Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: The Purposes and Problems of German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century
- 1 Life Writing and Writing Lives: Ego Documents in Historical Perspective
- 2 From Erlebnis to Erinnerung: Rereading Soldiers’ Letters and Photographs from the First World War
- 3 From Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges to Der gefährliche Augenblick: Ernst Jünger, Photography, Autobiography, and Modernity
- 4 Persuasive Illusions of the Self: Albert Speer’s Life Writing and Public Discourse about Germany’s Nazi Past
- 5 The Shoah before the Shoah: The Literary Technique of Allusion in Elias Canetti’s Autobiography
- 6 “Ich schäme mich meiner Augen”: Photography and Autobiographical Identities in Grete Weil’s Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben
- 7 “Mich in Variationen erzählen”: Günter Grass and the Ethics of Autobiography
- 8 Voyeurism? Autobiographies by Children of the Perpetrators: Niklas Frank’s Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung (1987) and Meine deutsche Mutter (2005)
- 9 Dismembering the Past, Remembering the Self: An Interrogation of Disability Narratives by Luise Habel and Christa Reinig
- 10 “Schicht um Schicht” — The Evolution of Fred Wander’s Life Writing Project in the GDR Era and Beyond
- 11 Thought Patterns and Explanatory Strategies in the Life Writing of High-Ranking GDR Party Officials after the Wende
- 12 “Ein reines Phantasieprodukt” or “Hostile Biography”? Günter de Bruyn’s Vierzig Jahre and the Stasi files
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
7 - “Mich in Variationen erzählen”: Günter Grass and the Ethics of Autobiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction: The Purposes and Problems of German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century
- 1 Life Writing and Writing Lives: Ego Documents in Historical Perspective
- 2 From Erlebnis to Erinnerung: Rereading Soldiers’ Letters and Photographs from the First World War
- 3 From Das Antlitz des Weltkrieges to Der gefährliche Augenblick: Ernst Jünger, Photography, Autobiography, and Modernity
- 4 Persuasive Illusions of the Self: Albert Speer’s Life Writing and Public Discourse about Germany’s Nazi Past
- 5 The Shoah before the Shoah: The Literary Technique of Allusion in Elias Canetti’s Autobiography
- 6 “Ich schäme mich meiner Augen”: Photography and Autobiographical Identities in Grete Weil’s Leb ich denn, wenn andere leben
- 7 “Mich in Variationen erzählen”: Günter Grass and the Ethics of Autobiography
- 8 Voyeurism? Autobiographies by Children of the Perpetrators: Niklas Frank’s Der Vater: Eine Abrechnung (1987) and Meine deutsche Mutter (2005)
- 9 Dismembering the Past, Remembering the Self: An Interrogation of Disability Narratives by Luise Habel and Christa Reinig
- 10 “Schicht um Schicht” — The Evolution of Fred Wander’s Life Writing Project in the GDR Era and Beyond
- 11 Thought Patterns and Explanatory Strategies in the Life Writing of High-Ranking GDR Party Officials after the Wende
- 12 “Ein reines Phantasieprodukt” or “Hostile Biography”? Günter de Bruyn’s Vierzig Jahre and the Stasi files
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
WHEN, IN AUGUST 2006, it became public knowledge that Günter Grass had served for a short time in the Waffen-SS at the end of the Second World War and had finally admitted to this in his new autobiography, Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (Peeling the Onion), the story unfolded not just in the German but also in the world media. Not only were the basic facts echoed in short press releases across the globe, consideration of the way Grass had related to this incriminating aspect of his biography throughout the course of his subsequent career ensured that the story continued to run in the world media for several months. Whether the angle taken was to explore the moral issues of joining the Waffen-SS in the first place (such an approach particularly suited the sensationalist reporting characteristic of the Bild-Zeitung, for example), or to question Grass's later legitimacy as a self-made “moralische Instanz,” or moralist, in postwar Germany (a line largely followed by his critics, many of whom collaborated on a lengthy cover story for Der Spiegel), ethical questions of “right” and “wrong” behavior were once again at the center of public debate in and about Germany.
This essay explicitly addresses such ethical issues of public self-presentation and reception. “Ethics,” understood in line with The Oxford English Dictionary definition as “a branch of knowledge that deals with the principles of human duty or the logic of moral discourse,” as well as “the rules of conduct recognized in a particular profession or area of life,” is a useful term through which to approach the sense of public accountability that has accompanied both scholarly and journalistic discussion of Grass in particular and of German postwar writing in general. I use the term in line with this common parlance quite deliberately, for although there is a growing body of specialist scholarship on the complex philosophical relationship between ethics and narrative discourse, it has so far tended to yield either abstract literary critical theory that is more concerned with reflecting on the general potential of narrative than to explain a text's immediate significance for its readers, or jargonized evaluation of an author's supposed “message.”
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- German Life Writing in the Twentieth Century , pp. 121 - 136Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010