The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust

I've read most of the novels in Dr. Schlant's book. Yet when I turned the last page of LANGUAGE, I knew that one of my next projects will have to include re-reading them.She rightly isolates the lone voices who dared speak up from 1945 - 1960 or so, especially Karl Jaspers. Perhaps if we ask, she will write a sequel on the individuals she does identify as positive role models in an era when they were few. [Note: I think I disagree with her assessment of Werner Bergengruen's works, as he was widely read by the small numbers involved in German resistance, and was a special friend of the White Rose. In fact, he manually duplicated some of their leaflets not knowing he knew the authors, an action that could have met with death. But I will not quibble.]Even if she never gets around to a follow-up work, this one will have accomplished something few others have dared to speak aloud, namely boldly proclaiming that the world has not expected too much of Germany, that there have not been too many books about the Holocaust, that in fact those who chant "there's no business like Shoah business" are the worst informed of the lot.For what she says is true -- Germany must figure out how to mourn the dead. Once the nation is willing to collectively grieve (and not sate its conscience by buying Magen David necklaces and swelling the numbers at klezmer concerts), then perhaps the writing of books about the Holocaust can end. But not before then.Thank you, Dr. Schlant.

At a recent book party for Ernestine Schlant (a.k.a. Mrs. Bill Bradley), I was particularly struck with Ms. Schlant's statement that "literature is the seismograph of a people's unconscious". Ms. Schlant and I both grew up in Germany. She was nine years old at the end of WWII, I was six. We both live in the US and have a foot in both worlds. I attended schools where "former" Nazi teachers made sure that I didn't know about the atrocities committed by my people, was surrounded by a thick wall of impenetrable silence and like many young Germans of my generation, including Schlant, didn't find out about the Holocaust until I ventured abroad as a young adult and was confronted with its horror. It can safely be said that the official silence of the first twenty postwar years has long since given way to debates, discussions, the publication of many non-fiction books, documentaries, and so forth. While German authors like Heinrich Böll (who received the Nobel prize in 1972), Günter Grass (one of last year's nobelists), Wolfgang Borchert, Siegfried Lenz, and others have written eloquently about the horrors and the madness of war and our misery because of it, literature by non-Jewish Germans depicting and addressing the suffering of fellow German-Jewish citizens continues to be virtually nonexistent. We saw our world as shattered by WWII and its aftermath, Jews disappeared - while the language with which we describe our own suffering is rich in nuance and texture, the language we use to describe the fate of Jews is abstract and devoid of emotional resonance.In my own research, I have found that many of my countrymen believe that there is in fact an abundance of literature written by German gentiles which deals with the plight of European Jews in general and German Jews in particular. In reality, there is a distinct absence of Holocaust victims as protagonists in literature written by German gentiles. Many if not most Germans seem to consider literature about their own suffering during WWII and the chaos of the postwar years, and condemnation of the Hitler regime as synonymous with writing about Holocaust victims. It doesn't strike them as extraordinary that there are almost no books written by them about our former Jewish fellow citizens, who had lived in Germany for hundreds of years, had contributed to our culture and society, had been our neighbors, our class-mates, our colleagues, our acquaintances, our friends and our relatives. As Ms. Schlant brilliantly demonstrates in her book, even after WWII , when it was perfectly safe to do so, almost no books were written by Germans, which explored their feelings about the forced emigration or deportation to a sure death of their Jewish fellow citizens. Not even by the roughly half a million German gentiles who had acquired Jewish relatives through marriage. One could expect that at least a handful of those might have felt compelled to write about the emotional fallout of the tragedies of their Jewi

A great analytic work in which Schlant adds meaning to that which is omitted or left unsaid in post-war German literature about Nazi crimes against the Jews and thereby lifts analytic writing to a new and higher level. In analyzing the post-war german literature, Schlant explains, clarifies and puts into context complex metaphors for those of us who would otherwise be led onto wrong paths and conclusions. Due to its intensity and perception, this book is hard to put down.

I would love to write one. In particular, I would love to read it: A few weeks ago, my own (7th) book about the all powerful silence in Passau came out, as well: "Out of Passau", Herder Verlag, Germany.How can I get in touch with the author?