Secret report

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In 2002, Wallstein-Verlag published dossiers by Carl Zuckmayer under the title Secret Report , which he had written in 1943/44 for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on successful actors, directors, publishers and journalists from the Weimar Republic and the “ Third Reich ” . The editors are Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön .

construction

One page of the list of names (first page of the original manuscript)

The publication contains around 150 "character portraits". Examples are Gustaf Gründgens , Werner Krauss , Emil Jannings , Theo Lingen , Hans Reimann , Richard Billinger , Gottfried Benn , Leni Riefenstahl , Ernst Jünger , Wilhelm Furtwängler , Martin Luserke and Peter Suhrkamp . It is preceded by a brief characterology (general / classification) with explanations by the author. The character portraits themselves are divided into four categories:

  • Group 1: Positive
  • Group 2: negative
  • Group 3: special cases, partly positive, partly negative
  • Group 4: Indifferent, opaque, blurred

The editors dispense with footnotes in the text; instead, they are in a comprehensive commentary with references to the associated pages. This is followed by an afterword by the editors Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön , an "editorial note", a bibliography and a register of persons.

content

Zuckmayer makes fundamental considerations in the preceding characterology: In Germany, the opinion is widespread that artists live in a “timeless world of the arts” and bear neither political nor social responsibility. It is their job to ensure the continued existence of art under all circumstances. As evidence for this he quotes Schiller's ballad Die Teilung der Erde (Where were you staying when I was dividing the world? I was, said the poet, with you). Therefore, “representatives of artistic or art-related professions” such as actors, directors, publishers, poets, painters, musicians, writers and journalists should be judged differently than politicians, industrialists, military, civil servants or scientists. Zuckmayer manifests itself particularly ambivalent about actors: I am of the opinion that the acting profession such characteristics and attitudes as general intelligence, not self-control, responsibility, mental clarity, of character reliability right necessarily excludes, but probably mostly obscured, undermines, makes ambiguous. (Deletions taken from the source.) He quotes Werner Krauss, who, initially a staunch opponent of the Nazis, is said to have said to the author after a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden : I came there, cynical as a Pharisee, and thought: I'll be you don't pretend, my boy. But when I saw him sitting there in the circle of his closest friends and heard him talking to them - then I knew: Jesus among the disciples.

Client OSS and creation

The tasks of the OSS , founded in 1942, were espionage , sabotage and support for resistance groups. Information should be collected not only from military-strategic, but from all areas of society - for personalities remaining in the Third Reich this was done within the framework of the “Field Unit of Biographical Records” founded in 1943 (at that time also: “Name Project” or “Name File Project "). Zuckmayer saw his work as a contribution to the fight against the Nazi regime, his direct contact person was the Swiss Emmy Rado, the wife of the psychoanalyst Sándor Radó , who had emigrated from Hungary . The character portraits should help to find anti-Nazi opponents who were not communists for the reconstruction of Germany - so-called "crown jewels". Zuckmayer received a total of $ 450 for his work in three installments ; the average weekly wage at the time for an employee was $ 43.63 and for a manual worker $ 45.27.

The division into categories was given to Zuckmayer by Emmy Rado in a letter dated September 21, 1943. The introduction with basic considerations was made from about the end of September to mid-October 1943, the list of names until the beginning of December 1943, the positive portraits in January 1944, the rest in the course of the first half of 1944. Not just more or less objective assessments were expected, but Rado writes in a letter dated February 2, 1944: If you come to the “bad guys”, please let rumors, stories, “dirt”, etc. come in. Perhaps something like this can still be used in psychological warfare . Don't hold back.

At that time Zuckmayer was living with his wife Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer on a secluded farm in the mountains of Vermont and was writing the drama The Devil's General . Occasionally, as Rado wrote to his wife, he traveled to face-to-face meetings in New York.

Publications before 2002

The "Characterology" and a revised version of the portrait of Werner Krauss appeared on October 3, 1947 under the heading "Artists in the Third Reich" in the Münchner Neue Zeitung .

reception

Paperback edition

The journalist and theater critic Günther Rühle writes in ZEIT under the heading Characterology: A poet sharpens the guillotine :

... then 300 pages of notes and comments by the publishers of the Marbach School, who dig the archives and never want to stop: Gunther Nickel and Johanna Schrön. Her proliferating appendix is ​​historically valuable, reminiscent, illuminating, complementary, also necessary, although not corrective or strong in opinion. The Zuckmayer part is an original collection that you just admire and want to throw in the corner the next moment. First it is a book for those who snoop on the past, then for human beings, then for Zuckmayerians (for them: inspiring and alienating). In some places one shouts like Iphigenia: "Save your image in my soul".

Joachim Kalka from the FAZ saw a very important, precise and rich work at the time of National Socialism in Germany. Matthias Wegener from the NZZ even found a "philologically solid" encyclopedia. In Die Welt , Tilman Krause came to the following verdict: “This 'secret report' is about the most colorful 'who's who' that can be imagined. [...] No discussion about involvement in National Socialism should in future leave out Zuckmayer's study. ” Marcel Reich-Ranicki described the work as“ Zuckmayer's best prose ”.

expenditure

Footnotes and individual references

  1. ^ After the paperback edition of September 2007 (Carl Zuckmayer - Geheimreport , Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 2007 2nd edition ISBN 978-3-423-13189-6 )
  2. ↑ The verses read correctly: “Where were you then when the world was divided? / 'I was', said the poet, 'bey dir'. ”See also: The division of the earth (Wikisource)
  3. ^ A b Carl Zuckmayer - Secret Report . Characterology - General p. 9ff Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 2007 ISBN 978-3-423-13189-6
  4. ↑ At the coffee table with Rudolf Hess and others
  5. ^ Secret report epilogue p. 455
  6. ↑ a b secret report, epilogue p. 453ff
  7. ^ Secret report , dtv 2nd edition 2007, comment p. 407 (footnote 1)
  8. ↑ Günther Rühle: Characterology: A poet sharpens the guillotine (Zeit-Online Kultur, date: May 2, 2002, print edition 19/2002) accessed on March 22, 2012

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