How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Important, resonant, devastating.
Review: If you've considered the case Sebald makes in _On the Natural History of Destruction_ you may wish also to consider the other "amnesia" Germany has embraced. Perhaps some feel that now is the time for Germany to step forward and claim its rightful place among the victims of the 20th Century's excesses...well, more of us don't, and this book is a good illustration of why. Postwar Germany's relationship to itself, to its history, to the war, are explored here subtly and comically. The past, which literally resurfaces in a model postwar town designed to evoke nothing more than the antithesis of Nazism, is draped over this brilliant book. At what cost freedom? At what cost revolution? At what cost order? At what cost comfort? At what cost homogeneity? All of these questions are addressed, the answers filtered through a prism that unstintingly insists that Germany must be defined by its Nazi past no matter what.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy and ambitious project gone awry
Review: Noticing a photographer's ever-handy camera, Ulrich, the not so subtly Musilian main character of this novel, is led "to question this fixation, this need or necessity to photograph, to freeze on photosensitive paper what was essentially familiar and as a result quite banal." This sentence from the middle of "How German Is It" can be enlisted to do double duty: by switching from the lens to the pen, it gives an accurate idea of what the author himself is doing, and by switching from content to style it shows quite clearly how he does it.

This observation wouldn't have to be left sounding negative, if the many characters populating this fiction, were not all cut from the same very thin cardboard, and would, in some manner or other, flesh out what stands as nothing more than a schematic latticework of behavior patterns in postwar Germany. We are given some details of each male character's sex life, but more as an accounting by a brokerage firm: Helmuth, the architect has shares in Anna, Vin, Rita, etc.. His younger (half-)brother Ulrich also invests in Anna, and has holdings in Paula, Marie-Jean and Daphne as well. Helmuth's client Egon, also has an affair with Rita, as well as a sex life with his wife Gisela, a grouchy woman prone to crouching --- in other words a grouchy crouch. The mayor's sex life involves ... but let me not go into all the details, and that is the problem, these are all details about interchangeable, and not particularly original, characters put on the page for no more than making a point.

It is true that like everyone else, also the Germans cannot escape the consequences of their past, but having them carrying on as if they lived in Updike country, is hardly what makes you understand how living in a town built on land that formerly housed a death camp must feel like.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Relevant
Review: The master journalist H.L. Mencken once wrote, "If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die. This novel is 23 years old; the Second World War ended over 59 years ago, yet the plot is still relevant today. It will be a long time before Germany as a nation, and the Germans as a people will be live apart from the legacy of Nazism and the atrocities and destruction that was wrought during those few years. While the descendents of the victims will continue to usurp the role of the victim, the descendents of the perpetrators will inherit guilt for the crimes, and then there are those who are not sure how they fit into this scheme from a historical perspective. The naïve, the disgruntled, the apathetic, and the nazis-new and old-exist side by side, this is the crux of "How German is it."
The setting of this story is a town that was once the site of a concentration camp. For posterity the camp has been leveled and a modern town has been built and named after Germany's most celebrated contemporary philosopher. The story surrounds a writer who is the son of a former high ranking German military officer executed for his role in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. While not a military story, this novel weaves through the daily activities of this man and the constantly reminders of the events past due to relationships both professional and personal, and a small band of terrorists, a very interesting plot.
Although written in 1980, terrorism is explored as a form of expression for the disgruntled. The author does a good job to explain how a government can tweak the circumstances and the fears surrounding terrorism to gain more power, allocate more funding, and remove personal freedoms. The characters are well developed in this very important novel for it covers events that are beginning to find there way into American society. Terrorism was a novelty in the United States in 1980 whereas it was already a common place event in the rest of the world. This novel will make you think about your lifestyle relative to the rest of the world. Very cleverly written.