PETERARNDS
Kansas State University
On the Awful German Fairy Tale: Breaking Taboos in
Representations of Nazi Euthanasia and the Holocaust
in Giinter Grass's Die Blechtrommel, Edgar
Hilsenrath's Der Nazi & der Friseur, and Anselm
Kiefer's Visual Art
Amongthose representationsof the Ho-
locaust in literature,painting,cartoon,and
film that share the characteristicof mixing
the sublimewith the profaneand hence op-
posingTheodorAdorno'sfamousstatement
that writing a poem after Auschwitzwould
be barbaric,there is in Germanya groupof
texts and films in which Nazi atrocitiesare
representedwithin the context of German
mythologyand the Germanfairy-taletradi-
tion. The fictionalizationof such a largely
unrepresentablehistoricalevent as the Ho-
locaustand its aftermathis, of course,prob-
lematic.If writinga poemafterAuschwitzis
barbaric,what is writing fairy tales after
1945,particularlyfairytales in the contextof
the ThirdReichand the Holocaust?
In her recentbook The Languageof Si-
lence:WestGermanLiteratureand theHolo-
caust Ernestine Schlant argues that West
Germanliteraturehas largelyremainedsi-
lent aboutthe topicofthe Holocaust.'Thesi-
lence aboutthe Holocaustthat maypervade
the worksSchlantanalyzesis, however,shat-
teredin quitea fewotherworksof art in Ger-
many,not only in textual representationsof
Nazi atrocitiesthat make use of the fairy
tale, but also in the workof artists and film-
makers such as Anselm Kiefer and Hans-
Jfirgen Syberberg,the two enfantsterribles
"ofan otherwisereputableculture",as An-
dreas Huyssen has pointed out.2Although
SchlantbrieflydiscussesG(interGrass'sDie
The GermanQuarterly 75.4 (Fall 2002) 422
Blechtrommel,she ignores the fact that a
close readingrevealsit to be a text in which
there is definitely no silence about Nazi
atrocities (69-71). Althoughit is true that
the persecutionof Jews and their elimina-
tion in concentrationcampsis not a central
theme in this novel,it is in its entiretya text
about the persecutionof another minority
group that the Nazis consideredartfremd,
the physically and mentally handicapped,
exemplifiedby the dwarfOskarMatzerath.
I want to explorethe use of fairytales in
Die Blechtrommeland Edgar Hilsenrath's
Der Nazi und der Friseur in the contextof
the Nazis' ethnic cleansing.Questionsthis
essay attempts to answer are: what makes
Hilsenrath'suse of fairy-talematerialmore
provocativethan Grass's, so that German
publishers rejected the manuscript until
1977, six years afterits originalappearance
in the US; and what links Hilsenrath'sand
Grass'stexts to someof the satiricpaintings
and photographsof Anselm Kiefer?The
fairytale in Germanyin the 20thcenturyis
an ideal genre for showinghow historyde-
terminesthe uses and abuses of fictionand
how then this veryfictioncanbe used in dif-
ferentwaysto representhistory.Thetalesof
the BrothersGrimmhad becomepoliticized
duringthe years of the WeimarRepublicas
progressivewritersandconservativesfought
over their legacy.3For the Nazis the fairy
talesbecamethe primevehiclein supporting
 ARNDS:Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
their Aryanpolicies.As a consequence,the
entire field of Volkskundebecameideologi-
callypollutedfarinto postwarGermany.Fol-
lowing this abuse of folklorein support of
the Nazis' racistand imperialistideology,in
1945 the Allied Forces briefly banned the
publicationof the Grimmtales in Germany
because they associated the horrors ex-
pressedin many a fairytale with violencein
the death camps.4Such postwarauthorsas
Arno Schmidt, Giinter Grass, Edgar Hil-
senrath,RolfHochhuth,most recentlyIngo
Schramm,and filmmakerslike Alexander
Kluge,VolkerSchl6ndorff,and Helma San-
ders-Brahmshave all re-claimedthe Ger-
manfairy-taletraditionfortheirworksin or-
derto exploitthe artisticpotentialofthe con-
nection between this genre and the Third
Reich. In tales like Hidnsel und Gretel, Dau-
merlings Wanderschaft, Vom Fischer und
seiner Fru, and Frau Holle they see ways of
speaking the unspeakable. It seems that
throughtwo of its attributes,its violenceand
its unreality,the fairy tale lends itself to a
representationof just that--extreme politi-
cal violenceand the victims'loss of reality.
The reaction in Volker Schl6ndorff'sfilm
The Ogre of the French protagonistAbel
(playedby John Malkovich),as he witnesses
Goering'seccentrichunting orgies, that it
was so unrealhe thoughthe was in somesort
of fairytale holds true especiallywithin the
contextof the Holocaust.Yetotheraspectsof
the fairy-taleworldreoccurin texts andfilms
after1945.Whatthe Naziseagerlyembraced
for their nationalistpolitics-such motifsas
the "Faustian"quest of the Germanicfairy-
tale hero, the housekeepingskills of such a
figureas Frau Holle,and the Germanfairy-
tale forest as a symbolfor nationalidentity
and unity-becomes a target for artisticre-
appropriationthat oftenparodiesthe Nazis'
abuse of the genre.
One phenomenonthat becomes appar-
ent in many of the postwar texts that employ
the fairy tale in connection with the Third
Reich is that the genre no longer seems to
promise an intact order in which moral val-
ues can be re-established. Although the orig-
423
inal Grimmtales were ideallysuited for the
conservativeAdenauerperiod,as JackZipes
argues,a text like Arno Schmidt'sDas stei-
nerne Herz (1956) clearly deconstructsthe
conservative message of the patriarchal,
moralisticfairy tale, as I have shown else-
where.5The fairytale as an intertextin the
belleslettresthus undergoesa literarytreat-
ment similarto that of the Bildungsroman.
The 19thcentury'squestforan organicuni-
ty and a metaphysicaltotalityfor whichthe
Nazis ideologicallyexploited both genres,
the fairytale and the Bildungsroman,is no
longer possible after 1945. Whereasin the
proletarianfairy tales of the 1920s and the
anthologies in the Third Reich, the tales'
teleology serves political purposes, in the
FederalRepublicthis dimensionof hopedis-
appearsalmost entirely from fairy-talere-
writingsin the belleslettresand can only be
foundin fairytales forchildren.In WestGer-
manythere is little experimentationin fairy
tales for childrenfrom 1945to 1968. Due to
the anti-authoritarianattitude of the stu-
dent generation,after1968the fairytalewas
no longer consideredsacrosanctand it be-
came a target for increasingexperimenta-
tion.6 As for fairytales within the belleslet-
tres,thereis someearlyexperimentation,for
example in Arno Schmidt's Das steinerne
Herz or Giinter Grass's Die Blechtrommel.
The main phaseof experimentationwith re-
gard to representationsof the Holocaust
doesnot startuntilthe late seventies,i.e.,ten
years after the increaseof experimentation
with children'stales. Undoubtedly,this phe-
nomenonresultsfromthe fact that, with an
increasing discourseon the German past,
the fairytale has becomea more acceptable
vehicle for speakingabout the Third Reich
and the Holocaust:the later Grass, Edgar
Hilsenrath,RolfHochhuth,AlexanderKlu-
ge, and Helma Sanders-Brahmsmust be
mentionedhere.A film like Benigni'sLife is
Beautiful, which not only conjoins the Holo-
caust with a fairy-tale imagery but fills the
representation of the Holocaust with a great
deal of laughter, would have been as shock-
ing in the Germany of the late 1960s as was
424 THE GERMANQUARTERLY
the provocativeHolocaust art of Anselm
KieferandEdgarHilsenrath.7Thereception
historyof some of the provocativeworks or
art by Kieferas well as the publicationhis-
tory of Hilsenrath's Der Nazi und der
Friseur reflect this development. Hilsen-
rath's and Kiefer'sunrealistic representa-
tion of the Holocaustin the context of fairy
tale and myth, particularlytheir use of the
macabre,wasill receivedin Germanyunlike,
for example,JurekBecker'sJakobderLuig-
ner (1969),whose conflationof the sublime
withlaughterwasaccomplishedmoresubtly.
Ironically,in the philo-Semiticclimateof the
Germanyof the 1970s Germanpublishers
told the Jew Hilsenrath,who at that time
still livedin the US, that they consideredhis
novels Nacht (1964) and Der Nazi und der
Friseurunacceptablebecauseof their inher-
ent anti-Semitism.8Similarly,Anselm Kie-
fer'spaintingsandhis photographsOccupa-
tions (1975),a series of Hitler salutes, were
taboobreakersin Germanythroughoutthe
1970s and wereinterpretedas "thesarcasm
of a young artist directing his questions
toward a pernicious iconography."9 These
worksconsequentlyexperienceda sortof ex-
ile existenceoutsideof Germany.WhileHil-
senrath had not become successfulin Ger-
many until the 1990s, which experienceda
renaissanceof Jewish culture,Anselm Kie-
fer'sart hadto "migrate"to andthroughthe
Statesbeforereturningto Germany,whereit
had never been fully recognizeduntil his
1991exhibitionin Berlin.As AndreasHuys-
sen points out, "[t]he timing could hardly
havebeenbetter:Kiefercomesto Berlin,the
politicaland culturalcapitalof the new,re-
united Germany."'•It is clearlydue to the
earlier openness of discourseon the Holo-
caustin the UnitedStates andthis country's
appropriationof the Holocaustas a cultural
icon that the GermanHolocaustart of the
'60s and '70s, with its transgressionof the
limits of representation, was forced to "emi-
grate" to the US. 11Beforethe 1980s there
was no significant discourse on the Holo-
caust in Germany. Consequently, when the
United States witnessed the awakening of
Fall2002
taboo-breakingHolocaustart (e.g., Spiegel-
man), in Germanythere was still a sort of
hidden censorshipthat producedthe lan-
guageof silenceof whichErnestine Schlant
speaks.Althoughthis silence was also bro-
ken in the documentarydrama of Peter
Weissand RolfHochhuth,their playsdo not
contain Holocausthumor or parody.While
theirrepresentationsremainwithinthe lim-
its of realism, German-Jewishauthorslike
GeorgeTabori,Jakov Lind, Soma Morgen-
stern, and Edgar Hilsenrath broke the si-
lence in their worksthroughhumor,parody,
andgrotesquefantasy.Thisdifficultyof find-
ing an adequatelanguageforwritingabout
the Holocaustwas a point of discussionbe-
tweenHilsenrathandJakovLindwhenthey
lived in Israel. Hilsenrath, who spent the
years from 1941 to 1944 in the Ukrainian
ghetto of Moghilev-Podolsk,describesthis
meetingwith "JosephLindberg"in his novel
Die Abenteuerdes RubenJablonski (1997).
Lindbergsays to him:"Heutemusst du rea-
listischschreiben,wennduernstgenommen
werden willst. [...] Ich meinerseits schreibe
humoristischmit einem Zug ins Groteske.
[...] Irgendwann wirst du es in dir spilren,
dass die Zeitreifist. Und dann setzt du dich
auf deinen Arsch und legst los. Alles muss
fliel3en.Es muss aus dir herausflieBlen wie
aus einer Quelle."12Hilsenrath must have
heededLind'swordsbecausein most of his
works he too chooses a grotesqueform of
representationover a realistic one. In Der
Nazi und der Friseur he completelydesta-
bilizes the sacrosanctityof the fairy tales.
They were considereduntouchableby the
Nazis because of their typically Germanic
features but also after the war when they
becameimportantfor "the healing process
necessaryfor the rebuildingof a humanist
culture."13Whileone can still see Die Blech-
trommeland its fairy-talesubtextsas a con-
tributionto this reconstructionof a human-
ist culture, Hilsenrath's novel, which is pos-
sibly one of the strongest satires of the
Grimm folktales, eludes this process. By
transmogrifying Frau Holle into a prosti-
tute, Der Nazi und der Friseur becomes a re-
 ARNDS: Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
actionto the Nazis'perceptionof FrauHolle
as a symbolof fertilityfrom Germanicmy-
thologyand an archetypalfigureto be emu-
lated by all Germanwomen. Furthermore,
he placesHdnselund Gretelinto the context
of genocide. Despite all the debunking of
fairytales in Germanyafter 1968this sortof
transgressionof the representationallimits
was aheadof its time.
Grassuses the fairy-taletraditionin the
context of the Holocaustin a much subtler
and less cynicalway than Hilsenrath.While
Hilsenrath'sview of the Germanfairytale is
entirelynegativebecausein Jungianfashion
he associateswith it the realizationof myth
duringthe ThirdReichand sees reflectedin
the fairytale the spiritofWotan,Grass'sper-
ception of the German fairy tale changes
fromDieBlechtrommelto his laterwork.It is
precisely the concatenationof a historical
event of suchutter hopelessnessas the Holo-
caust with the fairy tales, whose predomi-
nant messageis one of hope, that leads the
Nobel Laureatein the courseof his ceuvreto
an increasingsenseof doom.His adaptations
of fairytales reflecthis skepticismaboutthe
possibilityof a Germanreunificationandthe
idea of historical progress. In Der Butt
(1977),his adaptationofthe Grimmtale Vom
Fischer und siner Fru, he argues that male
ratherthan femalegreedled to the catastro-
phes of the twentieth century.In this novel
the Faustianquestof the Nordicman,which
the Nazis read into the German folktale,
leadstowardthe Holocaustas a culmination
beforethe declineof humanity.In Die Rdttin
(1986) Grassdevelops-among many other
fairy-talemotifs-a link between Nazi Ger-
many and the legend of The Pied Piper of
Hameln, with Hitler as the seductiveflute
player who takes rats (Jews) and children
(the Germans)to their doom.In this novel
the pessimismis even more pronounced.It
harks back to the Nazis' perversionof folk-
lore primarily through the motif of the Ger-
man fairy-tale forest, a chief emblem for na-
tional identity during the Third Reich, which
is itself endangered now in light of Ger-
many's ecological crisis. In Grass's Rdttin,
425
not only are the Germanforestand German
national identity about to vanish, the fairy
tales themselvesare.Theendof the fairytale
announcesthe end of humankind.
His earlier and no doubt most famous
novel, Die Blechtrommel,does not yet con-
tain this dark fairy-taleworld.On the con-
trary, far from his later pessimism and
Hilsenrath'scynicismconcerningthe Ger-
man fairy-tale tradition, reviving the Ro-
mantic dwarftale allows Grassto recovera
deeplyhumanitarianaspectof the Romantic
Age. In Die BlechtrommelGrass addresses
the persecutionof the mentally and physi-
cally disabled, of schizophrenics,thieves,
aimlesswanderers,andthe so-calledArbeits-
scheuenunder the Nazis' sterilizationlaws
and euthanasiaprogram.Die Blechtrommel
probes the limits of representationby em-
ploying elements of folk culture--the fairy
tale, a carnivalambience,the archetypeof
the trickster,andthe literarygenreof the pi-
caresque novel-in order to represent the
grim realityof the NationalSocialisteutha-
nasia programas well as the discriminatory
practicesof a post-fascistWestGermansoci-
ety.14Althoughthe novel conflatesthe sub-
lime (the Holocaust)with the profane(folk
humor), in doing so it attempts to revive
some of the grotesqueformsthat the Nazis
had tried to eliminate.Die Blechtrommelis
an elaborateTom Thumb tale that directs
ourattentionto the Nazis'misuseof folklore
fortheirracialtheories.15 Throughhis dwarf
Oskar Matzerath Grass comments on the
Nazis' narrowlydefinedideaof the Faustian
quest pertainingonly to the Nordicman of
classicalbeauty,a limitationthat nourished
their conceptof life unworthyof life. In re-
claiming the fairy-tale tradition from its
ideologicalabuse during the Third Reich
Grass harks back to the liberaltraditionof
the Romanticperiodandthe WeimarRepub-
lic,whichexpressedsolidaritywiththe phys-
ically and racially different Other. Moreover,
Die Blechtrommel is a picaresque satire on
the Bildungsroman that questions Goethe's
concept of Bildung, of man's perfectibility,
thus casting doubt on the classical notions of
426 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
stability, health, and harmony, the Apolline
spirit that also informed the racial eugenics
of National Socialism. Like the constantly
endangered Tom Thumb of the fairy tale,
Oskar Matzerath is not only physically chal-
lenged, he is also a thief, a trickster, and a
seemingly aimless wanderer. These catego-
ries make him into the kind of social outsider
that the Nazis targeted. Through its revival
of different forms of folk culture repressed or
manipulated by the Nazis for ideological pur-
poses, Die Blechtromnmelis a major contri-
bution to German Vergangenheitsbewialti-
gung.1l
It is the story of Oskar Matzerath, who
decides to stop growing at age three. He lives
in Gdansk during the Nazi years, where he
keeps beating on his tin drum and shattering
glass with his miraculous voice, all in protest
against the adult world. After his mother
dies from unhappiness and compulsive fish
consumption, Oskar leaves home and joins
his friend Bebra, a circus midget, in order to
perform before the Nazis at a warfront the-
ater in France. He then returns home to his
father, whom the Russians kill as they over-
run Poland. At his father's funeral Oskar de-
cides to grow a few more inches, he develops
a hunchback, then temporarily becomes a
successful entrepreneur in the early Federal
Republic and finally ends up in a madhouse
after being charged with murder. The tale of
Tom Thumb occupies a central place in this
Bildungsroman parody. Like Wilhelm Mei-
ster, who is influenced for the remainder of
his life by a puppet play, Oskar's develop-
ment is substantially impacted by a theater
performance:
Es wurde das Marchen vom Daumeling
gegeben, was mich von der ersten Szene
an fesselte und verstandlicherweiseper-
sbnlich ansprach. Man machte es ge-
schickt, zeigte den Daumeling gar nicht,
liel3nur seine Stimme horen und die er-
wachsenen Personenhinter dem unsicht-
baren aber recht aktiven Titelhelden des
Stiickes herspringen.Da saB3er dem Pferd
im Ohr, da lieB er sich vom Vater fuir
schweres Geld an zwei Strolche verkau-
Fall 2002
fen, da erging er sich auf des einen Strol-
ches Hutkrempe, sprach von dort oben
herab, kroch spiter in ein Mauseloch,
dann in ein Schneckenhaus, machte mit
Dieben gemeinsameSache,geriet ins Heu
und mit dem Heu in den Magen der Kuh.
Die Kuh aber wurdegeschlachtet,weil sie
mit Daumelings Stimme sprach.Der Ma-
gen der Kuh aber wanderte mit dem ge-
fangenen Kerlchenauf den Mist und wur-
de von einem Wolfverschluckt. Den Wolf
aber lenkte Daumeling mit klugen Wor-
ten in seines Vaters Haus und Vorrats-
kammer und schlug dort Larm, als der
Wolf zu rauben gerade beginnen wollte.
Der SchluB war, wie's im Marchen zu-
geht: der Vater erschlug den basen Wolf,
die Mutter offnete mit einer Schere Leib
und Magen des FreBsacks, heraus kam
Diumeling, das heiBt, man horte ihn nur
rufen: "Ach,Vater,ich war in einem Mau-
seloch, in einer Kuh Bauch und in eines
Wolfes Wanst: nun bleib ich bei Euch."
Mich rfihrte dieser SchluB [...], und als
ich zu Mama hinaufblinzelte, bemerkte
ich, daBsie die Nase hinter dem Taschen-
tuch barg, weil sie gleich mir die Hand-
lung auf der Bifihnezum eigensten Erleb-
nis gemacht hatte. Mama liel3sich gerne
rithren, driickte mich wihrend der fol-
genden Wochen,vor allen Dingen, solan-
ge das Weihnachtsfest dauerte, immer
wieder an sich, kiiB3temich und nannte
Oskar bald scherzhaft, bald wehmittig:
Diumling. Oder:Mein kleiner Ddiumling.
Oder:Mein armer,armer Daumling.17
This novel is densely intertextual not only
with two different versions of the Grimms'
Tom Thumb folktale, Daurmesdick and
Daumnerlings Wanderschaft, but also with
other fairy tales about dwarfs, first and
foremost Wilhelm Hauff's Der kleine
Muck and Zwerg Nase.18 Grass regener-
ated, as it were, what the Nazis had per-
ceived as degenerate, the grotesque body
and the grotesque Romantic fairy tale.19 A
close reading of the novel reveals that
Grass adopts a structure shared by at least
these four dwarf tales: (1) the reduction of
the dwarf to his grotesque body, (2) the
mockery and public display of the dwarf,
 ARNDS:Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
(3) the public's understanding of the
dwarf'ssize as a reflectionof mental inade-
quacy,(4) the dwarfs desire to hide from
harassment and persecution, (5) his col-
laborationwith criminalsas a form of self-
protection, (6) the questionability of his
parents' love, and (7) his wandering in
searchof happiness.The tales thus become
a vehicle for historicalrepresentation.20
Like Tom Thumb, Oskaris in constant
dangerbecauseof his size. LikeTomThumb
therefore,Oskar repeatedlyhas to hide in
places that symbolizethe protectivenessof
the mother's womb. He hides under his
grandmother'sskirts,inside a rostrumdur-
ing a Nazi partygathering,in war bunkers,
closets,etc. Hejoins a bandof criminals,the
"Stdiuberbande" and the Nazis themselves,
in ordernot to be crushedby them.Although
he is the size of a thumb,TomThumb'sjour-
ney reflectshis pursuitof happiness.Grass
elaborateson this conceptand contextuali-
zes it with the historicalbackgroundof eu-
thanasia.The externalarrestingof Oskar's
growthstandsin directcontrastto his inner
life. The associationof arrestedintellectual
growth with arrested physical growth be-
comesa criticalcommenton the condemna-
tion of the disabledby the Nazis as dead
soulsandtherefore"lifeunworthyof living."
Oskar'srich inner life exposesthe enormity
of Nazi crimes against the mentally and
physicallyhandicapped,who were sent into
the gas chambersafter"aperfunctorymedi-
cal test."21Whathave been literarytopoifor
centuries-society's contemptforthe dwarf,
the view that his physicalshortcomingssig-
nal mental inadequacy,his uselessness for
society other than for the purpose of dis-
play-are paradigmswe can observe not
only in the above-mentioneddwarf fairy
tales but also in such novels as Par Lager-
qvist's Dvdirgen(1944) and Ursula Hegi's
Stonesfromthe River (1994).These literary
topoi became gruesome realities under Nazi
euthanasia. Leni Yahil points out that "Ster-
behilfe became Vernichtung lebensunwerten
Lebens and the extension of such life was de-
noted unsozial" (307). While euthanasia
427
aims at alleviatingthe sufferingof the indi-
vidual, "racialeugenicswas to developand
improvethe humanraceand,in light of this
seeminglynoble aim, the individualand his
suffering became insignificant. [...] People
who were no longeruseful to the state were
perceivedas "monsters"in contrastto "true
human beings"(Yahill307). They were de-
scribedas geistig Tote, "aliengrowth[s]in
humansociety,andof a lowerlevel than ani-
mals"(Yahill307).It is onlya shortstepfrom
this conceptto the denialof the rightto exist.
Accordingto these theoriesit was suggested
by Professor Ernst Bergmann as early as
1933 "thata worldwidecampaignshouldbe
launched against the retarded, habitual
criminals, and all degenerates.He recom-
mended 'quietly throwing away onto the
garbageheap a millionof the human refuse
in the largecities"'(Yahil308).Yahilgoes on
to describethe implementationof the eutha-
nasia program in Nazi Germany.She ex-
plains how the Sonderbehandlung,i.e., the
gassingand subsequentcremation,of unde-
sirable Ballastexistenzenoriginated as the
centraloperationof the euthanasiaprogram
in 1940 beforeit was used in concentration
camps. After public protest against these
practices,the Nazis halted the euthanasia
operationand the gassinginstallationswere
officiallycloseddown. In practice,however,
the operationcontinuedin the form of the
so-calledwild euthanasia,that is, killing in
special,locked-upinstitutionsin which vic-
tims wereput to deathindividuallyby injec-
tion, sleepingpills,or starvation.Thestarva-
tion methodwas particularlypopularin the
case of mentallydefectiveandphysicallydis-
abledchildren-the numberof such victims
is estimatedat twentythousand.Persuasion
and deceptionwerepracticedparticularlyin
the case of child victims: parents were in-
formedthat the child had been transferred
to a specialinstitutionfor specialtreatment
(Yahil309), from which they never returned.
Rather than employing a 'language of si-
lence' in Die Blechtrommel, Grass explicitly
addresses these concepts of (a) Sonder-
behandlung, (b) Ballastexistenz, (c) the per-
428 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
ception of the handicapped as monsters at a
lower level than animals, (d) their perception
as mentally dead, and (e) their consequent
institutionalization. Oskar's friend, the
dwarfBebra, refers to the concept of Sonder-
behandlung when he says:
"Unsereins darf nie zu den Zuschauern
gehoren. Unsereins muB auf die Btihne,
in die Arena. Unsereins muB vorspielen
und die Handlungbestimmen, sonst wird
unsereins von denen da behandelt [my
italics]. Und jene spielen uns allzu gerne
uibel mit!" Mir fast ins Ohr kriechend,
fliisterte er und machte uralte Augen:
"Sie kommen! Sie werden die Festplitze
besetzen! Sie werden Fackelziige veran-
stalten! Sie werden Tribiinenbauen, Tri-
biinen bevolkern und von Tribuinenhe-
runter unseren Untergang predigen. Ge-
ben Sie acht, junger Freund,was sich auf
den Tribiinen ereignen wird! Versuchen
Sie, immer auf der Tribilne zu sitzen und
niemalsvor der Tribiinezu stehen. [...]
Kleine Leute wie wir finden selbst auf
iiberftilltesten Tribiunennoch ein Platz-
chen. Und wenn nicht auf der Tribuine,
dann unter der Tribiine,aber niemals vor
der Tribiine."(92f)
The difference between Bebra and Oskar
is that in order to survive, the circus dwarf
will, as he says, sit on the rostrum, i.e., side
with the Nazis for self-protection, whereas
Oskar initially puts up some resistence to
the Nazis by sitting inside the rostrum. We
may all remember the famous carnival-
esque scene in which Oskar drums apart a
party gathering from within the band-
stand. Sitting inside this rostrum like Jo-
nah in the whale corresponds to the inte-
rior spaces in the Tom Thumb tale, the
cow's and the wolf's belly, from which Tom
Thumb liberates himself through his own
activity. Although he initially practises po-
litical resistance, Oskar later joins Bebra
in performing before the Nazis at the
warfront in France. Oskar would lose his
life if it were not for his "usefulness" to the
Nazis as an entertainer at the front. As
long as he entertains the Nazis he can
Fall 2002
escape from being classified as Ballast-
existenz. He survives thanks to his voice,
the miracle weapon that enables him to
scream glass to pieces. By shattering glass
he also becomes an accomplice to the Nazis
in the sense that this activity is associated
with the Reichskristallnacht. This com-
plicity with the Nazis once again recalls
Tom Thumb, who for self-protection also
joins a gang of thieves.
That Oskar is persecuted is easy to miss
in the novel. After his return from France
Oskar is in danger of being taken to an insti-
tution, and not simply because the question
of who Oskar's father is remains unresolved
in his life. Oskar would not be taken to an or-
phanage, although Matzerath's dubious fa-
therhood is used by the authorities as a rea-
son for Oskar's planned institutionalization:
Ein Mann vom Gesundheitsministerium
kam, sprach vertraulich mit Matzerath,
aber Matzerath schrie laut, dass man es
h6ren konnte: "Das kommt gar nicht in
Frage, das habe ich meiner Frau am To-
tenbett versprechen miissen, ich bin der
Vater und nicht die Gesundheitspolizei."
Ich kam also nicht in die Anstalt. Aber
von jenem Tage an traf alle zwei Wochen
ein amtliches Briefchenein, das den Mat-
zerath zu einer kleinen Unterschrift auf-
forderte;dochMatzerathwollte nicht un-
terschreiben, legte aber sein Gesicht in
Sorgenfalten. (286)
Oskar has become a public health issue. In
the chapter entitled "Die Staiuber" this
letter is mentioned a second time:
Es hatte mich also alle Welt verlassen,
und nur der Schatten meiner armen
Mama, der dem Matzerath idhmendauf
die Finger fiel, wenn er ein vom Reichsge-
sundheitsministerium verfaBtes Schrei-
ben unterzeichnen wollte, verhinderte
mehrmals, daBich, der Verlassene,diese
Welt verlieB.(299)
Although Matzerath's position as father is
a weak one, his reaction to the letter is
healthy:
 ARNDS:Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
Das geht doch nich. Man kann doch den
eigenen Sohn nich. Selbst wenn er zehn-
mal und alle Arzte dasselbe sagen. Die
schreiben das einfach so hin. Die haben
wohl keine Kinder.(298)
It is Maria, Oskar's first love and later
stepmother, who is not as sure about keep-
ing Oskar at home as is Matzerath. She
would not mind seeing him disappear in an
institution. Her vacillation already be-
comes evident upon Oskar's return from
France. Her reception of him is far less
emotional and is accompanied by the com-
ment that he has given them plenty of
trouble (286). Although she claims to hope
that they will not put him in an institution,
she adds: "Vaidient hastes ja. Laifst davon
und sagst nischt!" (286) She shows the
same kind of ambiguity at the second men-
tion of the letter. In response to Matze-
rath's healthy reaction that he can't send
his own son away she says:
Nu beruhje dir doch,Alfred.Du tust grad
so, als wiird mir das nuscht ausmachen.
Aberwenn se sagen, das macht man heut
so, denn weiB ich nich, was nu richtig is.
(298)
The "modern way to do" this, is, of course,
to kill the likes of Oskar. Despite the appar-
ent ambivalence of Maria's reaction, she
tries to exert some pressure on Alfred and
push him into signing the letter, quite pos-
sibly not so much to get rid of Oskar as to
get rid of the trouble he causes them.
Matzerath seems almost shocked at her
willingness to get rid of Oskar and he
bursts out: "Agnes [Oskar's real mother]
hatte das nie gemacht oder erlaubt!"
(298). Maria's reaction to this is quite in-
teresting because it expresses an idea with
which we are familiar from the fairy-tale
world: "Na is verstindlich, weil se de Mut-
ter war und immerjehofft hat, dasses bes-
ser mecht werden mit ihm. Aber siehst ja:
is nich jeworden, wird iiberall nur rum-
jestoBen und weiBlnich zu leben und weiBl
nich zu sterben!" (298). This is undoubt-
edly the 'evil' fairy-tale stepmother want-
429
ing to do away with the real mother's
child[ren]. But in this very comment the
fairy-tale world also collides with the his-
torical reality of euthanasia. Apart from
the fact that she is wrong because Oskar
knows very well how to live, she adopts the
Nazi party's own reasoning that because
there is no visible physical growth, a crip-
ple like Oskar has no life inside and should
therefore be put out of his misery. This is
the very idea implied by the euthanasia
program, under which the disabled were
considered geistig tot. Ernst Klee has col-
lected a large amount of historical docu-
ments that reflect such attitudes. He
quotes, for example, from Karl Binding's
and Alfred Hoche's book Die Freigabe der
Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens. Ihr
Ma/3 und ihre Form (1920):
Sie habenwederden Willenzu leben,noch
zu sterben.So gibt es ihrerseits keine be-
achtliche Einwilligungin die Titung, an-
dererseits stS6t diese auf keinen Lebens-
willen, der gebrochen werden mif3te. Ihr
Leben ist absolut zwecklos, aber sie emp-
finden es nicht als unertraiglich.FUrihre
Angehorigen wie ffir die Gesellschaft bil-
den sie eine furchtbarschwere Belastung.
Ihr Tod reil3tnicht die geringste Liicke -
auBer vielleicht im Gefuihl der Mutter.
[...] Wieder finde ich weder vom rechtli-
chen, noch vom sozialen, noch vom sittli-
chen, noch vom religiosen Standpunkt
keinen Grund, die T6tung dieser Men-
schen, die das furchtbare Gegenbildech-
ter Menschen bilden und fast in jedem
Entsetzen erwecken, der ihnen begegnet,
freizugeben.22
Euthanatos, the beautiful death, was in
store for those who were considered mar-
ginal existences between life and death,
neither quite alive because they were con-
sidered geistig tot nor quite dead because
physically they were still alive. Oskar as-
serts his existence in opposition to Maria's
words by taking refuge in his two gifts, the
drum and his voice, "mir jedoch war Os-
kars Stimme iiber der Trommel ein ewig
frischer Beweis meiner Existenz; denn so-
430 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
lange ich Glas zersang, existierte ich, so-
lange mein gezielter Atem dem Glas den
Atem nahm, war in mir noch Leben" (299).
These words are, of course, also a refer-
ence to his earlier 'usefulness' to the Nazis
at the warfront, because Oskar has sur-
vived this long solely because of his
strange gift of shattering glass with his
voice. Maria's disparaging words have a
strong impact on Oskar. In a way they dis-
illusion him about her and his love for her
as becomes clear from his vision of the
clinic, which evokes the Nazi euthanasia
institutions:
[er] sieht sogar heute noch, sobald ihm
Mariaunter die Augen kommt, eine wun-
dersch6ne, in bester Gebirgsluftliegende
Klinik,in dieser Klinik einen lichten, mo-
dern freundlichen Operationssaal, sieht
wie vor dessen gepolsterter Tiir die
schtichterne, doch vertrauensvoll ldi-
chelnde Mariamich erstklassigen Arzten
tibergibt,die gleichfallsund Vertrauener-
weekend lacheln, wahrend sie hinter ih-
ren weiBen, keimfreien Schiurzen erst-
klassige, Vertrauen erweckende, sofort
wirkende Spritzen halten. (299)
The Nazis' euthanasia methods of camou-
flaging their activities as well as using in-
jections are both addressed in this pas-
sage. The neglect that Oskar experiences
from his stepmother Maria nearly causes
his death, were it not for the good angel of
his mother and Matzerath's persistent re-
luctance to sign. Finally, however, Matze-
rath gives in when, after Oskar's trial for
his and the 'Stauberbande's' desecration
of the Church of the Sacred Heart, an offi-
cial in civilian clothes approaches him,
iibergabdem ein Schreibenund sagte: Sie
sollten sich das wirklich noch einmal
tiberlegen, Herr Matzerath. Das Kind
mu3 von der StraBefort. Sie sehen ja, von
welchen Elementen solch ein hilfloses Ge-
schapf mifbraucht wird. (319)
The official's comment is again a reference
to Oskar's mental deadness and echoes
Maria's earlier words that he's always be-
Fall 2002
ing pushed around by others, i.e., that he
has no will of his own. Both are wrong
since we know that Oskar is the gang
leader, the brain behind all of its activities.
Yet the authorities now have two reasons
to institutionalize Oskar and dispose of
him. Not only is he considered a public
health threat because of his physical im-
perfection, now he also falls under the cat-
egory of criminal, another type of Unter-
mensch that the Nazis were eager to
eliminate. This time Matzerath ponders
for ten days as to whether or not he should
sign the letter before he finally gives in. Yet
luckily for Oskar
lag die Stadt schon unter Artilleriebe-
schuB, und es war fraglich, ob die Post
noch Gelegenheitfainde,den Briefweiter-
zusenden. (319)
The end of the war saves his life.
It is little surprise that Maria, who almost
causes Oskar's premature death, becomes
the chief representative of the postwar afflu-
ent bourgeoisie which contrasts sharply
with the institutionalized Oskar. Although
Oskar proposes to her, their marriage seems
out of the question. In a moment of rage she
had once reduced him to the kind of monster
mentioned earlier. Bindingund Hoche called
people like Oskar "Menschen, die das furcht-
bare Gegenbild echter Menschen bilden und
fast injedem Entsetzen erwecken, der ihnen
begegnet" (Klee 22). Maria calls him
eine verfluchte Drecksau, einen Gift-
zwerg, einen fibergeschnappten Gnom,
den man in die Klappsmiihle stecken
miisse. Dann packte sie mich, klatschte
meinen Hinterkopf, beschimpfte meine
arme Mama, die einen Balg wie mich in
die Welt gesetzt habe und stopfte mir,als
ich schreien wollte, es auf alles Glas im
Wohnzimmerund in der ganzen Weltab-
gesehen hatte, den Mundmit jenem Frot-
tierhandtuch, das, wenn man hineinbil3,
ziher als Rindfleischwar. (238)
Although she failed to see him institution-
alized during the Third Reich, she wit-
nesses how this is finally accomplished in
 ARNDS:Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
the FederalRepublic.Thus in the end she
finds her theory confirmed that he is an
"iibergeschnappterGnom,den man in die
Klappsmiihle stecken miisse." By calling
him a gnome she reduces him to a fairy-
tale creature, an otherwordlybeing, strip-
ping him of his humanity,in the same way
the Nazis placedthe disabledand the Jews
at a level lower than animals. Art Spie-
gelman's caption to his Maus series may
also come to mind in this context, Hitler's
words "The Jews are undoubtedly a race
but they are not human." This view ap-
plied to both the Jews and the disabled,
who were primarily considered a health
hazardand fell victims to the politics of ra-
cial hygiene. Like Tom Thumb, chased by
his Master's wife with a rag, Mariathreat-
ens to gag Oskar with a towel. The rag in
the fairy tale and the perception of the
physically handicappedas monstrous are
also linked to Oskar's famous comment
on Goethe:
der Goethe hitte [...] in dir [Oskar] nur
Unnaturerkannt,dichals die leibhaftige
Unnatur verurteilt und seine Natur [...]
hitte ermittibersiilhem
Konfektgeffittert
und dich armen Tropfwenn nicht mit
dem Faustdannmit einemdickenBand
seinerFarbenlehre erschlagen.(72)
Goethe'svision of the "klassischGesun-
de"as a seedbedforthe racialeugenicsof the
Nazis is undoubtedlya provocativethought.
Yetin postwarGermancultureGrass'snovel
is not alonein its recourseto the picaresque
and its parodyof Germanhigh culture and
the Enlightenmentconceptof Bildung. In
this regard,Die Blechtrommelcan also be
comparedwithsuchworksas ThomasMann's
Felix Krull, Arno Schmidt'sDas steinerne
Herz, EdgarHilsenrath'sDer Nazi und der
Friseur,and someofAnselmKiefer'sprovoc-
ative visual art. In their returnto the world
of fairy tales and myth for the representation
of the Holocaust and post-Holocaust Ger-
man society these artists were all supporters
of Richard Alewyn's warning to all Germans
in 1949 that Buchenwald lies "zwischenuns
431
und Weimar."23 Much has been written on
Grass'suse of the picaresqueand his parody
of GoetheanBildung, yet these categories
havenot been discussedin the contextof the
Nazis'oppressionof the grotesqueandof low
culture.24By recoveringwhat was consid-
ered an inferiorgenre throughoutthe 19f
century(exceptin the RomanticAge),name-
ly the picaresquetradition,i.e., by salvaging
the degenerateandgrotesquenot onlyin the
humanbody (Oskar)but also in the literary
form, Grass's Die Blechtrommelbecomes
one of the great humanitariannovels of our
time. I would argue, however,that Grass's
use of the fairy-taletraditionin the context
of Nazi euthanasiaand criticismof German
Bildung is, on the whole, subtler and less
cynicalthan that of his contemporaryEdgar
Hilsenrath.AlthoughDie Blechtrommelhas
receivedverycontroversialreactions,the au-
thor's cautious and non-provocativetreat-
ment of the theme of euthanasiain the con-
text of folkculturedid not overtlybreakany
taboos.25
This does not hold true for Hilsenrath
and Kiefer.JenniferTaylorhas correctlyar-
guedthat whileElie Wiesel"writesto strug-
gle with his madness Edgar Hilsenrath
writesto asserthis claimto his own German
culturalpast, as well as to redefinehis post-
war identity as a Jew.Writingis for him an
act of assertionor even of revengewhich al-
lows himto reclaimsomeof the Germancul-
tural inheritance taken from all German
Jews by the Nazis."26She is referringto the
Germanhigh culture that Hilsenrath'suse
of the grotesquetransformsinto a sort of
Unterkultur.He does so by displacingthe
BrothersGrimmwith his own fairy-talever-
sions and by parodyingthe GoetheanBil-
dungsroman. Hilsenrath's principle tech-
nique is one of inversion.As he invertshigh
cultureinto low culture,he invertsthe posi-
tions of Ubermenschand Untermensch.Max
Schulz, a non-Jew who looks like a Jew, is one
of these lowly creatures. Allegedly raped by
his stepfather when he is seven weeks old, he
becomes a mass murderer in a concentration
camp. After the war he recreates himself as
432 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
his former Jewish neighbor and Holocaust
victim Itzig Finkelstein, goes to Tel Aviv,and
becomes a well-respected barber. The two
main fairy tales that intertextually pervade
the structure of the first half of this novel are
Frau Holle and Hdnsel und Gretel. Though
the reluctance on the part of German pub-
lishers to publish the book in the early 1970s
was attributed to its alleged anti-Semitism,
Hilsenrath's provocative reappropriation of
German culture may have something to do
with their refusal to accept the novel. As I
pointed out, the fairy-tale tradition was at
best considered beneficial for the process of
healing the great German wound. Through
his use of the fairy tale, Hilsenrath reopens
this wound and throws salt into it. Hilsen-
rath's Frau Holle has little in common with
the benevolent woman of the original tale,
who was considered a role model for all
women in the Third Reich. With the figure of
Frau Holle we transcend the boundaries of
folklore and enter the realm of Germanic
mythology. As an archetypal figure of Ger-
manic mythology that has survived in the
folktale she was of particular interest to the
Nazis.27No doubt Hilsenrath's Frau Holle is
inspired by the Nazis' obsession with her ori-
gin in Norse mythology and her function as a
model for the good mother and Hausfrau.
The Norse goddess Hel was a figure associ-
ated with death and rebirth, which we see re-
flected in the fairy tale's image of the well
through which the two daughters enter Frau
Holle's underworld and exit from it. Cater-
ing to Nazi ideology,Maria Fuihrersays of the
Norse goddess that she "nahm zwar die Ver-
storbenen in Empfang und hielt sie streng
gefangen und verhiillt in den Tiefen ihres
unterirdischen Reiches; sie barg aber auch
die Lebenskeime in ihrem muitterlich nih-
renden SchoB" (82). In his parody of Frau
Holle Hilsenrath works with these two func-
tions, that of guardian of the dead and the ar-
chetype of the life-giving mother. Her "mfit-
terlich niihrender SchoB3"is perverted into
that of a prostitute. That she has only one
real leg makes her the object of sexual desire
for an American major, who is incapable of
Fall 2002
making love to two-legged women and ends
up making love to her wooden, non-Aryan
leg. After he dies from too much sex with the
wooden leg, Frau Holle guards his dead body
in her "underworld,"her bombed-out base-
ment apartment. Particularly through the
revisionist tendencies of his Frau Holle,
Hilsenrath alludes to the Nazis' ideological
abuse of this tale and their appropriation of
what for them was a typically Germanic
myth:
"Ichkenne keine Juden,"sagte Frau Hol-
le. Frau Holle wollte weitergehen, aber
der Junge sagte dann noch:"Diekommen
doch jetzt aus den Lagern zuriick!""Du
meinst - die - die noch da sind?"sagte
Frau Holle. "Ja,"sagte derJunge, "- ha-
ben Sie die Zeitung gelesen?" "Ich lese
keine Zeitungen,"sagte Frau Holle. "Ist
sowieso alles Schwindel.""6Millionener-
morderter Juden," sagte der Junge. "Al-
les Schwindel,Willi,"sagte Frau Holle.28
This was possibly a key passage contribut-
ing to the publishers' rejection of the book.
Yet even more iconoclastic in the eyes of
the German publishers may have been the
associative proximity of the text's Hansel
und Gretel version to the concentration
camps. When Max Schulz returns from the
war he tells the Triimmerfrau Frau Holle a
Hansel-and-Gretel story that happened to
him deep in the Polish forest. Like Giinter
Grass's fairy-tale forest in Die Rattin, Hil-
senrath's forest is far from being the emblem
of national unity that the Nazis saw in the
German forest.29Hilsenrath's fairy-tale for-
est transcends the original danger of the
Grimm Brothers' forest by referring to the
horrors Germany committed in Eastern Eu-
ropean forests during WW II. As Schulz is
fleeing the Russians he manages to hide dur-
ing the winter in the hut of an ancient Polish
woman, Veronja, who in return for giving
him shelter and food expects sexual service
from him seven times a night. As he chances
upon her cabin he describes it in ominous
terms that conjure up the crematoria:
Ich sah zuerst nur ein Dach [...] ein schie-
 ARNDS: Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
fes Strohdachmit einem kurzen Schorns-
tein aus gepreBtem Lehm. Schwarzer
Rauch stieg aus dem Schornstein, kriu-
selte Uiberdem Strohdach,verfing sich in
den Baumwipfelnin der Nihe des Daches,
l1ste sich bei neuen WindstiBenund stieB
himmelwarts. Ich folgte den Rauch-
schwaden mit meinen Blicken, guckte in
den Himmel, ohne zu wollen, und er-
schrak. Denn der Himmel iiber dem
Strohdachsah wie Eis aus. Blaues Eis mit
einer eingefrorenen Sonne [...] Plitzlich
ging eines der Fenster auf. Ich sah ein Ge-
sicht. Das Gesicht eines Hutzelweibes.
Ein uraltes Gesicht. [...] [D]ann ging die
Tiir auf. Ganz langsam ging die auf. Und
knarrte. Ganz komisch knarrte die Tiir.
"So wie bei Hinsel und Gretel," sagte
FrauHolle. "Michgruselt's richtig. "Mich
hat's auch gegruselt," sagte Max Schulz.
"Dastand sie pl6tzlichauf der Tiirschwel-
le. Eine uralte Frau. Eine, die ganz ko-
misch grinste. So ein Grinsen hatte ich
vorher noch nie gesehen [...]. Die grinste
wie ein Menschenfresser"(100-01).
That Veronja first appears to him as a can-
nibal is not only a reference to the voracity
of the Grimm witch and the devouring
mother archetype but can, in the context
of Schulz's sexual slavery, also be read as a
Freudian reference to the finger episode in
the Grimm original. On the seventh night
of doing seven 'numbers' with Veronja,
"sieben Nummern schieben" as he calls it,
Schulz has his second heart attack. He had
his first one while shooting Jews at the
edge of the mass grave. Instead offinding a
treasure in the witch's hut, as do Hansel
and Gretel, Schulz already arrives with
one, a box full of gold teeth he has managed
to swipe from Laubwalde, the concentra-
tion camp from which he had escaped be-
fore his encounter with Veronja. The Han-
sel-and-Gretel tale is thus thematically
linked to the Holocaust in a number of
ways, via: (a) the black smoke from the
hut,30 (b) the box of gold teeth, (c) the in-
version of the status of Max Schulz: from
oppressor to oppressed, from perpetrator
to victim; the witch makes him the kind of
433
"Untermensch" (103) that he is used to
seeing in others, and, most centrally, (d)
the oven motif. Schulz has to clean Veron-
ja's oven (110) and when it comes to the
showdown in which, in order to save his
gold teeth, he has to kill her, the oven again
looms large:
Ich [...] zertrfimmerte den Schidel der
Hexe mit drei Schligen [...] VeronjasGe-
sicht [...] rutschte zum Kiichenherd,
rutschte unter die Beine der Ziege Katju-
scha, die entsetzt gegen das Ofenloch
sprang. Kalte Asche fiel auf VeronjasGe-
sicht. Ich holte die Kohlenschaufel,kehr-
te Gesicht und Asche zusammen, warf es
ins Ofenloch, machte ein lustiges Feuer.
(117)
The German war crimes, primarily the
Holocaust, cannot be disentangled from
this fairy tale version. For a moment,
Veronja as a representative for all Poles
who became victims of the Nazis, can enjoy
her position as oppressor and take sweet
revenge.31 Yet it is above all such props as
the black smoke, the icy atmosphere, the
ashes, the coal shovel, and the oven that
are stable reminders of the Holocaust in
the midst of this carnivalesque encounter.
That Schulz momentarily becomes a vic-
tim gives him the idea central to the struc-
ture of the novel of recreating himself as a
Jewish victim after the war. Through the
death of the witch, he experiences like
Hansel and Gretel a sort of rebirth: "Ich
ging dem Frithling entgegen" (118). The
theme of rebirth is shared by the Grimm
tale, Hilsenrath'snovel, Grass'sDie Blech-
trommel, and some of Kiefer's work.32
Oskar,for example, repeatedly voices his
eagerness to return to the mother's womb.
In connection with the oven as a symbol of
the motherly womb (as discussed also by
Jung), Andrey Toporkovhas pointed out
that the Russian version of Hansel and
Gretel, the Baba-Yaga tale, is related to an
Eastern European rebirth ritual, in which
a sick baby is placed on a shovel and shoved
into a hot oven with the intention of re-
434 THE GERMANQUARTERLY
baking it, i.e., to placing it back into the
womb so that it can be rebornas a healthy
baby (nepeneKaHie [perepekanye]).33This
ritual evokes not only the Hansel-and-
Gretel tale but also the story of Max and
Moritz, who are baked into bread in the
baker's oven. Their rebirth does not func-
tion, however,because they re-emerge as
ill-behaved as they were before, which is
why they are ultimately killed: so that the
village communitycan be reborn.The Na-
zis also thought in terms of rebirth. By get-
ting rid of what was considered harmful,
parasitic, diseased, and ultimately evil,
they thought that Germany could be re-
born, literally like Phoenix fromthe ashes.
In the context of the Holocaust as well as
against the backgroundof the beginningof
the Federal Republic as Stunde Null, the
idea of rebirth becomes thematic in Der
Nazi und der Friseur and Die Blechtrommel.
Max Schulz's rebirth as Itzig Finkelstein
can partlybe seen as a sort of Holocaustde-
nial and the repression of his own guilt.
Oskar Matzerath's rebirth ironically oc-
curs in the chapter in which after the war
he travels west on the freight train where
he metamorphizesfrom a mere child that
had refused to grow into an ugly dwarf
with a hump. His ugly hump denotes the
ugliness with which Germansociety emer-
ges from the war years, the burden of its
guilt which Oskar takes upon himself.
That Hilsenrath's perpetrator recreates
himself as a victim can even be understood
as a comment on Germany's postwar
philo-Semitism. Ironically,it is this very
philo-Semitism,denouncedby Hilsenrath,
that prevents the novel from being pub-
lished.34 The fact that the Hansel-and-
Gretel oven is a symbolof rebirth simulta-
neously pointing to the destruction in the
camps moves this text onto taboo ground.
The oven that destroys human life be-
comes the perpetrator's site for his recre-
ation as victim. If in this context the pro-
tagonist Max Schulz has been understood
to represent German society at large, it be-
comes possible to fathom why this book
Fall2002
has been unsuccessful in Germany.
LikeGrass,Hilsenrathparodiesthe Goe-
thean Bildungsromanand its successorsin
the 19thcentury.Particularlythe beginning
of Der Nazi und der Friseur, which juxtapo-
ses the upbringingof the non-Jewishandthe
Jewishboy,theirfriendshipas opposedto the
prejudicesof their parents, is intertextual
with such novels as Wilhelm Raabe'sDer
Hungerpastor and Gustav Freytag's Soll
und Haben. The Ubermensch Goethe is asso-
ciated with the Jews, who live in the Goe-
thestraBe("diemeistenJuden [wohnten]in
der Goethe- und SchillerstraBe"[20]) and
are civilizedpeople as opposedto the non-
Jews likethe butcher,who"wollteunbedingt
aufderGoethestrassebleiben,ichnehmean,
wegen des 'Erlk6nigs,'obwohl ich nicht
sicher bin, ob er Goethes Gedichtkannte"
(14), and like Slavitzkiwho rapes his step-
son.
What are the points of intersectionbe-
tween the visual art of Anselm Kieferand
the literaryworksof Grassand Hilsenrath?
LikeHilsenrath,Kieferbroketaboosin rep-
resenting the darkest chapter of German
history.Like Hilsenrath'snovelsNacht and
Der Nazi und der Friseur, Kiefer's work was
received triumphantlyin the US while it
triggeredshockreactionsat home. He em-
ployssomeofthe samethemesas Hilsenrath
and Grass:the world of Germanicmythol-
ogy,the Germanforest,the contrastbetween
German high culture and the darkness of
militarism and genocide. Like Grass and
Hilsenrathhe contraststhe classicalAryan
bodywith the Jewish body,and in doingso,
like Hilsenrathhe alludes to Paul Celan's
Todesfuge:"deingoldenesHaarMargarete,
dein aschenesHaarSulamit."Thislinefrom
Celan'spoem is echoed visuallyin Kiefer's
paintings Margarete (1981), in Dein golde-
nes Haar, Margarete (1981), in Sulamith
(1983), and in two books made of soldered
lead and strands of women's hair (Sulamith
1990). As L6pez-Pedraza argues, "in Ger-
many before Hitler, the Jewish Diaspora was
driven by an unreflective love for the Ger-
man culture, leading to the illusion of being
 ARNDS:Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
assimilated. But now we have to recognize
that it was the fantasy of assimilation to a
shadow-culture with Wotanic roots (L6pez-
Pedraza 69)" It is this Jewish love for the
German culture that Hilsenrath ironizes in
his parody ofBildung and the German fairy
tale. It is the rift between these two cultures
that appears to us from the abysses of Ce-
lan's poem and on the burnt East Prussian
landscape of Kiefer's paintings. Yet while his
Holocaust paintings may command one to si-
lence, Kiefer's Occupations (1975) caused a
major uproar among Germans. This is a set
of photographs and paintings in which by
making the Sieg Heil salute the artist "occu-
pies" various symbolic locations in Europe,
all territories held by the Nazis during WW
II. According to Peter Winter "WestGerman
art critics tend to assume that Anselm Kiefer
is a nationalist painter [...]. Short of banning
him, the domestic critics would like at least
to tell Kiefer what he ought to paint,"35 and
WolfSch6n asked in the Rheinischer Merkur
(6 June 1980), shortly after the 1980 Bien-
nale in Venice: "Is this neo-Nazi Blood-and-
Soil art, a relapse into the glorious past?"
(cited in Winter 66). Kiefer, however, de-
fended himself against accusations that his
art was neo-fascist by saying: "I identify my-
self neither with Nero nor with Hitler. How-
ever, I must sympathize with them just a lit-
tle bit so as to understand their madness"
(cited in Winter 70). Kiefer's way of acting
out and working through the fascist past
rather than partaking of the collective amne-
sia of the parent generation, is not altogether
different from Hilsenrath's sarcasm, which
became a means of working through his own
traumatic experiences. In an interview Kie-
fer once said, "you cannot show things as
they are;you have to ironize them or they are
not supportable. The only way to sustain life
is to laugh about it."36This stance and the re-
sponses to their work-Hilsenrath was ac-
cused of anti-Semitism, Kiefer of being a
Neo-Nazi-show how similar this work is.
Like Grass, who returns to the Parsifal
myth in Die Blechtrommel, and Hilsenrath,
who plays with the figure ofFrau Holle, Kie-
435
fer returns to many of the Germanic myths
that had been ideologically perverted by the
Nazis. In his enormous painting Parsifal II
(1973), for example, he does what Grass did
with his "WaldoperZoppot, wo unter freiem
Nachthimmel Sommer ffir Sommer Wag-
nermusik der Natur anvertraut wurde"
(87): he points to Wagner as a political fore-
runner of the Nazis. Both Grass and Kiefer
focus on the blood in the Parsifal myth. They
refer to the myth in connection with the
question of guilt:
Nichts ist vorbei, alles kommt wieder,
Schuld, Sfihne, abermals Schuld. [...]
Kennen Sie den Parzival?Auch ich kenne
ihn nicht besonders gut. Einzig die Ge-
schichte mit den drei Blutstropfen im
Schnee ist mir geblieben. Diese Geschich-
te stimmt, weil sie zu mir passt. Wahr-
scheinlich passt sie zu jedem, der eine
Idee hat [.... [A]berder Schnee war schon
gefallen, der jene drei Blutstropfen auf-
nahm, die mir den Blick gleich dem Nar-
ren Parzival festnagelten, von dem der
Narr Oskar so wenig weiB, daB er sich
zwanglos mit ihm identisch ffihlen kann.
(392-94)
The central terms in this passage are guilt
and its return, the blood, the snow that
catches the blood, the idea, and the fool.
Oskar the drummer is, of course, an am-
bivalent figure. He is the victim ofpersecu-
tion, yet in order to escape this victimiza-
tion he sides with the Nazis. This makes
him a guilty "Mitliiufer." The blood is that
of the victims of the Nazi crimes. The
snow, he says, "das ist die Berufskleidung
einer Krankenschwester" (394), i.e., the
blood spilled on the white clothes of the
nurse could once again be read as an allu-
sion to the perversion of medicine under
the Nazis. The idea is that of the Thousand
Year Reich and the salvation of the Ger-
man Volk by way of cleansing it from its
blood pollutants. The fools are those who
tried this.
Kiefer reduces the Parsifal myth to a
bowl of blood in the center of an ominous,
claustrophobic room with two monstrous
436 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Fall2002

constructionsof woodenbeams that resem- themes was the Germanforest, the Teuto-
ble a pairof gallows.As in some of his other burgerWald,muchabusedby the Nazis as a
paintings, Nothung (1973), Deutschlands national emblem. Nationalists after the
GeistigeHelden (1973),and his famousHo- BrothersGrimm,like the reactionarymod-
locaustpaintingSulamith(1983),the design ernist Werner Sombart, had already pre-
of these cavernoushallsis "derivedfromthe paredthe groundforthe Naziobsessionwith
'valkisch' Fascist architecture [...] and also the forest by distinguishing the "desert-
bearsconnotationsof the heroicpast of Ger- roamingrationalistJews"fromthe "sensu-
manic legend [...] reminiscent ofValhalla."37 ous, rooted,andforest-dwellingGermans."38
Over the bucket of blood one reads the in- Hilsenrath turns the Nazi obsession with
scription:"HdchstenHeiles Wunder!Erld- the forestinto a grimfairytale forestandthe
sung dem Erldser!"These words contain a "Waldder 6 Millionen"which haunts Max
good deal of irony when taken out of the Schulzforthe rest of his life,and Kiefercom-
Christiancontext and appliedto the Nazi bines the imageof the forestwith Germanic
past. This must be done in Kiefer'scase, es- history,especiallythe "Schlachtim Teuto-
peciallybecausethe "Heil"andits ideaofsal- burgerWald"betweenVarusand Hermann
vation turn up in another of his paintings the German.To the Nazis, the defeatof the
that mentions Germancultural figures by Romanswas a symbolofGermansupremacy
indirectlyreferringto them as forerunners and the purityof Germanblood.Whatis in-
of Third Reich ideology: Deutsche Heilslinie terestingis that, like Grassand Hilsenrath,
(1975). Like many others this painting is who satirizeGermanBildung and the Bil-
based on Kiefer'svision of the Norwegian dungsromanby returningto the picaresque
landscape,an areathat was dearto German tradition, Kiefer in his two paintings "de-
nationalistsfrom KaiserWilhelmto Hitler. picts the unrealityand inflationembedded
"Usinginscriptionsof their names, [Kiefer] in the Germantraditionofknowledge.It was
has separated several great modern Ger- a knowledgethat pretendedto be wellout of
man-languagethinkers into two lineages" the forestand a contributorto universalen-
(Rosenthal56).ThoughRosenthalmentions lightenment,but Kieferplacesall those rep-
such social theorists as Hegel, Feuerbach, resentative heads" back in the forest (L6-
and Marxhe also inscribes"futureoriented pez-Pedraza47). MatthewRampleyargues
philosopherswhobelievedthat a kind of sal- convincingly that the Hermannsschlacht,
vationwouldcomeaboutthrougheitherthe which "wastaken up early as a symbolof
emergence of an extraordinaryleader re- Germanidentityin the growthof a sense of
sponsive to history or through historical nationhood in the nineteenth century, [...]
forcesbeyondthe controlof any individual": became an icon of Wilhelminenationalist
Schopenhauer,Wagner, Nietzsche, Jung, ideology"(Rampley84) and that Wegeder
andHeidegger(56).Theideaofthe "Heil,"of Weltweisheit,in which Kiefer places the
salvationbecomesveryamiguousin connec- headsof prominentGermanthinkersround
tion with Wagner,Nietzsche,and Heidegger, a groupof gaunt trees and the words "Die
evoking the notion of "Sieg Hell" or "Heil Hermann-Schlacht," "presentsthe ideology
Hitler"in the spectator. of Arminiusand mainstreamGermanintel-
The approximationof Germanhigh cul- lectual life as inextricablylinked. Indeed,
ture, its literary and philosophicalfigures, Kieferseemsto implythat the world-wisdom
with WW II and the Holocaust shared by of the Germans,through the motif of the
Grass, Hilsenrath, and Kiefer is possibly best [tree]roots,lies at the originof the political
exemplified in Kiefer's series of paintings violence and its justification symbolized in
entitled Wege der Weltweisheit (1976-77) the event of the battle of the Teutoburger
and Wege der Weltweisheit:die Hermanns- Wald" (Rampley 86). This thought goes be-
schlacht (1978). One of Kiefer's favorite yond Adorno and Horkheimer's idea ofa dia-
 ARNDS: Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
lectic of the enlightenment and suggests that
German romanticism too is responsible for
the political violence of the Nazis. Kiefer's
second painting in particular seems to sup-
port this idea, because in Wegeder Weltweis-
heit: die Hermannsschlacht he places figures
representative of Germany's entire cultural
heritage next to the two Nazi propaganda
heroes Schlageter and Horst Wessel. In this
sweeping defamation of German culture-of
enlightenment, classicism, and romanticism
-Kiefer resembles Hilsenrath more than
Grass. While Hilsenrath's view of the Ger-
man romantic heritage is deeply cynical in
Der Nazi & der Friseur, Grass's treatment of
this period is more subtle. Despite the tex-
tual proximity of the Wagner opera and the
Diumling-performance in the chapter "Die
Tribiine," Die Blechtrommel reflects the
deeper humanity of German romanticism,
which did not reject the grotesque as Goethe
did when he said "das Romantische ist
krank." Grass's novel seems consciously to
revive the grotesque after the Nazis had sup-
pressed it as degenerate and persecuted it in
all of its forms, both in the human body and
in the arts. Yetthere is no denying that in try-
ing to articulate some of the most horrible
Nazi crimes in their oeuvre, all three artists
participate in what has been termed Vergan-
genheitsbewdltigung. They attempt to work
through Germany's past by harking back to
an ideologically polluted cultural baggage:
the fairy tale, Germanic mythology, the En-
lightenment concept ofBildung, and the fig-
ure of Goethe.
Notes:
1Ernestine Schlant, The Language of Si-
lence: West German Literatureand the Holo-
caust (New York:Routledge, 1999).
2Andreas Huyssen, "Kiefer in Berlin," Octo-
ber 62 (1992): 85.
3Forinformationon the fairy tale of the Wei-
mar Republic see Jack Zipes (ed. and trans.),
Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days
(Hanover:UP of New England, 1989) 3-28.
4Cf.Zipes, WeimarDays 25, and Ulrike Bas-
437
tian, Die "Kinder- und Hausmirchen" der
Briider Grimm in der literaturpidagogischen
Diskussion des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts
(Frankfurta.M.:Haag& Herchen,1981)186.
5Jack Zipes, "The Struggle for the Grimms'
Throne: The Legacy of the Grimms' Tales in
the FRG and GDR since 1945," Reception of
Grimms' Fairy Tales: Responses, Reactions,
Revisions, ed. Donald Haase (Detroit: Wayne
State UP, 1993) 169; Peter Arnds, "Arno
Schmidts Das steinerne Herz und Wilhelm
HauffsDas kalteHerz,oder:wie ein biedermei-
erliches Mdirchen gegen den Strich gekimmt
wird,"BargfelderBote.Materialienzum Werk
Arno Schmidts (Miinchen:edition text + kri-
tik, 2000): 3-17.
6Zipes, "Grimms' Tales in the FRG and
GDR,"173ff.
7It still does now to many critics.Cf. eg. Rich-
ard Schickel, "Fascist Fable," Time (Nov. 9,
1998): 116-17: "[T]urningeven a small corner
of this century's central horror into feel-good
popular entertainment is abhorrent. Senti-
mentality is a kind of fascism too, robbingus of
judgment and moral acuity, and it needs to be
resisted. 'Life is Beautiful' is a good place to
start."
8Cf. Fritz Rumler, "Max& Itzig, "EdgarHil-
senrath: Das Unerzahlbareerzdhlen, ed. Tho-
mas Kraft (Miinchen:Piper, 1996) 70.
9Cf. Rafael L6pez-Pedraza,Anselm Kiefer:
After the Catastrophe (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1996) 16.
10Huyssen, "Kieferin Berlin" 87.
11Peter Novick has recently pointed out that
the "Holocaust,as virtually the only common
denominator of American Jewish identity in
the late twentieth century, has filled a need for
a consensual symbol." See Peter Novick, The
Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Hought-
on Mifflin, 1999) 7.
12Edgar Hilsenrath, Die Abenteuer des Ruben
Jablonski (Miinchen: Piper, 1999) 214-16.
13Zipes, "Grimms' Tales in the FRG and
GDR"170.
14Cf.Saul Friedlander,Probing the Limits of
Representation:Nazism and the "Final Solu-
tion" (Cambridge:HarvardUP, 1992).
15This dimension of the Nazis' cultural poli-
tics has to an extent been analyzedby Christa
Kamenetsky in Children's Literature in Hit-
ler's Germany:The CulturalPolicy of National
Socialism (Athens: Ohio UP, 1984), and in
438 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
"Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi Germany,"
Journal of American Folklore 85 (1972): 221-
35, and "Folktale and Ideology in the Third
Reich," Journal of American Folklore 90
(1977): 168-78.
16Cf. Berthold Hamelmann, Helau und Heil
Hitler: Alltagsgeschichte der Fasnacht 1919-
1939 am Beispiel der Stadt Freiburg (Eggin-
gen: Edition Isele, 1989) 317. Hamelmann
demonstrates that the carnival was instrumen-
tal to the Nazis in their foreign politics. They
saw in carnival a possibility to present National
Socialism as a humane (menschenfreundli-
ches) system to an international audience, thus
camouflaging their nefarious activities at
home. The carnival and the dwarf fairy tales
that were not entirely suitable for the educa-
tion of the young were often omitted from an-
thologies.
17Giinter Grass, Die Blechtrommel (Darm-
stadt: Luchterhand, 1986) 87; further refer-
ences cited parenthetically.
18The fairy-tale subtexts of the novel have
been analyzed in two articles, Janice Mouton's
"Gnomes, Fairy-Tale Heroes, and Oskar Mat-
zerath," Germanic Review 56.1 (1981): 28-33,
and David Roberts, "Tom Thumb and the Imi-
tation of Christ: Towards a Psych-Mythologi-
cal Interpretation of the 'Hero' Oskar and his
Symbolic Function," Proceedings and Papers
ofthe Congress oftheAustralasian Universities
Language and Literature Association (Can-
berra, 1972) 160-74.
g1ReinholdFranke analyzes the figure of the
"Daumling," in "Das Mdirchen vom Diiumling
in deutscher und franzbsischer Sprache," Ju-
gendschriftenwarte 43.11 (1938): 21-25. Com-
paring Perrault's version of the tale with the
German version, he concludes that one can rec-
ognize "im deutschen Mirchen den nordisch
bestimmten, im franz6sischen den westischen
Rassetyp" (25). But dwarfs or dwarf-like fig-
ures were not particularly popular among Nazi
ideologues, who considered them unheroic and
"artfremd." Seen in this light, Franke's analy-
sis seems contrived, especially when compared
with an interpretation of the tale "Das tapfere
Schneiderlein." As early as 1924, Georg Schott
interpreted the little tailor, who brags about
his achievement of having killed seven flies, as
a truculent Jew, who tricks the 'Germanic' gi-
ant. Schott sees in this pattern the reflection of
Fall 2002
a historical truth. Cf. Peter Aley, Jugendlitera-
tur im Dritten Reich: Dokumente und Kom-
mentare (Hamburg: Verlag ffir Buchmarktfor-
schung, 1967) 103-05: "Es wire einfach er-
gotzlich, zum laut Auflachen, wenn es nicht so
todtraurig wdire.Denn es ist abermals unsere,
der Deutschen Geschichte. Die deutschen Rie-
sen: Prachtkerle, mit ihren unheimlichen
Kriften. Die Welt k6nnten sie aus den Angeln
heben, wenn sie zusammenstiinden. Aber alles
ist umsonst; ein elender Wicht, der seinen
Schabernack mit ihnen treibt, wird ihrer
Herr" (104).
20The Tom Thumb tale is also a subtext in
Volker Schlbndorff's movie The Ogre. Abel
(John Malkovich), who steals young boys from
his parents to recruit them for an elitist Nazi
School in an Eastern European forest, corre-
sponds to the ogre of Charles Perrault's Le Pe-
tit Poucet, who eats little children that get lost
in the forest. Since Abel is a French prisoner of
war, the French fairy tale here literally merges
with the German fairy-tale world.
21Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate ofEuro-
pean Jewry (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990) 309.
22Ernst Klee, ed., 'Euthanasie' im NS-Staat:
Die 'Vernichtung unwerten Lebens' (Frankfurt
a.M.: Fischer, 1989) 22.
23Georg Bollenbeck, "German 'Kultur,' the
'Bildungsbiirgertum,' and its Susceptibility to
National Socialism," German Quarterly 73.1
(2000): 67-83.
24See, for example, Rainer Diederichs, Struk-
turen des Schelmischen im modernen deut-
schen Roman: Eine Untersuchung an den Ro-
manen von Thomas Mann 'Bekenntnisse des
Hochstaplers Felix Krull' und Giinter Grass
'Die Blechtrommel' (Eugen Diederichs Verlag,
1971); Volker Neuhaus, Giinter Grass (Stutt-
gart: Metzler, 1992); Volker Neuhaus, Giinter
Grass: Die Blechtrommel (Mfinchen: Olden-
bourg Verlag, 1982).
25Cf. especially the following reviews: Otto
von Loewenstein, "Der Blechtrommler in der
Kiisestadt: Wie ein Vollstreckungsrichter die
Bekanntschaft von Oskar Matzerath machte,"
Die Zeit 7 June 1963, shows that in the Allgiu a
judge considered the novel a menace to youth;
Hubert Becher, "Die Blechtrommel und ihre
Kritiker," Echo der Zeit 13 March 1960, calls
it a barbaric book; Marcel Reich-Ranicki, "Auf
gut Gliick getrommelt: Spielereien und
 ARNDS:Grass, Hilsenrath, Kiefer
Schaumschliigereien verderben die Zeitkritik
des Giinter Grass," Die Zeitl January 1960: 1.
26Jennifer Taylor, "Writing as Revenge: Read-
ing Edgar Hilsenrath's Der Nazi und der Fri-
seur as a Shoah Survivor's Fantasy," History of
European Ideas 20.1-3 (1995): 439.
27 Maria Fihrer tried to show the connection
between German folktales and the Germanic
myths behind them in Nordgermanische Git-
teriiberlieferung und deutsches Volksmdrchen:
80 Mdrchen der Briider Grimm vom Mythus her
beleuchtet (Miinchen: Neuer Filser-Verlag,
1938). While she identifies Frau Holle as typi-
cally Germanic because of the Norse myths be-
hind this tale (80ff, 91f.), she has almost noth-
ing to say about the Tom Thumb figure (cf. page
71). In reading this work it becomes obvious
that their connection with Germanic myths
made some tales more useful to the education of
the German youth than others.
28 Edgar Hilsenrath, Der Nazi und der Friseur
(Miinchen: Piper, 1990) 64; further references
cited parenthetically.
29 The Nazis' view of the German forest to an
extent harks back to Grimms's nationalistic
perception of it. Cf. Jack Zipes, "The En-
chanted Forest of the Brothers Grimm: New
Modes of Approaching the Grimms' Fairy
Tales," Germanic Review 62.2 (1987): 67: "The
Volk, the people, bound by a common language
but disunited, needed to enter old German for-
ests, so the Grimms thought, to gain a sense of
their heritage and to strengthen the ties among
themselves. "
30 Cf. Jennifer Taylor 442. She makes a connec-
tion between "Dach" and Dachau and refers to
the intertextuality between the above passage
and Paul Celan's "Todesfuge." Similarly, An-
439
selm Kiefer appropriates Celan's poem for
some of his most deeply moving Holocaust rep-
resentations.
31Cf. Peter Novick 217: "Aloysius Mazewski,
the president of the Polish-American Con-
gress, insisted that it was Poles [... .] who de-
served second place to Jews: his total of ten mil-
lion Holocaust victims was made up of six mil-
lion Jews, three million Catholic Poles, and one
million 'other nationalities."'
32The painting "Resurrexit" (1973), for exam-
ple.
33Andrey Toporkov, "'Rebaking' of Children
in Eastern Slavic Rituals and Fairy-tales," The
Petersburg Journal of Cultural Studies 1.3
(1993): 15-21.
34 Cf. Fritz Rumler in Thomas Kraft's Edgar
Hilsenrath, 70: "'Uberempfindlichkeit der
Verleger ffir jiidische Themen' und der 'ge-
ftihrliche Philosemitismus, der hier so
iibereifrig gepflegt wird,' vermutet Nazi-Autor
Hilsenrath, habe die Buchmacher z6gern
lassen."
35Peter Winter, 'Whipping Boy with Clipped
Wings,' (66-70), "Evaluating Anselm Kiefer,"
Art International 2 (1988): 66.
36Nan Rosenthal, Anselm Kiefer: Works on
Paper in the Metropolitan Museum ofArt (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998) 10.
37Matthew Rampley, "In Search of Cultural
History: Anselm Kiefer and the Ambivalence
of Modernism," Oxford Art Journal 23.1
(2000): 83.
38Cf. Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism:
Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar
and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1984) 140.