Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Finding the “Good German”
- 1 Re-Presenting the Good German: Philosophical Reflections
- 2 “Görings glorreichste Günstlinge”: The Portrayal of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Gustaf Gründgens as Good Germans in the West German Media since 1945
- 3 From Hitler's Champion to German of the Century: On the Representation and Reinvention of Max Schmeling
- 4 Wilhelm Krützfeld and Other “Good” Constables in Police Station 16 in Hackescher Markt, Berlin
- 5 The “Good German” between Silence and Artistic Deconstruction of an Inhumane World: Johannes Bobrowski's “Mäusefest” and “Der Tänzer Malige”
- 6 Saints and Sinners: The Good German and Her Others in Heinrich Böll's Gruppenbild mit Dame
- 7 Being Human: Good Germans in Postwar German Film
- 8 “The Banality of Good”? Good Nazis in Contemporary German Film
- 9 Memories of Good and Evil in Sophie Scholl — Die letzten Tage
- 10 Deconstructing the “Good German” in French Best Sellers Published in the Aftermath of the Second World War
- 11 Macbeth, Not Henry V: Shakespearean Allegory in the Construction of Vercors's “Good German”
- 12 A Good Irish German: In Praise of Hugo Hamilton's Mother
- 13 Shades of Gray: The Beginnings of the Postwar Moral Compromise in Joseph Kanon's The Good German
- Works Cited
- Filmography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
5 - The “Good German” between Silence and Artistic Deconstruction of an Inhumane World: Johannes Bobrowski's “Mäusefest” and “Der Tänzer Malige”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Finding the “Good German”
- 1 Re-Presenting the Good German: Philosophical Reflections
- 2 “Görings glorreichste Günstlinge”: The Portrayal of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Gustaf Gründgens as Good Germans in the West German Media since 1945
- 3 From Hitler's Champion to German of the Century: On the Representation and Reinvention of Max Schmeling
- 4 Wilhelm Krützfeld and Other “Good” Constables in Police Station 16 in Hackescher Markt, Berlin
- 5 The “Good German” between Silence and Artistic Deconstruction of an Inhumane World: Johannes Bobrowski's “Mäusefest” and “Der Tänzer Malige”
- 6 Saints and Sinners: The Good German and Her Others in Heinrich Böll's Gruppenbild mit Dame
- 7 Being Human: Good Germans in Postwar German Film
- 8 “The Banality of Good”? Good Nazis in Contemporary German Film
- 9 Memories of Good and Evil in Sophie Scholl — Die letzten Tage
- 10 Deconstructing the “Good German” in French Best Sellers Published in the Aftermath of the Second World War
- 11 Macbeth, Not Henry V: Shakespearean Allegory in the Construction of Vercors's “Good German”
- 12 A Good Irish German: In Praise of Hugo Hamilton's Mother
- 13 Shades of Gray: The Beginnings of the Postwar Moral Compromise in Joseph Kanon's The Good German
- Works Cited
- Filmography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
It could be argued that the poetry of Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) tends towards absolute moral polarities, with Germans generally bad, and their Jewish, Polish, and other victims equally good, rather than exploring the complexities of individuals, ethnic communities, and their relations. This does not apply in the same way to the prose fiction he increasingly turned to in the 1960s. Several of his narrative texts show a German soldier with positive character traits, partly representing the author's own experience, while pointing to the insufficiency of these traits in the historical context. This essay will explore the representation of such “good Germans” in two of Bobrowski's short narratives, “Mäusefest” (Mouse Banquet, 1962) and “Der Tänzer Malige” (The Dancer Malige, 1965) in the context of his oeuvre, his ethics, and of East German literature and culture of the 1950s and '60s. The extent and manner in which the Germans in these texts are “good” reflects the development of Bobrowski's aesthetics in the course of his work toward a Wirkungsästhetik (aesthetics of effect) that cannot be grasped in the framework of a simple opposition of l'art pour l'art and art engagé. At the same time, the question arises to what extent such an approach to National Socialism is exceptional in East — and West German — literature of the time.
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- Representing the "Good German" in Literature and Culture after 1945Altruism and Moral Ambiguity, pp. 85 - 97Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013