Foto transparent zu machen: steht riesig wie die Trümmer- fassade der durch Feuerwind mummifizierte Schadel, dem unerklarbarweise sein Haar geblieben ist, die sitzende Tote auf eine Stra&e in D r e s d e n . 6 ?

This vision prompts Dorland to return in his mind to

Dresden. He describes the horrifying scenes there and remarks of the figure of Death: "Erst mein Opfer, jetzt mein Verfolger, bald mein Abbild."®® Whereas this figure of Death returns to haunt Dorland and to galvanize him into making the best use of the time remaining to him, the figure of Air Chief Marshall Harris appears to express his outrage at Dorland's having made a "Theaterspektakel" of the bombing campaign.Harris is little more than a caricature, given such lines as; Natiirlich lese ich sie gar nicht, die im Auftrag der Regierung verfa&te vierbandige Geschichte des Bomberkommandos: ekelhaft. [... ] Ich war der popularste Marschall GroBbritanniens, . doch nach dem Sieg der einzige, der nicht Viscount wurde, weil man entdeckte, daB ich die Befehle, Wohnzentren wegzuaschern...wort1ich befolgt hatte.?0 This paraphrasing of Irving's contention in The Destruction of Dresden, that Harris was only following 247 orders, serves rather crudely in Soldaten to clear the stage for an unimpeded concentration on the figure of

Churchill. Harris does not appear in the play-within-the- play.

In even more schematic fashion there appear in the Prologue a Russian military attache, a Japanese professor bearing the scars of nuclear radiation, a French general and an American colonel. Each of these characters is given a few lines to set the scene for the acting out of the wartime decision-making process which is to come in the body of the play. A West German colonel is given greatest rein to expose the bankruptcy of his country's relationship to the bombing of civilians. In perhaps the most contrived sequence of the drama Dorland relives in a reverie a press conference given by the West German on the subject of the German bombing of Rotterdam in May, 1940. Here the colonel paraphrased both Irving's study and Hochhuth's own letter to Lübke;

Es wurde ja nicht einmal der Befehlshaber der betreffenden Luftflotte, Herr Feldmarschall Kesselring, nach Herrn Kriegsende - ah, nach Kriegsende wegen der Verbrennung der City von Rotterdam verurteilt, weil dieselbe durchaus den Paragraphen 25 und 26 der Haager Landkriegsordnung entsprochen hat. [... ] Aber wir wollen ja ohnehin, meine Damen und Herren, endlich nicht mehr von Schuld reden (natürlich spreche ich hier nicht von der polnischen Schuld der Annektion urdeutscher Gebiete), sondern vom westlichen Abendland und uns gemeinsam freuen über den prompten Wiederaufbau der Bundesw...Verzeihung, der Rotterdamer City, die dem damais stattgehabten Schicksalsschlag obendrein verdankt, feuerfester und hygienischer wiederaufgerüstet worden zu sein und die Einsicht, daB ihre stadtische Feuerwehr radikalst modernisiert warden muB.71 248

The shifting of levels from that of "Traum” to ” r e a l " 7 2 is, in and of itself, not the cause of a pronounced imbalance to the drama. This is to be found rather in the parallel shift from the general, soldier as latter-day Everyman, to the specific. Churchill so dominates the play-within-the-play that the central issue of both

Hochhuth's letter to Lübke and of the Everyman Prologue, the soldier's role in the bombing of civilians, receives

scant attention. In the final act of the play-within-a- play, which reaches its climax in Churchill's confrontation with Dr. Bell, there is, however, a brief discussion

between a younger Dorland and Bell. Bell elicits from the bomber Dorland the age-old relativization for his actions

that he was merely carrying out orders: Sir: die Waffen, nicht die Krieger, bestimmen die Kampfmanier! Doch nicht meine Schuld, daB ich Bomber bin statt Jager! Das ist nun der Befehl.

When the Bishop tells Dorland that he should refuse to

carry out orders which entail the annihilation of civilian lives, Dorland hides behind the technical legality of such

acts :

Euer Gnaden - Marschall Harris spricht (allerdings ironisch), von nur einer internationalen Abmachung: irgendwann sei mal verboten worden, aus gasgefüllten Luftballons Sprengkorper abzuwerfen.

Bell counters by appealing to the higher authority of God, leaving Dorland completely deflated:

Dorland ist nicht mehr er selber. Er blickt im tiefsten verwirrt von dem kritiklos geliebten Churchill auf den Bischof, dem sein Verstand recht gibt. Er Will sich verabschieden und weiB nicht wie.?3 249

That this confrontation with Bell served as the first step in Borland's realization of the extent of his complicity in murder, we know from the arguments already heard from the older Dorland of the Prologue: Vor allem widerspricht das meinem Stil: den einzelnen bis in seinen Fami1iennamen als unverwechselbar mit jedem anderen personlich anzureden. Uniformen haben am Hals ihre Grenze - daher ich die klassische Ausrede unsres Zeitalters der Verantwortungsflucht: Befehlsnotstand - nie ernst genommen habe. Wir haben es getan. Zu sagen: hatte nicht ich es getan, so ein anderer, fiihrt nur dazu - Hannah Arendt hat das bei Eichmann ausgeführt: sich auf die Kriminalstatistik zu berufen. Da so und so viele Verbrechen jahrlich geschehen, muBte irgendwer sie schlieBlich tun - also habe auch ich eines begangen.?^

The Dorland/Bell exchange represents the only real broaching of the theme of the soldier's responsibility in "Das Londoner Kleine Welttheater" and yet in the context of

the drama it serves primarily as a preliminary to the climactic confrontation of Bell with Churchill. Minor characters such as Dorland and Bell, Polish partisan Kocjan

and others, enter and exit mechanically as Hochhuth contrives scenes which essentially serve to illuminate facets of the one constant throughout the play, Churchill.

Unlike the minor characters, the figure of Churchill is of monumental, even mythological stature, certainly not an

Everyman figure. The following evidence of this is just one example from the copious notes and stage directions which preface each act of the play with the exception of

the Epilogue: 250

Der Earl of Attlee hatte den Hitler so wenig aus der Welt schaffen konnen wie der deutsche Generalstabchef Beck. Churchill vermochte es, aber nicht schon deshalb, weil "das Genie wie ein Elefantenbulle allés niedertrampelte, was ihm in den Weg trat" (Moran) - sondern weil er veranlagt war, auBerdem einiges niederzutrampeln, was ihm nicht in den Weg trat. Sie bedingen einander: die Eigenschaften Noahs (Mann der Ruhe, heist das hebraisch), die Churchill 1940 befahigten, auf scheinbar sinkendem Schiff das Rettungswerk des Kriegers und Staatsmannes zu tun; und die nur alkibiadeske Ehrsucht des mit achtunddreifiig Jahren Chef der riesigsten Armada aller Zeiten gewordenen Marineministers, 1914 GroBbritannien in den Krieg zu ziehen.?5 The question arises as to the effectiveness of this portrayal of Churchill, the perpetrator, in coming to terms with the raids. Hochhuth would seem to have more in common with Kluge than any of the other writers looked at in this

study by virtue of his obvious dissatisfaction with a

distorted history as well as his injection into his own texts of information from other sources. Yet in Hochhuth's treatment of Churchill his point of divergence from Kluge can be clearly marked. Adorno charged Hochhuth with being

a dramatist who created a cult of personality in his works:

Was mich bei Stiicken über die Prominenz von heutzutage am meisten irritiert, ist, daB sie stillschweigend nach den Gebrauchen der Kulturindustrie sich richten, welche Prominenz als Kriterium des Wesenhaften und für die Menschen Wichtigen unterschiebt. Zwischen Soraya, Beatrix und den tatsachlich machtigen Spitzen aller erdenklichen Organisationen ist dabei schon gar kein so groBer Unterschied mehr. Überall wird personalisiert, um anonyme Zusammenhange, die den theoretisch nicht Gewitzigten nicht langer durchschaubar sind und deren Hollenkalte das verangstigte BewuBtsein nicht mehr ertragen kann, lebendigen Menschen zuzurechnen und dadurch etwas von spontaner Erfahrung zu erretten; auch Sie [Hochhuth] sind nicht anders verfahren.?6

At two points in the Prologue there is in fact the genesis of a theoretical explanation of the reasons for which nations go to war. On both of these occasions it is 251

suggested that war can be a profitable enterprise for some and on both occasions the point is made with reference to Vietnam. The first insight comes from Dorland; Verdienen tun wir ja alle gern - ergo: wenn Menschen noch am Krieg verdienen, ist es auch menschlich, Krieg zu wollen. Besonders wenn der Gegner unfahig ist, meine Fabrik zu bomben - die General Motors sind heut so sicher wie die Zürcher Bürle. Im Kriegstheater besitzt die Kasse, wer aus der Loge zusieht.?? The second is attributed to the charicatured American

colonel who, in a drunken conversation with the Russian military attache, explains his brother-in-law's business as

proprietor of a "Schiffe-Friedhof." The Russian is amazed:

Schiffe-Friedhof? - Was man bei euch so allés besitzen kann! Amerikaner: Ach - war lange kein Vergniigen, son Friedhof! Der Schwager hat noch vor drei Monaten einen ausgedienten Tanker des Zweitn Weltkriegs für knapp zwohunderttausend Dollar lostreten müssen - eine Schande, nur der Schrottpreis... erst Vietnam hat dann den Friedhof da belebt. Der Schwager kriegt - das Doppelte, kriegt jetzt genau das - für genau, das gleiche Schiff, genau das Doppelte! Nickel - meine Frau hat nur Papier geerbt, der Schwager den Friedhof? Nickel ist gestiegen um hundertfünfunddreiBig Prozent. Krieg ist ja auch - ah: ich will mal sagen: eine soziale Mafinahme. Wenn man ihn, versteht sich - in Grenzen halt, das heifit: auBerhalb der Grenzen, der eigenen. Der Mittlere Osten ist auch immer geeignet.'® The connection between the Second World War and the war in South-East Asia is reenforced in the Epilogue when the

American notes that General Curtis E. LeMay, one-time

director of U.S. bombing operations against Japan, is now doing the same in Vietnam.But this comes after three 252 acts centering on the personality of Churchill, and the point made seems a minor one. Hochhuth differs from Kluge in his perception that historical processes begin and end with certain individuals. The action of Soldaten centers on the genesis of two decisions arrived at by Churchill. With regard to the Hamburg raids, the play clearly gives the impression that the raids would not have taken place had Churchill said no to the plans. Kluge, I believe, would regard

Churchill as one link in the historical production process which led to the bombings. He would not have traced the inception of the raids back only as far as Churchill's acquiescing to the wishes of bombing proponent Lord Cherwell but looked to "dig" much deeper.

How ironic then, that the 1960's should have closed with the publication of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, a novel about Dresden which the author himself described as a " f a i l u r e , "80 with "nothing intelligent"^! to say about the raids. Yet this "failure," in which Vonnegut neither apportioned blame for the devastation wrought nor even offered an explanation for it, went on to become a best-seller and has retained a high profile ever since.8%

Slaughterhouse Five is a very personal novel about Vonnegut's own coming to terms with the experience of the raids. Although it certainly makes plain the psychological damage which the experience of catastrophe can cause, it is ultimately an affirmation of the ability of the human spirit to survive in the face of great adversity. 253

As somebody who had experienced the raids and their aftermath from the ground (Vonnegut was a P.O.W. in Dresden who survived because his place of detention was the underground slaughterhouse of the novel's title) Vonnegut had been profoundly affected by what he saw. Just as the experience defied comprehension at the time, however, so it still did almost twenty five years later. The reader of

Slaughterhouse Five is warned in the opening chapter not to expect insights into the raids;

[...] because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds. And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?"83

Nor should the reader be too confident that the novel will be making a profound anti-war statement: Over the years, people I've met have often asked me what I'm working on, and I've usually replied that the main thing was a book about Dresden. I said that to Harrison Starr, the movie-maker, one time, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, "Is it an anti-war book?" "Yes," I said, "I guess." "You know what I say to people when I hear they're writing anti-war books?" "No. What dp you say, Harrison Starr?" "I say, 'Why don't you write an anti-glacier book instead?'" What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, t o o . 84

In the second chapter Vonnegut switches from writing of

his own situation to relating the story of the fictional Billy Pilgrim who, we are led to believe, was a member of

the same group of P.O.W.'s to which Vonnegut belonged. Billy had managed to maintain a semblance of sanity after 254 his wartime experiences by inventing a fantasy world, the planet Tralfamadore, to which he would escape in his mind when the past threatened to overwhelm him. The inhabitants of Tralfamadore experienced reality in four dimensions and thus viewed moments in time as "points on an eternal

landscape."85 The Tralfamadorians could see the past, the present, and the future. They knew how their planet would

eventually explode; but since they also knew themselves to be powerless to stop it ("The moment is structured that way"), they continued to lead happy lives by thinking only

of "pleasant moments."86 such a view of reality with its

attendant denial of free-will was of great comfort to Billy

Pilgrim. By adopting such an attitude himself, he employed

the only coping mechanism which allowed him to function at all. When asked about his experiences in Dresden, Billy was able to answer; "It was alright, [...] Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore."87

This response served Billy in all situations. As past president of a Lions Club, he attends a speech delivered by

a major in the marines, during which the major declares himself to be "in favor of increased bombing, of bombing North Vietnam back into the Stone Age." This is almost the exact same remark attributed to General LeMay by Hochhuth

in Soldaten with regard to the bombing of Tokyo in March, 1945: "Wir versetzten sie zuriick in die Steinzeit."88 yet

Billy, who witnessed a bombing such as that which occurred at Tokyo, is not moved to protest, is not moved to 255 anything: Billy was not moved to protest the bombing of North Vietnam, did not shudder about the hideous things he himself had seen bombing do. He was simply having lunch with the Lions Club, of which he was past president now.89

It would, of course, be making a mistake to associate Vonnegut with Pilgrim. There are points in Slaughterhouse Five where the author makes it plain that his coping device has not been to adopt a fatalistic view of history: I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.90 In a 1980 interview with The Nation Vonnegut went so

far as to spell out a belief very similar to Hochhuth's with regard to the cause of the Dresden raids: I think the trouble with Dresden was restraint surely, or lack of restraint, [...] I think the politicians went mad, as they often do. The man responsible for the bombing of Dresden against a lot of advice was Winston Churchill. It's the brain of one man, the rage of one man, the pride of one man.91

Yet Churchill's name did not appear once in Slaughterhouse Five. The impetus to prevent catastrophe,

openly stated in Soldaten. is present in Slaughterhouse Five implicitly and by way of negative example. At the time of the book's publication (1969), the Vietnam War was

at its height and news of the terrible massacre which had

taken place at My Lai on March 16, 1968 was beginning to

filter back to the U.S.. Vonnegut's novel provided a

moving testament to the absurdity of war and was thus welcomed by the anti-Vietnam War movement. At that time it 256 was too late to argue theoretically; the overriding concern had to be communication of the reality of warfare to broad masses of people. Vonnegut's novel contributed to this aim. Since the end of the Vietnam war, the novel has retained this value, because it personalizes the war experience and in Billy Pilgrim we see our own lot should another conflict arise. Yet in looking inward rather than outward the novel obviously adds little to our understanding of the historical processes which led to

Dresden. Thus it was that Dresden maintained a high profile in the West as the 1970's began, but it was the profile of an event initiated by a single man now dead and impossible to comprehend. It would be seven years before

Kluge returned the bombings of German cities to the realm of rational investigation. 257

Notes 1. Bergander, Gotz, Dresden im Luftkrieq. (Cologne and Vienna: Bohlau, 1977), 129. 2. Rodenberger, Axel, Der Tod von Dresden. Ein Bericht über das Sterben einer Stadt. (Frankfurt am Main: Franz Müller-Rodenberger, 1963), Ilf. 3. Rodenberger, 13. 4. Rodenberger, 8If.

5. Rodenberger, 173. See also the following: Im Februar 1945 kannte man die Atombombe noch nicht. Die erste fiel erst ein halbes Jahr spater. Dann folgte die zweite und beendete den Krieg mit Japan. Über 100,000 Japaner verloren ihr Leben. Die Atombomben für Deutschland waren die Angriffe vom 13. und 14. Februar 1945 auf Dresden. Diese Angriffe übertrafen selbst die Wirkung der Atombomben, und die Zahl der Dresdner Opfer liegt weitaus hoher.

Rodenberger, 17. 6. Rodenberger, 14.

7. Rodenberger, 193. 8 . Webster, Sir Charles and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945. 4 vols., (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961). 9. Rodenberger, 193f.

10. Rodenberger, 197f. 11. Crossman, R.H.S., "War Crime", New Statesman 5/3/63, 684. Crossman expanded this piece and published it later in the same year. See: "Apocalypse at Dresden. The Long Suppressed Story of the Worst Massacre in the History of the World", Esquire 40, 11/1963, 149-54.

12. Irving was at his most controversial in 1977 with the appearance of his 900 page study of Hitler, entitled Hitler's War. The book, Irving stated in the preface, was an attempt to get beyond the image of Hitler as monster and show him as "an ordinary, walking, talking human weighing some 155 pounds, with graying hair, largely false teeth, and chronic digestive ailments." (XVIII) This normalizing of Hitler extended to absolving the Nazi leader of responsibility for the Holocaust, an action which, Irving argued, was initiated unbeknownst to Hitler by Himmler, Heydrich and other lesser-known Nazi functionaries. Irving's whole argument was based on the lack of any 258 written orders from Hitler which could link him to the Final Solution. The historian even went so far as to offer $1,000 to anyone who could produce such documentation. Historian Martin Broszat responded to Irving with an essay which systematically demolished the English writer's thesis and contentions, seriously questioning Irving's research: David Irving hat in seinem Hitler-Buch weder das faktische Geschehen der "Endlosung" noch Hitlers vielfaltige AuBerungen zur Judenpolitik wahrend des Krieges systematisch dargestellt. Nicht aus dem bündigen historischen Zusammenhang der Sache entwickelt er seine revisionistische These. Die zu ihrer Stiitzung angefiihrten Argumente sind vielmehr meist polemisch aufgesetzt, verstreut auf ein Dutzend Exkurse, in denen er, im Text und in den Anmerkungen, an weit auseinander1iegenden Stellen des Bûches und oft willkiirlich auf einzelne Aspekte und Dokumente zu dem Thema "Hitler und die Judenvernichtung" immer wieder zurückkommt: zerstückeltes Plâdoyer, bei dem abwegige SchluBfolgerungen mit Selbstverstandlichkeit an anderer Stelle als erwiesene Tatsachen eingesetzt oder als solche schon vorweggenommen werden. Seitdem der Autor sich auf seine These festgebissen hatte, war ihm kein Fetzen scheinbarer Evidenz zu schabig, um sie zu stiitzen. (211) The reason for Irving's determination to distance Hitler from the Final Solution is to be found in his contention that all other atrocities committed by the National Socialists at the behest of their leader can be rationalized by the demands of war. Since the Final Solution cannot be rationalized in such a way, it could not have been of Hitler's doing. The import of this white­ washing of Hitler's role goes beyond the issue of individual responsibility. It was an important step in the "normalizing" process. Alan Bullock wrote: The revisionist version of Hitler has hitherto stopped short at his foreign policy, which is represented as no different from anyone else's, and the responsibility for the war, from which he is absolved. For what happened inside Germany, however. Hitler has hitherto remained responsible. But if he was ignorant of and did not approve the greatest of all crimes, the extermination of five to six million Jews, then a very different picture emerges; then Hitler can be seen and understood as a normal person in domestic as well as foreign affairs. [...] It is this final step in the normalization of Hitler which Mr. Irving now proposes. (11) Broszat noted the wider connotations of this normalization: Es geht bei dieser Frage um mehr als um Hitler und dessen Verantwortung, sonst konnte man Irvings These 259

auf sich beruhen lassen oder sie gar begrüBen als nützliches kontroverses Element zur Korrektur entgegengesetzter Tendenzen innerhalb der deutschen Zeitgeschichtsschreibung, die Hitlers Alleinschuld zwar nicht expressis verbis behaupten, aber mitunter gedankenlos implizieren. Irvings These beriiht vielmehr den Nerv der Glaubwiirdigkeit der Geschichtsschreibung über die NS-Zeit. Nicht mit Himmler, Hermann und Heydrich, auch nicht mit der NSDAP, hat sich eine Mehrheit des deutschen Volkes enthusiastisch identifiziert, sondern mit Hitler. (193-4) Irving's study encouraged the notion that a "pure" strain of National Socialism, embodied in the person of Hitler, was ultimately corrupted by Party functionaries. Hitler's War offered Germans the opportunity to relativize their own past by pointing to this betrayal of their trust. Based on notes from a conversation between Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, Irving went so far as to suggest that Hitler had always intended to postpone settlement of the "Jewish question" until after the war. Broszat found this argument particularly disingenuous; Das Argument soil offenbar Irvings Hauptthese stützen. Hitler habe sich infolge der vorrangigen Beschaftigung mit Aufgaben der Kriegführung nicht starker mit der Judenfrage befassen konnen und deren Losung Himmler, Heydrich und anderen überlassen. Der Mangel an historischem Verstehen, an Einsicht in wichtigste Zusammenhange, tritt in dieser These besonders kraB hervor. LaBt doch schon die oberflachliche Beschaftigung mit Hitlers AuBerungen zur Judenfrage wahrend des Krieges erkennen, daB zwischen dem militarischen Krieg, vor allem dem Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, und dem Weltanschauungskampf gegen die Juden in Hitlers Denken und Wollen ein vielfaltig motivierter intensiver Zusammenhang bestand. Gerade dieser so evidente Zusammenhang entzieht ja Irvings revisionistischen Thesen alle innere Überzeugungskraft, zumal ohne diese ideologisch-pathologische Verknüpfung von Krieg und Judenvernichtung (in Hitlers Vorstellungswelt) letztere gar nicht erklart werden konnte. (222-3) Eberhard Jackel, among others, wondered at how Irving could base his theory on such flimsy documentation as a single note: Man braucht keine fachliche Ausbildung, es genügt ein Minimum an Vernunft und Logik, um dieses überaus miese Kunststück einer Quelleninterpretation zu durchschauen. (17) British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper saw in Hitler's War a continuation of the tactics Irving had employed in his research on the "Sikorski affair": ' 260

[...] here is this stale and exploded libel [Sikorski's "murder”] trotted out again, as if it were an accepted truth, in order to support a questionable generalization. [...] Mr Irving's argument about the Jews typifies his greatest weakness as a historian. Here, as in the Sikorski affair, he seizes on a small and dubious particle of "evidence"; builds upon it, by private interpretation, a large general conclusion; and then overlooks or re-interprets the more substantial evidence and probability against it. Since this defective method is invariably used to excuse Hitler or the Nazis and to damage their opponents, we may reasonably speak of a consistent bias, unconsciously distorting the evidence. (35)

Irving's manipulative use of documentation caused an uproar for a brief time in 1977 and can be seen now to have been an important stage in the revising of history which culminated in the Historikerstreit. Although Hitler's War deserved no better label than Broszat's "Kriegsroman" (191), Irving succeeded in popularizing a deeply questionable view of history with implications for the future. Jackel noted how Irving's argument was quickly picked up:

Da der Verleger von Viking Press in New York nicht Siedlers Skrupel hatte, [German editions of Hitler's War did not contain those chapters pertaining to the Final Solution] gelangte die These dann doch auf den Markt und macht nun auch in Deutschland ihre Runde, begierig aufgenommen von den sattsam bekannten interessierten Kreisen. Schon hort man, die Verteidiger im Düsseldorfer Majdanek-ProzeB hatten sich darauf berufen. (17) See: Irving, David, Hitler's War. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977). Broszat, Martin, "Hitler und die Genesis der "Endlosung". Aus AnlaB der Thesen von David Irving", In Nach Hitler. Der schwieriae Umuanq mit unserer Geschichte. Beitraqe von Martin Broszat. Ed. Hermann Graml and Klaus-Dietmar Henke, (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1987), 187-229.

Bullock, Alan, "The Schicklgruber Story", The New York Review of Books. XXIV/9, 5/26/1977, 10-15.

Jackel, Eberhard, "Hitler und den Mord an den europaischen Juden. Die Widerlegung einer absurden These", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeituna. 8/25/1977, 17.

Trevor-Roper, Hugh, "Hitler: does History offer a defence?", Sundav Times Weekly Review. 6/12/1977, 35. 13. Irving, David, "Interview", The Guardian. 7/7/1992. 261

14. Although not as manipulative as Hitler's War (see note 15), The Destruction of Dresden does indeed bear resemblances to Irving's later work (such as relating history from the German perspective) and should not be passed over too lightly as a relatively harmless piece of historicizing. In the context of Irving's whole body of work his first historical study represents the preparation of the ground for an incorporation of Allied complicity in evil into later works much more obviously revisionist in intent. The image of Churchill from The Destruction of Dresden is, for example, carried over into Hitler's War, as Alan Bullock noted: Churchill and Roosevelt were war-mongers in Hitler's eyes and it would be hard to find a sentence in these 800 pages [Hitler's Warl which suggested that Mr. Irving.took a different view. In the case of Britain he quotes with approval the Duke of Windsor's suspicion in July 1940 that the war was continued "purely so that certain British statesmen could save face," and argues that it was the British refusal to make peace with Hitler then that condemned the Western world to do so much unnecessary suffering and destruction, including the death of six million Jews. (Bullock, 10) Witness also the following passage from Hitler's War in which Irving tells of Hitler's being "reconciled" to the idea of the Final Solution by his subalterns: But the most poisonous and persuasive argument used to reconcile Hitler to a harsher treatment of the Jews was the bombing war. From documents and target maps recently found in crashed bombers he knew that the British aircrews were instructed to aim only at the residential areas now and to disregard the industrial targets proper. (Irving, 509) Of this argument Martin Broszat wrote: Mit diesen "Erklarungen hat unser Autor es wieder einmal geschafft: ohne den von Churchill veranlaBten britischen Bombenkrieg ware Hitler kein solcher Judenhasser gewesen. Die einseitige Voreingenommenheit des Autors, seine Umsetzung von Churchill-HaB in Hitler-Apologie, ein Merkmal seines ganzen Buches, charakterisiert auch diese Passage. (Broszat, 229) 15. Irving, David, The Destruction of Dresden. (New York, Chicago, San Francisco: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964), 210. 16. Irving, 69-85. 17. Irving, 86f. 262

18. Irving, 232ff. 19. Kausch, Hans-Joachim, "Die Zerstorung der Stadt Dresden", Die Welt der Literatur 14/1964, 71. 20. Neider, Ralf, Letter, Die Welt der Literatur 19/1964, 51. 21. Irving, David, Letter, Die Welt der Literatur 20/1964, 39.

22. Irving, David, Letter, The Times. 7/7/1966.

23. Irving, , 196.

24. Irving, 197. 25. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Einfiihrung. Goebbels in seinen Tagebiichern", in Goebbels, Joseph, Taqebiicher 1945. Die letzten Aufzeichnunqen. (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1977), 40f. The Irving connection continued to haunt Hochhuth, however, and in 1985 he was forced to explain his relationship to the historian once again:

Wütender Brief Golo Manns, wieso ich mich nicht offentlich von David Irvings wahrhaft absurder Vermutung distanzierte. Hitler habe erst 1943 erfahren, daB Himmler seit Februar 1942 die Juden vergaste, Ich sende ihm die zwei Weltwoche - Artikel, in denen ich das getan habe.

Hochhuth, Rolf, "Europa - dahin?", (1985), War hier Europa? Reden. Gedichte. Essays. (Munich: DTV, 1987), 213. 26. Esslin, Martin, "A Playwright Who Drops Political Blockbusters", New York Times Maqazine (Section 6), 11/19/1967, 48-167. The following three articles were originally published in Theater Heute (11/1967), New York Maqazine (5/1968) and Süddeutsche Zeitunq (1/10/1969) respectively. They are all reprinted in: Hoffmeister, Reinhardt, ed., Rolf Hochhuth. Dokumente zur politischen Wirkunq. (Munich: Kindler, 1980). Marcuse, Ludwig, "Hochhuth und seine Verachter," 131-34; Tynan, Kathleen, "Sabotage in hoheren Spharen," 142-48; "Anklage gegen Hochhuth," 48. In the same volume is a translation of the Esslin article/interview entitled "Ein Dramatiker, der politische Bomben legt." In the case of quotations attributed to Hochhuth I have cited from the German text on the assumption that this is likely to be more accurate. 27. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Zu Soldaten: Gegen die Neue Zürcher Zeitunq" . Krieq und Klassenkrieq. Studien. (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1971), 194. 263

28. Kroll, Jack, "The Heart of History", Newsweek 71/11, 3/11/1968, 105.

29. The only readily available source for this information is a German translation of the remarks by Lord Chandos in a press release announcing the board's decision; Einige der Figuren, so hiefi es darin, "besonders Sir Winston Churchill und Lord Cherwell werden grob verleumdet, und deshalb war der Rat einhellig der Auffassung, daB sich das Stuck für eine Aufführung im 'National Theatre' nicht eignet."

Tynan, 146. 30. Ward, Margaret E., Rolf Hochhuth. (Boston: Twayne, 1977), 65.

31. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Kultur und Justiz. Vortrag im Presidium des Hamburger Landgerichts, 25. Januar 1985", War hier Europa? Reden. Gedichte. Essays. (Munich: DTV, 1987), 171.

32. Stumm, Reinhardt, in Hoffmeister, 149f.

33. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Zu Soldaten: Gegen die Neue Zürcher Zeituna". Krieg und Klassenkrieq. Studien. 215f.

34. Marcuse, 132.

35. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Vom Soldaten zum Berufsverbrecher. Brief an den Bundesprasidenten und Schirmherrn des Deutschen Roten Kreuzes", Krieg und Klassenkrieq. Studien. 109.

3 6. Hochhuth, 112. 37. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Zu Soldaten: Gegen die Neue Zürcher Zeitunq". Krieq und Klassenkrieq. Studien. 214. Hochhuth also said the following to Esslin:

Ich war der erste Dramatiker, [...] der eine Szene mit Adolf Eichmann schrieb zu einer Zeit, als die Israeli ihn noch nicht einmal gekidnappt hatten. Ich war der erste, der Auschwitz auf die Bühne brachte. Das sollte deutlich machen, daB ich nicht versucht habe, die deutsche Schuld zu bagatellisieren. Esslin, 129.

38. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Vom Soldaten zum Berufsverbrecher. Brief an den Bundesprasidenten und Schirmherrn des Deutschen Roten Kreuzes", Krieq und Klassenkrieq. Studien. 115f.

3 9. Hochhuth, 119. 264

40. Hochhuth, 125.

41. A total of 593,000 German civilians were killed by air raids over the course of the Second World War. Keegan, John, The Second World War. (New York: Viking, 1990), 39. 42. Hochhuth, 125f. 4 3. Hochhuth, 129. 44. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Sikorski und Churchill", Tâter und Denker. Profile und Problème von Casar bis Jünaer. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1987), 132f. 45. Hochhuth, 215f.

46.Sohn (schwach): Vater, es ist nicht Sache der Soldaten, die Kriegstechnik zu diskutieren - Dorland (galgenlustig): Nein? - Und: "Soldaten"! Vorsicht, Soldat ist, wer Soldaten bekampft, Kampfflieger, die Panzer anzielen, Briicken, Industrien, Staudamme. keiner - sowenig ich über Dresden einer war. Sohn (aufstehend): Was bin ich sonst als Planungsass i stent? Dorland (affektlos, ganz ruhig, ein Sachwort: Ein Berufsverbrecher. Ein potentieller Beruf sverbrecher.

Hochhuth, Rolf, Soldaten. Nekroloq auf Genf. Traqodie. (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1967), 30. 47. Marx, Patricia, "An Interview with Rolf Hochhuth", Partisan Review. XXXI/3, Summer 1964, 367.

48. Hochhuth, "Sikorski und Churchill", 125f. 49. Esslin, 124.

50. Mayer, Hans, "Jedermann und Winston Churchill. Uraufführung der Soldaten von Rolf Hochhuth in der Berliner Volksbühne", in Vereinzelt Niederschlaae. Kritik - Polemik. (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1973), 133. 51. Hochhuth, Soldaten. 122.

52. Hochhuth, 191. 53. Hochhuth, 12.

54. "Ritt gegen Riesen", Der Spiegel 10/2/1967, 158. 55. Marx, 366. 265

56. Hochhuth, Rolf, "Zu Soldaten; Gegen die Neue Zürcher Zeituna" . Krieg und Klassenkrieq. Studien. 194f. 57. Hochhuth, 193. 58. Esslin, 126. 59. Esslin, 129. 60. The monarchist and Serbian nationalist Mihailovic was the leader of the only significant group resistant to Hitler immediately after the signing of the Yugoslav-German armistice on April 17, 1941. He was initially supplied with weaponry and funds by the British, but from the spring of 1944 onwards all aid was directed instead to the Yugoslav Partisans under Tito. This switch in policy was dictated by Mihailovic's commitment to Serbian nationalism which precluded him from forming a combined national resistance group with Tito. The purity of Mihailovic's motives were thrown into question when, as early as November, 1941, he began to fight the Partisans for control of western and thereafter entered into local truces with occupying Italian troops in order to secure arms to perpetuate a civil war. Nevertheless, the opportunity for tragedy is undoubtedly present in the story of Mihailovic and Churchill for, as military historian John Keegan has written:

Mihailovic ended the war a tragic figure. Tito's ascendancy had driven him deeper into complicity with the Germans; his belated efforts to reingratiate himself with the Allies totally failed, and after having hidden from Tito's troops in the mountains of central Serbia for over a year he was caught in March 1946, tried in Belgrade in June and executed by firing squad on 17 July. His plea of exculpation, "I wanted much, I began much, but the gale of the world swept away me and my work," has entered into the memorabilia of the Second World War. "Destiny," he said, had been "merciless" to him, and hindsight, by which many of his judgments have been forgiven, accords weight to that view. His tragedy was to have been a nationalist leader in a state composed of minorities, whose differences Hitler cynically exploited in order to divide and rule. Keegan, 494.

61. Esslin, Martin, "A Dramatist Who Drops Political Blockbusters", 158. New Yorker theatre critic Brendan Gill, reviewing the first New York production of Soldaten at the Billy Rose Theatre, described the cut version of the play which he saw as, "at once meagre and verbose." "Former Naval Person", New Yorker. 44/12, 5/11/1968, 83. 266 62. Esslln, 165. 63. Kroll, 105.

64. Hochhuth, Rolf, Soldaten. Nekroloq auf Genf. Traaodie. 44.

65. Gill, 83. 66. Hochhuth, 12. 67. Hochhuth, 19ff. 68. Hochhuth, 21.

69. Hochhuth, 44. 7 0. Hochhuth, 45. 71. Hochhuth, 25-27.

72. Hochhuth, 13. 73. Hochhuth, 158f. 7 4. Hochhuth, 43. 7 5. Hochhuth, 94.

76. Adorno, Theodor, "Offener Brief an Rolf Hochhuth", Gesammelte Schriften Band II. Noten zur Literatur. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 594f. 77. Hochhuth, 33.

7 8. Hochhuth, 40. 79. Hochhuth, 191. 80. Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse Five or The Children's Crusade. A Duty-Dance with Death. (New York: Dell, 1971), 22

81. Vonnegut, 19. 82. The commercial success of the novel was doubtless abetted by the film adaptation directed by George Roy Hill (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). Although the film received mixed reviews, it won a prize at Cannes and in 1972 was number thirty nine on the list of gross receipts with $2.2 million. This compares with $43.2 million for The Godfather. See: Peter F. Parshall, "Meditations on the Philosophy of Tralfamadore: Kurt Vonnegut and George Roy Hill", Literature Film Quarterly. 15/1, 1987, 49-59. 83. Vonnegut, 19. 267

84. Vonnegut, 3.

85. Chabot, C. Barry, *'Slaughterhouse-Five and the Comforts of Indifference”, Essays in Literature 8/1, Spring 1981, 48. 86. Vonnegut, 117. 87. Vonnegut, 198. 88. Hochhuth, 191. 8 9. Vonnegut, 60.

90. Vonnegut, 19.

91. Musil, Robert K., "There Must Be More to Love Than Death: A Conversation With Kurt Vonnegut", The Nation August 2-9, 1980, 130. AFTERWORD

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. (Milan Kundera - The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)

Alexander and Margarets Mitscherlich's psychoanalytic study of the relationship of the West German population to the Holocaust, Die Unfahiqkeit zu Trauern (1967), characterized the Nazi period as an "unmastered past" and explained the concept of 'mastering' with reference to Freud:

Es ist klar, da5 man millionfachen Mord nicht "bewaltigen" kann. Die Ohnmacht der Gerichtsverfahren gegen Tâter wegen der GroBenordnung ihrer Verbrechen in dieser Vergangenheit beweist diesen Tatbestand in symbolischer Verdichtung. Aber eine so eng jurustische Auslegung entspricht nicht dem ursprünglichen Sinn der Formulierung von der unbewaltigten Vergangenheit. Mit "bewaltigen" ist vielraehr eine Folge von Erkenntnisschritten gemeint. Freud benannte sie als "erinnern, wiederholen, durcharbeiten." Der Inhalt einmaligen Erinnerns, auch wenn es von heftigen Gefühlen begleitet ist, verbla&t rasch wieder. Deshalb sind Wiederholung innerer Auseinandersetzungen und kritisches Durchdenken notwendig, um die instinktiv und unbewuBt arbeitenden Krâfte des Selbstschutzes im Vergessen, Verleugnen, Projizieren und ahnlichen Abwehrmechanismen zu überwinden.l Defense mechanisms which had been successfully employed in the FRG to postpone a coming to terms with the past, included the wholesale shifting of energies into economic

rebuilding and an attempted distancing from the Nazi

regime. The myth was spread that responsibility for the

268 269 genocide of the Second World War was buried with the Nazi leaders. The mechanisms evolved over the course of time to the point where, when the two fledgling German States sought to carve out individual identities, energies were turned to the creation of enemy images. In the FRG a connection was claimed with the historical German tradition of anti-communism. Such a connection served two purposes: it questioned the legitimacy of the GDR and provided a first political relativization of the Nazi period. The difference between Bruno Werner's Die Galeere and Wolfgang

Paul's Dresden 1953 represents the transition from defensive disclaiming of responsibility to an offensive avowal of at least that uninterrupted tradition of anti­ communism. Much more widespread than this salvaging act of relativization was the general unwillingness to consider the past at all. Richard Wolin has labelled the years up until 1963 in West Germany as "the latency period of the

Adenauer years" which saw, "a total rejection of politics in German society": These were years of overwhelming political apathy. German political energies, which had once been so robust, were entirely sublimated into economic reconstruction. The result is well-known: the creation of the Wirtschaftswunder or economic miracle, which catapulted the Federal Republic, within years of its foundation, to one of the world's leading industrial powers. [...] Instead of "coming to terms with the past," the latter was consistently repressed through a series of familiar, highly inventive rationalizations: only five, not six million Jews were killed; Dresden was as bad as Auschwitz; the politics of the Cold War era confirmed what Hitler had always said about communism anyway - which justified in retrospect the war he launched in the East [...]; the fate of the "East Germans" (i.e. those driven from the eastern territories at the war's end) was comparable to that of the Jews.2 270

Wolin credited the "generation of the 1960's" for forcing an investigation of the past back onto the political agenda. In treating the GDR and the FRG separately, the preceding two chapters have looked at two distinctly different approaches to writing about that aspect of the Nazi past that was the destruction of

Dresden. They certainly support Wolin's contention that it was the 1960's which saw the first serious attempts at coming to terms with the period.

Despite their differences, both approaches exhibited impulses towards a breaking down of the mechanisms of denial and repression both in society and in the individual which had stood in the way of a true "Vergangenheits- bewaltigung." It could be argued, of course, that all works created after February 13, 1945, were conceived under the star of some sort of coming to terms with the bombing and that they thus aid an understanding. However, in chapter II, I have attempted to show that the immediate responses of survivors, while important as documents of the consciousness of catastrophe, are only a component in our understanding of that catastrophe. The information we get

from them needs to be augmented if we are to gain

historical perspective. The immediate reactions of some

visual artists initiated a certain coming-to-terms by

creating memorials to the dead, but the memorializing dissipated after 1949 in the two new forward-looking

states. Those works discussed in chapter III, which appeared between 1949 and 1954, far from coming to terms 271 with the past, represented literary justifications for denial and repression. The ahistorical treatment of the raids during this time precluded a coming to terms with them or with the Nazi period. It was not until the 1960's and the works of chapters IV and V that a serious confrontation with the bombing began. However, the success of that confrontation beyond the personal realm has been questionable. In the GDR it is clear that while Czechowski and Mickel effectively worked through their own histories, the state refused to recognize the importance of this act and consequently would not alter its dogmatic interpretation of history. And in the FRG one does well to consider Saul Friedlander's general reservation regarding works of the 1960's which dealt with the Nazi period: since those works were prompted in no small measure by the desire to extend an analysis of fascism to the contemporary West

German political scene, the concept of fascism became over- generalized and lost much of its meaning.3 It is certainly the case that a great number of the approaches to coming to terms with the Nazi past from the

1960's were weakened by the application of a "totalizing view" of the workings of historical processes, sacrificing the specifics of National Socialism to a rigid interpretative framework. In the jungle of theoretical

debate attention was not focused on the individual

experience but on the perceived historical processes at work. Andreas Huyssen has argued that the West German left

of the 1960's failed to encourage a coming to terms with 272 the past, because it lost sight of the individual participant. Without that perspective, Huyssen argued, there was no opportunity for identification with the suffering of the victims and hence there could only follow an abstracted coming to terms with Nazi history: To what extent, indeed, is the German left's insistence on comparing Auschwitz to Vietnam different from the right's claim that Auschwitz is balanced out by Dresden or Hiroshima? Certainly, the grounds on which the comparisons are made are different, and the underlying political intentions are diametrically opposed. But the right and the left share a universalizing and totalizing mind-set which in both cases overlooks the specificity and concreteness of human suffering in history, subsuming it either under a universal critique of capitalism or under the concept of an unchanging "human condition." The danger inherent in all such "universalizing" is that eventually it serves to legitimate power, losing any critical edge it might once have possessed.4

Naturally the "specificity of human suffering" brought about by the Holocaust differed from that brought about by the Dresden raids. But the crucial component of Huyssen's argument is valid for both situations: the perspective of the "victim" is an essential component of any historical enquiry. The issue of identification with that victim perspective is, however, something very different. The question as to with whom Germans should identify, or to phrase the issue a little more bluntly, whose perspective

they should adopt in writing history, has become a most contentious one. In order to understand why, a brief

explanation of context is necessary. At the same time as Hochhuth was directing attention

away from the "victim" perspective in Soldaten. there was

also evidence of a continuing interest in just that 273 perspective on the events of 1945. There has already been occasion in this study to note two anthologies with direct reference to Dresden, which were published around the time of Soldaten. As early as 1965, there appeared the Hans Rauschning-edited collection 1945. Bin Jahr in Dichtuna und Bericht. which contained the diary entries of Wolfgang Paul from February, 1945, and then five years later came Stadte 1945, edited by Ingeborg Drewitz, containing thirty-seven eye-witness accounts by established authors, of the situation in Germany's destroyed cities in 1945. The aim of this collection was to remember the reality of 1945 in as ideologically neutral manner as possible. Drewitz wrote in the introduction: Eines bleibt anzumerken: niemand gebraucht das Wort Feind. Die Absurditat des Krieges ist kaum besser zu artikulierenl Das scheint der Hintersinn des Erinnerns. Das ist der Sinn dieses Buches: die Absurditat des Krieges zu verdeutlichen, der zwei Generationen damit beschaftigte, wieder aufzubauen, statt sich den offenen Aufgaben in der Welt zu stellen, der sie ins Karussell notigte. Trotz überwâltigender Zahlen, überwâltigender Aufbauleistungen, ist es die Absurditat der Zerstorung, die erschreckende Authenzitat der Erfahrungen, die noch immer gilt.5 Some historians too, began to show an interest in examining more closely the subjective experience of history. At the "Institut fur Zeitgeschichte" in Munich, a long-term project entitled "Bayern in der NS-Zeit" was initiated in the early 1970's and the first in a series of

publications appeared in 1977. Martin Broszat of the Institute outlined the aims of the project thusly:

Am Anfang dieser Reihe ("Bayern in der NS-Zeit") stand die 1977 herausgegebene breitgefacherte Berichts- Dokumentation über die "soziale Lage und das politische Verbalten der Bevolkerung" (Band I). Darauf folgte 274

eine [...] mit insgesamt 20 Beitrâgen vorliegende Serie von Einzelstudien. Ihr erklartes Ziel war es, das dokumentarische Überblicksbild über Alltagserfahrungen der NS-Zeit in Bayern zu erganzen und zu vertiefen "durch die genauere, exemplarische Untersuchung der Verhaltnisse in einzelnen Lebens- und Politik- bereichen.” Mit alledem gait es einzulosen, was als richtungsweisendes Ziel des Projekts ins Auge gefaBt war: Am Beispiel Bayerns eine breite Skala der "Gesellschaftsgeschichte politischen Verhaltens in der NS-Zeit zu entfalten.6

This and other such projects came to be known as "Alltagsgeschichte." Criticized by Saul Friedlander for ignoring the moral and political aspects of the Nazi period, Broszat replied, in a correspondence published in

New German Critique, that far from excluding those aspects, the point of "Alltagsgeschichte" was to provide them "with a new foundation by means of concretization."? To return to literature, works such as 's Kindheitsmuster [1976], which presented a picture of childhood during the Third Reich, represented also a

"concretization" of the Nazi years. The interest in

eye-witness/documentary material in literature and other art-forms which enabled the reader/audience to identify with the perspective of a participant did not abate throughout the 1970's. In looking at Hochhuth's development subsequent to Soldaten. it is plain to see that

he widened the scope of his earliest work to incorporate the perspective not only of the perpetrators, but of the victims also. His second work which centered specifically on anti-Semitism, the novel Eine Liebe in Deutschland [1978], was very different from Der Stellvertreter. In the later work, Hochhuth did not jettison his tangential 275 explorations of documentary materials, nor leave out the names of the perpetrators entirely, but the novel centered unequivocally on the story of Pauline and Stasiek, victims both. Not only did Hochhuth thereby facilitate an identification with the victims of anti-Semitism, but he also produced a much fuller depiction of the historical

time of which he wrote, prompting Fritz Raddatz to note that formally the work was reminiscent of Kluge's Neue Geschichten.8

1977 was, of course, the year which marked the publication of the Neue Geschichten. The Halberstadt text

therein should certainly be viewed not only as a model for a new form of history writing, but as a reaction to the

totalizing mind-sets which prioritized theory over experience. Kluge's inclusion of the views of those "down below" in a text which at times offered complex theoretical

argumentation in its exposition of the raids, ensured that

the level of subjective identification with the victims of historical development was not lost. The theoretical and the experientially-specific were linked.

Two years later, in Die Patriotin. Kluge would further exhort those who turned their attentions to history, to

take seriously the depth to which the past should be

plumbed (i.e. both in terms of historical time and breadth of informational sources), in order that it might be most effectively comprehended. Yet in the literature of the bombing, the exhortation

found no resonance. In the GDR the Dresden raids all but 276 disappeared from view once Czechowski lost heart. The only writer to touch on them was Helga Schütz, but they did not constitute the focus of her novels, rather, in a vein all too familiar by now, they appeared as preliminary action to the stories which she went on to relate. Jette in Dresden [1977], Erziehunq zum Choraesanq [1980] and In Annas Namen

[1986], all described growing up in the GDR amidst ruins, but the physical destruction was employed merely as backdrop and naturally, as time passed, that destruction faded into history. As expositions of the straitened circumstances under which the population suffered, the novels were effectively evocative. However, since in each case the protagonist was but a very young child at the time of the bombing (in the case of In Annas Namen. Anna is a baby found abandoned in the aftermath of the devastation), it was not the raids which determined character development, but later events.

Similarly, the bombing served as a backdrop to the real

action of 's Schwarzenberq [1984], in which the author wove a tale of post-war confusion, one of the starting points of which was the attack on Dresden. Yet the raids were present only as an event too monumental to

comprehend — they were included as a narrative device by which to bring together two of the novel's protagonists: Anfanglich war mir das Verhaltnis Max Wolframs zu dem stummen Madchen nicht recht verstandlich. Ich vermutete, ihrer Beziehung liege jene erste Begegnung der beiden zugrunde, wahrend des groBen Luftangriffs auf Dresden: er selbst hatte mir nach einer unserer morgendlichen Sitzungen erzahlt, wie er damais zu sich kam, nachdem es ihm irgendwie gelungen war, den niederstürzenden Trümmern des brennenden Gefângnisses 277

ZU entgehen, und das Madchen, das er dann Paula nannte, an seiner Seite fand; auf welche Weise sie dorthin gelangt war, und was vorgegangen sein muBte, um ihr die Sprache zu verschlagen, und was sie bewegt haben mochte, bei ihm auszuharren, bis er sein Bewu&tsein wiedererlangte, dies allés vermochte er nicht zu sagen.9 Interestingly, this passage points to the psychological damage inflicted by the bombing but the implications of that damage, beyond Paula's silence, or of its repression, are not dwelt upon. Whether or not the reluctance to confront the raids in

a literary text was occasioned by the fear that any such text would lack the authority of the eye-witness account,

it is certainly true to say that the 1980's saw no decline in the interest of the populations of both the GDR and the FRG in, as it were, documentary material. The strongest

evidence for this in the GDR, was the reception of three wartime diaries and one collection of wartime letters, all of which were published between 1987 and 1989.10 The

interest aroused by these materials prompted one East German critic to the conclusion that, in comparison to East German literature, the documentary materials were,

"offensichtlich immer noch einen 'Zahn' scharfer."H Much overshadowed by the political events of the late 1980's in

the GDR, the response accorded these volumes was not much remarked upon in the West, but in the East several literary critics were quick to note its importance for literature

and history-writing.12 Of the four books it was Briefe des Soldaten Helmut N. (first excerpted in Neue Deutsche Literatur in May, 1988) 278 which proved most popular, selling out its entire print run immediately. The reason for this commercial success is

apparent: for many East Germans these letters from a young soldier at the front, addressed to his wife at home in Germany, were the first unmediated writings about a period which had been consistently distorted by "official" GDR

history. Granted, appended to the letters was a commentary by Kurt Patzold, but N. himself presented a perspective on the Second World War and life under National Socialism

which had been excluded from GDR history, namely that of an

enthusiastic young man fighting for what he believed.

Nowhere in these letters is there even a sign that N.

harbored any doubts as to the correctness of his actions;

and there is certainly no afterword in which he recants his earlier convictions, for N. was killed at the Eastern Front

in the spring of 1945. Owing to this lack of reflection (and hence of any forward-looking moment), Patzold's

commentary attempted to forestall any identification with

N. on the part of the reader, and reviews which followed the book's publication focused their attention not on N.'s letters but, in one last gesture of denial, on Patzold's

accompanying text. The letters, in contrast to

traditional GDR history-writing, made the not insignificant lacunae of the history books glaringly apparent and hence

the reluctance to deal with the text itself. However, when

critics such as Ursula Heukenkamp wrote more substantial

pieces on.the letters, the lacunae themselves were addressed and "official" history-writing thereby called 279 into question. Heukenkamp concluded her essay on the letters with the following passage: Gewohnt, dem Gang der Geschichte zu vertrauen, geschichtliches Handeln als notwendig, verandernd und letztlich auch als sinnvoll anzusehen, haben wir uns der Erkenntnis des Sinnlosen seit den Nachkriegsjahren ziemlich strikt verschlossen. Das ganz und gar Unsinnige des Handelns aus gutem Glauben in einer unheilvollen Geschichte halt keine Lehren bereit. Es wiederstreitet dem positiven Sinn des Begriffs der Geschichte; paBt nicht zur Überzeugung von ihrer Vernunft; erlaubt nicht, vergebliche Opfer und offenbare Unvernunft als Ausdruck oder Folge von reaktionarem Denken und Tun einzustufen. Vertrauen auf historisches Gesetz und Gang der Geschichte reicht aber nicht aus, um sich in diesem Jahrhundert zu orientieren. Das hat sein Gutes, wenn dadurch Raum fur die Einsicht entsteht, daB eben diese Geschichte nicht die Instanz sein kann, an der Schuld und Verantwortung der Individuen gemessen werden. Dazu braucht es andere, den Menschen nahere Begriindungen. Denn moglich ist eben auch eine Geschichte, die Irrweg ist, die aus Irrtümern heraus gemacht wird oder aus der Verfalschung der Sachverhalte und Interessen. "Falsche" Geschichte entsteht aber, wenn die geschichtsbildenden Krafte sich Zielen unterordnen lessen, die, als absolute Wahrheit aufgestellt, nicht befragt werden d ü r f e n . ^ 4

Writing on the letters and diaries during the following year, which is to say the year which saw the collapse of the SED state, Günter Hartung reflected on the task which lay ahead for the former citizens of that state: Wenn nach den Gründen gefragt wird, warum der Traum eines ausbeutungsfreien Gemeinwesens auf deutschem Boden ein so schmahliches Ende erlitt, wird man nicht nur an die Verzerrungen durch den aufgenotigten Stalinismus zu denken haben, sondern an die Nachwirkungen eines zu wenig reflektierten Erbes aus der Zeit vorher.15 Hartung also pointed, rather ominously, to another possible effect of the decades-long ideologizing which had

left the Nazi period poorly-understood, namely a revisionist approach to that period: Im BewuBtsein der durch die DDR-Schulen hindurch- gegangenen jungen Generation waren die Jahre 1933-1945 280

ganzlich vom Kampf der Faschisten mit ihren antifaschistischen Gegnern beherrscht, als deren kompromlBlosesten man die Sowjetunion anzusehen hatte. Es war daher unvermeidlich, daJ3 in demselben MaBe, als Nachrichten von der sowjetischen Aufarbeitung der Stalinzeit durchsickerten, auch das konventionelle Faschismusbild unter Ideclogieverdacht geriet und unglaubwürdig wurde. Fur Stalin wurde politisches und psychologisches Verstandnis gefordert; warum nicht auch fur Hitler und seine Anhanger? Ohne Zweifel lag hierin ein Hauptgrund fur das Intéressé an authentischer Geschichtsliteratur.16

Clearly, the much broader range of materials which will now be available to the former GDR population will be of profound effect in shaping the future development of the newly-unified Germany. In the FRG meanwhile, the connection between

identification with a participant perspective and relativization of the Nazi period, had been in the headlines ever since 1985 and President Reagan's trip to

Bitburg. In that same year, Andreas Hillgruber published an essay in which he went beyond saying, as the East German critics would later, that the perspective of a Helmut N. was worthy of investigation, to actually encouraging an identification with that perspective for the purposes of

writing history. "Der Zusammenbruch im Osten 1944/45 als Problem der deutschen Hationalgeschichte und der

europaischen Geschichte" sought to redefine the history of the Nazi period by claiming for the soldiers of the Eastern front an essentially tragic role. No longer were they to be viewed as having abetted Hitler in his genocidal

policies by prolonging the length of the war, but rather as

having fought valiantly to defend Germany: 281

So bleibt für den Histcriker bei einer Darstellung der Katastrophe im Osten 1944/45 nur die im Einzelfall oft schwer einzulosende, aber doch als Leitlinie vertretbare Position, daB er sich mit dem konkreten Schicksal der deutschen Bevolkerung im Osten und mit dem vielfach verzweifelten und opferreichen Anstrengungen des deutschen Ostheeres und der deutschen Marine im Ostseebereich, die Bewohner des deutschen Ostens vor den Racheorgien der Roten Armee, den Massenvergewaltigungen, den willkürlichen Morden und den Deportationen zu bewahren und - soweit dies iiberhaupt noch moglich war - den Ostdeutschen den Fluchtweg zu Lande oder über See nach Westen frei zu halten, identifizieren sollte.i? It was this suggestion which prompted Jürgen Habermas to take Hillgruber to task in the 1986 essay, "Eine Art

Schadensabwicklung. Die Apologetischen Tendenzen in der deutschen Zeitgeschichtsschreibung.For an historian to suggest such an identification is revealing for a number of reasons, not least of which is the implicit disavowal of even an attempt at objectivity. Beyond this, and much more ominously, the victim status accorded the soldier of the

Eastern Front placed him at the same level as the Jews, an equivalence which, Charles Maier pointed out, "common decency should have forbidden."19 In a second essay on the "Jewish question," subsequently published together with "Der Zusammenbruch" in a volume entitled Zweierlei

Unteraana. Die Zerschlaqunc des Deutschen Reiches.

Hillgruber employed none of the emotionally-charged language of the first essay: Ho depiction of sealed freight cars, purposeful starvation, degradation, and the final herding to the gas chambers parallels Hillgrubers vivid evocation of the East Prussian c o l l a p s e . 20

Hillgruber paved the way for the identification he called for in the first essay by absolving the army of 282 complicity in the Holocaust. If the fighting on the Eastern Front allowed Hitler to continue with his genocidal policies "at home," the blame can not be attributed to the troops who were fighting only to defend the Reich

(Hillgruber's term). Habermas and Maier correctly wondered

as to the place of guilt in Hillgruber's analysis.21

Hillgruber's approach to history-writing, it has been shown, was not without precedent — one can trace it back

as far as 1950, and Thorwald/s Es beqann an der Weichsel —

but in the context of a unified Germany, the anti-communist

component of the approach is naturally no longer as important as the relativization of the actions of the

German army. Thus it becomes evident that identification

is itself open to a myriad of abuses. In the case of the

Holocaust, Huyssen's insistence on consideration of the victim's perspective is thoroughly appropriate, since that

perspective has represented the most important gap in the German reaction to the genocide When that same victim

perspective is applied to an understanding of the situation

at the Eastern Front, however, it becomes most problematic.

The victim of Nazi aggression is different from the victim

of the fight against Nazism. It is appropriate to conclude this study with a literary text. Martin Walser's Die Verteidiauna der

Kindheit [1991] is, however, indicative of the continuing

wrangling as to the meaning of the Dresden raids. At the

same time, this novel, one of the first by a firmly- established West German writer to appear in unified 283

Germany, attests both to the continuing relevance of

Dresden as a topic of investigation, but also to a continuing insistence on ideologizing. Walser has proved a controversial figure recently. In 1987, he indicated his approval of Hillgruber's historical analysis, when he pictured a coming to terms with the past:

Sicher nicht so, daB man zum Beispiel jene Soldaten, die an der Ostfront kampften, beschuldigt, sie hatten dadurch den Betrieb von Auschwitz garantiert. Es war ein Krieg, der mag so ungerecht angefangen worden sein wie auch immer: Das hat aber nicht der Soldat aus Wasserburg zu verantworten. Den spreche ich vollkommen frei.22

He was at his most contentious, however, in 1988, in his calls for the unification of Germany on the basis of a common history which stretched back not just to 1871, but a thousand years.23 The division of Germany, Walser viewed as a "Strafaktion" which had served its purpose. Germans had been "resozialisiert" and there were no signs of "irgendeiner Rückfallmoglichkeit."24 Elsewhere, Walser cast the division as not having followed from the Second World War at all,.but from the Cold War. Since Gorbachev had signalled the end of the latter conflict, the division too should go. Calls for German unification were certainly not uncommon in both Germanies at this time. The troublesome aspect of Walser's writings, however, was that his unified state would pick up not from 1933, and the end of democracy, but from 1945. Walser claimed, not unlike Werner over forty years previously, a blameless history for himself: he was "ein sechs- bis Achtzehnjahriger, der 284

Auschwitz nicht bemerkt hatte.” Despite what he had come to learn of the Nazi period, there was no reason for him to

reflect on his own experiences; "Das erworbene VJissen über die mordende Diktatur ist eins, meine Erinnerung ist ein anderes."25

Die Verteidiauna der Kindheit takes as its theme the

struggle of one individual to recover this "untainted" experience of the Nazi period. Alfred Dorn, the

protagonist of the novel, who was a 4-16 year old during the Nazi period, becomes obsessed in his later life, with

recovering his lost childhood, all physical traces of which were destroyed in the firestorm at Dresden. The momentos

he most dearly misses are photographs and home movies from

before 1945. Clearly, the memories contained therein are

harmless images of childhood: the films bear the titles "Der erste Schultag 1936," "Silberne Hochzeit 1942," "Konfirmation, Palmarum 1944." In 1945 they were

destroyed: Mit einem Angriff hatte jetzt ohnehin niemand mehr gerechnet. Mitte Februar 19451 So lange war Dresden so gut wie verschont geblieben. Der Krieg war doch schon fast zu Ende. Dresden war überfüllt mit 500 000 Frauen, Kindern, Soldaten, die aus dem Osten geflohen waren. Und da belegen sie die Stadt mit drei klugen, fabelhaft genau gezielten GroBangriffen. Gezielt auf die für die Kriegführung unwichtige Innenstadt, auf das Alt-Dresden-Juwel also. Man hat sich, wenn zwischen 100- und 200 000 Menschen getotet werden, nicht über zwei Dutzend Fotoalben und drei Filme zu beklagen. Aber er wollte die Bilder trotzdem zurückhaben.26

Dorn castigates himself for not having taken the time

to search for his "history" after the bombing: Der 13. Februar 1945. Das war immer der Tag, in dem er landete. Oft verfiel er dann in ein Weinen, bei dem er sich selber vorkam wie ein kleines Kind. Warum hat er 285

im Sommer 1945 nicht langer gesucht und gegraben in den verkohlten Trümmern des Hauses? Vielleicht waren die Filme, die Alben noch zu retten gewesen. Es batte doch nichts Wichtigeres gegeben als dieses Graben in den Trümmern des Huses BorsbergstraBe 28 d. Und das hatte er versaumt. Das ist grotesk.27

He continues, both literally and metaphorically, to lament the fate of his own personal history;

Die Trümmer des Hauses, in dem die GroBeltern umgekommen waren, wurden abgeraumt, die ganze KaulbachstraBe eingeebnet, auf dem neuen Stadtplan würde es sie nicht mehr geben. Und er hatte keine Aufnahme gemacht vom letzten Zustand der Ruinen, von den Schildern, die in den Trümmerbergen steckten, von den Schildern, auf denen stand, wo Kretzschmars jetzt seien, wo Poldracks, Bohlers und Steinhovels. Von Schmiedels nichts. Die waren gemeint mit dem Schild: KAULBACHSTRASSE 6: 5 TOTE. Das Grabmal seiner GroBeltern.28

Dorn's own ambitions to leave Dresden and study law, had caused him to neglect searching for his history, just as the economic ambitions of the FRG had switched attention from the past to the future. Yet the effects of this switch of attention are dramatized in the person of Dorn, to suggest fatal consequences: he dies, either from suicide or accidental overdose, clutching a biography of Kasper

Hauser. Walser's view of German history is personified in the character of Alfred Dorn. Thus the raids, the ruthlessness and pointlessness of which are underlined, as in the quotation above, and subsequent developments in both

Germanies, can be seen as the curtailment and repression of an historical continuum. Unable to resurrect this continuum, Dorn dies. Dorn is a victim: if German history is cast as that of a victim, what becomes of the victims of Nazism? In Walser's novel the answer is simple — they do 286 not appear in the symbolic tale. Joseph von Westphalen's praising of Die Verteidiauna der Kindheit as the first major novel after unification "gegen das Vergessen geschrieben,"29 only half right. It is a novel written against the forgetting of one perspective, a perspective which should most emphatically not be raised to the level of staring point for a new society. Walser's novel is not one which augers well for the future coming to terms with either the Dresden raids or the larger history of National

Socialism. 287 Notes 1. Mitscherlich, Alexander and Margarete, Die Unfahiqkeit zu trauern; Grundlaqen kollektiven Verhaltens. (1967), (Munich/Zürich: R. Pirer, 1982), 24. 2. Wolin, Richard, Introduction to The New Conservatism. Cultural Criticism and the Historian's Debate by Jürgen Habermas, ed. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), ix-x. 3. Wolin, xxvii, n.9.

4. Huyssen, Andreas, "The Politics of Identification: Holocaust and West German Drama”, in After the Great Divide; Modernism. Mass Culture. Postmodernism. (Bloomington and Indianapolis; Indiana UP, 1986), 95.

5. Drewitz, Ingeborg, ed., Stadte 1945. Berichte und Bekenntnisse. (Düsseldorf, Cologne: Eugen Diederichs, 1970), 10. 6. Broszat, Martin, "Resistenz und Widerstand. Eine Zwis- chenbilanz des Forschungsprojekts "Widerstand und Verfol- gung in Bayern 1933-1945", Nach Hitler: Der schwieriae Umqanq mit unserer Geschichte. (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1987), 68f. Six volumes were published between 1977 and 1983. 7. Broszat, Martin and Saul Friedlander, "A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism", New German Critique. Special Issue on the "Historikerstreit. 44, Spring/Summer 1988, 100. 8 . Raddatz, Fritz J., "Die Vergangenheit ist Gegenwart" in Rolf Hochhuth. Dokumente zur politischen Wirkunq. ed. Reinhart Hoffmeister, (Munich: Kindler, 1980), 257. 9. Heym, Stefan, Schwarzenberq. (Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 1984), 162. 10. Cibulka, Hanns, Nachtwache. Taqebuch aus dem Krieq. Sizilien 1943. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1989); Cwojdrak, Günther, Kontrauunkt. Taqebuch 1943-1944. (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1989) ; Gortz, Adolf, Stichwort: Front. Taqebuch eines iunqen Deutschen 1938- 1942. (Halle, Leipzig: Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 1987); Tremper, Marlies, ed., Briefe des Soldaten Helmut N. 1939- 1945. (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1988). 11. Berger, Christel, Review of Briefe des Soldaten N. 1939-1945. Weimarer Beitraqe 10/1989, 1677.

12. Hartung, Günter, "Tagebücher aus dem Krieg", in DDR- Literatur ^89 im Gesprach. ed. Siegfried Ronisch, (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1990), 21-39. 288

Heukenkamp, Ursula, "Soldat mit Leib und Seele. Über die Vielseitigkeit der historischen Wahrheit", in DDR-Literatur ^88 im Gesprach. ed. Siegfried Ronisch, (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1989), 38-55. 13. Hartung, 21.

14. Heukenkamp, 54.

15. Hartung, 22. 16. Hartung, 23. 17. Hillgruber, Andreas, Der Zusammenbruch im Osten 1944/45 als Problem der deutschen Nationalaeschichte und der europaischen Geschichte. Rheinisch-Westfalische Akademie der Wissenschaften Vortrage, G 277, (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1985), 11. 18. Habermas, Jürgen, "Eine Art Schadensabwicklung. Die Apologetischen Tendenzen in der deutschen Zeitges- chichtsschreibung", in Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einziaartiakeit der national- sozialistischen Judenvernichtunq. (Munich, Zürich: Piper, 1987), 62-76.

19. Maier, Charles S., "Immoral Equivalence", New Republic 195/22, 12/1/1986, 37. 20. Maier, 38. 21. Lest it be thought that abuse of identification has been a specifically German phenomenon, mention must be made here of a statue unveiled in London on May 31, 1992, to the memory of Sir Arthur Harris and the men of Bomber Command. The statue, commissioned and paid for with private money ($180,000) by the veterans' group Bomber Command Association, was unveiled during a "private" ceremony which was nevertheless attended by the entire Royal Air Force hierarchy, the Queen Mother in her capacity as patron of the Bomber Command Association, and former Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher. Described by John Ezard in the English newspaper The Guardian [6/1/1992], as "an uncompromisingly bullish likeness of Harris, chin and chest jutting, legs thrust apart," the nine feet high statue also bore an inscription, "honouring him and Bomber Command's 55,000 dead [but which] left out the reference to civilian victims of bombing which peace groups and German mayors requested." A group of German mayors from cities which had been attacked during the war (the mayors of Dresden, Hamburg, Hildesheim, Cologne, Magdeburg, Mainz, and Pforzheim) had protested the dedication of the statue while the project was still in the planning stage. The German/Austrian press also criticized the monument: the Wiener Nachrichten characterized Harris as "der Mann, der vor Hiroshima kam" 289 and Die Welt labeled him an "Architekt der Vernichtung.” The following observation is from Der Spiegel: Die Bombenveteranen ehren einen Soldaten, der ihnen im Kampf gegen Hitler-Deutschland "den Weg zum Sieg geebnet" habe - das aber sieht der Rest der Welt und sogar die offizielle britische Militargeschichts- schreibung ganz anders. "Bomber-Harris" organisierte und kommandierte eine der morderischsten Aktionen des Weltkriegs, die Plachenbombadierung deutscher Stadte nach der "Stratégie der Feuerstiirme. " "Eben die Sieger. 'Bomber-Harris', der Befehlshaber der Flachenbombardements im Zweiten Weltkrieg, bekommt in London ein Denkmal. In Deutschland regt sich Protest", Der Spiegel 40/1991, 152f. See also; Kinzer, Stephen, "Memorial Unsettles Dresdners", New York Times. 1/6/1992, A4. Peace groups in Britain also wanted to know why such an obviously incendiary monument was erected. As Canon Paul Oestreicher, director of international ministry for Coventry Cathedral and chief spokesman for opponents of the monument, stated fObserver 5/24/1992]: "This debate would not be happening had the statue been of a grieving mother or even a proud mother - or an unknown pilot in his flying suit." But no accommodation was made to the requests of the peace groups or the German mayors who noted with bitter irony that May 31 marked also the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing of Cologne. Instead, Bomber Command Association rode roughshod over all requests, exhibiting their own insensitivity most strikingly in the comments of Association secretary Douglas Radcliffe who parried criticism by asking, "You don't think they'd [i.e. Germans] be doing this if the Berlin Wall hadn't come down, do you?" rGuardian 5/18/1992] The implications of this whole appallingly orchestrated affair are clear. First, as Humphrey Fisher pointed out in The Observer [5/31/1992], "that Britain, despite the overwhelming volume of heart-rending evidence about area- bombing, feels no contrition." Second, as John Harris noted in a letter to The Guardian Weeklv [6/28/1992], that the statue "perpetuates a myth" that "war can be waged with honour and that national pride is an unmitigated virtue" while "the truth is Vukovar and Sarajevo" (a reference to the murderous civil war currently raging in Yugoslavia). Third, a message is sent to the British and German populations, the majorities of both of which were born after the Second World War, that British history of that war would continue to be written through identification with the perpetrators alone.

22. Walser, Martin, "Ich hab' so ein Stuttgart-Leipzig- Gefühl: Stern-Gesprach mit Martin Walser", in Auskunft: 22 Gesprache aus 28 Jahren. ed. Klaus Siblewski, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 251. 290

23. Walser, 25. Walser, Martin, "Über Deutschland reden; (Ein Bericht), in Über Deutschland reden. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 80.

24. Walser, 83. 25. Walser, 76f. 26. Walser, Martin, Die Verteidiauna der Kindheit. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), 197 27. Walser, 198.

28. Walser, 198f.

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