Air War and Literature

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Air War and Literature is a literary historical study by the writer and literary scholar WG Sebald .

Emergence

The book published in 1999 is essentially based on lectures given by WG Sebald in the late autumn of 1997 in the Zurich Puppet Theater. The question was whether German literature dealt adequately and adequately with the subject of the Allied area bombing during World War II , which Sebald doubted. It spoke of a social taboo. Even this first presentation of his theses met with a great response. In Switzerland, Andreas Isenschmid raised the question under the heading “Germany's shameful family secret” (a formulation by Sebald) whether the poetics lecture was an “aestheticization of the German experience of victims”; he came to the conclusion that Sebald was not a German revisionist: “In his first four narrative books he wrote about German guilt and Jewish suffering. He kept the dead in these books. And he does it without any wrong note, including in his new text. ”In Germany, Sebald's lecture was first reported in January 1998 in“ Spiegel ”. The great journalistic interest induced the author to submit his reflections later in book form, and he also addressed the public reactions and letters that had reached him.

content

The main part of the book consists of the three lectures that have been expanded for the book version. So the novel is, among other things retaliation by Gert Ledig considered from 1956, which was not mentioned in Zurich. Sebald's core thesis is: “Certainly there is one or the other relevant text, but the little that has been handed down to us in the literature is out of all proportion to the extreme collective experiences of that time, both in quantitative and qualitative terms.” Those who were born later could use the “Witness of the writers” hardly give a picture of the course, the extent and the consequences of “the catastrophe brought to Germany by the bombing war”. He lamented the "inability of an entire generation of German authors to record what they had seen and bring it to our memory". In the book edition, as in other of his works, Sebald has included images. There is also a critical essay on the writer Alfred Andersch .

reception

Soon after the publication of the "Spiegel" article, a debate in the "FAZ" followed in January 1998. First of all, Frank Schirrmacher affirmed Sebald's view of German post-war literature: “The description of bombing and expulsion” is still suspected of exonerating. Klaus Harpprecht replied: “The silence hid a shame that is more precious than all literature.” The writer Maxim Biller took the view that the real catastrophe for German post-war literature was not so much the lies and silence of the father generation, but in that "the sons soon learned from their fathers to lie, to be silent and to stand by". Gustav Seibt stated in the "Berliner Zeitung": "The debate about it weighed back and forth in January, and its preliminary result is a not so small list of forgotten books in which the aerial warfare does appear." Sebald saw them himself Possibility, as he said in an interview at the beginning of 2000, that the gap he claimed can still be closed: “I think that is possible. I even think it's right. Fifty years is not that much. "

According to Silke Horstkotte, however, the impressive list of literary works in the first part of Volker Hage's Witnesses to Destruction proves once again that - contrary to Sebald's theses - the bombing war on German cities has been dealt with in an abundance of literary works.

literature

  • WG Sebald: Air War and Literature . Hanser, Munich 1999

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Isenschmid: Germany schandbares family secret . In: Tages-Anzeiger, December 4, 1997
  2. ↑ Volker Hage: Fire from Heaven. In: Der Spiegel. January 12, 1998. Retrieved August 24, 2019 .
  3. ^ WG Sebald: Air War and Literature . Hanser, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-446-19661-7 , pp. 82 .
  4. ^ WG Sebald: literature and aerial warfare . Hanser, Munich 1999, p. 81 .
  5. ^ WG Sebald: Air War and Literature . Hanser, Munich 1999, p. 8 .
  6. ^ Frank Schirrmacher: Air War. Will post-war German literature begin tomorrow? Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 15, 1998
  7. ↑ Klaus Harpprecht: Silence, fateless. Why post-war literature was silent about a lot. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 15, 1998
  8. ↑ Maxim Biller: Innocence with verdigris. How the lie got into German literature. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 13, 1998
  9. ^ Gustav Seibt: Speechless in the firestorm. Berliner Zeitung, February 14/15, 1998
  10. ↑ Volker Hage: Witnesses to the Destruction. The writers and the aerial warfare . Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-596-16035-8 , pp. 279 .
  11. ↑ Silke Horstkotte: Review of: Hage, Volker: Zeugen der Destruction. The writers and the aerial warfare. Essays and conversations. Frankfurt am Main 2003. ISBN 3-10-028901-3 / Hage, Volker (Hrsg.): Hamburg 1943. Literary testimonies to the firestorm. Frankfurt am Main 2003. ISBN 3-596-16036-7 , in: H-Soz-Kult, October 31, 2003, [hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-4916]