The well-meaning

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Well-intentioned is a factual novel by the writer Jonathan Littell , who combines a fictional biography with real events and people of the Holocaust .

The American with a French passport wrote the 900-page (German edition 1400-page) work in French . It was published in August 2006 under the title Les bienveillantes by Éditions Gallimard in Paris and was immediately a journalistic sensation. Littell was awarded the Prix ​​Goncourt on November 6, 2006 after he had already been awarded the Novel Prize by the Académie française in October . By the end of 2007, 700,000 copies of the French edition had been sold. The German edition of the novel was published on February 23, 2008 by Berlin Verlag , which secured the translation rights for 450,000 euros. According to the publisher, the German initial circulation of 120,000 copies was almost sold out due to pre-orders; However, there are no real sales figures so far. In Israel , the book is in May 2008 to Hebrew appeared. A Tel Aviver publisher bought the rights for US $ 50,000, which is a record amount for Israel.

The title refers to the last part of Aeschylus' Oresty with the title Die Eumeniden (German: The Well-Minded ). Aeschylus uses it to address those goddesses of revenge from Greek mythology, also known as Erinyes , in a well-meaning way in order to appease their anger.

people

Fictional people

Dr. jur. Maximilian Aue

First-person narrator of the novel is the former SS - officer Dr. iur. Maximilian Aue, who lived in France in the 1980s as a factory manager and wrote down his memories, especially of his time with the SS during the Second World War .

Aue, born in 1913, comes from Alsace , his mother was French, his father German, who fought in the Free Corps in the Baltic States. Aue speaks German and French. Aue's mother finally had the father declared dead and remarried: the French Aristide Moreau. Max Aue, who knows very little about his father, sees this marriage as a betrayal of his father, whom he will never again forgive his mother. He also hates his mother and stepfather Moreau because they separated him from his twin sister after they discovered that Max had an incestuous relationship with his sister Una ( Latin: the "one") . At the time of the events in the book, she is married to the (fictional) composer Karl Berndt Egon Wilhelm Freiherr von Üxküll , possibly an allusion to the real existing resistance fighter Nikolaus Graf von Üxküll-Gyllenband .

Aue explains his homosexuality with the fact that after his great love for his sister there is no longer any other woman for him. He does not love his future wife after the war, with whom he has twins. He joined the SS to seek revenge on his French mother. Aue had to keep his homosexuality a secret in the SS, but could not prevent the occasional malicious rumors and had to let Heinrich Himmler hold his bachelor life against him.

In the course of the novel - as Aue suggests, perhaps also because of the events of the war - he intensifies his phantasy into this past relationship with his sister and into the hatred of his mother.

During the war, Aue was deployed in important Eastern European theaters of war. He and the Einsatzgruppen waged a cruel war of extermination against Jews and other "enemies", witnessed pogroms and the mass shooting of Babyn Yar , the battle of Stalingrad and the Auschwitz concentration camp , most recently the conquest of Berlin by the Red Army before he could escape.

He describes the Holocaust as a perpetrator, and experiences Eichmann , Himmler and many other less prominent Nazis from their private side.

During his stay in Antibes , France, with his mother and stepfather, they are both murdered in an unexplained manner. That is why the detectives Clemens and Weser take his lead. They stay on his heels to the last, although as criminal police officers they also belong to the SS and consider Himmler Aue to be innocent (or because of Aue's importance) because “racially pure, apart from some Alpine influences”. Since Aue was ultimately judged neither for matricide nor for his involvement in genocide, he is, in the opinion of one commentator, condemned to endless persecution by memory and he confesses: “The past is never over”.

Dr. Thomas Hauser

Through Dr. Thomas Hauser joins the SD , a subdivision of the SS. Hauser is the prototype of the SS man: he seems cunning and cynical. His view of the world is determined by the Führer principle , he is not intellectual and aesthetic, but tries with all means to advance his career. He always seems to have a way out and saves Aue's life several times, always at the expense of others.

Hauser's relationship with Aue is not fully clarified, but Hauser has respect for Aue.

The main motive is the question of promotion: Whenever Aue is promoted - often unexpectedly - and attains a higher rank, Hauser is already one step ahead of him.

Dr. Mandelbrod

Aue explains that Mandelbrod, like Alfred Rosenberg , despite the Jewish-sounding name, comes from an old German family. His father once worked for Mandelbrod, which is why he is friendly towards him. Mandelbrod's business partner is "Mr. Leland". Both helped Aue's family after their father's disappearance. Mandelbrod and "Herr Leland" are influential industrialists, belong to the Himmler Circle of Friends and are on the management staff of the Reichsgruppe Industrie . They are also part of the Reich Coal Association . Aue's friend Thomas mysteriously suggests that the two could be more powerful than the SS.

Mandelbrod pretends to be a fanatical National Socialist. Its principles were actually discovered by the Jews, the term "National Socialism" was coined by Moses Hess . Because of their pure race, the Jews are the only opponents of the German people to be taken seriously. They should therefore be completely eradicated. When Aue reports these views of Mandelbrod to his friend Thomas, the latter considers it possible that Mandelbrod is only disseminating such things because it is easier to get ahead with in the NS state.

The description of Mandelbrod has some fantastic features. He seems to have reached an unnaturally old age, can only get around in an electric vehicle, is looked after by three blonde women in black SS uniforms who look at each other like clones . In addition, he makes life difficult for his visitors with severe flatulence.

Criminal police officers Clemens and Weser

They suspect Aue of murdering his mother and stepfather and, like Erinyen , pursue him to the end. Like the entire criminal police , they belong to the SS.

A model for the names could have been a feared Nazi trio in Dresden, Johannes Clemens , Arno Weser and Henry Schmidt . Victor Klemperer mentions these Gestapo officers on various occasions in his diaries, in particular “Clemens and Weser”, who, referred to as the “Spucker” and the “Thug” or “Boxer”, persecuted Jews.

Real people

In addition to fictional characters, real people from the National Socialist regime appear in the novel, such as particularly well-known people Adolf Eichmann , Heinrich Himmler , Reinhard Heydrich , Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höß and Adolf Hitler (whom the protagonist bites in the nose in the Führerbunker ) or less well-known people like Theodor Oberländer . The writer Ernst Jünger makes a brief appearance.

Several defendants of the later Einsatzgruppen trial also appear . Many of these people had academic degrees mentioned in the novel.

Paul Blobel, July 1947
  • SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf - death penalty , on June 7, 1951 executed
  • SS Brigade Leader Prof. Dr. Franz Six - 20 years imprisonment, released early on November 3, 1952. Called Alfred Six in the novel .
  • SS Brigade Leader Dr. Dr. Otto Rasch - left the proceedings on February 5, 1948 due to illness
  • SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel - Death penalty, executed on June 7, 1951
  • SS-Standartenführer Willi Seibert - death penalty, converted to 15 years imprisonment in 1951
  • SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Braune - death penalty, executed on June 7, 1951
  • SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Ott - Death sentence, commuted to life imprisonment in 1951, released May 9, 1958. - This person does not appear. But there is a "Untersturmführer Ott" in the novel who, after he has committed an atrocity, is killed by a paramedic.
  • SS-Sturmbannführer Waldemar von Radetzky - 20 years old, released in 1951
  • SS-Obersturmführer Heinz Schubert - death penalty, converted to 10 years imprisonment in 1951. In the novel, he is considered a descendant of the composer Franz Schubert .

Also:

France (writer):

Numerous other people from politics, the military and the SS do not appear themselves, but are mentioned in more detail:

Wolf Kieper and Moses Kogan were executed as Jews and NKVD functionaries in 1941 . Likewise, Joel Brand (in the book as Brandt ) and Rudolf Kasztner (in the book as Kastner ) are mentioned.

Historians mentioned or cited by Aue:

Orientation towards real individuals

The novel thus also intervenes in discussions about real people from the Nazi regime.

Theodor Oberländer

In 1960, the Federal Minister for Expellees Theodor Oberländer in the GDR was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for involvement in murdering Jews. He then resigned, although there was no conviction in the Federal Republic of Germany . In the novel (i.e. in the portrayal of the first-person narrator Max Aue) Professor Theodor Oberländer explains that the Stalinist policy of “de- culakization ” and what he called the “planned famine of 1932” was a probably successful attempt to achieve a balance between available space and the consuming population. In a Ukrainian restaurant there is an exchange of words between Oberländer, advisor to the " Nachtigall " battalion , and the (fictional) SS officer Thomas Hauser. Oberländer is in favor of the OUN -B, a nationalist Ukrainian organization under Stepan Bandera , while Thomas Hauser relies on the "more reliable" Melnyk , leader of the OUN-M. Thomas used the charge against Oberländer that the OUN had only recently become more anti-Semitic under pressure from Stalin .

In the novel, the fictional narrator knows Oberländer through Professor Dr. Reinhard Höhn .

Otto Ohlendorf

Ohlendorf at the Nuremberg Trials

Otto Ohlendorf confessed to the murder of 90,000 people in the Nuremberg trials , for which he was sentenced to death and hanged in 1951. There had been appeals for clemency because Ohlendorf was still involved in planning the post-war economic order in the Reich Ministry of Economics during the war. In the explanation of the judgment text, Ohlendorf is referred to as a “ Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ”.
In Littell's novel (by the narrator Max Aue) Ohlendorf is portrayed as an intellectual who is appointed task force commander against his will, probably because his relationship with Himmler and Heydrich is strained. Ohlendorf, however, considers the murder of the Jews to be necessary and the Gypsies to be "at least" just as dangerous. More humane solutions such as resettlement to Madagascar or Siberia could no longer be carried out because of the war situation. Enemies of the empire could no longer be fed in an all-out war. Ohlendorf positively opposes the “totalitarian” Italian fascism with the national socialist community . The people and the people should be in the center of the economy, in that regard Karl Marx would have been right. Ohlendorf admits that under National Socialism there was also an idolization of the state and policies that were hostile to SMEs, which should be combated.

Albert Speer

In the novel, the first-person narrator Aue addresses the question of whether Albert Speer had attended Himmler's speeches in Poznan or, as Speer said after the war, had left before the speech. Aue can no longer remember exactly, so the question in the novel remains open.

content

The names and sequence of the individual chapters ( Toccata , Allemande , Courante , Sarabande , Menuet en rondeaux , Air , Gigue ) correspond to the dance movements of a baroque suite ; only the first chapter is a bit out of the ordinary , as it provides for a toccata as an overture, which was unusual in the baroque era . B. occurs in organ suites of the Romantic era. Littell expressly refers the headings in his letter to the translators to Bach .

Toccata

Maximilian Aue, a former officer in the Einsatzgruppen , describes how he managed to gain a foothold in France as a director of a lace factory with a false identity . He is married and has children, namely twins.

Aue claims: “I have no regrets, I've done my job. That's all. ”He wrote the book to pass the time and perhaps to clear up a few dark points for the reader and for himself. Elsewhere he mentions the search for truth. Towards the end of the chapter, he speaks of his "honest intentions" being used in a work that has been shown to be "bad and pernicious."

Aue puts the crimes into perspective. According to Raul Hilberg's figures, for example, he puts the number of Germans killed in the east in relation to the Germans who perished in the east and comes to the conclusion that a similar result comes out for the Algerian war .

He asks rhetorically why his superior Rudolf Brandt was hanged after the Nuremberg trials , but not his superior Karl Wolff , why Julius Streicher and not von dem Bach-Zelewski ? Aue also refers to the post-war careers of former SS men like Paul Carell and the fact that he managed not to use the word “Jew” once in his multi-volume historical work “ Operation Barbarossa ” on the Russian campaign.

In this chapter he goes into some later “private” acts, which are not yet apparent to the first reader, and refers to the psychological effects of the atrocities of war. Aue continues to suffer from psychosomatic complaints. He describes his life after the war as boring and joyless. In the end he asserts: "I am a person like you!"

Allemande I and II

Aue is deployed in a task force on the Eastern Front - in the Caucasus and Crimea  . He not only attended massacres of Jews, but also killed several times himself. His sister later asked him about his work in the task forces . Aue claims to have given shots of grace. But everyone is equally responsible, whether they killed themselves or just attended.

Aue describes in detail how the SS and the SD are advancing into Russia in the wake of the 6th Army . The task is to destroy enemies of the Reich, especially Jews, in the hinterland. “For the lawyers among you” it is stated that the Soviet Union has not acceded to the Geneva Conventions , so that different rules prevailed on the Eastern Front than on the Western Front. In the country destroyed by the German attack, the troops also find victims of mass murders committed by the NKVD before it left. Aue is explained by an SS colleague that Jews and NKVD are the same thing.

Aue witnessed the 1941 pogrom in the Lemberg ghetto . The German occupation is not fulfilling its legal obligation to protect the civilian population. On the contrary, under the name “Aktion Petliura” the massacre is supported by a higher authority ( Petljura was killed in 1926 by a Jew because of his (historically controversial) role in pogroms in exile in Paris). The blue and yellow armbands of the murderers are mentioned several times in the novel, i.e. the national colors of today's Ukraine.

Soon the SS murdered the Jews themselves, first only the males, then all. Aue also describes the historically documented scene that the SS developed displeasure when blood sausage was on the menu during the lunch break between the murders. Aue takes part in the mass murder of Babyn Yar . Aue describes the psychosomatic complaints of the SS, some can be transferred back to Germany to avoid mass murder, others commit suicide, still others are particularly sadistic, which Aue also interprets as a symptom of excessive demands . The use of Saurer trucks converted into gas vans doesn't make killing any easier for the murderers.

On the other hand, the cooperation with the Wehrmacht works well, even if they don't like it when soldiers volunteer to help. General von Manstein keeps his distance, which brings him the accusation of hypocrisy from the SS officer Blobel in the novel.

Aue describes the rapid advance of the German troops during the course of the war. However, bomb attacks kill German soldiers in the hinterland. It is unclear whether these bombs are triggered by time fuses or agents in the hinterland. Aue is concerned because he realizes that no provisions have been made for a winter war.

Finally, the SS superiors send the psychosomatically ill Aue to Yalta for a cure for two months. There he meets Ohlendorf and is transferred to the Caucasus by him.

Back from the cure, the question of the mountain Jews is hotly debated within the SS. The increasingly difficult situation of German warfare suggests that no new enemies should be created among the population. The Wehrmacht therefore suggests that the “mountain Jews” of the Caucasus, similar to the Karaites , be excluded from persecution, because they are religious but not racially Jews. Aue and other SS people support this position and, after lengthy linguistic, ethnological and racial negotiations, using the skull measurements of the peoples concerned, they can prevail against those SS people, including Aue's superiors, who also want to destroy the mountain Jews as enemies of the Reich.

But this is a bitter success for Aue, because his SS superior Dr. In revenge, Bierkamp transfers him to the 6th Army, which is already encircled in Stalingrad (by plane).

Courante

Siege and Battle of Stalingrad . Aue witnessed the downfall of the 6th Army, which was previously involved in the crimes of the SS under General von Reichenau . The soldiers hope that “Manstein will come”, but Aue knows that the soldiers will be withheld, that von Manstein has long since given up command and that General Hoth's relief attack has already failed.

Aue's friend Thomas explains to him that indispensable people, like Thomas himself, have a chance of being flown out. Aue was obviously not indispensable, otherwise he would not have been assigned to Stalingrad. The soldiers of the states allied with Germany, such as the Ukrainian Hiwis , had no chance, they would be shot as traitors by the Soviets after they were captured.

Aue visits a position where a Russian soldier is dying with a shot in the stomach and calls out loudly for his mother. Aue thinks of his own mother and has a fit of hatred for her. He cannot forgive her for having his father, who has been missing since the early 1920s, pronounced dead and for remarrying. This hatred goes back to Aue's childhood. Aue is wondering whether these attacks of hatred will become more frequent and stronger under the influence of the war.

Aue asks why the fatally injured Russian doesn't get a coup de grace. So he doesn't know that cartridges are no longer used for something like this in Stalingrad, and so he reveals himself to be useless. A Croatian sergeant major would have killed him if Aue's Ukrainian bodyguard had not defused the situation again.

Cannibalism developed among Russian prisoners of war who were no longer able to eat, and soon afterward among German soldiers too. The former is still seen as the true nature of the Russians, the latter shocked the army command. The soldiers involved are quietly executed.

A friend of Aue's Dr. Hohenegg uses the opportunity for scientific research by thawing corpses and examining what is going on in starving people. He notes that less important organs are digested by the body, but other organs even increase in size. According to Hohenegg's calculations, the soldiers die of hunger earlier than one would actually expect after the food rations. Hohenegg attributes this to psychological reasons.

The leadership tries to curb desertions and self-mutilation that are supposed to simulate a combat injury through constant death penalties .

Gradually the Aues report becomes more and more surrealistic, Aue seems to reflect delusions. He arrives from Stalingrad in a zeppelin , sees his sister naked in a boat downstairs, jumps off with a parachute and wants to prevent his sister from marrying an ugly dwarf, who does not pay any attention to him. In addition, twins appear. The chapter ends with these hallucinations.

Sarabande

Dr. Werner Best (right)  

Aue wakes up from his hallucinations in the Hohenlychen military hospital near Berlin. He survived a bullet through the head. His friend Thomas fought hard for him in Stalingrad. Aue would not have been flown out with the sign “Wounded, not transportable”, but Thomas swapped it for another soldier's sign “who would not have come out anyway”, so that Aue was flown out. Aue is given three months' leave to recover.

In Berlin, Aue is holding talks with Dr. Werner Best , later in Paris with Dr. Helmut Bone . In the end he travels to France to see his mother and stepfather. Out of hatred for his French parents, he arrived in the black German SS uniform.

His mother and stepfather are murdered while he is with them in Antibes. Aue is horrified when he finds the bodies in the house. He has obvious gaps in his memory, all the evidence points to him as the perpetrator, which Aue cannot or does not want to admit.

Menuet (en rondeaux)

Aue hears from the official reports that Germany's military situation is deteriorating further. During the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Jewish rebels resisted the best German troops for weeks.

Aue, now active for the Reich Ministry of the Interior , meets the most important representatives of the National Socialist bureaucracy, Himmler , Eichmann , Höß and visits Auschwitz . Aue is present at Himmler's speeches in Poznan . He is certain that he also met Albert Speer there, but does not know for sure whether Speer was there at the decisive points or, as he claimed, left early after the war.

The SS is concerned because the BBC and a New York broadcaster are reporting on the murder of the Jews and naming those responsible.

Air

Aue is initially with a servant, then, after she fled from the Red Army, all alone on the abandoned estate of his sister and brother-in-law in Pomerania . Sister and brother-in-law, the Junker von Üxküll, now live in Switzerland. Psychotically, Aue tries to revive his love affair with his sister in his fantasy, and over it loses himself in a sexual frenzy; He seems to be taking bottle after bottle from the estate's wine cellar. He finds various letters in the house, including one stating that his father, who had cared so much about him, was a failure as a military leader in the Free Corps in the Baltic States and killed civilians in a cruel manner, comparable to the atrocities that have meanwhile been committed by rumored to be reported to the advancing Russian army.

Aue seems to have completely forgotten the advancing Soviet troops. The two criminal police officers Clemens and Weser, who stubbornly pursue the murder of his parents, appear and leave again without finding Aue, who is hiding. Finally, Thomas picks him up with his driver Piontek (possibly an allusion to Heinz Piontek ).

Jig

Thomas and his driver Piontek picks up Aue on his estate and makes his way through to Berlin on the run from the advancing Red Army . You experience atrocities committed by Russian soldiers against German civilians. Aue found a sign with Russian inscription on a hung farmer with his intestines hanging out: “You had a cow, you had canned food! What were you doing with us? ”They meet a group of children who pretend to be“ Army Group Adam ”and kill every adult, the Russians as enemies, the Germans as deserters. Due to the presence of mind of Thomas only the driver Piontek suffers a cruel end in the hands of the young people.

Against the background of the general collapse, Aue loses his inhibitions to murder. In a church he shoots an old Junker after he played a fugue by Bach. He explains to the shocked Thomas that Germany is losing the war because of these corrupt Junkers. Together with the group of children and two other scattered soldiers of the Wehrmacht, they finally reach a German post. Back in Berlin, Aue was deployed as a liaison officer at the Wehrmacht High Command to report on the situation at the front by radio. At the Hotel Adlon he meets a Romanian diplomat with whom he had previously had an affair and whom he now brutally murdered in the toilet because of his smug demeanor.

Since Aue is one of the few officers remaining in Berlin who had stood at the front, he and ten other officers are to be awarded the German Cross in Gold. When the visibly marked Hitler is awarded, he notices his large, disproportionate nose; When Hitler stands in front of him, Aue also notices his strong bad breath and finally bites his nose with full force reflexively. Aue is able to flee because the police vehicle is hit by a Russian grenade and he kills one of the police officers with a cobblestone.

In the subway shaft between the city ​​center and Kochstrasse he is again placed by the two criminal police officers Clemens and Weser. In the subway tunnel they tell Aue in all gruesome details how, according to their police reconstruction, Aue murdered his stepfather and his mother. With the exception of the crucial gaps, the details of her report are identical with what Aue himself reported about the events.

After Weser was fatally hit in a hail of bullets in the subway shaft - the Russians were advancing from Kochstrasse - Clemens placed Aue in the zoological garden. At the last moment, Thomas appears and kills Clemens. When Thomas bends over Clemens to search him for anything useful, Aue takes an iron bar and kills Thomas. Aue takes Thomas' French papers and “was left alone ... with the time and the sadness and suffering of memory, with the cruelty of my existence and my future death. The well-intentioned had taken up my trail again. "

The Oresty

Orestes and the Erinyes, painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1862).

The Oresty is a tragedy of Aeschylus , which takes place in the house of the Atrids . Orestes , supported by his sister Elektra , kills his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aigisthus because his mother killed his father Agamemnon after he had returned from the Trojan War . Before she is murdered - Aigisthus has already been murdered - Clytemnestra begs her son Orestes once again in vain not to kill her.

Orestes is then persecuted by the Greek goddesses of revenge, the Erinyes . Ultimately, however, Orestes patron goddess Athena succeeds in appeasing the goddesses of vengeance , so that they, as eumenids , as "well-disposed people", give up their lust for vengeance.

In Littell's novel, Aue is strongly suspected of having killed his mother and stepfather Aristide Moreau. Aue's sister Una is also deeply concerned that her brother might have something to do with the double murder. Aue accuses his mother of having declared his father dead after the First World War , the "great war" as it is called in the novel, so that she can get herself a new man, Aristide. Aristide is the first name of a French interwar politician Aristide Briand , but can also be interpreted as an anagram of Atrides . Aristide Moreau could also be an allusion to the surrealists Aristide Maillol and Gustave Moreau .

From now on, Aue is followed by two criminal police officers Clemens ( Clemens , Latin for "mildness") and Weser until the end of the novel . Finally, they give him gruesome details of how they think the murder took place. Accordingly, Aue's mother swore to her son before she was murdered - Aristide has already been murdered - in vain not to kill her.

Finally, Aue managed to escape the police officers.

Motif of the "twins"

Twins keep appearing in the novel.

  1. Aue has a twin sister with whom he also had an incestuous relationship as a teenager and on whom he is erotically fixated all his life.
  2. As a seriously injured person at Stalingrad, he has a fantastic dream in which u. a. his sister and twins appear.
  3. While visiting his parents (mother and stepfather) he meets unknown twins who seem to have a mysterious relationship with his sister, but also with him.
  4. In a secondary scene, he meets a prostitute who tells him about her deceased twin sister.
  5. His best friend in the SS, Thomas Hauser, is called " Thomas " by his first name , which in Aramaic is "the twin". The first name "Thomas" was rare in Germany at that time.
  6. After all, the three blonde Valkyries, the servants of the Nazi Eminence Dr. Mandelbrod, confusingly similar.
  7. In his marriage after the Second World War, Aue had twins again, to his annoyance that he would have preferred an only child.

In a figurative sense, the novel occasionally makes reasoning about the identity or similarity of Germans and Jews. Like Alfred Rosenberg , who is also mentioned here in the novel, one of the Nazis has the “Jewish-sounding” name “Mandelbrod”.

The motif of the change of identity (e.g. Aue survives Stalingrad because Thomas exchanges the identities of Aue and that of another soldier, so to speak) appears differently.

Reception and debate

Francophone room

The French press and public reacted largely enthusiastically to Littell's work in the fall of 2006. A critic in Le Monde spoke of one of the “most impressive books ever written about Nazism”. The taz cited critics who remained unnamed who compared Littell's style with Tolstoy and Pasternak and equated the enormity of his story with Dostoyevsky's great novels Crime and Punishment and the Karamazov brothers .

The writer and Buchenwald survivor Jorge Semprún was particularly impressed : “I was stunned by this incredible book. It is the event of our half of the century. I don't see what other book could come close to its effect in the next few decades. ” As a jury member of the Prix ​​Goncourt, Semprún was able to convince his colleagues of his opinion.

In addition to minor objections that Littell's research was not accurate enough, the Shoah director Claude Lanzmann first heard the word in France that Littell would delight in the Nazi horror with the fictional memoirs of one of the perpetrators. Executioners did not want to speak, nor to be reminded, but to suppress. After meeting Littell, Lanzmann put his statements into perspective and was impressed by the accuracy of the novel: “Everything is correct. The names of the people, the places ”. And he emphasized his “lyrical side. The critics have not unjustly praised the novel. Littell deserves the awards he received. "

The book was completely rejected by the Canadian literature professor Guy Laflèche from the University of Montréal . He quotes a statement by Claude Lanzmann from 1985, La fiction est la transgression la plus grave dans une histoire pareille (for example: "In a story like this [like the genocide of the Jews], a fictional novel is the worst possible offense"). Unfortunately, Claude Lanzmann forgot this knowledge and allowed Littell to lead him into a "dialogue".

German-speaking area

In Germany, too, a lively debate quickly developed, which was mainly driven by the initiative of FAZ editor Frank Schirrmacher . To the displeasure of some publicists, this dominated the debate from February 2 to 23, 2008, alongside a partial preprint with a so-called "Reading Room" (later: "Reading Room"), a discussion forum on the FAZ website in which well-known Holocaust Researchers were available to readers with answers upon request. While the historians were noticeably reserved, the literary scholar Helmuth Kiesel said there was no comparable work in international Holocaust literature.

The literary critic Gregor Dotzauer stated that the horror of National Socialism had already been depicted from the perpetrator's perspective by Primo Levi in his Auschwitz reports and essays, and also in the grotesque Der Nazi & der Friseur des deutsch , published in 1971 in the USA and 1977 in Germany - Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath describes the Holocaust from the perpetrator's perspective. Klaus Theweleit took the view in the FAS that professional literary criticism could not do justice to the book because it remained attached to the victim perspective. In the same newspaper, Volker Weidermann described his reading experience: “With time, you confide in the narrator. Everything seems to be true what he writes. In the beginning you accept it that way and are completely occupied with defensive work. At some point, however, you are shaken by the presence of what is being told. "

The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit countered this journalistic support of the FAZ on February 14, 2008 with a detailed review section, in which, among others, the literary critic Iris Radisch ("dreary, grandiose and clichéd"), the Holocaust researcher Harald Welzer ("pure affirmation of horror") ) and the publicist Klaus Harpprecht turned against the novel. Harpprecht later in the FAZ: “His fictional character Dr. Max Aue - in reality there was no intellectual in the SS with such criminal energy and no murderer of such sophistication (there couldn't be) -… "On ZDF , Harpprecht continued: " The book itself, if you ask about the quality , is on the one hand ingenious because of its basic idea, on the other hand it is a mudslide of kitsch - it is ingenious and it is the last filth. "

Peter Schöttler , historian at the CNRS in Paris and at the Free University of Berlin , said: “There is constant shooting, shooting and murder here, blood and sperm and brain matter splattering across pages. Obviously, the author has a certain pleasure. ” In his review, the writer Georg Klein sees the shortcomings in a “ conventional description of the massacres, in the neat depiction of their circumstances and, last but not least, in the psychological and moral reasoning ” that robs the evil of the credibility . Thomas Steinfeld criticized the novel in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on February 22, 2008 as a "pornographic work" and a "monstrous book".

Criticism was also expressed from the Jewish side. Micha Brumlik said that “Littell's“ novel ”is, from a literary point of view, a rubbish heap of pornography, a narrative style that does not correspond to its subject matter, contemporary history that has been read, and fragments of moral philosophy that have not been thought through to the end.”   Michel Friedman warned against the author's Judaism in the Put in the foreground, and considered Littell's novel to be "overrated and dangerous" at the same time.

Israel

According to an “update” by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , the book would slowly “work its way up” on the bestseller lists in Israel . The historian Moshe Zimmermann described the book as fundamentally wrong, as the SS man Aue was not influenced enough ideologically, which contradicts the state of research. In addition, this group of perpetrators kept silent about their crimes. The literary critic Ariana Melamed found it amoral to write fictitiously about the Holocaust. In Haaretz , Omri advised Herzog to read the book as a supplement to the previous Israeli view of history. The historian Nili Keren praised the fact that Littell had broken the taboo on dealing with the perpetrators' psyche with his book.

Italy

The literary critic Bruno Brindisi described the novel in 2008 as an upscale country novel, which ultimately lacks any right to exist .

expenditure

  • The well-meaning. Translated by Hainer Kober . Berlin Verlag 2008 ISBN 978-3-8270-0738-4 . From September 2008 further editions at the Gutenberg book guild with linen cover and at Der Club with a cardboard cover. Also published in 2 volumes. A paperback edition was published in September 2009 by the Berliner Taschenbuch-Verlag ( ISBN 978-3-8333-0628-0 ).
  • The well-meaning. Marginalia volume ibid. ISBN 978-3-8270-0789-6 (contains: a long and a short letter from the author to his translators; Claude Lanzmann in conversation with Jürg Altwegg ; the author in conversation with Pierre Nora ; Florence Mercier-Leca : The "well-meaning" and the Greek tragedy. A macabre resumption of the Oresty ; Judith N. Klein: Understanding the "essence of great madness"? And several organizational charts, authored by Littell, on the structure of the SS and the like)
French edition
  • Les Bienveillantes . Édition revue par l'auteur (edition reviewed by the author, there was probably a previous one, to whose obvious errors - e.g. "Kommissarbrot" - some criticisms refer.) Gallimard 2006. ISBN 978-2-07-035089-6 .

Interviews

In German translation

Interviews in English

Reviews

chronological order

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Les vingt événements de 2008: Jonathan Littell récidive . In: Le Figaro , January 2, 2008
  2. ↑ "Berlin Verlag" ( Memento of February 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), FAZ.NET cultural calendar
  3. ↑ Martina Meister: In the middle of Paris . ( Memento of February 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Literatures , 2006, No. 12
  4. ↑ The NS novel starts with a mammoth edition . In: Focus , February 22, 2008
  5. ↑ a b Joseph Croitoru, in: FAZ , July 30, 2008
  6. ↑ a b c Florence Mercier-Leca: Die Wohlgesinnten , on diewohlgesinnten.de from the Berlin publishing house
  7. ↑ Whereby the Baltic line of this noble family is written Uexküll , and the Austro-Hungarian - as in the book - Üxküll.
  8. ↑ The three names can be found in: Spucker, Schläger, Schreier . In: Der Spiegel . No. 29 , 1998 ( online ).
  9. ↑ “I want to bear witness to the last.” Diaries 1933–1945 (Volumes I – VIII). Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-7466-5514-5
  10. ↑ The intellectuality and sophistication of the SS people, as described in the novel, was not without criticism: Klaus Harpprecht in the FAZ of March 12, “His [Littell's] fictional character Dr. Max Aue - in reality there was no intellectual in the SS with such criminal energy and no murderer of such sophistication (there could be no such thing) -… "
  11. ↑ https://archivtag.hypotheses.org/637
  12. ↑ See Michael Brackmann: “The day X. In June 1948 the D-Mark comes and changes the country. The currency reform has been prepared for a long time and has been worked out down to the last detail. ”In: Handelsblatt , June 25, 2006, the article from page 2 on Ohlendorf as well as Ludwig Erhard the central role for economic planning for the time after the war.
  13. ^ Judgments on Ohlendorf and ( Memento of March 5, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Blobel von Nürnberg (English)
  14. ↑ Marginalienband, p. 6. Also online on the Berlin Verlag website
  15. ^ Reprint ( memento of July 3, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in the FAZ reading room. (accessed July 20, 2008).
  16. ^ Reading room ( Memento from July 6, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) of the FAZ (accessed July 20, 2008).
  17. ↑ Aue mentions murder in the "oil sardine manner", cf. in addition z. B. Johannes Hürter: Hitler's army leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42 . Munich 2006.
  18. ↑ "Blood sausage for the break in execution" . In: FAZ , May 6, 2004. Review of Andrej Angrick's book : Occupation Policy and Mass Murder. Task Force D in the southern Soviet Union 1941–1943 . Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2003.
  19. ↑ Ultimately, the question of the perpetrator remains open, so: Die Wohlgesinnten , diewohlgesinnten.de from Berlin-Verlag.
  20. ↑ eBook
  21. ^ France and the Furies of Fascism In: taz , November 8, 2006
  22. ^ Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 9, 2006
  23. ↑ "Let me tell you how it was" .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Stuttgarter Nachrichten , February 8, 2008@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.stuttgarter-nachrichten.de  
  24. ^ Members of the Prix Goncourt ( Memento of October 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ↑ The executioners don't speak ( memento from July 30, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) In: FAZ.net , November 27, 2007
  26. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , November 28, 2007
  27. ↑ Guy Laflèche (French)
  28. ↑ Anne-Catherine Simon: “Where the brain splashes, the flies come” ( Memento from October 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) In: Die Presse , February 5, 2008
  29. ↑ Jörg Schröder , Barbara Kalender: “There was never such a Eichmann” . In: taz , February 3, 2008
  30. ↑ Conversation with Prof. Peter Schöttler on SWR2 , February 4, 2008
  31. ↑ “The mood wasn't always happy” . In: Tagesspiegel , February 16, 2008
  32. ↑ Readingroom ( memento of June 24, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , February 24, 2008
  33. ↑ The crime in the head . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed November 1, 2019]).
  34. ↑ Iris Radisch : “In the beginning there is a misunderstanding” . In: Die Zeit , February 14, 2008
  35. ↑ "In the end, the fascination remains" . In: Die Zeit , February 14, 2008
  36. ↑ The transfigured "Boche" . In: Die Zeit , February 14, 2008
  37. ^ FAZ March 12, 2008
  38. ↑ “Pulp Fiction” in book form , ZDF - aspekte , February 15, 2007, with video
  39. ↑ The wickedness of the dead . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 16, 2008
  40. ↑ A clever pornographer . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 22, 2008
  41. ↑ At table with Eichmann . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , February 22, 2008
  42. ↑ Kulturpresseschau on Deutschlandfunk , February 21, 2008
  43. ^ "Michel Friedman considers Littell's Nazi novel dangerous" , Berliner Literaturkritik, February 29, 2008
  44. ↑ L'Europeo magazine , 12/2008, p. 24f.
  45. ↑ Peter Schöttler : Ripley in the land of the Shoah . In: Tagesspiegel , October 29, 2006. Littell seems to have discreetly corrected some of the inaccuracies noted in this review, such as “Kommissarbrot” instead of “Kommissbrot” in the current French and German editions.