Funeral: Big farewell to Günter Grass in Lübeck – THE WORLD

That would have pleased him, as you have given him on Sunday at the theater in Lübeck farewell. A funeral with schwarzgedecktem pathos he did not want and – which is not hard to guess – the last word, which was granted to him by the mouth of the daughter Helene and friend Mario Adorf

In his poem” I dreamed that I would have to say goodbye to “Günter Grass lets reminisce all the things that are really important in life, simple, concrete things and experiences that make up a human being. And in “Kleckerburg” he negotiated, although great things and intractable conflicts such as the loss of their homeland and the policies of the expellees’ associations. But the main role played onomatopoeic the Baltic Sea, the Baltic puddle on whose shores he was born as Danzig and died as Lübeck.

It is not so that at the memorial service in Lübeck not well-chosen words had been spoken. Grass was, after all, an institution, something like the national poet of postwar Germans. Accordingly great was the presence of political personalities. Only when the President had taken his place, the celebration began. The SPD, which the poet was connected in difficult affection and fidelity, offered on their party leader Sigmar Gabriel and a team of the Prime Minister. Even former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder was like an old, wise and a bit of a lone wolf in the front rows one.

Culture Minister Monika Grütters of the CDU flirted with her different political coloring and wall the great dead but then with inner conviction, as you have to believe her, the laurel wreath as a “contradiction artist”, an innovator of the German novel and as a great teacher of democratic virtues. The Lübeck Mayor Bernd Saxe did his duty, and implored the Nobel Prize-triumvirate Thomas Mann, Willy Brandt and Günter Grass, and the Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz said simply: “. We are proud of him, we Poles and we Danziger”

Photo: AP The American writer John Irving cites his friend Günter Grass returned to the stage

And then was the “eulogy “by John Irving on the program. With Anglo-Saxon understatement but the bestselling author underwent all expectations who like to build on this genre. In a kind of chitchat he quoted the dead on the stage, the very reason is irreplaceable, because there is now no longer a writer, write the Social Democratic campaign speeches, quote a fluke against a feminist Tribunal and political-literary Handel from the period of the Thirty Years’ War in could transform contemporary literature.

But was so far been his literary cosmos, Irving said, Grass had been so but driven by a central motif, the sense of Shame. From the beginning he had written to “Peeling the Onion”. The onion skins, so you have to understand Irving, was his literary method. Not quite consistent blends belonging to the further statement that Grass was childish “as most writers”. So then wore the figure of the Jewish toy retailer Sigismund Markus, from the Oskar gets his tin drums, features a self-portrait? Günter Grass was even the “King of toy dealers”? This raises then but quieter dizziness, and you would like to know what the old man had said about it.

But the says nothing. Which is now in the churchyard of Behlendorf under the lawn. A little off is placed the grave mound. The wreaths withered already, the writing on the wreath binding faded slowly. The Gypsies have sent last greetings, the City Council of Gdansk, of course, family and friends. It is hard to imagine that from this humble tomb once may be a place of pilgrimage. The occasional visitors wonder. In Behlendorf Grass wanted to have peace and quiet. He has now found there. The city council had on Sunday put the flags at half-mast in front of the fire station.

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