A wide field

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A broad field is a novel by Günter Grass that was published by Steidl in 1995 . The novel is set in Berlin between the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification, but paints a panorama of German history from the revolution in 1848 to German reunification in 1990. The book attempts to deal with German reunification in a literary way.

The title of the Grass novel goes back to the phrase with which the father of the title character of Theodor Fontanes Effi Briest repeatedly fended off the discussion of unpleasant questions, and as “ too wide a field” extends the novel and ends the novel: “Oh Luise, let ... that is too broad a field. "

For this highly controversial, politically oriented book, Grass was awarded the Hans Fallada Prize of the city of Neumünster in 1996. The book was widely discussed in public, which, among other things, led to the fifth edition going to print after just eight weeks.

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The protagonist of the novel is the messenger Theo Wuttke, but prefers to be called Fonty and identifies with Theodor Fontane . The second protagonist is the "eternal" spy Hoftaller, who is based on the character from the novel Tallhover by Hans Joachim Schädlich . Both identify with their respective role models and quote at every turn and relate the events of the 20th century to the events of the 19th century. The biographies of the people, model and likeness, are closely interwoven and their history is peppered with cross-references through the whole of German history.

Hoftaller always exerts more or less pressure on the protagonist with his sentence “We can do it differently” and thus retains power over Fonty, who had already believed himself free, even after the fall of the wall.

The book itself is written from the first-person perspective of a Potsdam archivist who remains anonymous, who reproduces the events without comment and leaves the reader to judge.

Criticism and Effect

On August 21, 1995, Marcel Reich-Ranicki published a review in the magazine Der Spiegel , on the cover of which the literary critic literally tore the book up. The demolition established a long hostility between Grass and Reich-Ranicki. When Grass in an ARD interview with Fritz Pleitgen in 2002 indicated the possibility of a reconciliation, Reich-Ranicki responded with a letter that was published in part on October 10, 2002 in Spiegel-Online.

On August 25, 1995 Iris Radisch tore up the work in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit .

Both reviewers described Grass as a failed writer, and above all criticized the fact that the book was written from a GDR perspective, without indignant condemnation of the GDR (Reich-Ranicki) and instead depicting reunification as a colonization by West Germany (Radisch). Even in the headline of her book review, Radisch made negative reference to the Bitterfeld path of GDR cultural policy, which Grass apparently embarked on.

The object relating to the GDR statement Fonty's talking to his wife, was "We lived in a dictatorship dressers" in discourses about the nature of the GDR to the dictum . Günter Grass stated in an interview: "It is not the author who speaks from the individual person, and these things are ostensibly only taken politically at their word by some of the criticism." Following this statement, however, Grass defends the Expression of his fictional character with the words: "If you want to argue with me about this sentence, if I compare the GDR conditions to the conditions that prevailed in the Soviet Union for the longest time, or in Romania until the end, or ruled in Chile, or in Colonel Greece, then the GDR was a relatively commode dictatorship. As a result, it remained a dictatorship, but that is not enough, there is a mentality that has expressed itself in some of these criticisms that wants to see the victory that one thinks one has achieved even greater. So the opponent lying on the ground, the opponent who has partly already disappeared, must be made even more dangerous afterwards in order to increase one's own victory. "

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In an interview with L'Express, Grass pointed out that Fonty and Hoftaller in his work corresponded in a certain sense to Flaubert's Bouvard et Pécuchet . ( Günter Grass: "Le rôle de l'écrivain n'est-il pas de se mettre à la place des autres?" L'express October 1, 1997, last accessed October 9, 2017)
  2. ↑ See Michael Ewert: Walks through German history. "A wide field" by Günter Grass . In: Language in the Technical Age. Vol. 37 (1999), H. 152, pp. 402-417.
  3. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki : ... and it must be said . In: Spiegel Online , August 21, 1995. Retrieved March 25, 2020. “But I have to say what I cannot hide: that I think your novel 'A Wide Field' has failed completely. [...] It is not my business to teach you about the GDR. But it is my right to wonder. You know as well as I do that the SED regime made millions of people unhappy, that it stole years of their lives from countless numbers, including our colleagues Walter Kempowski and Erich Loest, for example. You know better than I do that and how literature has been suppressed in this country. You know very well that the GDR was a terrible state, that nothing can be glossed over here. But your novel knows no anger and bitterness, anger and indignation. I admit, I can't understand it, it takes my breath away. " 
  4. ↑ Thomas Steinfeld : The German. Günter Grass was a pathetic, protester and a solitaire as a narrator . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of April 14, 2015, p. 3.
  5. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki : I have to teach you again . In: Spiegel Online , October 10, 2002. Retrieved on March 25, 2020. “Your first and most important condition: I should take back my criticism of your novel“ Ein weites Feld ”published on August 21, 1995 in the Hamburg news magazine“ Der Spiegel ”. (...) Why should I, I ask very modestly, revise my criticism? " 
  6. ↑ Iris Radisch : The Bitterfeld dead end . In: zeit.de . August 25, 1995. Retrieved March 26, 2020: “This book is illegible. [...] It's not so easy to write. The failure of the great master cannot be reported without grief and disappointed respect. "
  7. ↑ kommod: from French commode, "comfortable"
  8. ↑ Walter Famler, Günter Kaindlstorfer: Günter Grass on Botho Strauss, the evil in capitalism and its "rational relationship" with the SPD . In: Wasp's Nest . 102/1996. (online at: kaindlstorfer.at )