Local lore. Essays and speeches

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Local lore. Essays and Speeches is a volume by Martin Walser from 1968, consisting of nine speeches and essays . Walser critically describes the reality of the Federal Republic between 1965 and 1968 and reflects on the events and conditions of the Auschwitz trial and the Vietnam War , analyzes homeland, dialect, the political language and also addresses the theater, the role of America in the Vietnam War and the social relationship of a writer.

The title Heimatkunde is also the title of an essay contained therein. For Martin Walser, home means a kind of linguistically oriented bond. Walser is closely connected to his homeland and has been shaped by his mother tongue, Alemannic . Home and dialect are two important themes that Walser often addresses in his work. Their importance for Walser is reflected in the title of the volume.

Contributions

Our Auschwitz

In this political essay, first published in 1965 in the first edition of the course book , Martin Walser dealt intensively with the events in Auschwitz and the subsequent reactions and processes and is one of the few who has publicly dealt with the handling of the Holocaust . In the first part of his essay, Our Auschwitz , he first addresses the distance we humans build from Auschwitz. No one was spared details by media and newspaper reports and the "more hideous the detail, the more precisely it was communicated to us". But it was also true: “The more terrible the Auschwitz quotes, the clearer our distance from Auschwitz becomes. We have nothing to do with these events [...] ”. The accused are insulted several times in the media as devils or predators. In an interview on May 8, 2015 for the program Aspects , Walser said that the guilty party couldn't be called the devil; it was much more a German organization, "managed and implemented with all our characteristics". He also wrote in his essay that the torturers “were not fantastic devils, but people like you and me”. Above all, Auschwitz has become important because of the prisoners and is problematic for our nationality. However, it is only the prisoners who know what Auschwitz really was.

The second part is mainly about the ignorance of Germans and the concept of collective guilt . A main problem that Walser describes is that we were completely clueless about the brutalities and excluded ourselves as confidants. With this, “we lose the rest of national solidarity with the perpetrators. We forget [...] that we were at least patient witnesses when one step after the other visibly took place in front of us from 1933 to 1943 ”. Nevertheless, collective guilt is a term that Walser rejects in this context; because "wherever there is a feeling of shame, where conscience should report, I am not affected". In the interview, he also makes it clear that guilt is a very problematic word in general, as guilt or innocence can always be discussed. Shame, on the other hand, is a term without absolution, shame cannot be washed off, but something that remains. With all these difficulties of the concentration camp processes, we ultimately long for peace, "which [bears the beautiful name of justice]". The fact is, however, that Auschwitz is always present for the victims and cannot be forgotten. However, we can forget Auschwitz; there will be no further consequences unless we were involved.

Practitioners, unworldly and Vietnam

The essay Praktiker, Weltfrende und Vietnam shows that Walser raised his voice not only against the suppression of the National Socialist past , but also against that of the Vietnam War . Walser wrote: “This is our war. [...] The Americans are our closest allies, our closest political friends. They are waging this war in our name too ”. It is a war that is not connected to chance, but is much more connected to the USA, the Federal Republic and the whole world. So you shouldn't just stay out of it. However, Walser describes Germany as the only country that has not yet expressed any public, political criticism of this war. His moral condemnation is "continued to criticize the tacit tolerance of this war by the federal government and a public that still wants to cling to the friendly image of America in the 1950s." At the end of this essay, Walser calls on you to step in for the SPD and for all practitioners and tacticians and to express your own criticism of the Vietnam War.

Information about the protest

Information about the protest is a short essay about the meaning, the purpose and also the success of protests. It is often the case that despite protests we do nothing. So why are we protesting? Just for the feeling that you haven't left untried? Does this feeling alone really satisfy us? Walser asks himself these questions and emphasizes that protests arise from facts, but above all, in connection with the Vietnam War, are generated by the belligerents themselves.

Local lore

Martin Walser's essay Heimatkunde dates from 1967. Walser deals with the topic of Heimat , which he also takes up again and again in other works. He is not to be regarded as a local writer ", but as an author who deals with local history, who determines, analyzes and explores". At the time the essay was written, local history was still a subject “in which the immediate perception of their surroundings should become the starting point of learning for the students” and which is very similar to today's geography subject . This definitely includes dealing with history, the country and the people from the area, and so National Socialism tried to combine and spread its ideology with it. The title Heimatkunde is therefore not meant in a "folkloristic or club-like sense programmatically: Heimatkunde is a thoroughly time-critical undertaking that must also concern the Auschwitz trials or the Vietnam War."

The essay begins critically with the words “When it comes to home, it is easy to be unscrupulous. [...] Heimat, that is certainly the most beautiful name for backwardness ”. The concept of backwardness as a contrast to progress now leads us into Walser's problematic; because "despite all the love for intellectual historical progress since the Enlightenment, despite all the love for democratic-political progress in Germany, Walser respects the hidden substance that lies in the backwardness, even worships it a little". Walser sees the main problem in the "fashionable progressiveness", which includes casual mobility. In this context, Walser reflects on his own place of residence, the area around Lake Constance , where he himself stayed. He describes his great interest in walks, which he attributes to the fact that it is difficult for him to get completely away from his surroundings. But his statements about walks can also be seen as thought processes with which he reflects on the past. He expresses his passion and his interest in local history clearly: “Now I go for a walk. Between Ice Age, Good Friday and Pentecost. On these difficult, attractive paths. Apparently I'm interested. To local lore. "

The exploration of his homeland is a fundamental theme in Walser's works, both historically and contemporary. Its “literary sedentariness” has its origins in the water, Lake Constance, and that is where the last paragraph of the essay Heimatkunde begins and ends - with Lake Constance, a friendly body of water in which people are sure to regularly drown and yet one often forgets how strange one is the water can be. The water, which is also the reason why one has not yet left home.

Notes about our dialect

Comments about our dialect is an essay by Walser from 1967. Born and raised at Lake Constance, it is almost necessary for Walser to deal with the language and the dialect . For him, Heimat is also very much due to his linguistic character. While Munich Bavarian and Stuttgart Swabian have developed into features of the class, Alemannic , Walser's mother tongue, was continuously interpreted as a sign of a lack of education and was therefore threatened with extinction. Nevertheless, even if you stop speaking the dialect, you will never get rid of your mother tongue.

Walser describes the dialect as an always concrete language that reveals the untenable. The dialect is against using words that one does not understand, or words that have no real reason in oneself; When you learned the dialect as your mother tongue, every utterance had a right cause and a valid reason. Walser observes a kind of tension between dialect and high-level language and feels the dialect as "unassigned, incorruptible". Dieter Wellershoff, on the other hand, argues that exactly the opposite can be the case: “Because when you learned dialect as your mother tongue, you hardly made any judgments and understood little, but simply took over the prejudices of those around you. Walser misjudged himself because the dialect, like everything socially unfamiliar, has oppositional stimulus for him. ”Walser ends his essay by making a comparison between childhood and dialect. He considers the dialect to be just as important as the lost childhood, the aftermath of which has the greatest impact in the dialect.

The slogans and the reality

The slogans and the reality is a speech by Walser from 1967. Walser first goes into the motto and its transience and draws attention to the fact that people make fun of earlier slogans, but forgets that our motto today will also look funny in the future become. Today's slogans neither claim to have already achieved a goal, nor do they serve as a prediction of the coming years; they always proceed “from the development and continuation of what is intended in the constitution”. There are certainly good and beautiful slogans that call for vigilant and critical behavior; but these, too, remain mere slogans - "sayings that are in motion without anything changing because of it". It emphasizes the idea of democracy and assures us that each of us is important for democracy to be achieved. Nevertheless, Walser asks critically: “Let's stay with the dependent, with the employee; Since the majority of the population is dependent, in a democracy the interest of this majority should be decisive for the establishment of democracy. Is that so?"

Walser differentiates between, on the one hand, having the right to express one's opinion freely and, on the other hand, being able to make use of this right. Idea and reality diverge from one another when a society expresses the idea of ​​democracy aloud, but the interests of powerful groups differ. This is where Walser's spirit of contradiction becomes visible, which repeatedly appears in his works. This is how Walser expresses his own watchword by calling on us not to be talked out of our interests or to be bought off. Rather, we should be constantly aware of what is in our interest, even if this is not always easy to determine. Finally, Walser ends the speech by stating, on the one hand, that the Federal Republic of Germany is still a long way from democracy; but he “closes with the hope that this 'vital interest' of the majority will prevail”.

Another daydream of the theater

Walser has dealt a lot with the theater and with the related subject of art, which is very difficult to describe using the varied vocabulary. He is critical of the fact that contemporary theater is heavily in the "imaging service", "to which both the illusion or imitation theater and the Brechtian example and parable theater pay homage". The representations on the stage are harmless images of reality. Walser criticizes the previous character of the theater and justifies this criticism “firstly with its separation of reality and art […], secondly with the fact that the theaters perform plays from earlier centuries as if they still concern today's audience as much as they do the audience from the time in which the piece was created, [...] and thirdly with the fact that with the help of a used vocabulary stemming from idealistic aesthetics, pieces are written with actions that actually meet the hidden and open conditioning of consciousness in today's society in no way take into account ”. Here Walser ties in with the statements in his previous speech The slogans and reality , since for him, among other things, the theater of consciousness is responsible for the implementation of democracy, as it does not directly represent a part of politics, but nevertheless forces the realization of reality.

Ultimately, he expresses his wish in the liberation of the theater from any “artistic constraints and depiction burdens” as well as in the movement of a part towards the future. He would like the theater as a place of "independent actions [... which] could express our unhappy consciousness more precisely". Furthermore, Walser pleads for a stage figure "who would be as difficult to understand as any real person, like any real consciousness". The focus should always be on awareness - as an elementary part of a society. Walser longs for a theater of awareness that does not represent art but also life on stage, and yet this idea has so far been very vague.

More American than the Americans

More American than the Americans is a speech by Walser on International Vietnam Day in 1967, in which he opposed the American Vietnam War. In the first part of his speech, Walser involved many quotations and first differentiated between two wars within the Vietnam War: "clear and destroy", often also called " scorched earth " and "pacification", translated as "satisfaction".

Walser notes that although the majority of Europeans criticize the American attitude towards the war, it is still most popular in the Federal Republic. He brings statements from various, mostly well-known personalities into his speech and criticizes, among other things, Heinrich Lübke's statement about the Americans as “champions of freedom”. He also quotes Klaus Mehnert , who sees America's stance as an obligation and always describes world politics as credible. Walser also refers to American voices like the Martin Luther Kings , who made it clear in 1967 that the Americans and not the Vietnamese are the real enemy. He also criticizes Cardinal Spellmann, who maintained that human life is always the most precious good for all Americans; because Walser puts forward the assumption that the cardinal only describes American or white life as human life, and yellow is simply not white. With the presentation of various quotes and statements, Walser always takes a position against the war; however, he has long considered Americans "prisoners of an anti-communist tradition". Finally, he refers to a very profound sentence that Jawaharlal Nehru said in 1956: “There is nothing more dangerous than when a country uses violence to do good to other countries.” Here he regrets that this statement also received too little attention from Lübke.

With this the second part of his speech begins, in which he devotes himself to the conclusions. It is noticeable that Walser speaks of the positive sides and actions of the Americans, which for him should not be forgotten: of the liberation of Cuba , the victory over the Kaiser and Hitler and ultimately also their acceptance of Germany. Walser concludes that there were obviously several Americas, which begs the question of which America now governs politically. Because America's brutal behavior as a world power is also an issue for Germany. Even if many are of the opinion that after the Second World War the Germans had no reason to reproach the Americans, Walser always countered: “We in particular have to do more than reproach America, which is waging the war. After all, we have experience with self-delusion. ”Martin Walser ended his speech by giving people thought. You should think about the question of whether the silence within the Federal Republic is really sufficient and correct.

Commitment as a compulsory subject for writers

Commitment as a compulsory subject for writers is a radio lecture from 1968 with a total of four postscripts. The lecture deals with the writers' commitment and their position in society. Walser consolidates that “everyone knows where a committed writer stands or has to stand today”, including the committed writer. In doing so, he criticizes both the public expectations and the people's constant urge to express themselves politically, whereby he in no way excludes himself. The writer should follow the provocations of life that lead to poetry [...]. But not the inlets and outlets that are repeatedly warned by the public, which only increase the general "irritating noise".

The irritating noise itself, as an expression of politics, is supplied by the committed person; through it the gap between assertion and real consciousness becomes clear. Accordingly, the committed delivers what is expected of him without changing anything in reality, and this creates a kind of game. Is commitment something that can be so easily asked for? Walser is of the opinion that the political attitude of an author can usually be classified as trustworthy in literary works; any further kind of interference is only a sign of provocation that leads to clarification. In his radio essay, Walser illustrates this with the example that a writer can come to the view through American newspapers that the Germans are poorly informed about the Vietnam War and largely support the war. Such a situation can lead to clarification and engagement. The whole war can provoke, so that clarification is often considered necessary. Education is part of the commitment in terms of content. It is not always just writers who are committed and protest, but also often students, pastors, lawyers, lecturers, etc., who disseminate protest, are committed and at the same time also participate in a movement for change.

This radio lecture is followed by four postscripts:

  1. In the first postscript, Walser emphasizes that protest alone will not be enough and falls back on the idea of ​​democratizing work, which should always remain the most important goal, also for any commitment.
  2. The second postscript is about writers who put their own difficulties on paper in order to perhaps cope with them. Accordingly, the main interest of these writers lies with themselves.
  3. With the third postscript, Walser once again draws attention to democracy, which many contemporaries believe has stagnated for years; however, this opinion is not yet expressed politically. Politicians are always convinced of their statements and do not doubt. Intellectuals are not capable enough to be politically active and “only talk to be right”. Should a new political style develop? How does it have to develop so that intellectuals can also participate politically?
  4. The fourth postscript is entitled A Visit in Bonn and takes us back to the Vietnam theme, which Walser dealt intensively with in many works and above all in essays. He quotes Federal Chancellor Kiesinger , who said in 1968 that "we in particular [...] have not the slightest reason to pose as America's schoolmasters". For Walser, this sentence only means that Germany has committed genocide and now America is also committing genocide, and “one crow should not poke another eye out”. Walser rebels once again against the Vietnam War and pleads for more attention, more criticism and more zeal from the citizens, also in line with the primary goal of all government: the reunification of Germany .

Work context

The local history work . Essays and Speeches contains articles, essays and speeches from the years 1965 to 1968. The subject thus includes the Second World War, especially the problem of the Auschwitz trials in the post-war period. Collective guilt, shame and shame are key terms.

The situation of the Vietnam War, which was at the center of public attention at the time Walser's local history was created, is described in detail in the second article, but also repeatedly taken up in further articles in order to continually emphasize its importance. In addition to these two important, historical and political events in German history, Walser also tries to depict the reality of the Federal Republic between 1965 and 1968 with other topics, such as the theater, the dialect, the commitment of the writers and also the identification and homeland.

expenditure

  • Local lore. Essays and speeches. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1968 (= edition suhrkamp 269), DNB 458569186 .
  • Local lore. Essays and speeches. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996 (= edition Suhrkamp 3315, one-time special edition), ISBN 3-518-13315-2 .

literature

  • Wilfried Barner (ed.): History of German literature from 1945 to the present. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54220-6 .
  • Georg Braungart : "I don't have the feeling that I have moved". Martin Walser's "turning point" between local history and a sense of history. In: Walter Erhart, Dirk Niefanger: Two turning points. Views on German literature 1945 and 1989. Max Niemeyer Verlag, Tübingen 1997, ISBN 3-484-10762-6 .
  • Wilhelm Gössmann : Local history in the novels of Martin Walser. In: Hans-Georg Pott (Ed.): Literature and Province. The concept of “home” in recent literature. Ferdinand Schöningh, 1986.
  • Gerhard Kluge (ed.): Studies on drama in the Federal Republic of Germany. Rodopi, Amsterdam 1983, ISBN 90-6203-625-2 .
  • Matthias N. Lorenz : “We can get by without each other.” Walter Boehlich's and Martin Walser's estrangement as a result. In: Walter Boehlich (Ed.): Critics. Berlin 2011, pp. 143–165.
  • Martin Oehlen: The encounter of foreign worlds. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . November 11, 2001 ( online ).
  • Stuart Taberner: The Triumph of Subjectivity. Martin Walser's Novels of the 1990s and his Der Lebenslauf der Liebe. In: Stuart Parkes, Fritz Wefelmeyer: German Monitor. Soul work on Germany. Martin Walser in Perspective. Rodopi, Amsterdam 2004, ISBN 90-420-1993-X , pp. 429-443.
  • Martin Walser: Local history. Essays and speeches. Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • Dieter Wellershoff : The writer and the public, Martin Walser's politicizing essays. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . November 12, 1968, pp. 3-5.
  • The remorse of Martin Walser. Aspects, ZDF, Germany, 2015.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martin Walser: Local history. Essays and speeches. Frankfurt am Main 1968, p. 8.
  2. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 8.
  3. ^ The regret of Martin Walser (aspekte, ZDF, Germany 2015, 00:01:50 - 00: 02.00)
  4. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 11.
  5. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 10.
  6. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 17.
  7. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 18.
  8. ↑ Cf. The Remorse of Martin Walser (00:00:40 - 00:10:53)
  9. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 21.
  10. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 21.
  11. ↑ See Stuart Taberner: The Triumph of Subjectivity. Martin Walser's Novels of the 1990s and his Der Lebenslauf der Liebe. In: Stuart Parkes, Fritz Vefelmeyer: German Monitor. Soul work on Germany. Martin Walser in Perspective. Rodopi, 2004, p. 429.
  12. ↑ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 28.
  13. ^ Dieter Wellershoff: The writer and the public, Martin Walser's politicizing essays. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 12, 1968, p. 3f.
  14. ↑ See Wilhelm Gössmann: Heimatkunde in the novels of Martin Walser. In: Hans-Georg Pott (Ed.): Literature and Province. The concept of “home” in recent literature. Ferdinand Schöningh, 1986, p. 87.
  15. ↑ Cf. Gössmann: Heimatkunde , p. 85.
  16. ↑ a b c Gössmann: Heimatkunde , p. 88.
  17. ↑ Cf. Gössmann: Heimatkunde , p. 88.
  18. ↑ Georg Braungart: “I don't have the feeling that I have moved.” Martin Walser's “turning point” between local history and a sense of history . In: Walter Erhart, Dirk Niefanger: Two turning points. Views of German literature 1945 and 1989. Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1997, p. 100.
  19. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 40.
  20. ↑ Cf. Gössmann: Heimatkunde , p. 89.
  21. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 45.
  22. ↑ Cf. Gössmann: Heimatkunde, p. 89.
  23. ^ Gössmann: Heimatkunde, p. 89.
  24. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 50.
  25. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 51f.
  26. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 56.
  27. ↑ a b Wellershoff: The writer and the public, p. 4.
  28. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 58.
  29. ^ Gerhard Kluge (ed.): Studies on drama in the Federal Republic of Germany. Amsterdam 1983, p. 122.
  30. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 60.
  31. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 61.
  32. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 61.
  33. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, pp. 64–67.
  34. ↑ Kluge: Studies on Drama, p. 123.
  35. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 73.
  36. ↑ a b Kluge: Studies on Drama, p. 84.
  37. ↑ See Kluge: Studien zur Dramatik, p. 123.
  38. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 75.
  39. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 80.
  40. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 82.
  41. ↑ Cf. Wellershoff: The writer and the public, p. 3.
  42. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 86.
  43. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 87.
  44. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, pp. 89–92.
  45. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 96.
  46. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 97.
  47. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 99.
  48. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 100.
  49. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 103.
  50. ↑ Wilfried Barner et al. a. (Ed.): History of German literature from 1945 to the present. Darmstadt 2006, p. 593.
  51. ↑ Martin Oehlen: The encounter of strange worlds. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, November 11, 2001.
  52. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 104.
  53. ↑ Cf. Matthias N. Lorenz: “We can get by without each other.” Walter Boehlich's and Martin Walser's estrangement as a result. In: Walter Boehlich (ed.): Critics. Berlin 2011, p. 160.
  54. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, pp. 111–112.
  55. ↑ See Walser: Heimatkunde, pp. 116–119.
  56. ^ Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 121.
  57. ↑ a b Walser: Heimatkunde, p. 122.