6 - The defense of childhood and the guilt of the fathers

Summary

The surprise bestseller of 1991 was Die Verteidigung der Kindheit [The Defense of Childhood], by Martin Walser. The novel tells the life story of a lawyer named Alfred Dorn, a man unusual not because of particular talent, beauty, or intelligence, but because he does very little in the course of over five decades. Born on September 9, 1929 in Dresden, Dorn has a domineering mother, Martha, whom he dearly loves and a somewhat licentious father, the dentist Gustav Dorn, whom he dislikes. Because Gustav frequently has affairs with other women, Frau Dorn ultimately divorces him. She has a strong tendency to use her son as a weapon in her war with Gustav. At the age of fifteen, Alfred Dorn experiences the February 13, 1945 destruction of his home town and with it of much of his life. He survives, but the shock of the disaster in Dresden becomes yet another contributing factor to a neurosis that slowly eats away at him. Dorn becomes obsessed with the past and incapable of living in the present. Like the Stasi in Hilbig's Ich, Dorn would like to be able to stop time in its tracks. The passage of time is unbearable to him, because it inevitably brings with it destruction; and Dorn ultimately devotes his life to the impossible “defense of childhood” in the novel's title.