What's to Become of the Boy? by Heinrich Böll

First published:Was soll aus dem Jungen bloss werden? Oder, Irgendwas mit Buchern, 1981 (English translation, 1984)

Type of work: Memoir

Time of work: January 30, 1933 to February 6, 1937

Locale: Cologne, Germany

Principal Personage:

• Heinrich Böll, a noted German novelist

Form and Content

What’s to Become of the Boy? appeared in English translation only one year before the 1972 Nobel laureate’s death. It was his first and only attempt to write a straight autobiography. Heinrich Böll had previously resisted pressures to write in that genre, believing that autobiographies had a natural inclination to distort the past by interpreting events with the benefit of hindsight.

The book is written in a relaxed, conversational style, much as if the reader were sitting across the table from Böll, listening to him reminisce about his adolescent years. It covers the last four years of Böll’s formal education. Those years, from 1933 to 1937, parallel the first four years of Nazi rule in Germany. Böll portrays that time against the gloomy backdrop of the Nazi Party’s consolidation of its control over German society.

Böll clearly has not done any research into his past, nor is the narrative based upon any diaries, journals, or other documents. Böll is simply recalling, remembering, or reminiscing. Indeed, at the beginning of the book he warns the reader: “All this happened forty-eight to forty-four years ago, and I have no notes or jottings to resort to. . . . I am no longer sure of how some of my personal experiences synchronize with historical events.”

Böll gives several examples of his faulty memory. All of them are meant to impress upon the reader that Böll’s purpose is not merely to provide a sort of history of the young Heinrich Böll and his times but rather to re-create the mood of those four years as he felt and experienced it. “The mood and the situation I can vouch for, also the facts bound up with the moods and situations,” writes Böll, “but, confronted with verifiable historical facts, I cannot vouch for the synchronization.”

The conversational style of the book is evident in its format. It is a brief narrative, really only an extended essay. The paperback edition is only eighty-two pages long, approximately nineteen thousand words. There is no introduction or preface. The book simply begins with the statement, “On January 30, 1933, I was fifteen years and six weeks old.” From that inauspicious beginning, Böll’s memories flow forth unbroken until a date four years later, when he observes that he celebrated passing his final exams by drinking a glass of beer in a nearby tavern. There are no chapter headings, although the narrative is divided into eighteen numbered sections. There is no obvious reason for the subdivisions, unless it is to provide the reader with convenient points at which to stop reading and take a break.

Because the narrative is not based upon any research or documentation and because it does not attempt to give a history of the times, there are no index, bibliography, or footnotes. Also, there are no appendices or other attempts to place the memoir in its historical perspective. The account simply stops, without any conclusion. It is as if Böll, having finished reminiscing, got up from the table and left, leaving his audience to assign whatever meaning they wish to the memories he has just shared with them.

Critical Context

Much of the significance of Heinrich Böll’s What’s to Become of the Boy? lies in the fact that it chronicles the author’s life during those critical years when he formulated his political and social views—views which would later run through both his fiction and nonfiction. Those four years were also the years during which he decided that his life’s career would have something to do with books.

In late 1945, after returning to Cologne from service in the army, Böll began writing novels, essays, and radio and stage plays. Most of his literary works were set in the Rhineland, often in the Cologne-Bonn area. They both chronicled and critiqued the resurrection of West Germany. His biting criticism of middle-class values, which he believed had survived the war and dominated the new Germany, won for him praise from Marxist critics and made his books the best-selling West German fiction in East Germany. In the Soviet Union and throughout the East European Communist bloc, he was the best-selling non-Soviet author.

Some critics questioned Böll’s harsh portrayal of politicians, police, and the hierarchy of the Catholic church in postwar West Germany. Nevertheless, Böll remained the foe of every form of institutionalized power. In 1972, he openly campaigned on behalf of the Social Democratic Party, but later he became disillusioned with them.

Critics see much that is autobiographical in Böll’s fictional works, but What’s to Become of the Boy? was his only formal autobiography. Why did he choose to limit it to a four-year period? Perhaps he, too, thought that those were the crucial years for the development of his values. What’s to Become of the Boy? is a key to the greater understanding and appreciation of the whole of Böll’s literary output.

Bibliography

Adams, Phoebe-Lou. Review in The Atlantic. CCLIV (November, 1984), p. 148.

Barnet, Andrea. Review in Saturday Review. X (November/December, 1984), p. 81.

Craig, Gordon A. “Childhood of a Social Critic,” in The New York Times Book Review. LXXXIX (October 7, 1984), p. 3.

Kirkus Reviews. LII, August 1, 1984, p. 722.

Lehman, David. “In the Shadow of the Nazis,” in Newsweek. CIV (October 15, 1984), p. 100.

Library Journal. CIX, September 15, 1984, p. 1751.

Los Angeles Times Book Review. November 25, 1984, p. 6.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXVI, August 17, 1984, p. 49.

Washington Post. November 16, 1984, p. C3.