6 - Saints and Sinners: The Good German and Her Others in Heinrich Böll's Gruppenbild mit Dame

Summary

The inclusion of a novel by Heinrich Böll in a volume on the topic of the “good German” should come as no surprise — indeed, the author himself could have been proposed as a worthy topic for this volume, as he acquired during his lifetime a reputation as the “conscience of the nation” and representative of an alternative, better Germany. Böll's friend, the critic Heinrich Vormweg, chose the label “der andere Deutsche” (the other German) as the title of his biography of Böll — sidestepping the notion of the “good German,” but still suggesting a particular moral quality that distinguished the author from the German mainstream. More recently, the cliché of Heinrich Böll as the “good German” has been employed to diminish the author's literary significance, insinuating that Böll's moral stance disqualifies him as a good writer. This article will not pursue an approach focused on the author and his qualities, which has been the subject of recent discussion in Germany, but instead discuss the value system defining a good life and good characters that Böll presented in his novel Gruppenbild mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady, 1971).

Böll's reputation rested not so much on his actions during the Nazi period as on his role as a fervent moral critic of West German society since the foundation of the Federal Republic. Questioning Germans’ attempts to ignore and deny their individual responsibility for the events of the Nazi period, attacking what he perceived as an “unholy alliance” between the new state and the Catholic church, and satirizing the materialistic orientation of West German society, Böll put forward an alternative moral map in his writings that could serve as a basis both for political action and individual lifestyle choices. This alternative value system is frequently embodied in individual characters who are deployed “as empirically possible, extended manifestations of human goodness,” despite the problem that these characters “are ultimately difficult to believe in.”