When peeling the onion

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Peeling the Onion is an autobiographical work by Günter Grass from 2006. It begins with the end of his childhood in Gdansk and the beginning of World War II and ends in the year in which his book The Tin Drum appears.

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In the 500-page book, Günter Grass tells of his memories of childhood and youth and of the affection for his mother, who died of cancer. He also tells of his time in the Wehrmacht , of how he was committed to the Waffen SS at the age of 17 , was stationed in the Cottbus - Spremberg - Altdöbern triangle in 1945 and how he later suffered as a prisoner of war.

Günter Grass gives insights into the world into which he grew up as a young person, of his relationship to the visual arts, which he calls his own world, of the circumstances in Paris when he was writing his book The Tin Drum , and of his personality development.

Layer by layer, Günter Grass reveals memories of the time and its problems. Metaphorically, this ties in with the onion allegory from Henrik Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt .

Discussion on membership in the Waffen SS

In August 2006, a section of the book in which Grass writes about his membership of the Waffen-SS caused a sensation in the national and international public. Although his book had been sent to many publishers and editorial offices a few weeks before the publication date, reactions only came after an interview with the author in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on August 12, 2006:

“That had to come out, finally. The thing went like this at the time: I volunteered, but not with the Waffen-SS, but with the submarines, which was just as crazy. But they didn't take anyone anymore. The Waffen-SS, on the other hand, took what it could get in these last months of the war in 1944/45. This was true for recruits, but also for the elderly, who often came from the air force, it was called the ' Hermann Göring donation '. The fewer airfields were still intact, the more ground personnel were put in army units or in units of the Waffen SS. It was the same with the Navy. And for me, I am sure of my memory, the Waffen-SS was not a deterrent at first, but an elite unit that was always deployed where it was critical and that, as word got around, also suffered the most losses. "

So far, Grass had kept quiet about his membership in the Waffen SS. Rather, the general public had known that Günter Grass had been drafted as an anti-aircraft helper in 1944 and had served as a soldier before he was captured in 1945. In his autobiography he now reveals that he had served in the 10th SS Panzer Division "Frundsberg" .

Reviews

The criticism took the work very differently. On the one hand, it was praised as a brilliant masterpiece full of power, force and sensuality, while on the other hand, in addition to the late revelation that the author belonged to the Waffen-SS, the depiction of the portrayal was vain and self-indulgent, as well as a tendency to trivialize, veil and transfigure abysses.

expenditure

literature

  • Martin Köbel (Ed.): A book, a confession. The debate about Günter Grass' “When peeling the onion”. Steidl, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86521-427-0 .
  • Hans Arnold : About working on memory. To Günter Grass When peeling the onion. Günter Grass-Haus, Forum for Literature and Fine Arts, Lübeck 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Hammer: The onion "memory": Günter Grass' autobiography "When peeling the onion". In: Die Berliner Literaturkritik , October 25, 2006.
  2. ↑ 5th act. Pentecostal. In the high forest. “You are not an emperor; you are an onion. Now I want to peel you once, my peer! […] “(Translation: Christian Morgenstern , HTML ). These Meinolf Schumacher : Peer Gynt last night. Eschatological mediality and time expansion with Henrik Ibsen. In: Susanne Gramatzki, Rüdiger Zymner (ed.): Figures of order. Contributions to the theory and history of literary disposition patterns. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20355-9 , pp. 147–162, here p. 150 f. ( PDF ).
  3. ↑ Günter Grass reveals: "I was a member of the Waffen-SS". In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 11, 2006.
  4. ↑ https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/guenter-grass/beim-haeuten-der-zwiebel.html