|
View the h-german Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-german's February 1999 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-german's February 1999 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-german home page.
Submitted by Dan Rogers
drogers@jaguar1.usouthal.edu
I have just finished reading Victor Klemperer's diaries from 1933-1941 (the
English translation by Martin Chalmers, published in 1998 by Random House,
$29.95). I have found them to be enormously enlightening about any number
of phenomena:
+ everyday life in the Third Reich (e.g., the place of the
automobile, how one builds a house, wartime
rationing, anti-intellectualism)
+ the steady intensification of official antisemitism,
which Klemperer suffered from and documented
+ the distinctions that must be drawn among official national-
level antisemitic measures and propaganda, local-level
variations of it, and individual expressions of antisemitism
+ the enormous range of popular responses to the Nazi
regime, both among individuals and within those
same individuals
+ the question of what it means to be German (Klemperer
often portrays himself as one of the few real Germans
left, most others having betrayed their Germanness
to become Nazis, fellow travelers, or passive
supporters)
I'm sure those who have read the diaries have found many more areas of
particular interest to them, and it would be interesting to hear of them.
I suspect many network members have already read the diaries in German and
are familiar with their wide publicity in Germany over the last few years,
as reflected, for example, in the compendium of essays edited by Hannes
Heer, _Im Herzen der Finsternis: Victor Klemperer als Chronist der
NS-Zeit_. (Aufbau Verlag, 1997, DM 29,90), although I have not yet read
that collection. A number of lengthy reviews have appeared in the US
accompanying the English translation, among them by Omer Bartov in _The New
Republic_ (December 28, 1998, pp. 42 ff.) and by Silvia Tennenbaum in _The
Nation_ (November 16, 1998, pp. 12 ff.). Bartov's review in particular is
a powerful prompting to consider the question of German identity.
Other than my interest in others' professional opinions on the merits of
the diaries as a historical source, my current questions are for those who
have also read the diaries and have either used them or have contemplated
using them in a course on modern Germany, Nazi Germany, or the Holocaust.
They are so rich, so densely layered that it is almost impossible to fairly
select a manageable amount of material from them for use in the limited
time offered by a single course; yet I also feel the diaries are certain to
become one of the first books to which those seriously interested in German
history will henceforth refer and I would be loathe to neglect to introduce
my students to them. Does anyone see a reasonable way out of this
conundrum? Has anyone come up with a course assignment yet that either has
or has not worked out?
Further, the diaries are extremely dangerous in the hands of the
tendentious, since Klemperer provides ammunition to all sides in the recent
debate over Goldhagen's theses. As Bartov points out in his review in _The
New Republic_: "For Klemperer is not consistent (this is hardly surprising,
in his rapidly changing circumstances), and he is not free from
contradictions and delusions. Nor is he always a cool and objective
observer. Sometimes he is impassioned, angry, anxious. His vacillations
make his book fascinating; but they also make his book useless for
tendentious historians. Those in quest of 'good Germans' will be as
disappointed by Klemperer as those who believe in German 'eliminationism.'
The diary reveals instead a gallery of individuals who act remarkably like
ourselves under circumstances radically different from our own." It seems
to me one would have to lay the groundwork for class use very carefully and
insist that students deal forthrightly with the inconsistencies, rather
than simply pick the ones they agree with in order to advance a thesis
about Nazi Germany or German identity.
I will be grateful for any replies on this subject to H-German.
Dan Rogers
University of South Alabama
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|