Obituary: After the death of Siegfried Lenz: Our all German teachers – Augsburger Allgemeine

A scandal? A loud word? All that did not exist at Siegfried Lenz. On Tuesday, he died at the age of 88 years. Why millions of readers have admired the great writer. From Günter Ott
 

The image is in the memory: Siegfried Lenz, sitting in a wheelchair, in the Hamburger Michael Church. Up front, also in a wheelchair, his close friend Helmut Schmidt. That was in 2010 at the funeral of Loki Schmidt, the wife of the ex-chancellor

How often were Lenz and Schmidt sat together, had talked to each other and silent -., And is covered in smoke. One of them had a legendary match consumption to keep his pipe under fire; the harmonious gathering of two masters (recently documented in the book by Jörg Magenau), at the same time a nightmare scenario for each lung doctor

 

VIEW

 
 

 

Another image rises up: Siegfried Lenz on the Schillerhoehe the German Literature Archive in Marbach am Neckar. The writer passes his estate, another gem for Marbach. A scene from the summer of this year, a few months before his death. Lenz, 88 years old, speaks with usual quiet, pleasant voice. He is what he was almost always a calming influence, a man of gentleness, nothing more needs to delude themselves. His (second) wife Ulla and he were “in an age when it is time important things reasonable to regulate …”

Siegfried Lenz remains until the end of his homeland connected

Launched in 2014 in Hamburg also the Siegfried Lenz Foundation, which is to reappraise the barely manageable, distributed millions of copies of works: 14 novels, 120 short stories, numerous short stories, radio plays and dramas, including global hits such as “German Hour” (1968 ), the Masurian stories “So tender was Suleyken” (1955), “Heritage Museum” (1978) and the novella “Moment of Silence” (2008).

Siegfried Lenz from Elk in the Mazury proves its origin, the reverence , that the south of East Prussia, “between hidden lakes and pine forests” located. Have that area, according to the author, no famous physicists or skate master or president brought forth, but something in the long term will provide the work of this writer with stories and staff – “the inconspicuous gold of human society”. With this treasure Lenz says no one other than the wood workers and peasants, fishermen, small artisans and broom makers.

To the soul of the common people wrap themselves in the inventions, the winking, clips of irony and exaggeration declarations of love. The exaggeration is at Lenz in the service of truth. The decisive factor is not what corresponds to the facts, but what is possible.

is possible in the customs official’s son lives at first not much. The war comes, the Convening of the Navy, Desertion later the verge of collapse. Lenz studied in Hamburg, he wants to become a teacher, the study funded by black market – and then comes under as a journalist in the world. There he met his future wife, Liselotte know. You will be at his side until her death in 2006

After the death of Siegfried Lenz. Scandals No, only worship

In 1951, the first novel “appears There were hawks in the air “. The book has been previously published as a serial novel in the world. Henceforth Lenz is a freelance writer in Hamburg, last then also on the Danish island of Als and the Schleswig-Holstein Tetenhusen. What will distinguish him, is an unexcited tone, a need for harmony, at least for understanding. “I stripped her swimsuit off and they let it happen, they helped me, and we made love there in the trough at the Pines.” A scene from the discrete, perhaps because soghaften novella “minute of silence”. A high school boy loves his English teacher. As so often with Lenz, the encounters play at the lake. Is told from the elegiac look back. Stella, the teacher is dead already on the first page of the book. A school auditorium is their thought. The question remains, what of this love could be …

An example from the unexcited and disturbing in parts of late work. What drastic? Why this unnerving clarity? In both Lenz can do without for a lifetime. The man with the blue eyes and the charm of a curious boy always appears as the peacefulness in person. Does anyone remember any (literature) scandal, or at least on a larger debate about Martin Walser or Günter Grass accompanied like a Siamese twin? Nothing like that. Lenz is revered and read by millions. Resentment, he excites almost never. Once, perhaps, as the East Prussian 1970 at offend conservatives and displaced persons associations. Together with the former Chancellor Willy Brandt and Grass he travels to Warsaw and will witness the recognition of Poland’s western border

Siegfried Lenz. A conservative tinged schoolmaster

Is Lenz those little stuffy? inspired schoolmaster, who has some scene too clearly flagged out? He has such traits. But the critics fail to recognize his emotional ambivalence, his unprimed through humor humanity, his impish twinkle behind all the tragedy, its rich character spectrum, the sharply contoured characterizations of people and landscape.

All this can be found exemplified in his greatest success , the “German Hour” (1968). It’s about the Nazi period, more precisely to the question of how it kept the people of that time with morality, with the resistor? In Lenz, the painter Max Ludwig Nansen, the many links with Emil Nolde, is because of his critical attitude towards the regime from painting and polices. Here of course the similarity ends with Nolde, although the “degenerate” to the Nazi authorities has been used as an avowed Nazi and anti-Semite.

The “German Hour” is above all an artist novel. Nansen designs a (narrative) program: “Seeing is penetration and propagation. Or even invent. To the same to you, you have to reinvent yourself again and again, with every glance. “To see is to invent means to tell. Narrative is all remember. The remembrance creates home. These core concepts circling the letter of Siegfried Lenz. The author has established itself as one of the first dealt with a taboo in postwar German literature: the changed consciousness of the lost homeland against. Exactly it is the novel “history museum”

“); google_ad_client =”. Ca-pub-8780390774800539 “; google_ad_channel =” 3846174335 “; google_ad_slot =” 1673583032 “; google_ad_width = 572; google_ad_height = 160; google_ad_type = “text”; google_font_face = “arial”; google_tfs = 15; google_color_link = “# 19517F”; google_color_text = “# 4B4A4A”; google_color_url = “# BCBCBC”; google_ui_version = 1; google_override_format = true;