German Short Fiction

Introduction

The German short story is a relatively new form of literature. Traditionally, the novella has been short fiction in the German literary tradition. While the term Kurzgeschichte or kurze Geschichte (short story) was used before World War II, the German short story in its modern guise did not come into its own until after the postwar mingling of German and American literary forms. This new short story is best described as something like Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants," with a central metaphor and image, a sketch from someone’s life, and a central problem to be addressed. With all the geographical changes in Germany, the best access to short fiction is through the details of recent history.

The National Socialist Regime

The time of the Nazis looms large in much of German fiction. Austrian writer Peter Handke’s 1990 story “Versuch eines Exorzismus der einen Geschichte durch eine andere” (attempt at an exorcism of one story by another) juxtaposes a morning of singing birds with the activities in that same hotel of Dr. Klaus Barbie, noted for his sadistic torture of Jews. Handke is the son of a German soldier and an Austrian woman. Born in 1942 in Kärnten, Austria, he grew up shuttling between Austria and Berlin. He was studying jurisprudence when his first novel was published to great success. One who the Gestapo incarcerated, the Geheime Staatspolizei or secret state police, was Günter Weisenborn, who commemorated a brave comrade with the 1947 story “Die Aussage” (the statement). The comrade’s statement had exonerated Weisenborn. The transition to the conditions of postwar Germany was difficult for many Germans. Weisenborn was born in 1902 and lived through the Nazi era, although part of that time he worked as a reporter in New York. On his return to Germany, he became a prisoner of the Gestapo. Weisenborn died in 1969 in Berlin. In Georg M. Oswald’s 1995 story “Das Loch” (the hole), Uncle Otto buries his SA uniform from his service in the Sturmabteilung (storm battalion, the brownshirts) in a hole he has dug in the garden. Aunt Sophie hides Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” manifesto in the cupboard. It had been a wedding gift from the party. No one mentions the hole again. Oswald was born in 1963 in Munich.

Sick of War

Postwar disillusionment is presented with power in the work of Wolfgang Borchert. Borchert was born in Hamburg in 1921. He worked as a bookstore clerk and as an actor. At age twenty, he was conscripted to serve at the Russian front. He died at age twenty-six in 1947 from a series of illnesses and injuries that he had sustained as a soldier on the Russian front, and he did not experience success as a writer and playwright. Despite such a short life, he became a literary icon. He died the night before the first performance of his 1947 play Drauáen vor der Tür (the man outside). Borchert’s crisp and clear sketches are emotionally rich. A young boy sitting atop ruins to guard his family’s corpses against the rats in Borchert’s 1947 story “Nachts schlafen die Ratten doch” (but at night the rats sleep, don’t you know?) moves the reader to compassion. In another Borchert story, a soldier holds a kitchen clock stuck at 2:30 a.m., when his mother would have made him a meal because he had come home late, a young soldier thinks of his family that is gone because clocks stop when the bomb blast stops them. The fiercely bitter and angry 1946 story “Die drei dunklen Könige” (the three dark magi) brings three former soldiers to a small room where a woman has just delivered a baby. One man has no hands because they froze off, the second has a few pieces of candy for the woman, and the third has a small wooden donkey for the child. The father has no one into whose face he can smash his fist to express his anger against God in an anti-Christmas story. Life is senseless and profoundly sad for Borchert. In one of his stories, the physician in the military hospital moves from bed to bed, bent over as though he is carrying all of Russia on his shoulders. At his home, little Ulla, ironically, is practicing her handwriting with “in war, all fathers are soldiers.” These images are hard, focused, and painful.

Displacements

German displaced persons appear in the work of Jenny Erpenbeck, who was born in East Berlin in 1967 and settled in Graz in Austria and in Berlin. Her 2003 story “Siberien” (Siberia) alludes to the East Prussian women and teenagers who had to sign a document of atonement for Hitler’s wrongdoings and who were then deported as forced laborers to Siberia. Of the original two million abducted persons, only a few came back. Erpenbeck describes the return of Grandmother, who drags Grandfather’s lady-friend by the hair and tosses her out. However, the returning displaced person is not always victorious in reclaiming a place at home. Writer Christopher Hein, who lived through displacement, was born in Heinzendorf, Silesia, and studied philosophy and logic in Leipzig and in East Berlin. He was an outstanding writer in the German Democratic Republic. In 1994s, “Der Krüppel” (the cripple), Christopher Hein writes about a returning one-armed prisoner of war (POW), kicked out by his East Berlin family. The stories record the effects of severely disturbed minds after war, destruction, capture, forced labor, diminished resources and hunger, and many other hardships. In 1952, the last POWs returned from Russia to face such bitter experiences.

The “Others” in Germany

Another set of stories focuses on German-Jewish, Turkish-German, and immigrant-German relationships. Marie Luise Kaschnitz deals with two Jewish German sisters who both end tragically and ironically in the 1960s “Lupinen” (lupine flowers)—one in a concentration camp, the other as a suicide. Kaschnitz was born in 1901 in Karlsruhe, the daughter of a military officer. Her poetry began her literary career, and also she produced radio drama and short stories. Kaschnitz died in Rome in 1974. Günter Grass juxtaposes the concentration camp guard who was force-transferred to Dachau for his murder of a Jewish inmate in Oranienburg camp in 1934 with the famous genuflection of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt before the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in 1970. Grass points out the theatrical nature of Brandt’s studied pose, misplaced particularly because Poland had been viciously anti-Semitic. Grass published this sketch in 1999, well before his admission in 2006 that he had been a member of the Schutzstaffel, an elite unit of the National Socialist regime (SS). Grass was born in Danzig (which became Gdansk) in 1927, and he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999.

In “Unvermietetes Zimmer” (a room not rented), Botho Strauss alludes to Franz Kafka as Strauss invents Franz K., who shrinks as he reads of hatred against Jews. Of tiny stature, he cannot hurl himself to his death, an image of guilt and its diminishing effect on one’s sense of self-worth. Strauss was born in Naumburg in 1944 and studied German literature, theater, and sociology. He is a successful but also quite controversial writer. Michael Kleeberg deals with the German-Jewish relationship in an emotionally challenging way. In one of his stories, Kleeberg’s main character tells of her father, who was a physician in Paris when he treated a young German woman for extreme blood loss. By injecting his own blood, he saved her life. He also managed to pollute her Aryan blood with Jewish blood, a victory for him. Kleeberg, born in 1959 in Stuttgart, studied philosophy and visual arts. He lived in France for a long time, then settled in Berlin to work as a writer and translator.

Turkish German writer Selim Özdagan describes a woman’s leaving her husband in “Marita” (2003), something unheard of in the patriarchal culture of Turkey. Özdagan was born in 1971. He studied anthropology and philosophy, but his writing career began with pornography. In 1995, he moved to Cologne, where he continued writing. German Croatian writer Jagoda Marinić speaks of another fate of immigrants. In her 2001 “Kurzbiografi” (short biography), she tells of a man going to Germany to make money. His wife follows to make them a two-earner family. They can afford a large house, but the children, who have assimilated into German society, marry and move out. The man dies, and the woman remains alone in the big house, knitting clothing for her grandchildren, whom she does not know. Marinić was born in Stuttgart in 1977, the daughter of Croatian immigrants, and she eventually settled in Heidelberg.

The Human Rights of the “Others”

One of Germany’s great writers, Heinrich Böll, focuses on the time of student uprisings, leftist interests, and the Berufsverbot (work denial) for sympathizers of student radicals. Böll’s 1977 short story “Du fährst zu oft nach Heidelberg” (you travel to Heidelberg too often) focuses on a character who assists a young immigrant couple with paperwork. Böll won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972. Born in 1917 in Cologne, he served in the military and was a prisoner of war. He died in 1985. The writer Siegfried Lenz stresses in his work the obligation of supporting asylum seekers. In one story, a fake marriage to secure Josua’s stay has been discovered; Josua is deported. The dead-letter office receives his letter with brief greetings to friends and an announcement of his impending execution. Lenz also wrote about repression in Eastern Europe in the 1960 story “Ein Freund der Regierung” (a friend of the government). Journalists visit Bela Bonzo, a farmer who speaks in the best terms about his government. When the narrator departs, Bela gives him a tiny roll of paper. Back at the hotel, the narrator discovers Bela’s splintered tooth in the piece of paper, a hint of torture. Lenz was born in East Prussia in 1926. He became a member of the Hitler Youth and was drafted into the navy. He went AWOL in Denmark and was captured by the British. In 1951, Lenz settled in Hamburg.

The German Democratic Republic

While cultural expressions were strictly controlled in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), some critical voices were heard. Günter Eich's 1968 story “Hausgenossen” (comrades in the house) focuses on his severe dislike of his parents: Father State and Mother Nature. Eich was born in 1907 in the border area between Poland and Brandenburg. Later, his family moved to Berlin. During the war, Eich was a radio operator, and he was captured by the Americans. He died in 1972. Well known for his local-color novel of 1983, Der Laden (the store), Erwin Strittmatter populates his stories with villagers. He tells a story about an elderly couple who walked into a pond singing dirges because Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda of the Third Reich, frightened them about what the Russians would do to them. This early Strittmatter sees evil from the National Socialist regime but remains congenial to Russians. Strittmatter was one of the most honored writers of the GDR. He was born in 1912 and died in 1994. Some of Christa Wolf’s short fiction was suppressed when she narrated a story about a love relationship involving a Russian lieutenant. Wolf was born in 1929 in Landsberg, known as Gorzów Wielkopolski, and she became a successful and controversial writer in East Germany. The 1975 story “Versuchte Nähe” (attempted proximity) is Hans-Joachim Schädlich’s attempt to describe a parade guarded by armed personnel stationed on the roofs of houses. Schädlich, a writer of the GDR, was born in 1935 and got his doctoral degree in linguistics after studying in Berlin and Leipzig. In 1977, he immigrated to Hamburg.

Reiner Kunze’s “Element” (unsavory character), from 1976, tells of an apprentice who, wanting to read a Bible, keeps it on his shelf. However, apprentices in the socialist state must not have Bibles. He is pegged secretly as a revolutionary and effectively is barred from traveling freely. Kunze was born in East Germany in 1933. He attended university in Leipzig but had to interrupt his studies for political reasons in 1955. He published his critical literature in West Germany. Because he was barred from publishing in East Germany, he was forced to leave in 1977. Later, he became a teacher at West German universities.

Two young students with peace patches on their jackets are charged with hostility to the republic because the peace-loving republic should not be admonished toward peace in Claudia Rusch’s 2003 story “Peggy und der Schatten von Ernst Thälmann” (Peggy and the shadow of Ernst Thälmann). Thälmann was a member of parliament and head of the Communist Party of the Weimar Republic, who died in a concentration camp in 1944. Rusch was born in 1971 in the GDR and eventually settled in Berlin. Police managed the repression of citizens in the GDR, and Jacob Hein’s 2001 story “Nu werdense nich noch frech” (now don’t get uppity with us) tells the reader how the police react to cognitive dissonances in what they enforce. Jacob Hein was born in 1971, the son of the writer Christopher Hein, one of the most important writers of East Germany. Jacob Hein works as a physician. Cognitive dissonance about what is politically correct and what is reality is also at the core of Christopher Hein’s 1991 story “Die Vergewaltigung” (the rape). The socialist state was at odds with its founders, and Jewish German writer Thomas Brasch describes that conflict in his 1977 story “Fliegen im Gesicht” (flies in the face) in a dialogue between one of the communist fighters and strongman Francisco Franco in Spain. The GDR was not the state that they had envisioned. Brasch was born in England in 1945 to Jewish Austrian parents. His father became a leading figure in East German politics as a member of the central committee of the Socialist Unity Party. Nevertheless, Brasch was critical of East Germany.

The Turning Point

The adjustment literature deals with the transition from the GDR to the united Germany. Christopher Hein shows in his 1994 story “Unverhofftes Wiedersehen” (unexpected meeting) the meeting of two refugees from the GDR in West Germany: One had been a leading member of the GDR, and the other had been a conscientious objector to the regime. When they meet again, the leading member of the regime has become a leading member of a West German institution, and the enmity between the two continues. Many people in the GDR had become informants of the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi). Günter Kunert examines such guilt in “Lorenz” (Lawrence), his 1994 story. Kunert was born 1929 in Berlin. He was forbidden to attend university because of his Jewish ethnicity. Another sad course of events deals with Rudolf from Saxony, a jazz musician, well known at the jazz festival of Warsaw before the borders fell. However, he has no future in the new Germany, so he sells insurance and loses his sense of self-worth in Kleeberg’s story “Birth of the Cool” (1997).

The Modern Age: Broken Families

Later German short fiction also focuses on family problems. Gabriele Wohmann’s 1968 story “Verjährt” (statutes of limitation) tells of an elderly couple living with the woman’s indiscretion that produced a son, whom the husband calmly accepts into the family. Except for emotional undercurrents, the couple lives peacefully. Wohmann, a prolific German writer, was born in 1932, the daughter of a pastor. She has received many honors, including the Order of the German Federation, the highest award Germany can bestow. Brigitte Kronauer writes about a nagging woman who so alienates her husband that he simply disappears; she sees him again years later with another woman in 1997’s “Das Ehepaar Dortwang” (the married couple named Dortwang). Kronauer was born in Essen in 1940, where she became a teacher. Later, she moved to Hamburg, where she continued to write. In Susanne Geiger’s 1997 story “Flucht” (flight), a girl wants to leave home with a boy, any boy. Geiger was born in 1964 in Stuttgart. Parents blame each other for a dead son in Milena Moser’s 1998 story “Der Hund hinkt” (the dog cannot walk). Swiss writer Thomas Hürlimann’s 1992 story “Der Liebhaber der Mutter” (mother’s lover) tells of a woman’s masterful secrecy in having a prolonged loving relationship. A Swiss writer, Hürlimann was born in 1950. He attended universities in Zurich and Berlin. In 1985, he began to live and work in Willerzell, Switzerland. A lost-and-found-again father plays a role in the 2006 story “Streuselschnecke” (streusel Danish) by Julia Franck. Franck was born in 1970 in East Berlin. When her father fled to West Germany, the entire family was deported to West Germany. Franck moved to Berlin to continue her writing career.

The Modern Age: Broken People

The teacher who offers private tutoring in music but hangs himself after the first public performance of his student in Gerold Späth’s 1973 story “Mein Stundenplan” (my timetable) is a person who suffers from a loss of meaning. Späth, a Swiss writer, was born in 1939 to an organ builder. Although Späth spent time in London, he later moved back to Switzerland. Elfriede Jelinek’s stories abound with abused women, misguided youngsters, and bizarre behaviors of quite ordinary people. Born in 1946 in Mürzzuschlag in Styria, Austria, Jelinek won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Franz Kafka Prize in 2004 and a lifetime achievement award from Austria's Nestroy Theatre Prize in 2021. The work of Botho Strauss tells of people in meaningless relationships bonded by casual sex. Peter Bicksel traces the development of an abused person toward repeated calamity in “Immer wieder Weisshaupt” (always again the Weisshaupt guy). Born in 1935 in Lucerne, Switzerland, Bicksel worked as a primary school teacher and later received many awards from Germany and Switzerland. As a visiting professor, he taught in Germany and the United States. In a tale by Swiss writer Peter Stamm, young people become suicidally jealous of each other when first they swim and then skinny-dip in a lake. Born in 1963, Stamm began his business career but soon changed to study English, psychology, and computer science. He settled in Zurich to become the editor of a literary journal. Gert Loschütz tells about a man who commits suicide when he realizes that his wife failed to clean the aquarium properly. Loschütz was born in 1946 in Genthin in Brandenburg, East Germany. In 1957, he immigrated to West Germany and settled in Frankfurt.

European society has many families where both parents work, giving rise to the Schlüsselkinder (kids with keys), such as in ”Popp und Mingel.” The father is Popp, an old ball, and the mother is Mingel, a broken doll without limbs. Brother Harry is a chess piece, and sister Luzia is an almost depleted balloon. This “family” is in a box. When the child comes home, she unpacks the box, places father, mother, and siblings so she can communicate with them. However, the “family” disappears, and the child’s father has replaced the “family” with dominoes. Deprived of this social outlet, the child seeks contact with gangs outside. A slippery slope toward juvenile delinquency has begun.

Kafkaesque Stories of the Modern Age

Certain short stories have roots in paranoid alienation. Herbert Malecha’s 1954 story “Die Probe” (the test) and Ilse Aichinger’s 1951 story “Die geöffnete Order” (the opened message) pivot on ironies. The former has a thief who gives his real name to the press when he wins a prize, so he is captured immediately after. The latter has military headquarters use a code to initiate hostile action, the coded message being a command to execute the courier, which causes the courier to attempt pinning the message on the driver instead so that the courier comes face to face with his cowardly behavior. Little is known about Malecha. His short story won a prize in the newspaper Die Zeit contest. Aichinger was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1921; her radio dramas were memorable.

Reminiscent of Kafka’s Der Prozess (1925; The Trial, 1937), Günter Kunert's 1968 story “Zentralbahnhof” (central train station) ends with an execution in Cabin Eighteen of the men’s toilet. Herta Müller’s 1983 story “Drückender Tango” (depression tango) describes a surrealistic dance of death on All Souls’ Day. Müller was born in Romania in 1953. Her father had been a member of the SS. After the war, he drove a truck and became an alcoholic. In 1987, she moved to West Berlin from Banat, Romania, a German-speaking area. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009. Kronauer’s 1940 story “Der Störenfried” (the troublemaker) has a person run a race through a cemetery, the title being an allusion to a Nazi pro-war cartoon. Her 2004 story “Dri Chinisin” (three Chinese), a reference to a children’s song in which vowels throughout are replaced by a single vowel repetitively, focuses on a Jesus figure in a cemetery with the inscription, “Let the children come to me,” a biblical phrase usually rendered as “Suffer the little children” in English. The children’s ditty becomes a bizarre and fierce song of protest against death. Arne Nielsen’s 2003 story “Donny hat ein neues Auto und fährt etwas zu schnell” (Donny has a new car and drives a bit too fast) ends with an inexplicable scene in which the narrator bashes a chicken against sundry objects after he has removed the bird from a cage. Nielsen was born in Denmark in 1971 and moved to Hamburg, Germany; he is an economist. Burkhard Spinnen writes about mass murder caused by a shelf left messy by other members of the family in the 1996 story “Gründe für ein Massaker” (reasons for a massacre). It is a senseless killing to outsiders but a necessary revenge to the person in a world of compulsions. Spinnen was born in Mönchengladbach in 1956, and he holds a Ph.D. in German studies. Daniel Kehlmann’s 1998 story “Auflösung” (dissolving) relates the life of a person from meaningless job to pointless existence and final death. Kehlmann was born in Munich in 1975. He wrote his dissertation about Immanuel Kant and studied philosophy and literature in Vienna, where he settled to continue his work. Violence and senselessness are common themes in Felicitas Hoppe’s work. In her 2009 story “Die Hochzeit” (the wedding), for example, a bride spends her wedding night with a musician from the orchestra, who is then clubbed to death by the bride’s brother—all without narrative logic or context, alienation being the key effect. Her other works include Hoppe (2012), Prawda (2018), and Grimms Märchen für Heldinnen von heute und morgen (2019). Hoppe was born 1960 in Hameln. She studied literature and rhetoric in Tübingen and later moved to Berlin.

Summary

Germany’s history makes its culture unique. Its literature grew in response to its history and attempts to reflect how its people reacted to often traumatic events. Germany's twenty-first-century short fiction gained renewed popularity, sharing themes with the writings of authors in Austria and Switzerland. Judith Hermann's works have supported the re-emergence of the genre, beginning with her first short story collection, Sommerhaus, später (1998). In the aftermath of the collection's success, Hermann became a leader for young aspiring female writers. She published her second collection in 2003, Nichts als Gespenster, followed by Alice in 2009. The Swiss writer Peter Stamm also contributed to the development of modern fiction in Germany with Wir fliegen (2008; We're Flying, 2012) and Die sanfte Gleichgültigkeit der Welt (2018; The Sweet Indifference of the World, 2020).

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