The horror of history

Lore

(Dir. Cate Shortland)

Last week, to celebrate our new jobs, my friend and I went to the Tyneside. We saw Lore, an amazing, powerful film about a confused Germany in the summer of 1945 immediately after Hitler’s suicide. The story of a fatherless Vaterland is told through the journey of the teenage Lore, looking after her 4 brothers and sisters after their parents disappear, wanted for war crimes.

Unsurprisingly this isn’t easy viewing. As the children trek from the Schwarzwald in the southwest to Omi somewhere north of Hamburg they find all around them the destruction of a country in mind and body. Imagery is strong: in starvation they stop at an old widow’s farm where all the clothes on the washing line are dripping black dye, in remembrance of the Führer. When they try to leave, the old lady wants to keep Baby Peter – I could have sworn, so that she could eat him.

The most realistic and perhaps ground-breaking quality of the film though is the beautifully played character of Lore, a teenage Nazi. In the very first scenes she shows her disgust at anyone she considers “an other” so physically. We don’t need to see her worshipping the Führer, her physicality on screen is perfectly pitched to convey the ideology she has been brought up with. The excellent performance by Saskia Rosendahl made the family unit live and breathe. The other children are beautifully directed and it gels so naturally – quite a triumph to keep the children on screen throughout the film in such a believable way.

Something that struck me overwhelmingly about Lore was how it positioned itself in the genre of apocalypse films. I haven’t read the book it is based on, but by the nature of its medium the film calls forth allusions from such classics as 28 Days Later/Dawn of the Dead. I have no doubt this is intentional; the director Cate Shortland certainly knows exactly what she is doing. And interestingly as a non-native she still does an excellent job with the detail, whilst also bringing an outsider’s perspective to this peculiarly unbalanced post-war Germany. (My brain made a lot of comparisons with Günter Grass’s autobiography “Beim Häuten der Zwiebel”/”Peeling the onion” dealing with the same period, but not in such an effective way.) The “end of the world” feeling of the film chimes with the end of childhood innocence and the sexuality of the adolescent Lore – so much has been left behind in the Schwarzwald.

Maybe the view of Lore as a film in the zombie genre might trivialise it for some people, but I think it gives Shortland a language of horror to utilise and a set of conventions to challenge. It increased the impact of it on me. The historical reality of the film doesn’t verge into the period drama cliché (as so many UK films and TV shows now do). Somehow it almost manages instead to feel like science-fiction, except it wasn’t a nuclear disaster that caused Germany’s destruction and the Holocaust.

Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum / The lost honour of Katharina Blum

Heinrich Böll

Okay so I realise that German literature month was November, but I completely failed to review anything at that point, and so I’m going to belatedly catch up. (I don’t think I’m completely alone in this! #germanevenlatermonth)

When I read this book in November I was struck in much of a similar way to Christoph Hein’s Der fremde Freund that it was probably something every German schoolchild reads in school, and so is deemed too simplistic for German literature university syllabuses in England. It’s obviously a difficult balance to maintain, and I’m now able to remedy it for myself, but I definitely felt I had missed a treat by not stumbling across it sooner!

Sadly I know as yet very little about Heinrich Böll, and this was the first book/or work (or even poem I think) I have read by him. But I will endeavour to read more! What a masterly way he plays with the reader and the text. Building a beautiful story whilst commenting on the craze of the mass media to drive stories to their tragic conclusion. The language is playful and also critical. The ridiculously short chapters driving us ever onward in the search of “the truth” behind the story. And so we the readers also become Paparazzi, urging Katharina to reveal all, even when we know the end because that is the very place that Böll begins.

I loved this. And I think I will be re-reading it for a long time. It struck me how it seemed to speak well to a modern audience as well as evoking a specific West German 1960s/70s feel. Any recommendations of other Heinrich Böll I might like?

German literature November - again!

I should be continuing my job applications, but actually I’m going to post for German Literature Month run by the lovely Caroline and Lizzy – you can sign up here.

Per chance I actually started a German book last night, so despite the fact that I hadn’t logged onto the blogosphere for sometime, I hopefully will continue to complete the month.

TBR:

• Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The lost honour of Katharina Blum) by Heinrich Böll

I bought this before my holiday in September, with the intention of reading it, but have not as yet got round to doing so. I’m really looking forward to getting into some Böll as I’ve not read anything by him.

• Die Mittagsfrau by Julia Franck (Blindness of the heart - gosh what a weird title?)

OK, so I have actually already started this, albeit several months ago. That’s probably not a good sign, but in my defence I am trying to read the German version, and it’s not exactly bedtime reading. BUT I’m gonna do it. I will complete it by the end of the month!

Turns round in living room to look at bookshelf…hmmm…what else could I read in the next 2/3 weeks?

• Der Mauerspringer by Peter Schneider

This also came to my shelves at the same time as the Böll with the intention of taking it on holiday. I really love Berlin though, and especially history about the DDR, so this has to be read.

Aiming to read:

Ok so if I’m feeling ambitious, these others might get a look in…

Some Kafka…. I have a large collection of his short stories on my shelf which is untouched and this is a crime. I will endeavour to read a few.

I have a nice translation of some Fontane short stories which I also might dip into. Esp. having loved Effi last year.

I think that’s probably enough of good intentions for now. Let’s see how it goes! Would love to hear what others think about German Literature Month.

Jenseitsnovelle/Next World Novella

The premise seems familiar from the abundance of police thrillers on our screens: A man comes in to find his wife sitting at his desk, looking beautiful, but as he moves closer we all realise that the figure at the desk is in fact dead.  Here the similarities with all those TV dramas end.  Instead of collapsing with grief or calling some sort of official, the husband finds himself reading the last words she was writing.  Words of recrimination, words condemning him.  Notes in the margin of an old manuscript from the beginning of a novel of his.  The husband is compelled to read and he cannot ignore it or answer back:

„Es half nichts, er mußte lesen.  Gut, er hätte vielleicht erst einmal die Kinder benachrichtigen sollen.  Doch kam es auf ein paar Minuten jetzt noch an?  Gut, er hätte einen Arzt holen müssen, damit der den Totenschein ausstellte. (...)  Und dann wäre ja wirklich alles vorbeit gewesen (.)“

/  “It didn’t help, he had to read.  Yes, perhaps he should have called the children first.  But were a few minutes going to make a difference now?  Yes, he should have fetched a doctor to write the death certificate. (…)  But then everything would truly be over (.)”  (my translation)

It is a dark novella, full of Kleistian questions of the ability to communicate truly with another human being.  The couple both studied Ancient Chinese philosophy and so there are also questions about the afterlife and belief.  Images of an eternal lake we all have to cross once we go are used by the late wife.  Unfortunately one of the weaknesses of the English title is that it just cannot capture the beauty of the German word “Jenseits”, meaning the far side, the beyond.

It is a novella concerned with death as the end of a relationship.  The husband can no longer communicate, and feels his early novel has been misunderstood as relating to his own promiscuity.  He cannot convince his wife Doro of this though because she took the facts in her own interpretation and then passed away.

Not for the faint-hearted, but necessary reading.

Deutsche Lit !November 2011!

So, given that some people (@Lizzy and @Caroline) have decided it to be German book month in November, and I am a massive German book fan, and November is my birthday month, I feel this is all coming together to encourage me to blog about some of my favourites! Although it obviously isn't yet November....

Perhaps I have to declare, I studied German literature. I know, it's a problem. Free license to buy all those beautiful books with at least the theory that it was helping my degree... Anyways, now that I live and work in the North East of England, instead of living in Germany or studying Germany, there is slightly less time for this obsession. Nevertheless, until recently, when I started my new job and moved closer to work, I used to have about 2-3 hours a day on public transport, which was often used to continue this habit.

Down to business. I find it difficult to name absolute favourites, given as I am to mentally being prepared for someone at uni to argue the opposite point of view. I must confess though that I haven't necessarily read everything in German. A crime I realise. In particular, no. 1, which admittedly was a Christmas present from my parents in the gorgeous new translation. And if I'm honest I don't think I would have made it through the German. It might have been abandoned, or rather put aside for later, like currently my copy of Dr Faustus by Mann.

1. Der Zauberberg, T. Mann. Just excellent. There is little else to say.
2. Effi Briest, Fontane. I only read this a few months ago, after having heard others rave about it for quite some time. My copy was actually free from the Faculty library last year before I left... which means that the annotations were incredible...
3. Die Blechtrommel, Grass. I love Grass. I know he's arrogant and self-conscious, and not completely free of moral ambiguity, but this one is epic. I have more by him on my bookshelf at my parents that I have actually read, than probably anyone else (apart from, like, Roald Dahl).
4. Plays by Lenz: i.e. Die Soldaten, Der Hofmeister, Der neue Menoza :-) I know, I studied them, I even wrote about them, but they are brilliant. Everyone says of Kafka how forward looking he was, and he's read widely in translation because of this, but this should be true for more writers/dramatists etc etc etc. Ok rant over.
5. And whilst we're on dramatists: Schiller. In particular, Maria Stuart, Don Karlos and the Wallenstein trilogy.
6. Der fremde Freund, Christoph Hein. I came to this, again, rather late. It's one of those ones Germans study in school. I swallowed it in I think 1 or 2 sittings.

I need some time to think. I shall return to this later in the week once I've considered the rest of my bookshelf (as I mentioned, unfortunately it is many miles away at my parents house).