5 - The “Good German” between Silence and Artistic Deconstruction of an Inhumane World: Johannes Bobrowski's “Mäusefest” and “Der Tänzer Malige”

Summary

It could be argued that the poetry of Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) tends towards absolute moral polarities, with Germans generally bad, and their Jewish, Polish, and other victims equally good, rather than exploring the complexities of individuals, ethnic communities, and their relations. This does not apply in the same way to the prose fiction he increasingly turned to in the 1960s. Several of his narrative texts show a German soldier with positive character traits, partly representing the author's own experience, while pointing to the insufficiency of these traits in the historical context. This essay will explore the representation of such “good Germans” in two of Bobrowski's short narratives, “Mäusefest” (Mouse Banquet, 1962) and “Der Tänzer Malige” (The Dancer Malige, 1965) in the context of his oeuvre, his ethics, and of East German literature and culture of the 1950s and '60s. The extent and manner in which the Germans in these texts are “good” reflects the development of Bobrowski's aesthetics in the course of his work toward a Wirkungsästhetik (aesthetics of effect) that cannot be grasped in the framework of a simple opposition of l'art pour l'art and art engagé. At the same time, the question arises to what extent such an approach to National Socialism is exceptional in East — and West German — literature of the time.