First Critical Responses

IN HIS COMPILATION AND SUMMARY EVALUATION of Grass criticism, Heinz Ludwig Arnold (1997) devotes just over five pages to Katz und Maus, which was first published in 1961, whereas Die Blechtrommel merits fourteen and a half pages. While such quantitative measurements do not provide a firm basis for the comparison in aesthetic terms of the two works in question, they do allow us to draw conclusions as to the scope and the intensity of their reception, inasmuch as reviewers understandably tended to refer to Grass' first monumental success when discussing its much slimmer sequel. Arnold's summary is somewhat misleading in that, apart from the discussion of the characteristics of the Novelle (see below), it devotes major attention to negative comments, notably those by veterans' associations and former residents of Danzig, Grass's birthplace, who were expelled from their home town as a consequence of the Second World War (for a summary of the criticism, see also Sturm n.d.). The former saw their honor besmirched because protagonist Joachim Mahlke not only steals a Knight's Cross, one of the highest military decorations during the Second World War, which could only be conferred by the Führer himself, but subjects it to inappropriate use by dangling it “in front of his private parts, [where it] concealed no more than a third of his pecker” (CaM, 76; see Anon. 1962). A representative of the latter group revived the charge of pornography that had been leveled against Die Blechtrommel and applied it to Katz und Maus — a work that in his opinion totally discredits the city of Danzig (see Dr. Kö, 1962).