The Tin Drum

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The Tin Drum is a novel by Günter Grass . It was published in 1959 as the prelude to the Danzig trilogy and is one of the most important novels in German post-war literature .

The novel can be characterized as a historical novel , time novel , picaresque novel and development novel .

Narrative structure

The first-person narrator of the novel is the eccentric Oskar Matzerath. He was born in Gdansk in 1924 . At this point, according to the self-disclosure, his mind should already be fully developed. Since he has not grown since his third birthday, he can report on the world of adults as an apparently "eternal child" from below. Thanks to his tin drum, he can also visualize events in which he was not directly involved and thus also report on how his mother was conceived in a Kashubian potato field. (A similar motif of a reporting drum can already be found in Heinrich Heine's ideas. The book le Grand ) With this, Oskar temporarily becomes a kind of authorial narrator , who often addresses himself as "Oskar" in the third person. The change of perspective from the first to the third person and vice versa is one of the main narrative structural devices of the novel.

Oskar says of himself that he was one of those “clairaudient babies” whose “mental development is already complete at birth and from then on only has to be confirmed”. He denies the adult world and at the age of three decides not to grow anymore. At the same time, because he is “completely finished inside and out”, he feels far superior to adults. On his third birthday, his mother gave him a tin drum, which became his constant companion.

Oskar Matzerath is an " unreliable narrator ", the truth of Oskar's stories often appears dubious. First of all, at the time his report begins in 1952, he is an inmate of a sanatorium and as such possibly crazy and therefore not very trustworthy. In addition, it remains uncertain whether it is no longer growing because it fell down the cellar stairs, or whether it stopped growing of its own accord and only faked the fall of the cellar to avoid questions. Even his self-reproaches that he was to blame for the death of his parents and that of his uncle Jan Bronski are hardly corroborated by the course of the plot. But this calls into question the credibility of all of his stories.

action

From 1952 to 1954, Oskar Matzerath was in a sanatorium , where he put his life story on paper and reported current events. This is how he describes the conversations with his carer Bruno and his “works of art” in his room “Made of knotted twine and the days when friends (Klepp, Vittlar) and relatives (Maria) visit him. The actual plot consists of often only loosely put together episodes. A brief outline of the plot is given below based on the chapter structure of the book.

first book

The wide skirt

The story begins with the conception of Oskar's mother Agnes on a rainy day in October 1899. Anna Bronski, Agnes' mother and thus Oskar's grandmother, harvests potatoes in her Kashubian homeland and watches as Joseph Koljaiczek, an arsonist , flees from the police. In search of a hiding place, the somewhat short-lived Joseph escapes under Anna's skirts - she always wears four potato-brown skirts on top of each other. Anna grants him protection without the least reluctance. After the policemen have disappeared, Joseph crawls out from under the skirts, indicating that Joseph had sexual intercourse with Anna from under the skirts. Agnes, Oskar's mother, probably emerges from this.

Under the raft

Joseph takes on the identity of a drowned man, marries Anna and begins an honest job as a raftsman . Here Joseph meets someone he knows from his past as an arsonist. During a party, he panics and dives under floating tree trunks. He never shows up again. He may have drowned, but Oskar also mentions speculation that he emigrated to America and got rich there as Joe Colchic.

Moth and lightbulb

Agnes Koljaiczek grew up and married Alfred Matzerath, a hobby cook and soldier of the First World War , whom she met in 1918 as a nurse in a hospital near Danzig. Together they open a small grocery store. This is where the real story begins with the birth of Oscar. The first thing he sees is a butterfly buzzing around two burning light bulbs. He describes this in retrospect as a drumming on the light bulb. Oskar mentions that he “belongs to the clairaudient babies whose mental development is already complete at birth.” Therefore, he hears that Agnes promises him a tin drum for his third birthday, which Oskar is waiting for with longing. She keeps her promise, and Oskar receives a small drum painted in the Polish national colors of red and white.

The photo album

With the help of a photo album, the narrator recalls various episodes of his early childhood. This gives you an impression of the petty-bourgeois conditions in the city of Danzig, where Oskar grew up well protected. Finally, for his third birthday, he receives a tin drum from Agnes. So his mother kept her promise.

Glass, glass, glass

On his third birthday, Oskar decides to stop growing physically. To give his parents a reasonably plausible explanation for this, he, who has decided to be a three-year-old forever, descends into the pantry of the grocery store that day and falls on his head while trying to take a bottle of raspberry syrup from the shelf . Now that he has given his parents an apparent reason, he can devote himself to his drum undisturbed. Matzerath and Agnes soon fear that Oskar will injure himself on the drum, which is soon to be quite battered, and, above all, Matzerath is trying to snatch it from him. Oskar offers bitter resistance, whereupon he discovers his ability to shatter glass. The glass pane of the grandfather clock in the Matzerath's apartment breaks. Horrified and frightened, Jan Bronski, who is also present, the cousin of Oskar's mother, immediately gets Oskar a new drum. Oskar's lack of growth is becoming more and more noticeable, which is why Agnes took him to the doctor Dr. See Hollatz. In his practice, Oskar shatters all glass objects in the treatment room. Strangely enough, the doctor does not react angry, but fascinated. He senses an opportunity to secure a chair and turns to the press, where he tries to make a name for himself at Oscar's expense. Oskar's growth disturbance, however, remains untreated.

The schedule

At the age of six, Oskar was sent to a Polish school by his parents, but on the first day of school - accompanied by his mother - he shattered all the window panes in the classroom and the glasses of his teacher, Fräulein Spollenhauer, because she had tried to give him his drum to decrease. On the advice of the teacher, his parents finally gave up trying to find a suitable school.

Rasputin and the ABC

Oskar quickly realizes that without schooling he is falling behind. So he sets out to find someone who wants to teach him. In his search he comes across the baker's wife, Gretchen Scheffler. She and her husband are childless, which is why she likes to spend time with Oskar. She also has a preference for knitting. During his visits, Oskar cleverly succeeds in getting Gretchen to read to him from the book “ Rasputin and the Women”. Later on, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's “ Elective Affinities ” were added. He often tears a few pages that have been read aloud from both books in order to be able to study them later alone. In this way Oskar learns to read and write, which he does not reveal to anyone.

Remote chant sung from the tower

Stock tower at the Coal Market in Gdansk

Every Thursday Agnes drops little Oskar for a few hours at the Jewish toy seller Sigismund Markus, from whom the Matzeraths always get Oskar's tin drums. His mother always spends time with Jan Bronski in a hotel room. Oskar does not go unnoticed, but anyway he suspects that he was actually conceived by Jan Bronski and not by Mr. Matzerath. So he stays out of it and instead enjoys the time he is unsupervised. He climbs up the tower from where he sings the windows of the city theater. Agnes suspects that this act can be attributed to Oskar, but remains silent.

The grandstand

Agnes develops and shares with parts of her family a preference for theater plays, operas, but also for the circus. There Oskar meets Bebra, a short man like him who is employed in the circus. Bebra recognizes a great power in Oskar and gives him the advice to “always sit in the stands and never stand in front of the stands”. To say goodbye, Bebra, in which Oskar recognizes his master, kisses him on the forehead. Some time later, Oskar - according to Bebra's words - sneaks into the stands of an NSDAP meeting, sits down under the lectern and uses his drum to get all the musicians on the stage to play according to his rhythm.

Store window

Oskar is now starting to use his skills in cutting glass in a targeted manner. He uses his voice to turn simple, honest citizens into thieves by singing holes in shop windows just as they are in front of them. In his wickedness he even turns Jan Bronski into a thief who is seduced into stealing a necklace for Agnes from the jewelry store .

No wonder

As a result, Oskar and his mother return to the Catholic Church more often, remembering his baptism and describing the priest's attempts to drive away the evil in him - Satan - which he thought were futile . Nevertheless, he converted to Catholicism and took great pleasure in the splendid furnishings of the church. What fascinates him most is a plaster cast showing the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms. Oskar is so amazed by the resemblance between him and the Jesus figure that he hangs his drum around her. He wants to hear the Savior drumming, but nothing happens. He gets angry and tries without result to sing the windows of the church to pieces. Oskar breaks down crying.

Good Friday food

On Good Friday 1938, Jan, Mr. Matzerath, his wife Agnes and Oskar go on a trip to a pier . You meet an eel catcher who is attracting eels with a horse's head . The eels snake in the dead head of the horse, which is too much for Agnes. She vomits, whereupon Jan leads her away from the scene. Matzerath, on the other hand, is fascinated by the work of the eel catcher and buys four eels from him. He wants to prepare her for dinner, which causes a heated argument with Agnes. Jan steps up again and comforts Agnes by sexually satisfying her with his fingers between her legs. Oskar sits in the closet the whole time unnoticed and watches what is happening. Meanwhile, Matzerath prepares the eels. When everyone is back at the table, there is an apparent reconciliation between the quarreling.

The taper towards the foot end

After the Good Friday experience, Agnes suddenly begins to eat fish incessantly. It is found out that she is pregnant and does not want to give birth to the child. Oskar's beloved mother dies of fish poisoning after just a few weeks and is buried in a noble coffin that tapers towards the foot.

Herbert Truczinski's back

Oskar soon meets Bebra again, who is accompanied by another dwarf named Roswitha. All three go to a café together, where Bebra tries to win Oskar for a life in the circus. But he declines with thanks and makes the lady a heart with the inscription "Oskar for Roswitha" from a glass bottom. Oskar later meets Herbert Truczinski, who worked as a waiter in a wicked pub. He has many scars, especially on his back, from various brawls. One day Herbert killed a guest in self-defense and gave up his job. Since then, he has been lounging most of the time in his mother's apartment, which is in the same house as Oskar and his father's. Since Oskar is very inquisitive, he gets Herbert to tell him about the stories behind his scars. This is how Herbert and Oskar become friends.

Niobe

The new friends even commit a few window thefts with the help of Oskar's skills in glass-cutting, but Herbert soon looks for a decent job again. He becomes a watchdog in the city museum, where - initially always accompanied by Oscar - he guards a room in which the green figurehead Niobe stands. It should be cursed and bring death. Still, Oskar and Herbert play with her. But since you don't want Oskar near the figurehead, Herbert has to do his work alone. He is killed on the first day while trying to mount the figure by an ax that he drives into the figure.

Faith Hope Love

Dismayed by Herbert's death, Meyn, a trumpeter and old friend of Herbert's, who had joined the SA under the impression of National Socialist rule, gets drunk . The musician, who also lives in Oskar's parents' house, kills his four cats and puts them - although not yet dead - in the garbage can outside. They are still moving, which watchmaker Laubschad, who lives in the same house, observes. Laubschad accuses Meyn, whereupon he is violated by the SA. On the day of the November pogroms, Oskar disappears to check on the toy shop, from which he kept getting new tin drums. Once there, Oskar sees how SA troops are about to devastate the shop. The Jewish owner, Sigismund Markus, killed himself .

second book

scrap metal

Oskar's supply of drums is running out because his source of supply, the Jewish toy shop, has been destroyed. In his need he turns to Jan Bronski. He asks him to have his drum repaired at his workplace in the Polish Post by his colleague Kobyella, who had previously offered this. On the evening of August 31, 1939, Jan and Oskar went to the post office, which was already besieged by the National Socialists . The workforce is preparing for battle ; Jan is also drawn into the action. Meanwhile Oskar looks around the building. When he reads on a wall clock that it is bedtime for him, he lies down in a laundry basket full of letters in a storage room.

The Polish Post

Awakened by shooting shots, he wakes up again. Fearing for his drum, he hides it under the letters. He quickly finds Jan and Kobyella, who could repair his drum, in a children's room in a post office apartment. Both shoot out of the windows, with Jan in particular being terrified and even trying to wound himself in order to escape the situation. Upon entering the room, Oskar discovers a drum in good condition comparable to his drum on a shelf. Because of the fighting, Oskar is unable to get Jan's attention to the new drum. Oskar cannot approach because of his small size and hopes for help from Jan. A grenade detonates, Kobyella is injured and the drum falls from the shelf. Oskar, delighted, immediately takes possession of the new drum. Jan drags Kobyella into the storage room, which has been converted into a reception station for the wounded. Oskar follows them.

The house of cards

Oskar, Jan and Kobyella pass the time playing cards in the storage room. Oskar Jan clearly reveals that he can speak and even master skat . Jan begins to hallucinate while playing. Kobyella dies of his injuries, whereupon Jan begins to build a house of cards. Finally the Germans invade the storeroom. In order not to die, Oskar betrays Jan and plays a crying kidnapped child for the Germans. Jan is taken away and murdered, while Oskar is taken to the hospital.

He is lying on Saspe

After his discharge from the hospital, he meets Schugger Leo, who works in the Saspe cemetery. He lures Oskar with an empty cartridge case to Saspe, where Oskar finds many other cartridge cases, but also a Skat card. He immediately realizes that Jan Bronski was brought here to be shot and buried. With this knowledge, the case and the Skat card, he makes his way to Anna Bronski, his grandmother and Jan's aunt. He quickly hands her the two items and whispers in her ear that "he" is lying on Saspe. Then he runs away.

Maria

As a result, Oskar spent most of his time with Herbert's mother and her youngest daughter Maria Truczinski, who was his first great love. She is a little older than Oskar and works for Mr. Matzerath in the shop. This leads Maria to take care of Oskar because he has little time himself. She becomes a kind of surrogate mother. During a visit to the beach, Oskar smells the scent of vanilla , whereupon he walks between Maria's legs. But it is not clear to him what he actually wants. Confused by his first erection , he begins to cry.

Effervescent powder

The two go to the beach more often, and one day a bag of fizzy powder falls out of their pocket. Maria pours a little powder into her cupped hand, then asks Oskar to spit on her powder: It starts to bubble in her hand and she licks it off, which she obviously likes. One evening Matzerath hands over Maria's care to Oskar. Oskar sleeps in bed with Maria that night. You will find a bag of effervescent powder in bed. You repeat the game from the beach, but then Oskar empties part of it into her navel and spits on it. The hissing and bubbling of the powder in the belly button excites her. Sexual intercourse occurs.

Special announcements

One day when Oskar catches Maria and Matzerath having sex on the sofa, he angrily jumps on Matzerath, who then disappears through the door cursing. When Maria then sits down at the table, Oskar tries to approach her sexually. It fails and they get into a heated argument until they both cry. Only now does he realize that he has lost Maria to Matzerath.

Carrying the faint to Frau Greff

Aware of his powerlessness, he now spends his time in bed with Mrs. Greff, the wife of a greengrocer. Oskar studies the female anatomy. That doesn't bother Mr. Greff, he just puts a bowl of water with a soap in front of it, because Ms. Greff has a strong odor.

Seventy-five kilos

To everyone's horror, Mr. Greff hangs himself in the basement of his shop and at the same time weighs his weight exactly in potatoes. Greff had constant problems with the calibration office because of his modified scales in the store; When a summons followed because of his unconforming relationship with children - especially boys - he kills himself.

Bebras front theater

Maria gives birth to a child, and Oskar is absolutely convinced that it is his son. He promises him a tin drum for his third birthday, like Agnes once did for him. But instead of accompanying "his" son Kurt in his career, he meets Bebra a third time, who can persuade Oskar to join the front theater he runs. Oskar takes him through many cities in France, and Roswitha is there again. The two spend a lot of intimate time together.

Visiting concrete - or mystically barbarically bored

After all, they appear on the Atlantic Wall , on the Normandy coast , in Trouville . You visit the concrete bunkers on the beach accompanied by a soldier named Lankes. When four nuns are seen walking on the beach, the soldier is ordered by a senior officer to kill them. After a brief objection, he shoots her. In the evening, Oskar and the other members of the front theater perform for the soldiers. The following morning, June 6, 1944, the Allies land; the theater artists flee. In the process, however, Roswitha dies, who only wants to take a cup of coffee with her on the trip. Inwardly shaken by the loss of his lover, Oskar makes his way home.

Following Christ

He barely made it to Kurt's third birthday on June 12, 1944. Oskar proudly presented a tin drum to Kurt, but Kurt didn't like it and preferred to beat him up. Over time, Oskar settles in again with Matzerath and Maria. However, he does not provide any information about his disappearance. He still doesn't speak himself in her presence. Everyday life takes its usual course until Maria gets the news that one of her brothers was killed in the war. Affected by the loss, she seeks support in Protestantism , but soon converts to Catholicism and visits the same Catholic church with Oskar that Oskar had already attended with his mother. This opens up the possibility for Oskar to meet again with the figure of Jesus in the arms of Mary. In an unobserved moment he hangs his drum on her again - but this time to make fun of the plaster figure. He rolls on the floor with laughter, but suddenly he hears a drumming. The figure actually appears to be drumming. When Jesus asks him if he loves him, Oscar gives him a clear “no” to answer. Beside himself with anger, he takes his drum from Jesus and deliberately breaks off one of his cast toes. Since this revelation, Oskar has been drawn to church every night, but the figure of Jesus no longer drums for Oskar. On his way he sings everything made of glass; he doesn't stop at any window, not even at the street lamps.

The dusters

When he was on the road again one night, he ran into a gang of thieves called "The Dusters". It consists exclusively of young people, of whom he initially feels cornered. After a show of force of his voice, however, Oskar is accepted into the group. Within the gang, Oskar calls himself "Jesus" because of his decisive experience in the church.

The nativity play

With him at the head of the dusters, their empire of thieves grows, but internal tensions cause a division. One part begins to get involved politically, while the other part develops pseudo-religious tendencies together with Oskar. With the help of a gang member who, as an altar boy, got hold of the church key, they went to the Sacred Heart Church one night in Advent 1944 to steal the figures. Ultimately, however, the police get ahead of them and the entire gang is sentenced to a sentence. Only Oskar can save himself by playing a moronic child in court who has been seduced by the youth.

The ant route

A little later, in the winter of 1944/45, the Second World War reached the city of Danzig. Oskar and his family hide in the storage cellar of their grocery store. Maria's mother dies beforehand and is buried. Matzerath, Oskar's father, who still has a party badge of the NSDAP, is afraid of the invasion of the Russian troops. When the Russians actually invade their basement, he drops his badge on the floor. While Greff's wife is raped by three Russians, Oskar grabs the badge in order to give it back to Matzerath at an inopportune moment, whereupon he swallows it in his distress. The badge's needle catches in his throat, which is why Matzerath threatens to suffocate. One of the Russians is uncomfortable; he shoots Matzerath.

Should I or should not I

Mr. Fajngold, a Holocaust survivor, takes over the entire property of the Matzeraths, but is so courteous and allows the family to stay and work with them until further notice. At Matzerath's funeral, Oskar toyed with the idea of ​​throwing his drum into the grave hole as a sign of turning away from his drumming and the will to grow again. While Oskar has made the decision in front of the hole and throws the drum into the grave, Kurt throws a stone at his head, causing Oskar to fall into the grave. With this incident, its growth begins again. He leaves his drum in the grave.

Disinfectants

Oskar's joints hurt because he is growing again. Mr. Fajngold turns out to be a helpful person and looks after Oskar to the best of his knowledge. Maria rejects Mr. Fajngold's sudden marriage proposal. She wants to travel to her sister Guste in the Rhineland with Oskar and Kurt.

Growth in freight wagons

They are attacked several times on the train ride there, but reach their destination unscathed. Oskar is still growing and because of his pain is taken to a Düsseldorf hospital. Maria finds a job as a cleaning lady. Oskar himself states that it was the moment of his resuming growth that he lost his ability to sing glass to pieces. After a long stay in the hospital, Oskar is finally released. His height is now 123 instead of 94 centimeters before. He now breaks his silence and speaks normally in public.

Third book

Flints and tombstones

Maria, Kurt and Oskar are now living with Maria's sister Guste. In order to stay afloat, Maria and Kurt do a lot of black market trading. Maria sells artificial honey and Kurt Feuersteine . He accidentally discovered a source, but he won't reveal its location to anyone. Oskar keeps out of these things, but he reads a lot. But one day it becomes too colorful for Maria, which is why she asks Oskar to contribute to the family's livelihood. In order to evade the allegations, Oskar sells his mother Agnes' necklace, which puts the others at ease for a start. But it is clear to him that this will not be the case for long, and so he looks for a job. He starts as an intern at the stonemason Korneff, where he takes great pleasure in carving artistic characters into tombstones, while the hard work is less suited to him as a small man.

Fortuna North

Oskar obtained a tailor-made suit through an assignment, which made him feel elated to invite one of his former nurses, with whom he had a special relationship, to a rendezvous. Although she disappears during the rendezvous - embarrassed by the looks of the others at the strange couple - Oskar is having fun. During his work, the sudden sight of a dead woman makes him ponder. Among other things, it is her ring finger that moves Oskar to propose marriage to Maria. However, she refuses.

Madonna 49

Oskar gives up his job, depressed by this answer. He sits down on a bench in front of the employment office. There he is discovered by art students who ask him to pose as a nude model. He agrees and soon he is the model for a negotiated hourly wage. Later he meets Lankes, the former soldier, again at a carnival. He is now an art student and persuades Oskar to model a portrait with his muse Ulla. The result is the picture “Madonna 49”, which depicts Oskar with a drum in his hands in Ulla's arms. It is the first time that Oskar has been holding a drum again since Mr. Matzerath's death. He keeps it, but doesn't play on it for the time being.

The Hedgehog

By being employed at the university, Oskar earned enough to buy his own room to sublet. This is in the Zeidler couple's rented apartment and adjoins the room of a nurse. Right from the start he was fascinated by the woman who lived next to him, even though he only knew her name - Dorothea - and knew that she doesn't always stay here. This only spurs Oskar on to find out more about her, which is why he even opens her mail. Through one of her letters he learns from a Dr. Werner, whom Oskar thinks is her lover.

In the closet

Oskar wants to know more and tries to get into her room. He hopes every day that she has forgotten to lock her room. Oskar is so persistent in this that even after weeks he does not stop trying. In the end, luck is with him one morning. He steals some hair from Dorothea's comb and then sits down in her closet, where he masturbates . Deep in his desire, he imagines to be part of her life.

Klepp

When he leaves Dorothea's room again, he meets Mr. Egon Münzer , also called Klepp, the third subtenant of the Zeidlers. The musician, who plays various wind instruments, is evidently currently in a creative crisis and lives extremely shabby. Oskar and Klepp start a conversation, while Oskar takes out his drum. They start making music until they decide to form a band together. Klepp begins to bring order into his life again. Both are of the opinion that they still need a guitarist, and so they go looking.

On the coconut carpet

As Klepp and Oskar are about to set off again, they are intercepted by the tenant Zeidler, whom Oskar also calls a "hedgehog" because of his hairstyle. He asks her to help relocate a coconut runner. Since it is difficult for them to refuse, they agree to it, whereby a remnant piece of the carpet passes into Oskar's possession. Oskar uses it as a bedside rug. When he had to go to the toilet that night that same day, he put the rug on, naked. He runs into Dorothea on his way to the toilet. Shocked by the sudden collision, Dorothea comes to lie under Oskar on the floor. Confused, she asks for Oskar's name, who pretends to be Satan. Dazed and excited by the rough coconut carpet on her skin, she asks Oskar for sexual intercourse. But he can't do it mentally and the dizziness is exposed. Dorothea fled the house in dismay. In contrast, Oskar is still too exhausted by the situation, which is why he remains lying naked on the floor. Only when Klepp appears with a guitarist named Scholle does he stir. All three go together to the banks of the Rhine , where they begin to make music. From now on they call themselves "The Rhine River Three".

In the onion cellar

After a few smaller appearances, they get a permanent job in the "Onion Cellar", a Düsseldorf restaurant where visitors - mostly older people from the upper class - get nothing but cutting boards, knives and onions for a hefty price. By cutting the onions, visitors should be encouraged to express their personal problems. In short, the whole place is weeping. With this program, it has so far been possible for the bar to strengthen interpersonal relationships, make new ones and even reconcile those who have fallen out. The actual mission of the “Rhine River Three” is not to let the situation among the visitors get out of hand. One evening, however, when the host Ferdinand Schmuh granted a second round of onions as an exception, the situation got out of hand. An orgy is imminent. Klepp and Scholle cannot save themselves from laughing at the sight that presents itself to them. Only Oskar remains in control of the situation and begins to drum. Its rhythm takes the guests back to their childhood, some even wet themselves.

At the Atlantic Wall or there, the bunkers cannot get rid of their concrete

Days later Schmuh, the owner of the onion cellar, had an accident with his Mercedes . At the funeral, Oskar meets Dr. Dösch, the head of the concert agency "West". He was also in the onion cellar that memorable evening, trying to get Oskar under contract. Oskar asks for time to think about it, but is happy to accept an advance payment. He is thinking of going on a trip with Lankes' muse Ulla. However, Lankes claims Oscar's travel companion to himself, and so the two visit the bunkers from the Second World War on the coast of Normandy. While grilling two fish they meet again nuns who are walking in front of the bunkers. Lankes rapes the youngest of them, who then commits suicide by drowning. The incident leaves the World War II soldier Lankes completely cold.

The ring finger

Back in the Rhineland, Oskar goes to the agency because he is well aware that he cannot just collect money without lifting a finger. An unexpected reunion with Bebra awaits him, who - meanwhile clearly aged - sits in a wheelchair and speaks bluntly to Oskar about his immoral acts. Oskar tearfully signs the contract that obliges him to go on tour as "Oskar the Drummer". His drumming quickly brings him fame and fortune. With the money he gets Maria to let go of her current lover and open a chain of delis. Despite his money, Oskar often feels alone. Every now and then he borrows a dog to go for a walk. One day on one of these walks, the dog comes running at a ring finger. Oskar looks at him and then puts it in his pocket. However, he is observed from a tree by Vittlar , a noble decorator .

The last tram or adoration of a mason jar

Vittlar immediately suspects that Oskar's find is the finger of a murder victim. Oskar becomes friends with Vittlar, which means that he soon accompanies him everywhere. Oskar places his finger in a mason jar, but first has a few impressions made of it, including one made of gold. Oskar reveals to Vittlar that he sometimes worships his finger in a jar. Then he records one of the prayers in writing. One evening the two hijack an empty tram . On their journey through town, three men get on. Two of them are ex-soldiers who want to kill the third. It is the post office clerk Weluhn from Danzig, whom Oskar knows personally from the events at the beginning of the war. Oskar can prevent the attempted murder at the terminus, whereupon Vittlar expresses his envy towards Oskar. This, however, asks Vittlar to report him to the police because of the finger in the jar. Vittlar goes to the police with his finger in the jar. Oskar remains on the floor. Only when a cow licks his face the next morning does he decide to flee.

Thirty

Since the iron curtain blocks the way to his old home, Kashubia , and to his grandmother Anna, Oskar decides to flee to America, where his grandfather Joseph Koljaiczek might be. He crossed the Belgian border by train , continued in the direction of Paris to get a seat on the plane to overseas at Orly Airport . However, at the Maison Blanche metro station , on the way from the Gare du Nord train station to the airport, he is tracked down and arrested by French police officers. He is later sentenced by the court to stay in a mental hospital, where he is still sitting at the age of thirty. In the eyes of the court he should be Dorothea's murderer. The court cites the finger in the jar and the prayer of Oskar written down by Vittlar as evidence of this. Later investigations question his guilt, which is why he may be released soon. Oskar fears his dismissal. The finger actually belongs to Dorothea, who was murdered by Beate, another nurse. Her motive was jealousy because Dr. Werner loved Dorothea, not her. Dorothea tried to reassure Beate, since she had nothing from Dr. Werner wanted. After Dorothea disappeared or was murdered, Dr. Werner sick. It was clear to Beate that he would only belong to her while he was sick. She nursed him to death.

Scenes of the action

Danzig

The city of Danzig , with its small Polish minority and the German majority population, plays an important role in the novel. On his mother's side, Oskar comes from a Kashubian family who are said to be not Polish enough for the Poles and German enough for the Germans. Oskar repeatedly acknowledges his Polish roots - it is no coincidence that his drum has a red and white pattern - but after 1945 he went to the West.

Grass keeps coming back to the history of the city of Danzig and its changing masters, in detail, for example, in a chapter that takes place in the city museum.

Dusseldorf

He also worked the years 1947 to 1953, in which Grass started an apprenticeship as a stonemason in Düsseldorf , began studying art, worked as a bar musician and experienced the beginning economic miracle , he worked with the tin drum . Scenes from the novel are autobiographically shaped by a number of real Düsseldorf experiences, such as visits to his sister who worked as a midwife in a Düsseldorf hospital and is said to have “fed him in every way” there. With the figures of the art professors Maruhn and Kuchen, he caricatures the sculptor Sepp Mages and the painter Otto Pankok . With them he learned to model and draw at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . The figure of Egon Münzer, known as Klepp, is reminiscent of Grass' fellow student and musician Horst Geldmacher and the trained window dresser and painter Franz Witte was cast with the figure of Gottfried von Vittlar. The episodes in the "onion cellar" took place in the pub Csikós on Andreasstrasse in the old town of Düsseldorf.

Arrangements for theater, film and radio

The film adaptation of the literary template by Volker Schlöndorff from 1979 was a worldwide success, which was awarded an Oscar for best foreign language film and received the Palme d'Or in Cannes .

In 2010 Günter Grass gave his first approval for a version of the "Tin Drum" for the theater stage. In the production by Jan Bosse and Armin Petras for the Ruhrtriennale 2010, seven actors played both the main characters of the novel and seven Oskar narrative characters, while photos and effects recorded with a mini camera were projected onto a large screen in the background.

In January 2015, the artistic director Oliver Reese staged the work at the Schauspiel Frankfurt in a two-hour performance as a one-person play with the actor Nico Holonics .

In March 2015, a version by Luk Perceval premiered at Hamburg's Thalia Theater , in which an old Oskar ( Barbara Nüsse ) looks back on his life while a boy's voice reads text excerpts from the novel from the off.

In September 2015, Volkmar Kamm staged his own version of the tin drum with Raphael Grosch as Oskar Matzerath at the Alte Schauspielhaus at the Schauspielbühnen Stuttgart .

A stage version for two speakers and a percussionist has existed since 2016. The idea for this mixture of reading and percussion concert comes from the drummer Stefan Weinzierl: He provides the atmospheric accompaniment to selected scenes with percussion instruments (vibraphone, marimbaphone, percussion and live electronics). In some places musical solo passages can also be heard. The texts will be read by Ulrike Folkerts and Clemens von Ramin .

Autoreferentiality

The main character, the tin drum, also appears in later works by Günter Grass - without mentioning the name - such as in the novella Katz und Maus , the second part of the Danzig trilogy, or in the novel Der Butt . The late novel Die Rättin is a kind of continuation .

The tin drum in literary criticism

Günter Grass's style differs from contemporary post-war literature mainly through its lifelike narrative style, which is characterized by an exuberant love of tales, from the otherwise emphatically rational reflection of the German past. It sparked controversial discussions in the criticism. While Walter Widmer placed the work " as a prototype of the new novel " next to Goethe's Wilhelm Meister in the Basler Nachrichten of December 18, 1959, the Bremen Senate refused the author the Bremen Literature Prize awarded by an independent jury . The Bremen youth senator at the time, Annemarie Mevissen, justified: “ Chapters of the 'Tin Drum' belong on the index of writings harmful to young people . On the one hand, I cannot agree to an award ceremony for Grass and, on the other hand, have the work banned for young people. "

Hans Magnus Enzensberger prophesied in his review on the Süddeutscher Rundfunk on November 18, 1959, “ screams of joy and indignation ”. With reference to the realistic portrayal of the reality of the life of the petty bourgeoisie during the Second World War in the tin drum, he commented: “ The scandal that lies therein is ultimately not tied to any subject: it is the scandal of the realistic narrative in general. “He went on to say about Grass:“ His blindness to everything ideological frees him from a temptation to which so many writers succumb, namely to demonize the Nazis. Grass portrays them in their true aura, which does not have anything Luciferic: in the aura of foulness. “The much-quoted words that Grass had an“ aura of stench ”later became the leitmotif of many interpretations that see the tin drum as a moral image of the individual who, under National Socialism, did his part to help the NSDAP gain power. Alfred Matzerath, for example, is a typical partisan who, in the foulness of his petty-bourgeois world, does not overlook the effects of his own actions, but incurs individual guilt. Enzensberger also sees the work as an educational novel that draws on “ the best traditions of German narrative prose ”.

Marcel Reich-Ranicki's criticism in the period from 1 January 1960, with the words " I'm feeling lucky tumbled overwritten". Ranicki accuses the novel that " his great stylistic talent [...] is the undoing of Grass ". At that time he saw a multitude of promising motifs in the novel, which, however, were inconsistently executed and not incorporated into the overall structure: “ The writer does not need to circumvent anything human or all too human. But he must convince us through his work that taking these processes into account was necessary or at least useful. Grass cannot do that. “Reich-Ranicki revoked the criticism quoted above three years later on Westdeutscher Rundfunk . In the essay “ Self-criticism of a critic ” - in which he also expresses some remarkable thoughts on the task of the critic in general - he takes back parts of his opinion at the time and states that he “ sets the tone differently today ” and “ especially with the new in the prose of Grass much more deeply ”. In addition to a multi-layered analysis of Grass's narrative style, he remarks about the intention of the book: “ Oskar protests physiologically and psychologically against the very existence. He accuses the people of our time by making himself a caricature. Total infantilism is his program. "

Eckhard Henscheid described the novel in Merkur in 1984 as “a giant monsoon in which, for sheer baroque and allegory and realism and coming to terms with the past and megalomania, nothing, but nothing at all is right ”, the book is “ a synthetic product of the wateriest zeitgeist that, to top it all off, is also still ingenious ”.

Today, the tin drum, along with other great works such as The Magic Mountain, is considered a work of the century that has transported the novel into a new generation. The success of the tin drum helped German post-war literature, which had hitherto been neglected abroad, to attract attention across borders.

The tin drum was included in the ZEIT library of 100 books .

expenditure

Audio book

Trivia

  • As with his later books, Günter Grass himself designed the cover picture. He made two pictures for the “Tin Drum”: a charcoal drawing and a collage made from scraps of newspaper where a piece of the charcoal drawing is visible in a scrap. In both pictures a large red and white drum can be seen in the middle of the picture.
  • Günther Scholl (1923–2011), a friend of Günter Grass, was the model for the fictional character “Scholle”.
  • A bronze figure by Oskar Matzerath placed on a park bench commemorates the writer near Grass' birthplace in what is now Wrzeszcz (formerly Langfuhr ). After Grass' death, a larger bronze figure of the author was placed on the other side of the park bench.

Secondary literature

  • Rainer Diederichs: Structures of the mischievous in the modern German novel. An investigation into the novels by Thomas Mann Confessions of the impostor Felix Krull and Günter Grass Die Blechtrommel . 1971.
  • Georg Just: Presentation and appeal in the tin drum by Günter Grass. Presentation aesthetics versus effect aesthetics. 1972.
  • Robert LeRoy: Günter Grass's tin drum . An interpretation. 1973.
  • Gisbert Ter-Nedden: The problem of the time-critical novel after historicism. An investigation into the novel Die Blechtrommel by Günter Grass. 1973.
  • Irmela Schneider: Critical reception. The tin drum as a model. 1975.
  • Lore Ferguson: Günter Grass's tin drum . Attempt at interpretation. 1976.
  • Elisabeth Pflanz: Sexuality and sexual ideology of the first-person narrator in Günter Grass' novel "The Tin Drum" . Uni-Druck, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-87821-147-3 (also dissertation at the University of Würzburg 1976).
  • Hanspeter Brode: Contemporary history in the narrative work of Günter Grass. Attempt to interpret the tin drum and the “Danzig Trilogy” . Lang, Bern / Frankfurt am Main 1977, ISBN 3-261-02262-0 .
  • Silke Jendrowiak: Günter Grass and the "hubris" of the petty bourgeois. "The Tin Drum", a break with the tradition of an irrationalist interpretation of art and reality . Winter, Heidelberg 1979, ISBN 3-533-02870-4 / ISBN 3-533-02871-2 (also dissertation at the University of Kiel 1979).
  • Franz Josef Görtz (Ed.): The tin drum. Attraction and nuisance. A chapter of German literary criticism . Luchterhand, Darmstadt 1984, ISBN 3-472-61544-3 .
  • Hannelore Schwartze-Koehler. "The Tin Drum" by Günter Grass: meaning, narrative technique and contemporary history. Structural analysis of a bestseller of literary modernism . Frank & Timme; Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86596-237-9 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Tin drum  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Scheffel, Matias Martinez: Introduction to narrative theory . Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-44052-5 , p. 100 .
  2. ↑ Horst Geldmacher (1929–1992). Painter, writer and musician. Studied with Günter Grass at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. Model for the figure of Egon Münzer.
  3. ↑ Tongue out. In: Der Spiegel. 36/1963, from: spiegel.de accessed on March 11, 2012 (about Günter Grass and his novels The Tin Drum and Dog Years )
  4. ↑ Tongue out . Title report / literary criticism of September 4, 1963 in DER SPIEGEL , issue 36/1963 , accessed from the spiegel.de portal on January 12, 2012
  5. ↑ Deutschlandfunk, September 10, 2010: Review “No Shards of Heaps” Jan Bosse and Armin Petras bring Günter Grassen's tin drum to the stage at the Ruhrtriennale
  6. ↑ Review and review round-up for the world premiere of the novel on nachtkritik.de
  7. ↑ Schauspiel Frankfurt: "Die Blechtrommel" potato field coitus and canning fall , review by Natascha Pflaumbaum on Deutschlandradio Kultur on January 11, 2015, accessed January 13, 2015
  8. ↑ Werner Theurich: "Tin drum" at the Thalia Theater: The double Oskarchen . In: Spiegel Online from March 29, 2015.
  9. ↑ http://www.dieblechtrommel.de
  10. ↑ "The tin drum on the index!" . In: the daily newspaper , April 14, 2015.
  11. ↑ Tumbled on luck . Review of January 1, 1960 in Die Zeit , 01/1960 , accessed on the zeit.de portal on October 22, 2013
  12. ↑ Article by Michael Gassmann (faz.net of September 8, 2006) on Günther Scholl and his acquaintance with Grass.
  13. ↑ Grass made Günther Scholl known through the tin drum Obituary for Günther Scholl in the Bonner General-Anzeiger on September 15, 2011 (accessed on September 11, 2017) .
  14. ^ Danzig honors Grass on dw.com, October 17, 2015 (accessed October 17, 2015).