How German Is It

by Walter Abish

Book Overview

The question How German Is It underlies the conduct and actions of the characters in Walter Abish's novel, an icy panorama of contemporary Germany, in which the tradition of order and obedience, the patrimony of the saber and the castle on the Rhine, give way to the present, indiscriminate fascination with all things American. On his return from Paris to his home city of W rtenburg, Ulrich Hargenau, whose father was executed for his involvement in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811207765
• ISBN13: 9780811207768
• Release Date: November 1980
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 257 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Wicked . . .

Not sure if this book is devilishly funny or just devilish. Anyway, it got me laughing out loud. Don't know what that says about me, because the novel seems to be an attempt to account for the excesses of German fascism. Set 34 years after the fall of the Third Reich, it follows the lives of a number of hateful characters, during a period of several months, as they do their best to appear "perfect" to the rest of the world while behaving despicably to each other. The plot, if there is one, is a rambling affair, likely to spin off in any direction and shifting focus at will - following whatever happens to catch the eye and ear of the narrator: an architect separated from his wife, his brother a novelist now divorced and drifting through affairs with other women, a glamorously wealthy and utterly vicious young couple, a waiter in a high-class restaurant who is contemptuous of the customers he meticulously serves, an annoyingly narcissistic ten-year-old girl, a town mayor and his faithless wife, who berates her hapless husband and her aging house-painter father, and so on. Abish's narration is so thick with irony you couldn't cut it with a buzzsaw. His narrator punctuates the narrative with persistent questions and is constantly shifting perspective - sometimes intimately aware of what characters are thinking (though seldom what they are feeling, if anything), then turning speculative and gossipy, like a chorus of prying neighbors, then repetitive like a gossip who can't resist telling something over and over, or a camera blankly recording what happens to fall within the range of the viewfinder. Meanwhile, the satire in the novel is dark and relentless, events taking place against a backdrop of terrorist cells, social stratification, the burgeoning post-war economy, an influx of "guest workers," and the discovery of a mass grave under the main street of a new town built over the site of a "small" and therefore insignificant concentration camp. The unpleasantness of the Nazi years lurks everywhere under the surface, seemingly ready to pop out again at the next opportunity. Not a book for every taste, but definitely for anyone who appreciates Brecht and enjoys watching and rewatching "Dr. Strangelove."

So why isn't it a well known novel?

When should victims and their descents stop being victims and when do the crimes of our ancestors stop being our fault? This is territory of How German Is It = Wie Deutsch Ist Es by Walter Abish published in 1981 but set in the 70's when the post war generation were having to come to terms with their futures and the pasts it was built on. Abish is an American but whose family had fled Europe during the Hitler years. The central character is Ulrich a writer who is the son of a former high ranking German military officer executed for his role in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. He and his brother a modernist architect are from the aristocratic elite who supported Hitler's anti-communist stance as a political necessity. We first meet Ulrich having returned to the new post war town and discover that he had been caught up with a terrorist cell who were imprisoned based on his evidence so he and his wife are free. This has serious consequences as it clear that his wife who leaves him believes in the terrorist cause as may one of his girl friends. His brother, Helmuth is helping to build the new Germany and is in cahoots with the Mayor and has a chaotic sex life causing his marriage to fall about. This again ripples through the novel and helps to shape the climax of the story. A servant who saved the family in the fall of Nazi Germany lives in the new town and serves in the best restaurant and is known and loved by the two brothers. But it's clear in the web of relationships that build up that not all is as it seems. As the character's relationships build up a picture of who Ulrich is and why he must react in the final count in the way he does, we also start to discover that the new town is built on the ruins of a concentration camp and a willingness to try and ignore the past. To the point that we begin to see that the terrorists may well be the moralists except they are as much a failure as the bright new town. It is a political thriller and more as Abish is an experimentalist writer who uses German stereotypes and a central character, Ulrich, who is initially a cipher to builds up the story by switches in narrator, by the author questioning the action or intention of the character or situation etc. As the story unfolds the interaction with the other characters builds in to real psychological studies. The climax and its consequences for Ulrich seek to answer the question of the novel's title. The novel is highly recommended and for all it being experimental is not a difficult read. It won the American book award(PEN/Faulkner) in 1981 and deserves a wider readership

Very engaging

Abish as an experimentalist is writing this book using German stereotypes: he's started from the premise of culling through all the German stereotypes in his mind, and then he activates them in a story format. The characters and situations and histories he comes up with are all a bit off, not quite real, and being a very agile writer Abish captures this residue of unreality and feeds into it: the sexual, casual, familial, friendly relationships, the fumbled acquaintances are all nudged subtly by Abish, paragraph by paragraph, into a really tactile, amplified, and very engaging read.

Extremely Relevant

The master journalist H.L. Mencken once wrote, "If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die. This novel is 23 years old; the Second World War ended over 59 years ago, yet the plot is still relevant today. It will be a long time before Germany as a nation, and the Germans as a people will be live apart from the legacy of Nazism and the atrocities and destruction that was wrought during those few years. While the descendents of the victims will continue to usurp the role of the victim, the descendents of the perpetrators will inherit guilt for the crimes, and then there are those who are not sure how they fit into this scheme from a historical perspective. The naïve, the disgruntled, the apathetic, and the nazis-new and old-exist side by side, this is the crux of "How German is it." The setting of this story is a town that was once the site of a concentration camp. For posterity the camp has been leveled and a modern town has been built and named after Germany's most celebrated contemporary philosopher. The story surrounds a writer who is the son of a former high ranking German military officer executed for his role in the 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. While not a military story, this novel weaves through the daily activities of this man and the constantly reminders of the events past due to relationships both professional and personal, and a small band of terrorists, a very interesting plot.Although written in 1980, terrorism is explored as a form of expression for the disgruntled. The author does a good job to explain how a government can tweak the circumstances and the fears surrounding terrorism to gain more power, allocate more funding, and remove personal freedoms. The characters are well developed in this very important novel for it covers events that are beginning to find there way into American society. Terrorism was a novelty in the United States in 1980 whereas it was already a common place event in the rest of the world. This novel will make you think about your lifestyle relative to the rest of the world. Very cleverly written.

Very German Indeed

Walter Abish has a reputation for writing experimental fiction and much of his work is not all that accessible but this novel will appeal to readers of both experimental fiction and readers who like a solid plot and believable characters as the book treads ground familiar enough to appeal to the reader with a taste for tradtional novels and yet the psychologies studied are quite modern and so the reader of experimental fiction will find much to admire as well. Abish is an American and this book won the most prestigious American book award(PEN/Faulkner) in the year of its release 1981 but the authors that come to mind when reading HOW GERMAN IS IT are German or Austrian. The lead character is named Ulrich and any lover of German language literature will immediately think Robert Musil when hearing that name. In a way the book is reminiscent of Musil's Man Without Qualities in that its lead character is a kind of cipher without any real identity of his own, at least not one that is readily apparent. Abish's Ulrich is an author and throughout the book Abish has different characters in his book comment on how unreliable authors are. This is kind of a modernist joke but one that gains in resonance as the book progresses. Abish writes in a way that may remind some of Kundera but without the humor, and without the hip 60's sensibility. Like Kundera however he places his characters in very specific historic contexts. For Abish however there is a kind of delayed reaction as the present of the novel is the late seventies but the historic context still defining each character relates back to the 1939-45 period. The truths and obsessions that define the German character that was so very evident in those years have never really vanished is Abish's conceit. And each character must deal with those truths in his own way and define him/herself against them. In addition there is the irony/ambiguity in the title that suggests or asks if these are just German obsessions or are these obsessions shared by all modern capitalist societies. But all is done below the surface as Abish reveals all very subtly through his characters which he flushes out only very slowly and this slow and gradual flushing out of each character is where the real appeal of the novel is. Who is really standing for what. It is not so easy to see or say who is on what side and who stands for what in the modern version of Germany. Not til the last page do you know the defining truth of the lead character. And it is a surprise which I did at no time see coming. A great psychological study of half a dozen characters told in a meticulous and deliberately paced prose which reveals this while concealing that. Virtually perfect in every way which makes this novels answer to its own question HOW GERMAN IS IT :very German indeed.