On the Death of Grass: The Salt of the herd – tagesspiegel

13.04.2015 23:43 clock Rüdiger Schaper

self-doubt? Modesty? None. The role of the post-war Germans with the forefinger claimed Günter Grass to the last. This involved from the outset by the Part of the self-righteous denier. A comment

All his life has Günter Grass society gives the feeling that he always serve the good and just cause. Where Grass was the political decency and rebellion could not be far. In truth has not been Marcel Reich-Ranicki literature Pope of the Federal Republic, but Günter Grass. Grass from the authority of the ennobled poet and at the same time the eloquence of a Warners and admonisher, the verpanzerte with fairy tales, myths and vorzeitlichem creatures said. Grass has dominated the image of the dedicated writers, the intellectuals for decades

And also:. Usurped

Writers are left.. Writers get involved, otherwise they are not good writers. Writers have a clear view and work in social progress. Writers go to conventions, harangue, get upset. This phenotype is due Günter Grass: with a mustache and a pipe. With fanfare and hoopla. Self-doubt? None. Modesty? He just said Grass, not Böll.

Throughout the world literature must we look for to find a firstling struck as 1959, “The Tin Drum”. This was not a narrow band, but equal to the thickest fish that ever came out of the Baltic Sea. Not even the “Buddenbrooks” both earned their debutant Thomas Mann such a success thunderstorm, at least not immediately. With the “drum” was the basic key decision is made in Gdansk. Impact and gaudy. For the film Volker Schlöndorff won an Oscar in 1979.

From his poison and food stall came late poems about Israel and Greece

Grass itself had great acting talent. Who would ever like him, the good Germans embodies, with all the social registers? “More democracy” – the famous motto of Willy Brandt Günter Grass attributed. For or against Grass had not been used? And then something happened in 2006 that any politician would have cost office and reputation. Grass was the story with the Waffen-SS. But a writer does not withdraw. And the moral authority remained at the base, albeit shaky. Not that he had joined as a 17 year old murderer pile, was the misconduct. The break was that he had concealed or repressed for a lifetime. That it did not prevent him from becoming the postwar German with the largest index finger and to maintain this role permanently. Only it was more complex than expected. This included, from the beginning, the part of the self-righteous denier

Preceptor Germaniae, a preacher of wrath, a hedonist. From his poison and food stall late poems about Israel and Greece came. It must be said, with the famous phrase from the “Butt”: Grass salted after, after Ilsebill type. It was inedible.

So it should be. So he wanted to be. So it will not do more because people die with this war and postwar biographies and Rants on the Internet are on the agenda. Günter Grass has grown the last of his kind, the poetic and the J’accuse. Deeply he was a figure of the ideological 20th century. His appearance was reverberation, the public wanted the unpleasant, bulky chunks. The time will separate the. It helps the books when they are freed from the burden of vanity and the morality of the day. Then, and will remain: the literature

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