From Germany to Germany: Diary 1990 [Paperback]

As a student at the University of Bonn, in what was then West Germany, I became somewhat familiar with the two outstanding German literary figures, Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll. Both provide a certain insight into the world that was West Germany before reunification in 1989-1990. Both won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Böll in 1972 and Grass in 1999.

Gunter Grass is best known for The Tin Drum (1959), the first volume of his Danzig Trilogy. The Tin Drum was made into a successful motion picture in 1979. While spending the summer of 1980 in Berkeley, I took advantage of the opportunity to see the film in a local theater. "You really must see it," was the advice I was given repeatedly. So I did.

A short while into the film, there was a scene where some people were at a beach. They pulled a horse's severed head tied to a rope from the water and began to shake it. Eels began to fall from the neck. The camera kept going back and forth between the eels falling from the horse's head and the same people at a dinner table eating plats filled with eels as if they were eating spaghetti. It was too much for me. I got up from my seat and walked out. As far as I can recall, that was the only movie I ever walked out of.

Obviously it was not Grass the novelist that drew me to From Germany to Germany: Journal of the Year 1990. Rather it was my interest in Günter Grass as a political activist, supporter of the Social Democratic Party, and friend of Willy Brandt. Grass has been a witness to much of what is positive in the history of postwar Germany. He is one of the German authors who have tried to come to grips with Germany's past and how it continues to haunt the present.

From Germany to Germany is a journal Grass kept as he traveled through the newly reunited Germany between 1 January 1990 and 1 February 1991. In it Grass recorded his impression of what was happening during that memorable year. A whole host of well-known and not so well-known personalities from the cultural and political communities appear throughout the journal. He also comments on such mundane things as buying freshly caught "fluke and herring" off a fishing boat along the Baltic shore.

Grass is not only an author, but also an artist. And so there are drawings executed during his journey scattered throughout the book. I find the one used on the cover of the book especially interesting.

A very nice feature of the book is the collection of information at the back of the volume that serves to help the reader understand the text. These include an eighteen-page, alphabetical listing of the "Persons Mentioned in Grass's Journal" with a brief identification. There is also a "Brief Chronology of Modern German History," and a "Glossary" of terms that most American readers are not likely to be familiar with.

I would recommend From Germany to Germany for those who are interested in postwar Germany, and particularly those who might find interesting Günter Grass's insight into the birth of a new Germany from the ruins of what President Reagan called "the evil empire."

I've had my ups and downs with Gunther Grass over the years. I was greatly impressed with "My Century", I was thoroughly confused with "The Rat", I was disappointed with "The Box" and I was impressed with "The Tin Drum". I have taken a casual approach to "Too Far Afield" and have read a bit over two thirds of it. I sense in "Too Far Afield" a similar uncertainty as I have found in "From Germany to Germany". The problem for me is that I don't really comprehend the depth of the issues involved in the reunification of East and West Germany. In what I have read in "Too Far Afield" I believe that I'm getting a sense of the issues of a reunification of a people who were divided into two opposite economic systems. In addition there is the openness of one society and the repressiveness of the other. I understand that I am at a loss with comprehending both books by not being German.

In "From Germany to Germany" I didn't connect with the subtle issues that I somewhat gatherred in "Too Far Afield". That's because Grass has his own opinions and seems to assume that everyone knows what they are. Yes, I picked up the economic issues as being the major focus of his disagreement with the unification proposals. However, other than a loss a currency value from the East and a gain in the West, I wasn't getting much specificity. He referred to several public speeches on the subject and I believe that his 30-some pages of "Notes" could have added the text of those speeches. I'm really not sure what his other issues were and I'm also wondering if, after 18 or so years later, he might have changed his opinions in light of the rebirth that some of us Westerners saw in the reunification of Germany. That could have found room in his notes as well.

Perhaps it is just as well for a diary to be just a diary. There were other things going on in the year or so that Grass chronicled but the book wouldn't have been written with out the reunification issue. He seemed to have contracted writer's cramp especially with the proposed and, later, publication of "The Call of the Toad". There were also the beginning of "Too Far Afield" which seemed to energize Grass more than the Toad book.

I read the book in parts so as to understand it as a diary. By taking just a few pages a day, I felt a better communication with the author. I'm guessing I would have been a bit more disappointed if I read it in a day or two.

Since the publication of The Tin Drum in English translation, which I read promptly when it became available, I have been an avid and faithful reader of Gunter Grass's works, even including the somewhat tiresome Flounder and the relentless Rat. Tin Drum, Dog Years, Cat and Mouse, Meeting at Telgte, and Crabwalk are among my favorite novels of the 20th century, and I would not ever say that I wasted time reading his other works. Even The Box, which I found amusing but (at best) slight, was worth my time and worthy of recommendation. The same is true of From Germany to Germany, even though it is the kind of book that probably would never have been published were it not by a writer of Grass's importance and stature.

From Germany to Germany is a diary of Grass's travels in that country (formerly divided but finally reunited) in 1990, recording his observations of the state of the German polity and culture. Of course, he is Grass, and his observations are sharp, not at all indulgent (either of the country or of himself), and resonant (for any reader of his other works) of the recurring themes and concerns he has pursued during his long career. The book also includes his drawings, which may surprise those who do not know he is also a visual artist, and shows us the genesis of one of his quirkier books, The Call of the Toad. There are probably better books for readers who want to know the results--politically, socially, economically--of German reunification. This is certainly far too personal and self-reflective a book to be a source of "objective" information about those questions; nonetheless, Grass gives his readers images and responses that can be added to the historical or analytical information to provide a deeper and more human (and humane) perspective. For anyone who has not yet read his great novels, I would say go to them first--read Crabwalk, for example--but for any serious fan or student of Grass, this is a book that offers useful insights into his state of mind, at least in 1990.