Günter Grass's 'Danzig Quintet:' Explorations in the Memory and History of the Nazi Era from Die Blechtrommel to Im Krebsgang (review)

In 1975, John Reddick introduced the notion that Günter Grass's novel Die Blechtrommel (1959), the novella Katz und Maus (1961), and the voluminous novel Hundejahre (1963) should be considered parts of a coherent whole he called 'The Danzig Trilogy.' Now, Katharina Hall argues that the notion of a trilogy should be extended to that of a 'quintet,' adding örtlich betäubt (1969) and Im Krebsgang (2002) to the three former texts. I should mention right at the outset that her reasoning is quite convincing.

Not only can the author refer to the numerous intertextual referrals that link the five texts, from Danzig as a symbolically charged location to characters who, like Oskar Matzerath and Starusch a.k.a. 'Störtebeker,' appear in more than one of them, to common structures, such as Grass's trademark variations of the first-person narrative. Even more compelling is Hall's observation that all of the five texts revolve around the central issue of how to remember the past. Hall borrows from work by Freud, Shoshana Felman, Peter Brooks, and Hayden White, but first and foremost from Jacques Lacan's concept of the 'Imaginary,' to show that the seven narrators in the 'Danzig Quintet' (Oskar Matzerath [Bt], Pilenz [KuM], Eddi Amsel, Harry Liebenau, Matern [Hj], Starusch [öb], Paul Pokriefke [IK]) continually attempt to communicate with another central character in the text to establish what the author calls with Lacan an "Imaginary" dialogue that would allow them to create a discourse that absolves them from their guilt feelings. Thus Pilenz in KuM addresses the dead Mahlke to explain his actions during the Nazi period, in Hj Harry Liebenau writes letters to Tulla she will never read, Starusch tries to get absolution from his dentist / analyst in öb, to name just a few examples. The purpose of these communications is to fulfill the demand for Imaginary wholeness or a certain kind of closure. However, just as in Lacan's clinical setting, the demand of the patient (narrator) for Imaginary fulfillment remains unsatisfied, the narrators in Grass's texts are unsuccessful in trying to form a bond with the always absent other.

The kind of closure or fulfillment that is desired here concerns the memory of the past. Grass's narrators are telling their stories so that their audiences and they themselves can believe in their innocence. In this quest, they are always frustrated. One of the strengths of the study lies in the compelling way in which the author can show how Grass's storytellers are constantly undermined by the narrative structure of the texts. Key events in their lives during the Nazi period are told more than once and from different perspectives. Sometimes this happens in the same text, but there are also numerous instances in which a different version of the same event is narrated in a later text. Oskar's involvement with the 'Stäuberbande' in Die Blechtrommmel, for instance, is taken up again in örtlich betäubt, thus putting into question both Oskar's reliability as a narrator and Starusch's role in the group.

As a result of this intertextually established unreliability of the narrators the reader can never be sure what really happened and who is to blame. Thus, the complexity of memory itself is foregrounded and the reader's quest for Imaginary fulfillment or narrative closure is also thwarted. Between an Imaginary discourse that distorts the past by assuming that there is some kind of direct access to historical truth and a Symbolic discourse (Lacan) that is aware of the risks of representation, both Grass's narrators and his readers are left with the problematic and unsettling task of negotiating memories that more often than not misrepresent the past. What the 'Danzig Quintet' accomplishes is "to steer the reader away from the seductions of...