Review Post 33 - Friendship and Innocence

Putting aside my predilection for Japanese literature and all things Victoriana, one of my most prominent reading interests is German-language literature, especially twentieth century works.  Of course, as soon as you start to think about that, you realise that there's not just an elephant in the room; rather, there's a whole herd of rampaging pachyderms jumping up and down on your sofa and trampling the cushions underfoot.  However, while books set during the wars can be classics (one instantly springs to mind...), many works examine the times between the wars, or post-1945.  And that's where we're going today...

*****

As alluded to above, the classic war novel is Erich-Maria Remarque's Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front).  Sadly, I read it for the last time shortly before creating this blog, so you'll just have to put up with my telling you that it's really, really good.  Remarque followed his war novel with Der Weg Zurück (The Way Back, or Coming Home as it's usually translated), a book examining the problems the surviving soldiers faced on their return to a defeated Germany.  The final book in Remarque's post-WW1 trilogy, Drei Kameraden (Three Comrades), moves the action on to 1928/9 and follows three former soldiers as they slowly start to think about settling down and building a 'normal' life for themselves.

Robby Lohkamp is happily drifting along in the company of his two army colleagues, Gottfried Lenz and Otto Köster, working at Otto's car repair workshop by day and moving from bar to bar at night in search of distraction.  This comfortable life of nothingness comes to an end when he meets the beautiful Pat, destined to become the love of his life.  Although it sounds like the start of a run-of-the-mill love story, Robby and Pat's relationship is slightly more complex than that, threatened by the ghosts of Robby's past, the uncertain economic environment of the present and certain unfortunate events yet to come.

Remarque captures the feeling of the age beautifully, a generation of young men unable to commit to settling down, unwilling to allow themselves to believe in normality lest it be torn from them again.  As times become harder, people roam the streets, looking for work or, in some cases, just a warm place to while away a few hours.  This climate of anxiety and fear drives people to seek comfort in little pleasures, often of the alcoholic variety, and where little money is available, violence is always just around the corner.  Ironically, after fighting to bring about peace, the old soldiers have returned to a society hell bent on conflict and destruction.

And yet there is an underlying sense of calm and hope throughout the novel.  The very idea of living on the edge means that the people are only too willing to make the most of any opportunity to squeeze some enjoyment out of life.  The writer constantly pauses the action to focus on the more tranquil side of life; flowers, plum trees blooming overnight, waves crashing onto the shore, a misty evening sitting in a cemetery watching the trees fade slowly from view...  When no-one knows what tomorrow will bring, it's best to live for the moment.

While Drei Kameraden is essentially a paean to love, both romantic and collegial, there is a darker, political edge to it (which led to its banning in Germany).  The later scenes, depicting political assemblies where dispirited workers drink in the tirades of revolutionary orators, help the reader to see where Germany was heading at this time and why the people were prepared to listen to people like Hitler.  The crowd stand and stare at the speakers, convinced not so much by the ideas but by the energy and passion of the activists and by the desire to tear things down and start all over again.

It is, however, the love story which made this book successful, even leading to its adaptation into a Hollywood film (Remarque was very popular in the States).  I won't say too much more about the plot - I don't want to take any of the impact away -, but it is a wonderfully moving and extremely heart-rending story which makes you reflect on life and love, and will bring a lump to the throat of the most cynical reader.  In short, a very good novel.

*****

Let's move on now, ignoring the thirties and forties (a luxury people living at that time didn't have) and return to Germany in 1955.  Berlin is a city divided into four zones, one of which will eventually be walled off by the Russians, and it is into this early Cold War era that Leonard Marnham, a young English electrical engineer steps in Ian McEwan's novel The Innocent.  Seconded to the Americans in a joint operation, he helps engineer telephone taps to spy on the Russians across the border whilst spending his free time with Maria, a German woman he meets in a nightclub.

For Leonard, an innocent in every sense of the word, his time in Berlin is an awakening.  Quite apart from this being his first time abroad (and away from his parents), his relationship with Maria is his first real experience with the opposite sex - which shows in the way he thinks he needs to treat her.  He also has to form relationships with the Americans he is working with, including the charismatic Bob Glass, despite hints from a superior that he should, perhaps, be using them and passing information back to Whitehall.  And then, on top of all this, Maria's ex-husband turns up, and things get really complicated...

The story involves a new slant on a genuine spying operation in Berlin, introducing a real spy as a minor character in the book (so no looking things up until afterwards unless you want to spoil things!), and while it's a fairly slight work, it's thoroughly entertaining stuff.  McEwan handles the story deftly, with a few violent and sordid flourishes, but there is one aspect of the book which gives pause for thought.  The final section is set in 1987, allowing a look back at the events through the gift of hindsight, and as this is the third time he's done this in the three books of his I've read so far (this one plus Atonement and On Chesil Beach), I'm starting to wonder if he could possibly use the same technique in all his novels.  One would hope not...

That minor quibble aside, The Innocent is a pleasant read about a very interesting historical period and well worth a look (although I'm happy to have borrowed rather than bought it).  There is one more intriguing point to report though; McEwan wrote a postscript explaining some of the background information and thanking some of his sources.  Nothing there to interest one, you might think, until you see the date: September, 1989.  Timing really is everything...

83 - 'Der Weg Zurück' by Erich Maria Remarque

In one of my recent posts, I talked about my experiences with German literature, but I probably didn't start quite at the beginning. In fact, as mentioned in an even earlier post, my experiences with German history began earlier, when I was studying Germany for my twentieth-century history class. A lot of the interest I have in German literature today stems from the reading I did at that time about the two World Wars and the events of the inter-war period.

When it comes to books about World War 1, one of the stand-out pieces of literature is Erich Maria Remarque's 'Im Westen Nichts Neues' (translated into English as 'All Quiet on the Western Front'), a book I reread last year. As a teenager, the title always confused me (until I found out it had been written by a German) as I couldn't work out where the British Army's Western front could have been during World War 1 (were we fighting the Welsh?!). Of course, this book relates the experiences of a young German soldier, Paul Bäumer, who skilfully sketches out what life was really like in the trenches.

'Der Weg zurück', although not a sequel in the strictest sense (unlikely for obvious - and heart-breakingly sad - reasons), continues the topic covered in the earlier novel, following another soldier from Bäumer's troop, Ernst Birkholz, from war to peace. As the 11th of the 11th finally arrives, the shattered and defeated German troops finally leave the mud and death of the trenches behind and make the way back (der Weg zurück) to Germany. However, the long-awaited cessation of hostilities and the break-out of peace do not take things back to normal, and before long Ernst and his 'Kameraden' are left wondering what is left for them back at home.

The title has a double meaning as the soldiers are seeking a way back not only literally (to Germany and their hometowns) but also metaphorically: after years of war, they attempt to fit back into their old lives. Unfortunately, this proves to be considerably more difficult than they had imagined. Smothered by families unable to understand what their sons and brothers actually went through in the trenches, patronised by teachers who expect the battle-hardened war machines to go back to being good little schoolboys, despised by patriotic politicians (who never went to war) for their lack of enthusiasm for songs of glory and revenge: eventually the soldiers return to the only support they feel they can trust in - their fellow soldiers.

Yet even here, things are not as they were. Where life in the trenches depended on one's ability to function under pressure and kill or be killed, back in peace-time Germany social status (worth nothing in Flanders) begins to rear its ugly head. Men who were afraid to talk to certain of their colleagues, in awe of their presence and 'warcraft', now look down upon those they previously venerated, money, education and status replacing calm under pressure and the ability to lob grenades accurately into a column of advancing British soldiers.

The tight-knit group of friends starts to crumble as they find different ways to cope with post-war life. Some choose marriage; some throw themselves into work; some take advantage of the chaotic political and legal situation to advance themselves either socially or financially; however, others are unable to cope and, after struggling to understand what they had been fighting for, succumb to their depression...

Just as in 'Im Westen Nichts Neues', Remarque has sketched here a remarkable portrait of what was happening on the German side of the war; the big difference in this book though is that it is highly political. The book was written in 1930/31, when Germany was once again beginning to think about 'The Great War' and justify steps to remedy the 'injustice' done to the country by the Treaty of Versailles. Near the end of the book, as Ernst and a few of his friends are relaxing in a meadow, a group of boys led by a scout leader (or Führer...) march by, dropping to the floor and pretending to blow the unsuspecting rabbits and bluebirds away with their walking sticks, temporarily metamorphosed into rifles. As one of the characters rightly pointed out earlier in the novel, "it's all happening again"...

Sadly, as we know, Remarque's comments were prescient. Hitler's elevation to President was only a couple of years away - as was the infamous burning of books in Berlin, at which both 'Im Westen Nichts Neues' and 'Der Weg Zurück' were condemned to the flames. Within a decade of the writing of this novel, the German people had once again plunged Europe (and most of the World) into a catastrophic, crippling war, which was to produce (amongst other things) its own generation of misfits unable to return to society.

Together, these two books tell the tale of what really happens at war and what effects it has on those who fight them when they finally come home. Over the past few decades, we have slowly come to understand more about the horrors of combat and rehabilitation. In Vietnam, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan... wherever there is bloodshed, there is misery and a generation of broken people. The sad thing is that despite the information left for us by Remarque almost eighty years ago, we still struggle to understand the problems soldiers have when they try to find their way back home.