Nazi Characters in German Propaganda and Literature by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz (review)

The title of Dagmar C. G. Lorenz's new book Nazi Characters in German Propaganda and Literature immediately reveals its purpose, which is to fill a gaping vacuum in scholarly attention to fictional and autobiographical German-language Nazi figures as textual constructs from 1920 to 1950. Divided into three equally weighted sections of approximately forty pages each, it covers (1) the origins and conceptualization of Nazi figures immediately aft er the First World War; (2) the committed Nazi characters of the interwar years and the first half of the 1940s; and (3) the post—World War II "aft erlife" of these Nazi representations. Convincingly throughout, Lorenz contrasts Nazi propagandist authors' supremacist textual constructs with the anti-fascist imaginative writers' depiction of heavily flawed Nazi characters. As a consequence, sets of authorial dialogues are reconstructed that captured the German and Austrian reading public's attention during the first half of the twentieth century.

Lorenz begins the first chapter by juxtaposing the 1919 Weimar Constitution with the 1920 Nazi Party program: the difference between them being "evident from the fact that the terms 'Jew' and 'Ausländer' (foreigner) do not occur in the former but are central in the latter" (16). The four Nazi texts that are examined in the first half of the first chapter are Artur Dinter's 1917 Bildungsroman Die Sünde wider das Blut, Hans F. K. Günther's racist tract Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes (1922), Adolf Hitler's autobiographical Mein Kampf (1925), and Alfred Rosenberg's racialized cultural history Der Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (1930). Lorenz's discussion of Dinter's most influential novel is helpful as she details the "stages" that the protagonist—with his tellingly chauvinistic name, Hermann Kämpfer—undergoes in becoming a supposed super-Aryan hero in contrast with the novel's stereotypically materialistic Jewish antagonists, who appear physically repulsive. As a mixture of gift ed scientist and superior athlete, Kämpfer embodies the "purity" of his native Alps. And to atone for his professional and intimate contact with Jews, associated with Berlin, he joins the military and dies as a hero during the First World War. As Lorenz states: "Kämpfer embodies the endangered German hero" (21) within a narrative framework in which "Dieter mobilizes and justifies anti-Semitism" (19).

In juxtaposition to the above-mentioned Nazi writers, Lorenz centers compellingly on Joseph Roth's first novel, Das Spinnennetz (1923), and Gertrud Kolmar's novella Die jüdische Mutter (1930/31), prefacing her discussion with an introduction to political satires by Hans Reimann and Hugo Bettauer. Theodore Lohse, the protagonist of Roth's serialized novel, embodies the opportunistic Nazi mentality. His strong Nazi sympathies stem not from racist beliefs but from his inner insecurity, as he supports the movement for personal advancement. Lorenz wisely underscores Roth's prescience as an artist in that Lohse anticipates future Nazi careerist protagonists by such anti-fascistic writers as Brecht and Feuchtwanger. The eponymous protagonist of the Kolmar novella sees through the weaknesses of her Nazi lover and in turn feels totally isolated. And it is this protagonist's increasing isolation from both her own rejective Jewish community and her new, non-welcoming proletarian neighborhood on the outskirts of Berlin that leads to her tragic end. The difficulty that such Nazi-critical authors as Roth and Kolmar had in publishing their works is underscored by the fact that Roth's first novel was published as a whole only posthumously in 1967 and Kolmar's also appeared posthumously in 1965.

The second chapter is invaluable due to Lorenz's attention to anti-fascistic fictional works oft en neglected by scholars. Half of the works covered are well known: Feuchtwanger's Die Geschwister Oppenheim, Mann's Mephisto, Brecht's Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reichs, and Seghers's Der Ausflug der toten Mädchen, but it is Lorenz's attention to four significant less-known works that enhances this...