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Trilogy of Failure #3
Death in Rome
In Rome, four members of a German family are reunited by chance. A young composer, Siegfried; his estranged father, Freidrich, who held office under the Nazis and is once more making his way in public life, this time as a democratically elected buromaster; Siegfried's uncle, Judejahn, a unrepentant former SS general; and Judejahn's renegade son, Adolf, who is preparing himself for a Catholic priesthood. The four men recount their separate experiences in music, bureaucracy, arms, and religion- taken together they personify the German soul. Death in Rome is a history book, a family book, a book about the battle over who gets to represent the authentic face of post-war Germany. It is a devastating and brilliantly powerful provocation of an entire nation.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1954
About the author
Wolfgang Koeppen
71 books36 followersWolfgang Arthur Reinhold Koeppen (June 23, 1906 – March 15, 1996) was a German novelist and one of the best known German authors of the post-war period.
Koeppen was born out of wedlock in Greifswald, Pomerania to Marie Köppen, a seamstress who also worked as a prompter at the Greifswald theater. He did not have contact with his father, ophthalmologist Reinhold Halben, who never formally accepted the fatherhood. In 1920, Koeppen left Greifswald permanently, and after 20 years of moving about, settled in Munich, living there the remainder of his life.
He started out as a journalist. In 1934 his first novel appeared while he was in the Netherlands. In 1947, Koeppen received a book contract to rewrite the memoirs of the philatelist and Holocaust survivor Jakob Littner (born 1883 in Budapest, died 1950 in New York City). The resulting novel caused some controversy based on whether Koeppen was given a written manuscript to guide his work on Littner, and the novel never sold well. In 1992, a new edition was published, which led to the discovery of Littner's original text. In 2000, Littner's original manuscript was published in English and in 2002, in German.
In 1951, Koeppen had published his novel Tauben im Gras (Pigeons on the Grass), which utilized a stream of consciousness literary technique and is considered a significant work of German-language literature by Germany's foremost literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. "Das Treibhaus" (1953) was translated into English as "The Hothouse" (2001) and was named a Notable Book by the "New York Times" and one of the Best Books of the Year by the "Los Angeles Times." Koeppen's last major novel Der Tod in Rom (Death in Rome) was published in 1954. In the ensuing years, Koeppen found it difficult to complete longer works.
Between 1962 and 1987, Koeppen received numerous literary prizes in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1962 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize.
Koeppen was born out of wedlock in Greifswald, Pomerania to Marie Köppen, a seamstress who also worked as a prompter at the Greifswald theater. He did not have contact with his father, ophthalmologist Reinhold Halben, who never formally accepted the fatherhood. In 1920, Koeppen left Greifswald permanently, and after 20 years of moving about, settled in Munich, living there the remainder of his life.
He started out as a journalist. In 1934 his first novel appeared while he was in the Netherlands. In 1947, Koeppen received a book contract to rewrite the memoirs of the philatelist and Holocaust survivor Jakob Littner (born 1883 in Budapest, died 1950 in New York City). The resulting novel caused some controversy based on whether Koeppen was given a written manuscript to guide his work on Littner, and the novel never sold well. In 1992, a new edition was published, which led to the discovery of Littner's original text. In 2000, Littner's original manuscript was published in English and in 2002, in German.
In 1951, Koeppen had published his novel Tauben im Gras (Pigeons on the Grass), which utilized a stream of consciousness literary technique and is considered a significant work of German-language literature by Germany's foremost literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. "Das Treibhaus" (1953) was translated into English as "The Hothouse" (2001) and was named a Notable Book by the "New York Times" and one of the Best Books of the Year by the "Los Angeles Times." Koeppen's last major novel Der Tod in Rom (Death in Rome) was published in 1954. In the ensuing years, Koeppen found it difficult to complete longer works.
Between 1962 and 1987, Koeppen received numerous literary prizes in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1962 he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize.
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December 13, 2020
The Pre and post war years in Europe is a subject that fascinates me as much as WW2 itself. The major cities like Berlin, Paris, London and Rome, all went through a metamorphosis of fear prior, and eventually recovered bearing the battle scars in the years after. For certain people though, the war will never end, in their minds at least. For Former Nazi Judejahn, conflict still rages on. In the streets, in the Church, and in music.
The centre stage is a post-war Rome, for Wolfgang Koeppen's devastating novel on German resilience, it takes a prototypical German family and dumps them in Italy's capital to play out a reunion that none of them wants. We have four males, Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, his son Siegfried a composer, his cousin Adolf, who is on the way to becoming a Catholic Priest, and his stubborn father the Nazi Judejahn, a man who escaped death in Nuremberg and now trains Arabic militants. He has just arrived in town to secure an arms deal, he is a thoroughbred fascist, who chillingly dominates the story even though he is only part of it. He simply made my skin crawl, and may as well have been wearing an SS uniform. There are woman also, but they largely remain on the fringes. Each character has a different vision of what they stand for in terms of the old and new Germany, it's a battle in essence of who gets to represent their homeland in the most authentic way.
The set up is straightforward, but reading it was anything but. There were no chapters, and hardly any breaks in writing, moving between a first person narrative and third person without you hardly even noticing, the novel felt like more of a long prose poem, or a deftly choreographed ballet of outrageous contrivance, looked at by the reader with growing dread. Part of Koeppen's point is the Church and the state, the music and the camps, you can't have one without the other. It comes as no surprise that it's setting happens to be Rome, it was there or nowhere, Judejahn feels true disgust towards the Italians, and the fate of Mussolini still boils up inside. Whilst he is outraged at his weak minded son for entering the church, thus becoming an enemy. There is a whole micro plot about German presence in Italy, and references to German history, from Roman times, right up to when the novel was published in 1954.
Koeppen sits on the shoulders of his main characters like a bird with a keen eye, and passes judgement over them in ways that are both brutal and mindful of goodness, with a masterly touch that is parable of decadence. Very much a product of it's time, it shatters the illusion that a reformed nation might rise from the ashes. For Koeppen, he doesn't believe that mankind can be rectified, the book carries a clear message instilled with a deep sense of the futility of life. Images of death and destruction reign supreme in his vivid descriptions of time during war, and Rome offers no sanctuary to these tortured German souls, still dragging their heels through the blood of the fatherland. A stark contrast between German greed and Italian ambience.
It is a story of fathers and sons, saints and sinners, but Koeppen never allows his characters to be more than archetypal figures in a plot interspliced with a sensual rendition and perceptive vignettes of Roman life. The Germans move around the city like a damnation dance set to Koeppen's evocative prose, a poetic language that speaks volumes for his talents as a writer. Some say this is worthy of masterpiece status. That he should be classed in the same league as Mann, Böll and Grass. Others say he hit a raw nerve in Konrad Adenauer's fledgling democracy with the massage that those who had colluded with the Nazi regime were only hiding under the mantle of the newly restored civil society, opportunists now as they ere then.
I found Death in Rome a comprehensive and intricate provocation of an entire nation. It chilled my blood, and really made me think, deep down, hard. It's the sort of book to read again and pick up on any finer details that weren't noticeable the first time round, because I kid you not it was never an easy read and it's overall structure may be off putting for some. For me though, it gets top marks.
The centre stage is a post-war Rome, for Wolfgang Koeppen's devastating novel on German resilience, it takes a prototypical German family and dumps them in Italy's capital to play out a reunion that none of them wants. We have four males, Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, his son Siegfried a composer, his cousin Adolf, who is on the way to becoming a Catholic Priest, and his stubborn father the Nazi Judejahn, a man who escaped death in Nuremberg and now trains Arabic militants. He has just arrived in town to secure an arms deal, he is a thoroughbred fascist, who chillingly dominates the story even though he is only part of it. He simply made my skin crawl, and may as well have been wearing an SS uniform. There are woman also, but they largely remain on the fringes. Each character has a different vision of what they stand for in terms of the old and new Germany, it's a battle in essence of who gets to represent their homeland in the most authentic way.
The set up is straightforward, but reading it was anything but. There were no chapters, and hardly any breaks in writing, moving between a first person narrative and third person without you hardly even noticing, the novel felt like more of a long prose poem, or a deftly choreographed ballet of outrageous contrivance, looked at by the reader with growing dread. Part of Koeppen's point is the Church and the state, the music and the camps, you can't have one without the other. It comes as no surprise that it's setting happens to be Rome, it was there or nowhere, Judejahn feels true disgust towards the Italians, and the fate of Mussolini still boils up inside. Whilst he is outraged at his weak minded son for entering the church, thus becoming an enemy. There is a whole micro plot about German presence in Italy, and references to German history, from Roman times, right up to when the novel was published in 1954.
Koeppen sits on the shoulders of his main characters like a bird with a keen eye, and passes judgement over them in ways that are both brutal and mindful of goodness, with a masterly touch that is parable of decadence. Very much a product of it's time, it shatters the illusion that a reformed nation might rise from the ashes. For Koeppen, he doesn't believe that mankind can be rectified, the book carries a clear message instilled with a deep sense of the futility of life. Images of death and destruction reign supreme in his vivid descriptions of time during war, and Rome offers no sanctuary to these tortured German souls, still dragging their heels through the blood of the fatherland. A stark contrast between German greed and Italian ambience.
It is a story of fathers and sons, saints and sinners, but Koeppen never allows his characters to be more than archetypal figures in a plot interspliced with a sensual rendition and perceptive vignettes of Roman life. The Germans move around the city like a damnation dance set to Koeppen's evocative prose, a poetic language that speaks volumes for his talents as a writer. Some say this is worthy of masterpiece status. That he should be classed in the same league as Mann, Böll and Grass. Others say he hit a raw nerve in Konrad Adenauer's fledgling democracy with the massage that those who had colluded with the Nazi regime were only hiding under the mantle of the newly restored civil society, opportunists now as they ere then.
I found Death in Rome a comprehensive and intricate provocation of an entire nation. It chilled my blood, and really made me think, deep down, hard. It's the sort of book to read again and pick up on any finer details that weren't noticeable the first time round, because I kid you not it was never an easy read and it's overall structure may be off putting for some. For me though, it gets top marks.
June 20, 2021
Rome in the post war years where the diehard older generation of a Nazi family have convened. Unbeknown to them two members of the younger generation are there too. The patriarch is a wanted war criminal, a Nazi bigwig who is now, under a false name, a military advisor in some unnamed Arab country. The fabulously named Gottlieb Judejahn is a brilliant character and the dark star of the novel. He is the warrior Nazi who wants to carry on the killing. His brother-in-law was a powerful bureaucrat during the war and is again ascending the rungs of power in post-war Germany. His son is a composer of dissonant music and is about to have a work performed in Rome; Judejahn's son is training to be a priest. So the older generation is as fervently nationalistic, racist, murderous and opportunistic as they were during the war while the younger generation scrabbles for atonement for the sins of their fathers (and mothers). And it all takes place in a foppish and licentious Rome.
If the entire novel was as inspired and brilliant as certain passages you can't help feeling it would be widely acclaimed as a literary masterpiece. It's difficult for me to put my finger on why it doesn't quite thrill in its entirety. Perhaps it's because the bureaucrat and the priest fall way short of the SS psychopath and the composer as compelling and thought-provoking characters. Women play only a minor role in the novel but the wife of Judejahn and the Jewish wife of the conductor who performs Siegfried's music were also richer characters than the more prevalent bureaucrat and priest. That said it's a novel that plumbs the depths of Germany's temporary descent into insanity with inspired perspicacity and admirable artistry and certainly deserves a lot more attention than it seems to receive.
If the entire novel was as inspired and brilliant as certain passages you can't help feeling it would be widely acclaimed as a literary masterpiece. It's difficult for me to put my finger on why it doesn't quite thrill in its entirety. Perhaps it's because the bureaucrat and the priest fall way short of the SS psychopath and the composer as compelling and thought-provoking characters. Women play only a minor role in the novel but the wife of Judejahn and the Jewish wife of the conductor who performs Siegfried's music were also richer characters than the more prevalent bureaucrat and priest. That said it's a novel that plumbs the depths of Germany's temporary descent into insanity with inspired perspicacity and admirable artistry and certainly deserves a lot more attention than it seems to receive.
December 10, 2015
In retrospect, it should be obvious, of course. I cannot explain why it took me 100 pages to get it. Dotage, maybe. I mean, is there any other famous novel which includes death and some Italian city in its title? Lemmethinklemmethinklemmethink.......
Yes, 42 years and two world wars after Thomas Mann sent Gustav von Aschenbach to Venice in search of beauty in the form of a young Polish boy, Wolgang Koeppen sends a whole German family to Rome. The Judejahns and Pfaffraths, linked by marriage and history, are not there for a family reunion.
One of them is a pederast and a composer of a new symphony of dissonant music. He had made evident God's disquiet. The devil's work, so the literary debt continues.
Dietrich thought he could detect some calculation in his brother's music, a conjuror's trick or a mathematical equation he couldn't quite solve; this music hadn't come to the composer in the way of the great and beautiful sounds of Beethoven and Wagner must have come to them, this music was manufactured, it was a sophisticated swindle, there was careful thought in these dissonances, and that bothered Dietrich.
In attendance, under an assumed name, is Judejahns, an unrepentant Nazi. He is one step ahead of his Nuremberg judgement. Yet it is his wife, Eva, who serves as the blackest thought of the German soul.
The number of characters and their fractured nature made this a much more complex and appealing read to me than Death in Venice.
Death will come; we know that. In Venice, a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease. In Rome, when Death came, the fact of it can have shocked no one.
Yes, 42 years and two world wars after Thomas Mann sent Gustav von Aschenbach to Venice in search of beauty in the form of a young Polish boy, Wolgang Koeppen sends a whole German family to Rome. The Judejahns and Pfaffraths, linked by marriage and history, are not there for a family reunion.
One of them is a pederast and a composer of a new symphony of dissonant music. He had made evident God's disquiet. The devil's work, so the literary debt continues.
Dietrich thought he could detect some calculation in his brother's music, a conjuror's trick or a mathematical equation he couldn't quite solve; this music hadn't come to the composer in the way of the great and beautiful sounds of Beethoven and Wagner must have come to them, this music was manufactured, it was a sophisticated swindle, there was careful thought in these dissonances, and that bothered Dietrich.
In attendance, under an assumed name, is Judejahns, an unrepentant Nazi. He is one step ahead of his Nuremberg judgement. Yet it is his wife, Eva, who serves as the blackest thought of the German soul.
The number of characters and their fractured nature made this a much more complex and appealing read to me than Death in Venice.
Death will come; we know that. In Venice, a shocked and respectful world received the news of his decease. In Rome, when Death came, the fact of it can have shocked no one.
June 25, 2013
But could I? Could I even cope with my own life? And then I thought: If Adolf and I can't cope with life, then we should at least unite against those unscrupulous people who want to rule because they are unimaginative, against the real Pfaffraths, the real Judejahns, the real Klingspors, and perhaps we could change Germany. But even as I was thinking that, it already seemed to me that Germany was past changing, that one could only change oneself, and everyone had to do that for him or herself, all alone, and I wished I was shot of Adolf.
People remind each other of ghosts. Familial blood clots and colludes in the vein that threatens to burst over your strong brow. You are the amputated arm of country. It is like when you travel to another town and everything looks like home stepping in the same creaky floorboard. The big institutions of family like the same damned chain restaurants in every city. Power, military, church and the artistic soul in twenty-four hour lights. It is parades and it chimes doom or dinner bells. Time's road kill feasts.
Gottlieb Judejahn tightens his butt cheeks as if he is going to omit a very big fart. He sits on the toilet throne of life, always on the verge of the silent and deadly void of judgement and hate. The former Nazi. The once upon a time an angry little boy looking for the ground to listen to him when he stomps out his mighty fears. What is he afraid of? He hates like the wheels a rat runs on in a cage. The image of his belt that raises his buttocks stuck with me. He feels like underwear sweat on a hot day. He gave me the creeps. I could see a mustache hovering in the air over fat and sweat and bulge. He is enormous in the mind's eye in this book. He is loud. Feel skinned and can't breathe when a man like this takes up all of the clean air to breathe with his murderer's foul mouth. He wasn't flushed down the toilet. He climbed back up and stunk up the middle east with power and demands. He's oozing through the pipes of the old city of Rome. It is old and there have been centuries of crap for him to fit right in. A man like Judejahn bides his time. A little boy like Gottlieb stamps his feet.
His son Adolf was under the false sun of the hot lamps of family power. When the guns run out he opens his eyes like someone who doesn't know what they are seeing. He could be on another planet and there are no names for the starving Jewish boy from the concentration camp. No names for what they used to tell him in the training school. What does Father and Mother mean? There is a man he meets in a church. What does it mean to be a deacon now? You cannot forgive sins. This is what you can do. What does it mean to love? Forgiveness? It is a distance that is there. He walks the distance and I felt a blind mole rat in ancient city tunnels. I felt his no one is me no family.
Father and son have a woman they see, Laura. Laura does not think. Laura cannot count. She works behind the counter in a gay bar. Laura senses intent, or is it interest, from the two men. She is a prize to be collected. Judejahn is all about getting between moist thighs. Flesh and sweat and moving. I squirmed to think of his organs squirming between their body parts. Laura's empty mind like a cow put me in mind of more meat and rutting. I felt nothing for them but saw again the mustache of the father and the clerical robes to hide what may or may not be underneath. What is a prize mean to me? She was a person. She should be a person. The men flow into brains on the page and I felt her no brain a lot. If a person can be a prize for someone else I felt why even bother.
What would the nephew Siegfried, a musician, look like if he was not measured with a distance from a monster's face. If you were not looking for the same materials, to determine what sparked one to consume hell fires? What if death were not the answer but only how you wanted to live your life as it was then. Nothing to stand underneath. Nothing in the sky, nor in the past or answerable future. His father Friedrich is rising to power again, same as Judejahn. I was not surprised to read the introduction from translator Michael Hofmann explaining why Koeppen's books were not taken open arms by the German public. "We don't need this at this time in our history." Writers who moved into exile were welcomed back and those who did not weren't. I thought about this a lot about why Stanislaw Lem moved back to Poland after exile during martial law. He couldn't make a living as a Polish writer anywhere else. Likewise, that was what Koeppen could do. There was no where else for him to go. In hindsight where could he have gone? The world was fucked up and doing fucked up things.
If one does not want to name themselves from the people before them. I have seen photographs of the forced confrontations after the war. German women looked like they wanted to be anywhere else. They looked like cows. What had happened before didn't exist for them anymore. I had this feeling about the younger Adolf and Siegfried about their parents. Their mothers and fathers felt the tragedy was that the Nazis did not succeed. I felt the underneath and when they look up I see underneath a belly of death. I hear words about love, about forgiveness and family and I do not feel the meaning. They could feel the guilt, the collective guilt. Is it helpless to that, to own the human features that make those monster murderer faces and know that it isn't you? Would you have to get under the belly and carve into it, make it bleed, that you are not it? I felt the faces turning into the other face when their fists beat behind them for the world they live in. Judejahn who cannot wear his murderer's face. Adolf who wasn't born with a lover's face. Siegfried who should see music on his. There's another brother to Siegfried. He's the faceless of the masses who show the thoughtless rules of how it always is. It doesn't matter what you look like. This face will show what everyone else looks like. Look more like this and you will have the cruel faceless seas. I saw this face.
March 24, 2013
As a rule I attempt to distance my reviews from the personal. Certainly anecdotes thrive in this context. It is the more central experiences and principles which I make every effort to keep to myself. I'm afraid i can't do such this time. My friend J who I have worked with for 20 years died this past week. This has been one of the worst times of my adult life. I once went on a trip with J to Rome. It was around this time that I acquired this novel. For the life of me, I can't remember if it was before or after. My friend battled cancer twice in the last 20 years, this second time it was for keeps. This burning loss plagued my reading, tearing the book from hands after every ten or so pages. My wife has been wonderful throughout.
Death in Rome is exactly that. Koeppen penned a vast German family postwar dynamic and then enkindled such in 200 dense pages of shifting points of view and acerbic images. The fact that such unfolds in the Eternal City affords it relief, a perspective, a historical resonance. The family broods and rebels on issues of guilt and accomplishment: culture and the Camps. The novel succeeds with its focus on hotels, the concert hall and a smoky gay bar. Hopefully more will witness this remarkable novel, an unblinking snapshot of the odd time in (West?) Germany between 1945 and the Fassbinder expressionism of the late 60s and early 70s.
There are aspects here which anticipate Boll's masterful Billards at Half-Past Nine.
Death in Rome is exactly that. Koeppen penned a vast German family postwar dynamic and then enkindled such in 200 dense pages of shifting points of view and acerbic images. The fact that such unfolds in the Eternal City affords it relief, a perspective, a historical resonance. The family broods and rebels on issues of guilt and accomplishment: culture and the Camps. The novel succeeds with its focus on hotels, the concert hall and a smoky gay bar. Hopefully more will witness this remarkable novel, an unblinking snapshot of the odd time in (West?) Germany between 1945 and the Fassbinder expressionism of the late 60s and early 70s.
There are aspects here which anticipate Boll's masterful Billards at Half-Past Nine.
March 9, 2018
You don’t choose your family. And no matter how far you get away from them, they are never really that far behind. That's something that Siegfried Pfaffrath is unable to forget even for a minute, in this story about a "family reunion" of two pairs of German fathers and sons, in post-WWII Rome.
I'm not sure what I expected from this book, but it surprised me in many ways: the prose is evocative and beautiful, but occasionally very convoluted, as most of the story is told as the inner monologue of Siegfried, his father Friedrich, his cousin Adolf, and Adolf's father - Gottlieb Judejahn.
During the war, Judejahn was an SS officer, and the Reich's defeat is a bitter pill he still hasn't swallowed. He re-invented himself as an arms-dealer and is still boiling with hatred and rage. His brother-in-law Friedrich was a bureaucrat, and while he didn't have particularly strong feelings about the Reich, his actions led to many people's death and he doesn't really seemed to be bothered by that, even in the changed environment that is now West Berlin.
Siegfried and Adolf are trying, in their own way, to atone for their fathers' sins; through music and through religion, respectively. Both of them are horrified by the events of the war and its consequences, and their inherited guilt pushes them as far as they can get from their families, but the old generation is not gone yet, and they are hot on their heels...
Koeppen, who lived in Germany during the war, obviously pondered the question of German cultural identity very deeply. In this book, he takes four important facets of this identity (power, bureaucracy, art and faith) and through this family story, shows how interconnected those aspects of the culture are, and how impossible it is to separate them from each other.
An intricate, chilling and very thought-provoking little book. 3 and a half star, rounded down because I doubt I'll be reading this one again. As interesting and well-written as it is, I can't say this was an especially pleasant read...
I'm not sure what I expected from this book, but it surprised me in many ways: the prose is evocative and beautiful, but occasionally very convoluted, as most of the story is told as the inner monologue of Siegfried, his father Friedrich, his cousin Adolf, and Adolf's father - Gottlieb Judejahn.
During the war, Judejahn was an SS officer, and the Reich's defeat is a bitter pill he still hasn't swallowed. He re-invented himself as an arms-dealer and is still boiling with hatred and rage. His brother-in-law Friedrich was a bureaucrat, and while he didn't have particularly strong feelings about the Reich, his actions led to many people's death and he doesn't really seemed to be bothered by that, even in the changed environment that is now West Berlin.
Siegfried and Adolf are trying, in their own way, to atone for their fathers' sins; through music and through religion, respectively. Both of them are horrified by the events of the war and its consequences, and their inherited guilt pushes them as far as they can get from their families, but the old generation is not gone yet, and they are hot on their heels...
Koeppen, who lived in Germany during the war, obviously pondered the question of German cultural identity very deeply. In this book, he takes four important facets of this identity (power, bureaucracy, art and faith) and through this family story, shows how interconnected those aspects of the culture are, and how impossible it is to separate them from each other.
An intricate, chilling and very thought-provoking little book. 3 and a half star, rounded down because I doubt I'll be reading this one again. As interesting and well-written as it is, I can't say this was an especially pleasant read...
May 21, 2019
Another novel I read in order to write about it in my column in Florence News and Events and English-language monthly paper here in the boot.
The Greatest Novel You’ve Never Heard of
First published in 1954, German novelist and travel-writer Wolfgang Koeppen’s Death in Rome is a little-known treasure well worth seeking out. I was drawn to it because of its Rome setting, as fodder for this column, but realized before I had finished reading the very first page that I had found something very, very special. Not only is Death in Rome a luscious and wonderful conjuring up of that Dolce Vita Rome of the post-war and pre-Beatles era, but it’s also a fabulous flowering of Modernist prose techniques, hypnotizing in its streams of interior monologues, thought-based rhythmic repetitions, and musically minded meanderings, each sectione (and character) linked to the next through an image, a word, or an idea. It’s also one of the most convincing evocations, in a novel, of the dirty core of our Occidental political failings, that is to say of the slippery slope from national pride to patriotism, nationalism, imperialism, fascism, and finally the eventual pursuit of world domination through genocide. Not to mention the love/hate relationship both between fathers and sons as well as victims and oppressors. It’s rare that a novel impresses so convincingly in both form and content.
Death in Rome’s imaginative and organic style, its rhythms drawn from that inner monologue that we all carry around in our heads, takes us inside the thoughts, experiences, and desires of four major protagonists whose particulars build them into representatives of their split, post-war German culture and, by extension, all modern nation states. They are: an artist, a soldier, a bureaucrat, and a seminary student. Evoking the historical moment, the soldier is JudeJahn, a former SS man who has escaped the Nuremburg comeuppances and finds himself in Rome to buy arms for the Middle Eastern nation he now serves as a soldier of fortune. He is in the twilight of his ascendancy, bloodstained, keeping the Fuhrer’s dream alive in his every vile thought. His nephew Siegfried is an inverted romantic escapist, a composer of avant-garde classical music, in Rome for the debut of his first controversial symphony. His cousin, Judejahn’s son Adolph, traumatized by the breakdown of fascism and the destruction of Hitler’s Germany while he was still at school, is a seminary student looking to find another, better Fuhrer to serve in the Catholic priesthood. Siegfried’s father and brother are characters representing two generations of politicos who show us exactly what we all know, fear, and deny about politics: that it is more like prestidigitation or juggling than any ideological stance. They are ignorant opportunists, dancing to whoever fiddles them a momentarily credible tune; they are parasites upon the powerful, without the tiniest modicum of moral decency.
The novel’s four colliding forces, the military, the political, the artistic, and the spiritual collide both unbelievably and entertainingly through two days of criss-crossing encounters all throughout the exquisitely drawn Roman backdrop. You can palpably hear the fontanelle tumbling down water into the streets and smell the espresso and cornetti from the corner bars. The characters’ encounters, dialogues, and the eventual death of the title (a nod to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice of course) meditate on the problems at the heart of the mid-century German drama and are certainly still relevant today: how do we negotiate and control systems constructed of power and born of conflicting beliefs? Who do we follow and why? And, most importantly—and frightening here in the vivid portrayal of the interior mind of the former SS man—where do these impulses to serve, to entertain (although there is much more to the portrayal of the artist here than merely that), and to dominate and destroy originate? I really can’t recommend this novel enough, it’s necessary food for thought.
The Greatest Novel You’ve Never Heard of
First published in 1954, German novelist and travel-writer Wolfgang Koeppen’s Death in Rome is a little-known treasure well worth seeking out. I was drawn to it because of its Rome setting, as fodder for this column, but realized before I had finished reading the very first page that I had found something very, very special. Not only is Death in Rome a luscious and wonderful conjuring up of that Dolce Vita Rome of the post-war and pre-Beatles era, but it’s also a fabulous flowering of Modernist prose techniques, hypnotizing in its streams of interior monologues, thought-based rhythmic repetitions, and musically minded meanderings, each sectione (and character) linked to the next through an image, a word, or an idea. It’s also one of the most convincing evocations, in a novel, of the dirty core of our Occidental political failings, that is to say of the slippery slope from national pride to patriotism, nationalism, imperialism, fascism, and finally the eventual pursuit of world domination through genocide. Not to mention the love/hate relationship both between fathers and sons as well as victims and oppressors. It’s rare that a novel impresses so convincingly in both form and content.
Death in Rome’s imaginative and organic style, its rhythms drawn from that inner monologue that we all carry around in our heads, takes us inside the thoughts, experiences, and desires of four major protagonists whose particulars build them into representatives of their split, post-war German culture and, by extension, all modern nation states. They are: an artist, a soldier, a bureaucrat, and a seminary student. Evoking the historical moment, the soldier is JudeJahn, a former SS man who has escaped the Nuremburg comeuppances and finds himself in Rome to buy arms for the Middle Eastern nation he now serves as a soldier of fortune. He is in the twilight of his ascendancy, bloodstained, keeping the Fuhrer’s dream alive in his every vile thought. His nephew Siegfried is an inverted romantic escapist, a composer of avant-garde classical music, in Rome for the debut of his first controversial symphony. His cousin, Judejahn’s son Adolph, traumatized by the breakdown of fascism and the destruction of Hitler’s Germany while he was still at school, is a seminary student looking to find another, better Fuhrer to serve in the Catholic priesthood. Siegfried’s father and brother are characters representing two generations of politicos who show us exactly what we all know, fear, and deny about politics: that it is more like prestidigitation or juggling than any ideological stance. They are ignorant opportunists, dancing to whoever fiddles them a momentarily credible tune; they are parasites upon the powerful, without the tiniest modicum of moral decency.
The novel’s four colliding forces, the military, the political, the artistic, and the spiritual collide both unbelievably and entertainingly through two days of criss-crossing encounters all throughout the exquisitely drawn Roman backdrop. You can palpably hear the fontanelle tumbling down water into the streets and smell the espresso and cornetti from the corner bars. The characters’ encounters, dialogues, and the eventual death of the title (a nod to Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice of course) meditate on the problems at the heart of the mid-century German drama and are certainly still relevant today: how do we negotiate and control systems constructed of power and born of conflicting beliefs? Who do we follow and why? And, most importantly—and frightening here in the vivid portrayal of the interior mind of the former SS man—where do these impulses to serve, to entertain (although there is much more to the portrayal of the artist here than merely that), and to dominate and destroy originate? I really can’t recommend this novel enough, it’s necessary food for thought.
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September 18, 2015
I have a reputation in my family for being cold and difficult to be around. I don’t, the consensus is, ‘make any effort’ with them. And that is true. I really don’t. Don’t get me wrong, family can be a wonderful thing, if it is a safe and strong and nurturing unit; but I realised at a very young age that the idea of being tied to a bunch of people you have nothing in common with, who are, moreover, unpleasant human beings, is absurd. Recently my mother has become involved with her sister again. This sister is, quite frankly, vile. I find the fact that she is back in my life very hard to take, but I find it even harder that she is back in my mother’s, although of course my opinion is irrelevant. The only real blessing is that my Uncle is not around, having died of cancer some years ago. You are not meant to speak ill of the dead, but it’s difficult when someone had almost no redeeming features. I was present at his funeral, when the eulogy was spoken. He liked cats we were told. And, yes, I guess he did, but he was also a violent criminal, with perverse sexual tendencies, who kept a gun behind his sofa.
So I can identify with Seigfried Pfaffrath, one of the major players in Wolfgang Koeppen’s Death in Rome. It is the 1950’s, and he has essentially fled to Rome in order to escape his family, his past, and reinvent himself as a composer. But he finds that, in reality, you can’t escape, because wherever you go you bring your experiences with you. Much of the novel is devoted to internal monologues, and even before he comes to understand that prominent members of his family are also in Rome Seigfried can think of little outside of his childhood, his hated Uncle Judejahn, his father, and the recently ended war. It is significant, I think, that he chose to become a musician, because we generally think of music as being an expression of the creator’s inner life, their soul. Seigfried’s music is described as being frightening, as ‘naked and unworthy despair.’ It especially unnerves Kurenberg’s wife [the husband being a friend of Seigfried’s] who grew up in the same area and whose father was eventually murdered by the Nazis.
The Nazis, racism, and complicity all play important roles in Death in Rome. At one stage Seigfried dredges up the memory of Kurenberg asking for assistance from his father, in an attempt to save his own father-in-law. The advice that he received from Friedrich Pfaffrath, who at that time was a senior administrator, was to divorce his Jewish wife. A large part of Seigfried’s anguish is related to his not wanting to be associated with his family’s actions during the war and their ongoing Nazi sympathies. Like me, he feels tied to people who do not represent his feelings or opinions, whose behaviour he does not condone, people who, unfortunately, he will always be tied to by blood at least. He has, he states, thought about changing his name, so as to distance himself, but decided that to disappoint his family, who would not be in favour of his vocation, is a nice form of revenge; indeed, he focuses specifically on twelve tone music, which was frowned upon in his youth and was actually considered by the Nazis to be ‘degenerate.’ I found this aspect of the novel to be one of the most engaging; Koeppen did a fine job of capturing the young composer’s understandable shame, disgust, and helplessness, in being related to murders and war criminals [although I would say that he borrowed liberally from William Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom in order to achieve it].
The most imposing member of the family and, as noted, the most hated by Seigfried, is Gottlieb Judejahn, a former SS officer. He fled Germany due to a death sentence having been placed upon him for his involvement in the war, during which he had ordered the execution, and had himself killed, numerous people. As with Seigfried, a large part of the novel is also given over to Judejahn’s thoughts and feelings, and none of them are pleasant. He is an unrepentant Nazi and racist. He yearns for war, for bloodshed, for a reinvigorated, all-powerful and all-conquering Germany. In Guy de Muapassant’s Bel Ami, Georges Duroy is described as having the attitude of ‘an NCO let loose in a conquered land,’ and I think this suits Judejahn perfectly. Men are to be beaten down or brought to heel, and women [whom he frequently refers to as ‘cunt’] are to be raped or fucked [if willing]. After spending some time with Judejahn not only did I empathise with Siegfried in his hatred, but I started to understand the title of the novel. Death in Rome. It doesn’t mean dying in Rome, it means that Death has come to Rome, and his name is Judejahn, a man who stalks the pages of the book, and the city itself, like a particularly grim Grim Reaper.
[Rome in the 1950’s]
However, as I progressed through the novel, I struggled to understand what exactly Koeppen was trying to say, specifically in relation to Judejahn. That SS men were psychopaths? Well, yeah. I mean, that’s hardly news is it? Moreover, I felt as though Judejahn is simply too cartoonishly loathsome; I was, in fact, unable to take him seriously as a human being. Yes, he is a Nazi, but I’m not convinced that he had to be so unrelentingly despicable, so much so that at times I expected him to tie a woman to some train tracks and stand to the side twirling his moustache. I am, of course, not defending the Nazis, but would simply have liked this one to be a little more nuanced as a character. Indeed, I don’t actually think it is helpful to portray them as titanically evil [not to mention miserable], without a humane thought in their head or even the merest hint of sensitivity. That, for me, almost excuses them, as though we are saying that they are or were sub-human, or not human at all. They absolutely are and were human, they had families, friends, they laughed and enjoyed themselves. That is what is so horrifying about them. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only example of Koeppen losing control of his material. I was also decidedly unimpressed with the melodramatic scene in which Adolf, Judejahn’s son, kind of befriends a starving Jewish boy, and the two swap uniforms and break bread.
In any case, I would laud Koeppen for his bravery in writing, and having published, a novel such as this so soon after the war, for reminding the world that Nazis didn’t just stop being Nazis because Hitler lost; they didn’t simply see the error of their ways, or ‘wake up’ as though coming out of a deep sleep. I think if the book says anything of note, anything really important, then that is it. People like Judejahn, who becomes a kind of Arab arms dealer, or Friedrich Pfaffrath, who becomes a legitimate mayor, may try and reinvent themselves, they may hide or escape, but their old prejudices remain. In this way, the stream of consciousness technique was entirely appropriate, because one might be able to wash the blood off one’s hands, but one’s thoughts, if we have access to them, would always reveal the true nature of the man.
So I can identify with Seigfried Pfaffrath, one of the major players in Wolfgang Koeppen’s Death in Rome. It is the 1950’s, and he has essentially fled to Rome in order to escape his family, his past, and reinvent himself as a composer. But he finds that, in reality, you can’t escape, because wherever you go you bring your experiences with you. Much of the novel is devoted to internal monologues, and even before he comes to understand that prominent members of his family are also in Rome Seigfried can think of little outside of his childhood, his hated Uncle Judejahn, his father, and the recently ended war. It is significant, I think, that he chose to become a musician, because we generally think of music as being an expression of the creator’s inner life, their soul. Seigfried’s music is described as being frightening, as ‘naked and unworthy despair.’ It especially unnerves Kurenberg’s wife [the husband being a friend of Seigfried’s] who grew up in the same area and whose father was eventually murdered by the Nazis.
“Once upon a time, this city was a home to gods, now there’s only Raphael in the Pantheon, a demigod, a darling of Apollo’s, but the corpses that joined him later are a sorry bunch, a cardinal of dubious merit, a couple of monarchs and their purblind generals, high-flying civil servants, scholars that made it into the reference books, artists of academic distinction. Who gives a damn about them?”
The Nazis, racism, and complicity all play important roles in Death in Rome. At one stage Seigfried dredges up the memory of Kurenberg asking for assistance from his father, in an attempt to save his own father-in-law. The advice that he received from Friedrich Pfaffrath, who at that time was a senior administrator, was to divorce his Jewish wife. A large part of Seigfried’s anguish is related to his not wanting to be associated with his family’s actions during the war and their ongoing Nazi sympathies. Like me, he feels tied to people who do not represent his feelings or opinions, whose behaviour he does not condone, people who, unfortunately, he will always be tied to by blood at least. He has, he states, thought about changing his name, so as to distance himself, but decided that to disappoint his family, who would not be in favour of his vocation, is a nice form of revenge; indeed, he focuses specifically on twelve tone music, which was frowned upon in his youth and was actually considered by the Nazis to be ‘degenerate.’ I found this aspect of the novel to be one of the most engaging; Koeppen did a fine job of capturing the young composer’s understandable shame, disgust, and helplessness, in being related to murders and war criminals [although I would say that he borrowed liberally from William Faulkner’s Absalom Absalom in order to achieve it].
“Could I even cope with my own life? And then I thought: If Adolf and I can’t cope with life, then we should at least unite against those unscrupulous people who want to rule because they are unimaginative, against the real Pfaffraths, the real Judejahns, the real Klingspors, and perhaps we could change Germany. But even as I was thinking that, it already seemed to me that Germany was past changing, that one could only change oneself, and everyone had to do that for him or herself.”
The most imposing member of the family and, as noted, the most hated by Seigfried, is Gottlieb Judejahn, a former SS officer. He fled Germany due to a death sentence having been placed upon him for his involvement in the war, during which he had ordered the execution, and had himself killed, numerous people. As with Seigfried, a large part of the novel is also given over to Judejahn’s thoughts and feelings, and none of them are pleasant. He is an unrepentant Nazi and racist. He yearns for war, for bloodshed, for a reinvigorated, all-powerful and all-conquering Germany. In Guy de Muapassant’s Bel Ami, Georges Duroy is described as having the attitude of ‘an NCO let loose in a conquered land,’ and I think this suits Judejahn perfectly. Men are to be beaten down or brought to heel, and women [whom he frequently refers to as ‘cunt’] are to be raped or fucked [if willing]. After spending some time with Judejahn not only did I empathise with Siegfried in his hatred, but I started to understand the title of the novel. Death in Rome. It doesn’t mean dying in Rome, it means that Death has come to Rome, and his name is Judejahn, a man who stalks the pages of the book, and the city itself, like a particularly grim Grim Reaper.
[Rome in the 1950’s]
However, as I progressed through the novel, I struggled to understand what exactly Koeppen was trying to say, specifically in relation to Judejahn. That SS men were psychopaths? Well, yeah. I mean, that’s hardly news is it? Moreover, I felt as though Judejahn is simply too cartoonishly loathsome; I was, in fact, unable to take him seriously as a human being. Yes, he is a Nazi, but I’m not convinced that he had to be so unrelentingly despicable, so much so that at times I expected him to tie a woman to some train tracks and stand to the side twirling his moustache. I am, of course, not defending the Nazis, but would simply have liked this one to be a little more nuanced as a character. Indeed, I don’t actually think it is helpful to portray them as titanically evil [not to mention miserable], without a humane thought in their head or even the merest hint of sensitivity. That, for me, almost excuses them, as though we are saying that they are or were sub-human, or not human at all. They absolutely are and were human, they had families, friends, they laughed and enjoyed themselves. That is what is so horrifying about them. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only example of Koeppen losing control of his material. I was also decidedly unimpressed with the melodramatic scene in which Adolf, Judejahn’s son, kind of befriends a starving Jewish boy, and the two swap uniforms and break bread.
In any case, I would laud Koeppen for his bravery in writing, and having published, a novel such as this so soon after the war, for reminding the world that Nazis didn’t just stop being Nazis because Hitler lost; they didn’t simply see the error of their ways, or ‘wake up’ as though coming out of a deep sleep. I think if the book says anything of note, anything really important, then that is it. People like Judejahn, who becomes a kind of Arab arms dealer, or Friedrich Pfaffrath, who becomes a legitimate mayor, may try and reinvent themselves, they may hide or escape, but their old prejudices remain. In this way, the stream of consciousness technique was entirely appropriate, because one might be able to wash the blood off one’s hands, but one’s thoughts, if we have access to them, would always reveal the true nature of the man.
July 3, 2018
You won't enjoy this if you're looking for 'three dimensional characters,' and you won't enjoy it if you're looking for anything about Rome: someone is dying in Rome because it's like dying in Venice, except it's the seat of empire. If you're willing to tread the line between actual human beings and symbols of German history, on the other hand, this is a very moving novel, very well translated and rather insightful. The ex (sic)-Nazi Judejahn is too bad to be true, but, on the other hand, Nazism was too bad to be true; his family includes a priest (desperately trying to purify himself for his youth in Hitler's school); a composer (trying to flee his youth...); a politician (trying to cover up his Nazi past, but not too much, because really, they were mostly right...); a conformist (who wants Germany to be great and misses the old greatness but, on the other hand, really would like a well-paying job); and Judejahn's wife, surely one of the most appalling characters in all of modern fiction--more Nazi than Himmler, if you like. These character-symbols wander around Rome and struggle with their historical situation in various ways. There are a few pointless formal tricks (paragraphs that don't end in a full stop!!! WOW!!!!), but this is a serious, well-formed, discomforting book.
June 10, 2019
1954 erschien mit DER TOD IN ROM der abschließende Band der sogenannten „Trilogie des Scheiterns“ von Wolfgang Koeppen. Hatte er sich im ersten Roman TAUBEN IM GRAS (1951) mit den gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen und Kontinuitäten nach 1945 beschäftigt, damit, wie die Bourgeoisie langsam wieder Fuß fasste und dabei gern vergaß, was eben noch gewesen war, wurden diese Entwicklungen im zweiten Band, DAS TREIBHAUS (1953), im spezifisch politischen Umfeld der neuen bundesrepublikanischen Hauptstadt Bonn untersucht. Nun war der Gegenstand des Romans die Familie,die Keimzelle, das angebliche Ur-System aller Gesellschaften, in dessen Gemengelage sich Terror, Verbrechen, Pein, Not und Kontinuität eingefressen hatten, spiegelten und durch den Autor analysiert wurden.
In den frühen 50er Jahren – eine Zeitungsschlagzeile berichtet uns, die „Dschungelfestung“ sei gefallen, was auf das Jahr 1954 hindeutet, in dem die Schlacht um Điện Biên Phủ die entscheidende Wende im Indochinakrieg der Franzosen brachte – trifft sich in Rom die Familie Pfaffrath mit dem Onkel Judejahn, einem untergetauchten SS-General. Seine Gattin Eva und die gemeinsamen Söhne Dietrich und Adolf sind mitgereist, um den tot geglaubten Ehemann und Vater zu treffen, obwohl sie aus verschiedenen Gründen vor der Begegnung auch zurückschrecken. Eva, selbst eine überzeugte Nationalsozialistin, die ernsthaft am Untergang Deutschlands und dem Tod des Führers leidet, fragt sich, ob ihr Mann ihr tot nicht lieber wäre – als Held im nordischen Walhalla, wo sie, dezidierte Nicht -, wenn nicht gar Anti-Christin, die Gefallenen des Nazi-Regimes sich vorzustellen beliebt. Pfaffrath, mittlerweile Oberbürgermeister einer westdeutschen Gemeinde, glaubt, den Schwager durch seine Beziehungen wieder nach Deutschland holen zu können. Derweil weilt sein Sohn Siegfried zufällig ebenfalls in Rom. Er ist ein moderner Komponist, dessen Werk durch den dem Nazi-Terror entkommenen Dirigenten Kürenberg in der ewigen Stadt aufgeführt werden soll. Judejahns Söhne, Absolventen einer nationalsozialistischen Eliteschule, vor allem Adolf, der in Anbetracht der Schrecken des 2. Weltkrieges und des Holocaust Priester geworden ist, scheuen das Wiedersehen mit dem übermächtigen Vater aus ganz unterschiedlichen Gründen. Und Judejahn selbst, nach wie vor überzeugter Nazi, der im Mittleren Osten als Berater und Waffenlieferant für diverse Regime tätig ist, verachtet nicht nur seine Schwägerin und deren Gatten, sondern auch die eigenen Nachkommen, da diese sich mit der neuen, „lauen“ Zeit arrangiert haben. Selbst ist und bleibt er stolz auf das Geleistete. Er wünscht sich neue, todbringende Kriege herbei, nicht nur, um weiterhin ein heldisches, soldatisches Leben führen zu können, sondern weil er im Krieg eine Art Transzendenz des menschlichen, anthropologischen Daseins erblickt und erfahren zu haben glaubt.
Waren die Vorgänger eher leise Romane, nicht zuletzt auch literarische Experimente, in denen Wolfgang Koeppen sich an Versatzstücken der literarischen Moderne versuchte, treten diese Elemente in DER TOD IN ROM zugunsten eines wütenden, ja zornigen, manchmal ungezügelten Schreibens zurück. Auch hier gibt es noch Brüche und abrupte Wechsel zwischen subjektiver und auktorialer Erzählperspektive, manchmal fast ohne erkennbaren Übergang, es gibt an die spätere Cut-Up-Technik erinnernde Sprünge zwischen Schauplätzen und Personen, um Gleichzeitigkeit zu simulieren, auch ein freies Spiel mit der Interpunktion, aber all das nimmt weniger Raum ein, als in den Vorgängern, drängt sich weniger auf und tritt im Rahmen der Erzählung zurück, wenn der Stil sich nicht gar in den Dienst des Erzählens stellt. Offenbar war es dem Autor hier um die Klarheit und Verständlichkeit zu tun, mit der die Ungeheuerlichkeit des faschistischen Kontinuums beschrieben werden sollte. Koeppen bedient sich dabei durchaus auch einer Vulgärsprache, lässt den SS-General Judejahn offen, manchmal obsessiv über Bordellbesuche und „Judenhuren“ berichten, die einem deutschen Mann zur Verfügung gestanden hätten, macht wenig Aufhebens um Komißsprache und derbe Schimpferei und Beleidigungen. Ebenso – und das ist doch weitaus interessanter – lässt er Judejahn offen über dessen Taten während des Krieges berichten. Ob Massenerschießungen, Kriegsverbrechen, Vergeltungsmaßnahmen an Zivilisten und vor allem eine unfassbare Verachtung gegenüber allen, die als „minderwertig“ – ob Juden, „Neger“, „Zigeuner“ o.a. – erachtet werden, nichts lässt Koeppen aus. Schwer erträglich ist das während der Lektüre und doch wahrscheinlich sehr, sehr nah an der Realität der frühen 50er Jahre.
Man wundert sich, daß in der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft oft behauptet wurde, die Gräuel seien nie zur Erwähnung gekommen. Hier werden sie nicht nur erwähnt, sie werden explizit benannt, grell ausgestellt, sind wesentlicher Teil der Charakteristik dieses Mannes und dessen, wofür er – symbolisch – steht. Daß das in der bundesrepublikanischen Wirklichkeit Mitte der 50er Jahre nicht gern gelesen oder gehört wurde, kann man sich vorstellen. Mitten in die Restaurationsphase der Adenauer-Ära, in die Jahre des Aufschwungs, des beginnenden Wirtschaftswunders hinein mit dem Grauen konfrontiert zu werden, das im eigenen Namen, dem des „deutschen Volkes“, verübt worden war, kann und wird nur den wenigsten gefallen haben. Doch erstaunt es, daß offenbar auch in den Dekaden danach kaum wahrgenommen wurde, daß hier jemand klar benannt, ausgesprochen hatte, was geschehen war. Und zudem weit darüber hinausging, indem er aufzeigte, wie die Täter langsam wieder Fuß fassten, zurückkamen, sich bürgerliche Existenzen aufbauen konnten, trotz „Entnazifizierung“ und Besatzungsstatuten. Daß Koeppen voller Wut, ja Ingrimm, schrieb, ist während der Lektüre deutlich zu spüren. Und es ist auch zu spüren, wen er für die Entwicklungen verantwortlich macht.
In allen drei Romanen sind es Intellektuelle, Künstler und die Bourgeoisie, deren Kreise der Autor beschreibt. Arbeiter, kleine Angestellte, gar die Halbwelt, kommen am Rande zwar immer vor, doch stehen sie selten bis nie im Fokus. Es ist das Bildungsbürgertum, das Koeppen beschreibt und auch angreift. In DER TOD IN ROM führt diese Analyse weit: Rom als Hauptstadt des den Nächsten liebenden Christentums, aber auch Stadt der europäischen Antike, Hort abendländischer Schätze und Ursprung europäischer Kunst- und Kulturlandschaft, ist nicht zufällig Kulisse dieses Familientreffens. Adolf, der Priester-Sohn Judejahns, reflektiert es in einer Szene höchstselbst: Dient er nicht erneut einem Herren, der mit Demokratie und moderner Rechtsstaatlichkeit wenig zu tun hat? Ist er wirklich dem väterlichen Dunstkreis, der Nazi-Eliteschule und ihren pervertierten Werten entkommen, oder hat er das eine Regime lediglich gegen ein anderes, älteres, fester sitzendes, eines mit einem scheinbar menschlichen Antlitz eingetauscht? Und auch in der Figur des Komponisten Siegfried – ein Echo auf, eine Korrespondenz mit Thomas Manns Adrian Leverkühn aus dem DOKTOR FAUSTUS (1947) – kommt einmal mehr Koeppens Vorbehalt gegen den Intellektuellen, sein Mißtrauen gegenüber Bildung als „Festungsgürtel gegen die Masse in uns selbst“ (Elias Canetti) zum Ausdruck. All die Bildung, all das bildungsbürgerliche Gehube, haben nicht verhindern können, daß da eine jede Bildung verachtende Bande an die Macht kam, die all das, was einst „deutsche Kultur“ ausmachte in den Dreck trat, der Lächerlichkeit Preis gab, in einem nie da gewesenen Zivilisationsbruch ad absurdum führte. Wenn Adolf sich hinter der Soutane, wenn Siegfried sich hinter seiner „modernen“ Musik verstecken will, wenn beide glauben, darin den Bruch mit der eigenen Familie, der Tradition zu vollziehen, stellt Koeppen sie doch vor allem bloß, stellt bloß, daß die Verflechtung sich nicht lösen lässt. Die Kontinuitäten deutschen Denkens und Handelns sind zu stark in DER TOD IN ROM, als daß der einzelne diesen entkommen könnte, anderes, radikaleres Denken und Brechen wären wohl vonnöten, um hier eine echte Abkehr zu verwirklichen.
Wie gelegentlich bei Koeppens Schreiben, hat auch die Lektüre von DER TOD IN ROM bei aller Begeisterung sowohl über den Stil, als auch die inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung, einen Beigeschmack. Denn gelegentlich kommt der Autor sich in seinem Furor selbst ins Gehege. Die stärkste Figur des Romans ist der Alt-Nazi Judejahn, dem der Autor psychologisch einiges dessen einschreibt, was Jahrzehnte später Klaus Theweleit in seinen bahnbrechenden MÄNNERPHANTASIEN (1977/78) analytisch so genau auf den Punkt brachte. Judejahn ist ein brutaler, frauenverachtender, sexualisierter und gerade darin das Leben verachtender Mann, der den Krieg liebt, ihn, wie seine Geliebte, den Tod, ebenfalls transzendiert, der seinen Körper panzert und zugleich tief in sich den „kleinen Gottlieb“, das verängstigte Kind, einschließt und versteckt. Die Verachtung gegenüber Frauen, geboren aus Angst vor ihnen – Theweleits Grundthese findet ihre literarische Bestätigung bei Koeppen. Judejahn ist literarisch sehr überzeugend. Und die ihm eigene Verachtung gegenüber dem „fidelnden“ Neffen Siegfried und erst recht gegenüber dem eigenen Priester-Sohn Adolf, steckt Koeppens Schreiben gelegentlich an. Zwar wird dieser Über-Vater, Patriarch alter Schule, SS-General, Kriegsverbrecher, auch immer wieder lächerlich gemacht, doch eine gewisse Ehrfurcht vor der Kompromißlosigkeit, der ehernen Härte dieses Mannes, ist dem Text anzumerken. Und darin dann auch die Skepsis gegenüber den „verweichlichten“ Söhnen, die es mit dieser kriegsgestählten Generation nicht aufnehmen können, die dann aber passender wie unpassender Weise als homosexuell und sogar päderastisch veranlagt (Siegfried, der auch in diesem Detail auf Thomas Mann und die Figur des Aschenbach aus der nicht zufällig titelverwandten Novelle DER TOD IN VENEDIG rekurriert), innerlich nicht gefestigt (Siegfried und Adolf) und sich in ihren Selbstzweifeln dennoch nicht der eigenen Unreife bewusst (Adolf) gezeichnet werden. Ohne daß der Autor dieser Intention folgen wollte, schleicht sich doch eben jene Perspektive in den Text, die Judejahns gewesen sein dürfte. Zumindest bis in die letzten Seiten hinein.
Dann lässt Koeppen in einer ebenso grandiosen wie erschreckenden Engführung im Text Väter und Söhne, Schwestern und Schwägerinnen, Täter und Opfer aufeinander treffen und – auch hier ist die Sexualisierung ein wesentliches Element – in den Begehrlichkeiten (Judejahn sieht sich bei einer jungen Römerin, die er, sie konsequent als „Judenhure“ betitelnd, obwohl der Leser weiß, daß sie katholisch ist, für sich als Bettgenossin auserkoren hat, durch seinen priesterlichen Sohn ausgestochen) einander zum Schicksal werden. Er schreckt dabei auch nicht davor zurück, Judejahn in seinem Wahn erneut zum Mörder werden zu lassen und zugleich in einer fürchterlichen Volte zum Vollstrecker seiner ureigenen Obsession, Juden töten zu müssen, viel mehr, als er schon getötet hat, denn darin sieht er sein Versagen: Nicht genug getötet zu haben. So schreibt sich auch in diese Entwicklung die deutsche Kontinuität ein. Was geschehen ist, wird weiterhin geschehen, schon allein deshalb, weil die Täter ihre Taten weder bereuen, noch als solche überhaupt begreifen. Und so verflüchtigt sich im Entsetzen über diese letzten 20, 30 Seiten des Romans der Beigeschmack und macht einem tieferen Verständnis dessen Platz, was hier so deutlich wird: Wie genau es Wolfgang Koeppen gelingt, nach der gesellschaftlichen und der politischen Analyse des Nationalsozialismus eine treffende psychologische Analyse derer zu liefern , die das Regime in Kraft gesetzt und am Leben gehalten haben. Und eine Analyse davon zu liefern, wo das Kraftzentrum all des Schreckens liegt: In der Familie.
In der Familie, in der Verachtung der Väter für die Mütter und die Kinder, was folgerichtig die Verachtung der Kinder für ihre Väter zeitigt. In der deformierten Sexualität – auch, wenn solcherart Analysen heute vielleicht schon zu altbacken anmuten mögen und Koeppen gerade was die Figur Siegfried betrifft auch zu weit gehen mag, wenn er dessen Homosexualität an Päderastie koppelt und beides in dessen Wunsch, niemals Kinder zeugen zu wollen als Dekadenz denunziert, womit er eine allzu konservative und überholte Vorstellung offenbart – kommen genau diese Brüche zwischen Erzeuger und Erzeugten, zwischen Herrschern und Beherrschten überdeutlich zum Ausdruck.
Für solch eine frühe Analyse der Psychologie der Täter ist Koeppen dann doch etwas Bahnbrechendes gelungen. Er trifft es dann eben doch erschreckend genau, wenn er das Ideologische desavouiert und ihm die Maske herunterreißt, um die dahinter liegenden, darunter verborgenen, damit übertünchten Ängste, die Obsessionen und die Allmachtphantasien, den Narzissmus und den patriarchalen Herrschaftsanspruch bloßzustellen.
DER TOD IN ROM ist eine schmerzhafte Lektüre, die Zeit erfordert und aus der Trilogie heraussticht, da sie so Tiefliegendes offenbart, weit über die eher deskriptive Analyse der Vorgängerromane hinausreichend. Mag man vor allem DAS TREIBHAUS heute eher als zeitgenössisches Dokument deutscher Befindlichkeit betrachten, TAUBEN IM GRAS vor allem ob seiner gewagten Konstruktion und des der Moderne entsprechenden Stils bewundern, der Koeppen als einen Solitär im Kanon deutscher Nachkriegsliteratur ausweist – DER TOD IM ROM hat in seiner Schrecklichkeit, seiner Kompromißlosigkeit und der Genauigkeit der Analyse Bestand. Wer etwas erfahren will über die Täter, der sollte das Buch zwingend zur Hand nehmen.
In den frühen 50er Jahren – eine Zeitungsschlagzeile berichtet uns, die „Dschungelfestung“ sei gefallen, was auf das Jahr 1954 hindeutet, in dem die Schlacht um Điện Biên Phủ die entscheidende Wende im Indochinakrieg der Franzosen brachte – trifft sich in Rom die Familie Pfaffrath mit dem Onkel Judejahn, einem untergetauchten SS-General. Seine Gattin Eva und die gemeinsamen Söhne Dietrich und Adolf sind mitgereist, um den tot geglaubten Ehemann und Vater zu treffen, obwohl sie aus verschiedenen Gründen vor der Begegnung auch zurückschrecken. Eva, selbst eine überzeugte Nationalsozialistin, die ernsthaft am Untergang Deutschlands und dem Tod des Führers leidet, fragt sich, ob ihr Mann ihr tot nicht lieber wäre – als Held im nordischen Walhalla, wo sie, dezidierte Nicht -, wenn nicht gar Anti-Christin, die Gefallenen des Nazi-Regimes sich vorzustellen beliebt. Pfaffrath, mittlerweile Oberbürgermeister einer westdeutschen Gemeinde, glaubt, den Schwager durch seine Beziehungen wieder nach Deutschland holen zu können. Derweil weilt sein Sohn Siegfried zufällig ebenfalls in Rom. Er ist ein moderner Komponist, dessen Werk durch den dem Nazi-Terror entkommenen Dirigenten Kürenberg in der ewigen Stadt aufgeführt werden soll. Judejahns Söhne, Absolventen einer nationalsozialistischen Eliteschule, vor allem Adolf, der in Anbetracht der Schrecken des 2. Weltkrieges und des Holocaust Priester geworden ist, scheuen das Wiedersehen mit dem übermächtigen Vater aus ganz unterschiedlichen Gründen. Und Judejahn selbst, nach wie vor überzeugter Nazi, der im Mittleren Osten als Berater und Waffenlieferant für diverse Regime tätig ist, verachtet nicht nur seine Schwägerin und deren Gatten, sondern auch die eigenen Nachkommen, da diese sich mit der neuen, „lauen“ Zeit arrangiert haben. Selbst ist und bleibt er stolz auf das Geleistete. Er wünscht sich neue, todbringende Kriege herbei, nicht nur, um weiterhin ein heldisches, soldatisches Leben führen zu können, sondern weil er im Krieg eine Art Transzendenz des menschlichen, anthropologischen Daseins erblickt und erfahren zu haben glaubt.
Waren die Vorgänger eher leise Romane, nicht zuletzt auch literarische Experimente, in denen Wolfgang Koeppen sich an Versatzstücken der literarischen Moderne versuchte, treten diese Elemente in DER TOD IN ROM zugunsten eines wütenden, ja zornigen, manchmal ungezügelten Schreibens zurück. Auch hier gibt es noch Brüche und abrupte Wechsel zwischen subjektiver und auktorialer Erzählperspektive, manchmal fast ohne erkennbaren Übergang, es gibt an die spätere Cut-Up-Technik erinnernde Sprünge zwischen Schauplätzen und Personen, um Gleichzeitigkeit zu simulieren, auch ein freies Spiel mit der Interpunktion, aber all das nimmt weniger Raum ein, als in den Vorgängern, drängt sich weniger auf und tritt im Rahmen der Erzählung zurück, wenn der Stil sich nicht gar in den Dienst des Erzählens stellt. Offenbar war es dem Autor hier um die Klarheit und Verständlichkeit zu tun, mit der die Ungeheuerlichkeit des faschistischen Kontinuums beschrieben werden sollte. Koeppen bedient sich dabei durchaus auch einer Vulgärsprache, lässt den SS-General Judejahn offen, manchmal obsessiv über Bordellbesuche und „Judenhuren“ berichten, die einem deutschen Mann zur Verfügung gestanden hätten, macht wenig Aufhebens um Komißsprache und derbe Schimpferei und Beleidigungen. Ebenso – und das ist doch weitaus interessanter – lässt er Judejahn offen über dessen Taten während des Krieges berichten. Ob Massenerschießungen, Kriegsverbrechen, Vergeltungsmaßnahmen an Zivilisten und vor allem eine unfassbare Verachtung gegenüber allen, die als „minderwertig“ – ob Juden, „Neger“, „Zigeuner“ o.a. – erachtet werden, nichts lässt Koeppen aus. Schwer erträglich ist das während der Lektüre und doch wahrscheinlich sehr, sehr nah an der Realität der frühen 50er Jahre.
Man wundert sich, daß in der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft oft behauptet wurde, die Gräuel seien nie zur Erwähnung gekommen. Hier werden sie nicht nur erwähnt, sie werden explizit benannt, grell ausgestellt, sind wesentlicher Teil der Charakteristik dieses Mannes und dessen, wofür er – symbolisch – steht. Daß das in der bundesrepublikanischen Wirklichkeit Mitte der 50er Jahre nicht gern gelesen oder gehört wurde, kann man sich vorstellen. Mitten in die Restaurationsphase der Adenauer-Ära, in die Jahre des Aufschwungs, des beginnenden Wirtschaftswunders hinein mit dem Grauen konfrontiert zu werden, das im eigenen Namen, dem des „deutschen Volkes“, verübt worden war, kann und wird nur den wenigsten gefallen haben. Doch erstaunt es, daß offenbar auch in den Dekaden danach kaum wahrgenommen wurde, daß hier jemand klar benannt, ausgesprochen hatte, was geschehen war. Und zudem weit darüber hinausging, indem er aufzeigte, wie die Täter langsam wieder Fuß fassten, zurückkamen, sich bürgerliche Existenzen aufbauen konnten, trotz „Entnazifizierung“ und Besatzungsstatuten. Daß Koeppen voller Wut, ja Ingrimm, schrieb, ist während der Lektüre deutlich zu spüren. Und es ist auch zu spüren, wen er für die Entwicklungen verantwortlich macht.
In allen drei Romanen sind es Intellektuelle, Künstler und die Bourgeoisie, deren Kreise der Autor beschreibt. Arbeiter, kleine Angestellte, gar die Halbwelt, kommen am Rande zwar immer vor, doch stehen sie selten bis nie im Fokus. Es ist das Bildungsbürgertum, das Koeppen beschreibt und auch angreift. In DER TOD IN ROM führt diese Analyse weit: Rom als Hauptstadt des den Nächsten liebenden Christentums, aber auch Stadt der europäischen Antike, Hort abendländischer Schätze und Ursprung europäischer Kunst- und Kulturlandschaft, ist nicht zufällig Kulisse dieses Familientreffens. Adolf, der Priester-Sohn Judejahns, reflektiert es in einer Szene höchstselbst: Dient er nicht erneut einem Herren, der mit Demokratie und moderner Rechtsstaatlichkeit wenig zu tun hat? Ist er wirklich dem väterlichen Dunstkreis, der Nazi-Eliteschule und ihren pervertierten Werten entkommen, oder hat er das eine Regime lediglich gegen ein anderes, älteres, fester sitzendes, eines mit einem scheinbar menschlichen Antlitz eingetauscht? Und auch in der Figur des Komponisten Siegfried – ein Echo auf, eine Korrespondenz mit Thomas Manns Adrian Leverkühn aus dem DOKTOR FAUSTUS (1947) – kommt einmal mehr Koeppens Vorbehalt gegen den Intellektuellen, sein Mißtrauen gegenüber Bildung als „Festungsgürtel gegen die Masse in uns selbst“ (Elias Canetti) zum Ausdruck. All die Bildung, all das bildungsbürgerliche Gehube, haben nicht verhindern können, daß da eine jede Bildung verachtende Bande an die Macht kam, die all das, was einst „deutsche Kultur“ ausmachte in den Dreck trat, der Lächerlichkeit Preis gab, in einem nie da gewesenen Zivilisationsbruch ad absurdum führte. Wenn Adolf sich hinter der Soutane, wenn Siegfried sich hinter seiner „modernen“ Musik verstecken will, wenn beide glauben, darin den Bruch mit der eigenen Familie, der Tradition zu vollziehen, stellt Koeppen sie doch vor allem bloß, stellt bloß, daß die Verflechtung sich nicht lösen lässt. Die Kontinuitäten deutschen Denkens und Handelns sind zu stark in DER TOD IN ROM, als daß der einzelne diesen entkommen könnte, anderes, radikaleres Denken und Brechen wären wohl vonnöten, um hier eine echte Abkehr zu verwirklichen.
Wie gelegentlich bei Koeppens Schreiben, hat auch die Lektüre von DER TOD IN ROM bei aller Begeisterung sowohl über den Stil, als auch die inhaltliche Auseinandersetzung, einen Beigeschmack. Denn gelegentlich kommt der Autor sich in seinem Furor selbst ins Gehege. Die stärkste Figur des Romans ist der Alt-Nazi Judejahn, dem der Autor psychologisch einiges dessen einschreibt, was Jahrzehnte später Klaus Theweleit in seinen bahnbrechenden MÄNNERPHANTASIEN (1977/78) analytisch so genau auf den Punkt brachte. Judejahn ist ein brutaler, frauenverachtender, sexualisierter und gerade darin das Leben verachtender Mann, der den Krieg liebt, ihn, wie seine Geliebte, den Tod, ebenfalls transzendiert, der seinen Körper panzert und zugleich tief in sich den „kleinen Gottlieb“, das verängstigte Kind, einschließt und versteckt. Die Verachtung gegenüber Frauen, geboren aus Angst vor ihnen – Theweleits Grundthese findet ihre literarische Bestätigung bei Koeppen. Judejahn ist literarisch sehr überzeugend. Und die ihm eigene Verachtung gegenüber dem „fidelnden“ Neffen Siegfried und erst recht gegenüber dem eigenen Priester-Sohn Adolf, steckt Koeppens Schreiben gelegentlich an. Zwar wird dieser Über-Vater, Patriarch alter Schule, SS-General, Kriegsverbrecher, auch immer wieder lächerlich gemacht, doch eine gewisse Ehrfurcht vor der Kompromißlosigkeit, der ehernen Härte dieses Mannes, ist dem Text anzumerken. Und darin dann auch die Skepsis gegenüber den „verweichlichten“ Söhnen, die es mit dieser kriegsgestählten Generation nicht aufnehmen können, die dann aber passender wie unpassender Weise als homosexuell und sogar päderastisch veranlagt (Siegfried, der auch in diesem Detail auf Thomas Mann und die Figur des Aschenbach aus der nicht zufällig titelverwandten Novelle DER TOD IN VENEDIG rekurriert), innerlich nicht gefestigt (Siegfried und Adolf) und sich in ihren Selbstzweifeln dennoch nicht der eigenen Unreife bewusst (Adolf) gezeichnet werden. Ohne daß der Autor dieser Intention folgen wollte, schleicht sich doch eben jene Perspektive in den Text, die Judejahns gewesen sein dürfte. Zumindest bis in die letzten Seiten hinein.
Dann lässt Koeppen in einer ebenso grandiosen wie erschreckenden Engführung im Text Väter und Söhne, Schwestern und Schwägerinnen, Täter und Opfer aufeinander treffen und – auch hier ist die Sexualisierung ein wesentliches Element – in den Begehrlichkeiten (Judejahn sieht sich bei einer jungen Römerin, die er, sie konsequent als „Judenhure“ betitelnd, obwohl der Leser weiß, daß sie katholisch ist, für sich als Bettgenossin auserkoren hat, durch seinen priesterlichen Sohn ausgestochen) einander zum Schicksal werden. Er schreckt dabei auch nicht davor zurück, Judejahn in seinem Wahn erneut zum Mörder werden zu lassen und zugleich in einer fürchterlichen Volte zum Vollstrecker seiner ureigenen Obsession, Juden töten zu müssen, viel mehr, als er schon getötet hat, denn darin sieht er sein Versagen: Nicht genug getötet zu haben. So schreibt sich auch in diese Entwicklung die deutsche Kontinuität ein. Was geschehen ist, wird weiterhin geschehen, schon allein deshalb, weil die Täter ihre Taten weder bereuen, noch als solche überhaupt begreifen. Und so verflüchtigt sich im Entsetzen über diese letzten 20, 30 Seiten des Romans der Beigeschmack und macht einem tieferen Verständnis dessen Platz, was hier so deutlich wird: Wie genau es Wolfgang Koeppen gelingt, nach der gesellschaftlichen und der politischen Analyse des Nationalsozialismus eine treffende psychologische Analyse derer zu liefern , die das Regime in Kraft gesetzt und am Leben gehalten haben. Und eine Analyse davon zu liefern, wo das Kraftzentrum all des Schreckens liegt: In der Familie.
In der Familie, in der Verachtung der Väter für die Mütter und die Kinder, was folgerichtig die Verachtung der Kinder für ihre Väter zeitigt. In der deformierten Sexualität – auch, wenn solcherart Analysen heute vielleicht schon zu altbacken anmuten mögen und Koeppen gerade was die Figur Siegfried betrifft auch zu weit gehen mag, wenn er dessen Homosexualität an Päderastie koppelt und beides in dessen Wunsch, niemals Kinder zeugen zu wollen als Dekadenz denunziert, womit er eine allzu konservative und überholte Vorstellung offenbart – kommen genau diese Brüche zwischen Erzeuger und Erzeugten, zwischen Herrschern und Beherrschten überdeutlich zum Ausdruck.
Für solch eine frühe Analyse der Psychologie der Täter ist Koeppen dann doch etwas Bahnbrechendes gelungen. Er trifft es dann eben doch erschreckend genau, wenn er das Ideologische desavouiert und ihm die Maske herunterreißt, um die dahinter liegenden, darunter verborgenen, damit übertünchten Ängste, die Obsessionen und die Allmachtphantasien, den Narzissmus und den patriarchalen Herrschaftsanspruch bloßzustellen.
DER TOD IN ROM ist eine schmerzhafte Lektüre, die Zeit erfordert und aus der Trilogie heraussticht, da sie so Tiefliegendes offenbart, weit über die eher deskriptive Analyse der Vorgängerromane hinausreichend. Mag man vor allem DAS TREIBHAUS heute eher als zeitgenössisches Dokument deutscher Befindlichkeit betrachten, TAUBEN IM GRAS vor allem ob seiner gewagten Konstruktion und des der Moderne entsprechenden Stils bewundern, der Koeppen als einen Solitär im Kanon deutscher Nachkriegsliteratur ausweist – DER TOD IM ROM hat in seiner Schrecklichkeit, seiner Kompromißlosigkeit und der Genauigkeit der Analyse Bestand. Wer etwas erfahren will über die Täter, der sollte das Buch zwingend zur Hand nehmen.
February 24, 2011
Wolfgang Koeppen's 'Death in Rome' is a profound and thought-provoking novel written in the mid-fifties. While set against the backdrop of Rome, the main theme is a portrayal of the early after-war German society. It is a remarkable book for several reasons. When first published, it was either criticized or, more commonly, ignored only to be praised a few years later by some of Germany's great authors such as Grass and Boll. Death in Rome was the third book of a trilogy, written by Koeppen in quick succession at the time - all addressing aspects of the "new" Germany. It was followed by 40 years of literary silence, except for travel writings and a short autobiography of his youth. Nevertheless, he is now regarded as one of the best German literary authors and his work has experienced a revival since his death in 1996.
The members of one family meet, more or less by chance, in Rome. The protagonists each personify one aspect of German society: the military, the bureaucracy, religion and art. Koeppen weaves the complex story around an unrepentant former SS man, a then and now middle-level bureaucrat, a young priest and a young composer. The latter two being the sons of the older generation. Symbolism and mythology meet the reader everywhere. The links between Germany and Rome are multifaceted, reaching well back in time. The main characters' names were selected for their meanings: Judejahn for the SS man and Adolf for his priestly son. Siegfried, his young, gay composer cousin, explores experimental music that was forbidden during the Nazi period. He also befriends a conductor and his Jewish wife who had escaped the camps.
There are different levels of connections between the different characters as they move in and out of focus of the story line. One is reminded of a ballet or a complicated but well-structured dance where each participant performs his or her part without seeing the overall picture that unfolds for the reader. Rome in its decaying beauty is treated almost like one of the characters in this composition. Koeppen underlines the intricate choreography by leading from one element in the story to another, often interrupting in the middle of a sentence only to complete it in a different scenario. The language also moves from factual detailed descriptions of events to intimate reflections and analysis of characters. For example, Judejahn is not all that he appears and his contradictions are explored through flash-backs to his youth. His wife Eva would rather see him as a dead hero of the past than as a survivor who is at odds with the present. In many ways, Siegfried represents the centre of the narrative and his voice alternates with that of the author. Still, he is not without his own demons. Both he and Adolf attempt to distance themselves, physically and mentally, from their parents and what they represent. However, given their upbringing, can they really escape?
Death in Rome must have been an uncomfortable book for Koeppen's contemporaries who felt it easier to put the book aside than to confront the issues it exposed. Reading the novel today with the advantage of historical perspective, it has to be seen as one of the first successful efforts to critique German society as it emerged from the Nazi period. This novel is an engaging, if disturbing, read. I regret that I didn't know about this and the other books in the trilogy in my younger years. Still, Death in Rome is as powerful a book now as it was when it was first published and should be recommended to readers of all ages interested in recent European history.
The members of one family meet, more or less by chance, in Rome. The protagonists each personify one aspect of German society: the military, the bureaucracy, religion and art. Koeppen weaves the complex story around an unrepentant former SS man, a then and now middle-level bureaucrat, a young priest and a young composer. The latter two being the sons of the older generation. Symbolism and mythology meet the reader everywhere. The links between Germany and Rome are multifaceted, reaching well back in time. The main characters' names were selected for their meanings: Judejahn for the SS man and Adolf for his priestly son. Siegfried, his young, gay composer cousin, explores experimental music that was forbidden during the Nazi period. He also befriends a conductor and his Jewish wife who had escaped the camps.
There are different levels of connections between the different characters as they move in and out of focus of the story line. One is reminded of a ballet or a complicated but well-structured dance where each participant performs his or her part without seeing the overall picture that unfolds for the reader. Rome in its decaying beauty is treated almost like one of the characters in this composition. Koeppen underlines the intricate choreography by leading from one element in the story to another, often interrupting in the middle of a sentence only to complete it in a different scenario. The language also moves from factual detailed descriptions of events to intimate reflections and analysis of characters. For example, Judejahn is not all that he appears and his contradictions are explored through flash-backs to his youth. His wife Eva would rather see him as a dead hero of the past than as a survivor who is at odds with the present. In many ways, Siegfried represents the centre of the narrative and his voice alternates with that of the author. Still, he is not without his own demons. Both he and Adolf attempt to distance themselves, physically and mentally, from their parents and what they represent. However, given their upbringing, can they really escape?
Death in Rome must have been an uncomfortable book for Koeppen's contemporaries who felt it easier to put the book aside than to confront the issues it exposed. Reading the novel today with the advantage of historical perspective, it has to be seen as one of the first successful efforts to critique German society as it emerged from the Nazi period. This novel is an engaging, if disturbing, read. I regret that I didn't know about this and the other books in the trilogy in my younger years. Still, Death in Rome is as powerful a book now as it was when it was first published and should be recommended to readers of all ages interested in recent European history.
March 13, 2018
This book is like a punch in the stomach. I am not very well versed in post-war literature. All I have read is Heinrich Boll. But it seems to me, from the little I know, that Boll is far more subtle than Koeppen. Billiards at half past nine, the sole book by Boll I've read, is about the unsaid, what cannot be mentioned. Koeppen mentions everything. Everything is raw, crude and cruel. It's in your face. He wants you to know exactly what he thinks of modern Germany. Of what he thinks of the class that prospered both under Nazism and under the Federal German Republic. Of cowardice, of cruelty, of Death, of Justice, of the bareness of life after the Holocaust. There's no point to life, no point to music, art, religion, the State. There are just vain attempts to escape the past, to take refuge, temporarily, in things that are never able to make you forget.
This is a pessimistic, shocking book; written to be shocking. Sometimes I feel Koeppen goes too far in his attempt to shock, in his attempt to show his disgust. But then, what do I know of this kind of pain, of the enormity of the events Koeppen is talking about?
This is a pessimistic, shocking book; written to be shocking. Sometimes I feel Koeppen goes too far in his attempt to shock, in his attempt to show his disgust. But then, what do I know of this kind of pain, of the enormity of the events Koeppen is talking about?
May 18, 2016
Totentanz
Why is this author almost unknown in this country? This novel from 1954 is a compact masterpiece, a lurid but fascinating dance of death that anatomizes the German psyche in the decade following the Second World War. Its setting is Rome in the early 1950s, evoked in a brilliant collage of sights, sounds, tastes and smells. Into this, with the choreographed contrivance of artistic licence, Koeppen brings together several members of a German family, scattered by hatred or exile since 1945. Chief among these is Judejahn (the name has overtones of "Jew hunter"), an ex-Nazi general and executant of the Final Solution, now training the armies of some Arab country under an assumed name. He is brought to Rome by his brother-in-law Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, a loyal functionary who once claimed that his position as Oberpresident of a province made the events of Kristallnacht none of his business, now denazified and elected Oberbürgermeister by the citizens of his town. Pfaffrath believes that the conscience-laundering process can be applied to Judejahn also, not realizing the intensity of the other's continued devotion to the ideals of the old Third Reich.
Set against these as representatives of the younger generation are their respective sons, who also happen to be in Rome at the same time. Judejahn's son Adolf, coming upon a stalled train of concentration camp inmates in the last days of the war, has suffered a crisis of conscience and is now in process of becoming a priest. His cousin Siegfried Pfaffrath is a composer, turning his back on German Romanticism to write in the new atonal style. The four men come together for the first time at the premiere of Siegfried's symphony, a scene that forms the dialectical climax of a book that has already screwed itself up to fever pitch and plumbed the depths of despair. Listening to the music, the deacon Adolf feels…
The brilliant translation by Michael Hoffman is a living thing, jumping from high art to slang, exalted and depraved by turns. Hoffman has also provided that rare thing: an introduction that can safely be read before the book itself and which greatly deepens one's appreciation of it. And renders my own comments derivative by comparison.
Why is this author almost unknown in this country? This novel from 1954 is a compact masterpiece, a lurid but fascinating dance of death that anatomizes the German psyche in the decade following the Second World War. Its setting is Rome in the early 1950s, evoked in a brilliant collage of sights, sounds, tastes and smells. Into this, with the choreographed contrivance of artistic licence, Koeppen brings together several members of a German family, scattered by hatred or exile since 1945. Chief among these is Judejahn (the name has overtones of "Jew hunter"), an ex-Nazi general and executant of the Final Solution, now training the armies of some Arab country under an assumed name. He is brought to Rome by his brother-in-law Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, a loyal functionary who once claimed that his position as Oberpresident of a province made the events of Kristallnacht none of his business, now denazified and elected Oberbürgermeister by the citizens of his town. Pfaffrath believes that the conscience-laundering process can be applied to Judejahn also, not realizing the intensity of the other's continued devotion to the ideals of the old Third Reich.
Set against these as representatives of the younger generation are their respective sons, who also happen to be in Rome at the same time. Judejahn's son Adolf, coming upon a stalled train of concentration camp inmates in the last days of the war, has suffered a crisis of conscience and is now in process of becoming a priest. His cousin Siegfried Pfaffrath is a composer, turning his back on German Romanticism to write in the new atonal style. The four men come together for the first time at the premiere of Siegfried's symphony, a scene that forms the dialectical climax of a book that has already screwed itself up to fever pitch and plumbed the depths of despair. Listening to the music, the deacon Adolf feels…
…it was like a reflection of his childhood in a broken mirror. The Teutonic fort was in the music, the exercise grounds, the woods, sunrise and sunsets and dormitory dreams. But the cynicism and unbelief, the narcissistic flirtation with despair, and the drift into anarchy drove Adolf away.As in his earlier Pigeons on the Grass (1951), which deals with the post-Hitler limbo in a German city under American occupation, Koeppen switches subjects and viewpoints almost paragraph by paragraph, now listening to Siegfried in the first person, now following him in the third, now breaking off to another character, or looking something outside the story altogether such as his wonderful reflection on the Pope at prayer. The effect is musical, but while the earlier novel was almost skittish and jazzlike, here the rhythms are slower, the connections tauter, the language cutting deeper. Originally separate, Koeppen's four figures (and several others beside them) circle one another in a tighening spiral, to come together in a climax of outward hatred and inner doubt. Keeping them separate for so long, Koeppen can show their private lives as clearly as their public personae, revealing everything from grandiose mania to crippling self-loathing, even in the same person. He can contrast their sexual proclivities: the confused yearning of Adolf, the pederasty of Siegfried, or the sadism of Judejahn. But it is by no means all inner monologue; a clear sequence of events generates increasing momentum over a couple of days. The climax, when it comes, may seem contrived, but the psychology is utterly convincing, etched in blood, bile, and acid.
The brilliant translation by Michael Hoffman is a living thing, jumping from high art to slang, exalted and depraved by turns. Hoffman has also provided that rare thing: an introduction that can safely be read before the book itself and which greatly deepens one's appreciation of it. And renders my own comments derivative by comparison.
October 7, 2014
This deserves to be called a classic, as well as ahead of its time. It is perhaps allegorical to a fault, but its characters represent a Germany still inextricable from its (then recent) Nazi past. The four principals are foremost German "types": the unrepentant Nazi, Gottlieb Judejahn; his brother-in-law Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath, the careerist who maneuvers to stay on the side that is winning; their respective sons Adolf Judejahn, on the verge of becoming a priest; and Siegfried Pfaffrath, a composer of what his uncle considers "degenerate" music. The four cross paths in Rome by chance. Judejahn's journey around Rome is narrated by his expectedly hate-filled interior monologue. He is the personification of a particularly German brand of evil: lustful, race-obsessed, death-glorifying. He is terrifying, but out of power he is also simply lost. His wife, Eva, who is as unreconstructed a Nazi as he is, in moments wishes he were dead, carried off to Valhalla, rather than defeated. He expects to obtain a job, possibly under an assumed identity, through connections with his brother-in-law. His son Adolf, who spent his childhood in a Nazi academy, has turned to religion after sharing a human moment with a Jewish boy, a concentration camp survivor, when the two encounter one another during a train wreck shortly before liberation. Siegfried meets with him in Rome; he believes Adolf's decision to become a priest is a cop-out, a knee-jerk reaction. He himself remembers a childhood terrorized by his uncle Judejahn. The names here, as the translator's note mentions, are no accident. The younger generation, embodied in Adolf and Siegfried, tries to make its separate and uneasy peace. Judejahn is haunted by the "little Gottlieb" who was in turn humiliated by his own father. The chickens are forever coming home to roost.
The conflict among these archetypes of German-ness, which has been simmering throughout the novel (and which has pulled others, most notably the wealthy Kurenbergs, into its orbit) comes to a head as Judejahn and his son are both attracted to the same girl, named Laura, who works behind the counter at a gay bar. More prone to "vegetative musing" than thinking, Laura sparks the former's seemingly boundless reserve of murderous lust and serves as a source of temptation for the latter. Their inner demons are given a chance to come to the foreground, bringing Death in Rome to its inevitable conclusion. Largely ignored in its time in favor of a widespread voluntary amnesia on the part of many Germans, Death in Rome deserves exposure to a modern audience.
The conflict among these archetypes of German-ness, which has been simmering throughout the novel (and which has pulled others, most notably the wealthy Kurenbergs, into its orbit) comes to a head as Judejahn and his son are both attracted to the same girl, named Laura, who works behind the counter at a gay bar. More prone to "vegetative musing" than thinking, Laura sparks the former's seemingly boundless reserve of murderous lust and serves as a source of temptation for the latter. Their inner demons are given a chance to come to the foreground, bringing Death in Rome to its inevitable conclusion. Largely ignored in its time in favor of a widespread voluntary amnesia on the part of many Germans, Death in Rome deserves exposure to a modern audience.
September 19, 2021
A great novel undermined by its greatness? Need to re-read it one day, especially the first third, since I read other books after starting this, unable to read five pages before spacing out and looking at phone or grabbing guitar etc. Dense, multiple perspectives, intentionally disorientating, deep POV/super-close third-person but also occasional first person. Took a while to figure out the family relations/dynamics -- helped that they were all spelled out on the back cover, or so I realized midway through. Probably helpful as well to read the translator's foreword first (I read it last). Hofmann's translation is tremendous, the language almost too honed/attentive. Repetition of the N-word in reference to American music (jazz/blues), even if embedded in Mr. and Mrs. Super-Nazi's perspective, seemed jarring and I thought the word may have been better off rendered in italicized untranslated original? But otherwise the language is rhythmic, the sentences generally short, accreting visual, sensual, and thematic intensity, as long as you don't zone out on them. Did better reading this while walking than otherwise sedentary -- definitely that sort of book. The super-Nazi, Judejahn, seemed like the inspiration for The Judge in Blood Meridian? One of the least reparable, least sympathetic, evil-incarnate characters I've read, larger than life, darker, and really the heart (putrefying blood, more so) of the novel. Other characters also stood up but cast a lesser shadow, including wonderful scenes presenting one of the character's twelve-tone "avant garde" symphony. All characters are German stereotypes but the language breathes life into them. The single lingering impression is that I need to read the first third again but I doubt I will anytime soon. Have had it for a few years but got around to it thanks to mentions in either An Overcoat: Scenes from the Afterlife of H.B. or The Other Jack. I haven't read Mann's Death in Venice in ~16 years so feel unable to eek out interesting cross-references, although the composer likes young boys (vivid pederasty down by the Tibor) and Judejahn sort of has his vampiric side, wanting to regain lost power more than lost youth? I've also never been to Rome but the city more than sufficiently fulfills its symbolic services as seat of fallen empire.
November 30, 2013
I hardly know how to rate this. Can a book that has Death in the title be "enjoyed" 5 stars worth? I won't soon forget this, surely that qualifies it. Michael Hoffman, translator, says in his introduction: Death in Rome is the most devastating novel about the Germans that I have ever read, and one of the most arresting on any subject. It most certainly is a compelling read, both for content and for style.
As to content, there are primarily four male individuals which make up a family - two each from the generation who were a part of the Third Reich and their sons. The sons reject their fathers, but the fathers believe they were right and that Germany will come back. I did not feel as if Koeppen so much colored their personalities with words of bias as he showed each of them for what they were and are. A word to the sensitive: one of the characters is a former SS general, very racist, and Koeppen depicts him as the brutal thug you can expect.
As to style, I selected this read just now because Koeppen is one of those authors influenced by Marcel Proust, which was one of the tasks for the Fall Challenge. In a review earlier this month, I wrote of laying aside Nabokov for style and Proust for content. Koeppen blends the two perfectly. His prose is beautiful even with his often ugly and evil subject matter. No eight-page sentences - though some were long enough - but his cadence, often incorporating repetition, was perfect to my ear. I did not listen to this on audio, but having written that last sentence, I wonder how beautiful it might be to hear the language.
As to content, there are primarily four male individuals which make up a family - two each from the generation who were a part of the Third Reich and their sons. The sons reject their fathers, but the fathers believe they were right and that Germany will come back. I did not feel as if Koeppen so much colored their personalities with words of bias as he showed each of them for what they were and are. A word to the sensitive: one of the characters is a former SS general, very racist, and Koeppen depicts him as the brutal thug you can expect.
As to style, I selected this read just now because Koeppen is one of those authors influenced by Marcel Proust, which was one of the tasks for the Fall Challenge. In a review earlier this month, I wrote of laying aside Nabokov for style and Proust for content. Koeppen blends the two perfectly. His prose is beautiful even with his often ugly and evil subject matter. No eight-page sentences - though some were long enough - but his cadence, often incorporating repetition, was perfect to my ear. I did not listen to this on audio, but having written that last sentence, I wonder how beautiful it might be to hear the language.
July 19, 2016
Je hebt iemand als Peter Drehmanns nodig om geattendeerd te worden op een literair meesterwerk. Ik heb het over ‘De dood in Rome’ van Wolfgang Koeppen. Oorspronkelijk verschenen in 1954, uit het Duits vertaald en recent heruitgebracht door uitgeverij Cossee. Een kleine roman is het, althans in omvang (niet meer dan 194 pagina’s lang), maar wie denkt dat je die op een paar dagen uit hebt vergist zich: als niet-Duitsers zijn we niet vertrouwd met het thema (Duitsers in het post-nazitijdperk), en er wordt een stoet aan personages opgevoerd (tien om precies te zijn, de meeste met familiale banden – het is sinds het lezen van Dostojewski geleden dat ik nog eens een namenlijstje heb aangelegd). Maar het is vooral de complexe en gefragmenteerde opbouw van het verhaal die van ‘De dood in Rome’ geen gemakkelijke lectuur maakt. Voeg daar aan toe: verrassende wendingen in de vertelperspectieven, uitgesponnen monologues intérieurs, lange ritmische volzinnen, verwijzingen naar mythologie en musicologie,… en je begrijpt dat dit boek een inspanning van de lezer vraagt. Maar de optelsom van al die elementen is ronduit magistraal: een perfect uitgebalanceerde roman in een verbluffende stijl.
Ik probeer het verhaal samen te vatten. ‘De dood in Rome’ speelt zich af, in een tijdsbestek van enkele dagen, in het Rome van de vroege jaren vijftig. Leden van een Duitse familie, door WOII van elkaar gescheiden geraakt, ontmoeten er elkaar. De protagonisten zijn de jonge componist en Schönberg-adept Siegfried Pfaffrath en zijn oom en antipode Gottlieb Judejahn, een voormalige SS-generaal die bij verstek ter dood is veroordeeld. Die Judejahn is intussen in dienst van een Arabische staat en is in Rome om een illegale wapenaankoop te regelen. Via de vader van Siegfried Pfaffrath, zijn zwager dus en ook nazi-sympathisant, hoopt hij zijn terugkeer naar Duitsland te kunnen regelen. Want zoveel is duidelijk: het Derde Rijk mag dan wel ingestort zijn (door ‘verraad’), de ideologie is nog springlevend. De oude generatie (de ouders van Pfaffrath, Judejahn en zijn vrouw) hoopt nog steeds op een restauratie van het nazisme. Het is de jongere generatie die radicaal breekt met dat gedachtengoed. De prijs die ze hiervoor betaalt is hoog: eenzaamheid, vertwijfeling, zoekend naar een nieuw houvast. Siegfried vlucht in zijn muziek (en pederastische escapades), zijn neef Adolf (!) zoekt soelaas in het geloof. Op één van zijn zwerftochten door Rome ontmoet de oude Judejahn in een bar Laura, een niet zo snuggere caissière. Judejahn denkt – ten onrechte - dat ze joods is, maar gaat toch met haar naar bed. Stomdronken, woest en ‘in een rode nevel’ wil hij ‘die Sünde wider das Blut’ wreken, eigenhandig zijn bijdrage tot de Endlösung leveren. Moorden zal hij en doet hij, maar - de plotwending is verrassend en ingenieus - het is niet Laura die hij vermoordt…
Zo samengevat lijkt het niet bepaald wereldschokkend. Maar de reconstructie van die verhaallijn is natuurlijk te summier, laat een aantal minder prominente figuren onvermeld, zegt niets over de psychologische diepgang waarmee de protagonisten uitgewerkt worden, en al helemaal niets over Koeppens stilistische virtuositeit. Daarom een fragment (p. 188):
“Ze had niet gedacht dat hij zo hartstochtelijk zou zijn, de mannen met wie ze naar bed ging voor de cadeautjes die een meisje zo nodig heeft waren anders niet zo opgewonden, het waren rustige affaires die zich in bed afspeelden, maar deze wierp zich op haar als een beest, hij duwde haar benen uit elkaar, trok aan haar huid en toen nam hij haar ruw, ging ruw met haar om en zij was toch zo smal en tenger, hij was zwaar, hij lag zwaar op haar lichaam dat zo licht was en zo goed om te omhelzen en zij dacht aan de flikkers, dacht aan de flikkers in de bar, aan hun weke gebaren, aan hun geurende haren, aan hun kleurige hemden en hun rinkelende armbanden en zij dacht misschien is het goed een flikker te zijn, misschien zou ik het ook moeten zijn, dit is walgelijk, hij stinkt naar zweet en hij stinkt als een bok, als een smerige gemene geitenbok in de stal stinkt hij, ze was als kind eens op het platteland geweest, ze was in Calabrië geweest, ze was toen bang en had heimwee naar Rome, naar haar heerlijke stad en het huis in Calabrië had gestonken en zij had moeten zien hoe de geiten naar de bok werden gebracht en op de brug had een jongen zich ontbloot en zij had de jongen moeten aanpakken, zij haatte de boeren en soms droomde ze van de bok en dan wilde ze de jongen pakken maar de jongen had horens en stootte haar en de horens braken af, in haar droom braken de horens af als rotte tanden, ze riep ‘je doet me pijn’ maar Judejahn verstond haar niet want ze riep het in het Italiaans en het deed er ook niet toe of hij haar verstond want het deed pijn maar het deed prettig pijn, ja, zij wilde nu de overgave, die oude man bevredigde haar, de veelbelovende vreemdeling openbaarde zich op onvermoede wijze, zij drukte zich tegen hem aan, dreef zijn opwinding op, stromen zweet liepen van de bok over haar lichaam, vloeiden over haar borst, verzamelden zich in de kleine kuil van haar buik, brandden een beetje maar brandden niet erg en de man was boos, hij fluisterde: ‘Je bent een Jodin, je bent een Jodin’ en zij verstond hem niet maar haar onderbewustzijn begreep hem, toen de Duitse soldaten in Rome waren had het woord een bepaalde betekenis en zij vroeg ‘ebreo?’ en hij fluisterde ‘Hebreeër’ en legde de handen om haar hals en zij riep ‘no e poi no no, cattólico’ en het woord cattólico scheen hem ook te ontvlammen in woede en begeerte en tenslotte was het hetzelfde, woede of begeerte, zij dreef weg en hij putte zich uit, rochelde en viel vermoeid, verslagen, als een dode van haar af.”
Koeppen is vaak zijn pessimisme (en erger) verweten. Hij mag dan intussen gerehabiliteerd zijn en door de literaire kritiek tot de grootste schrijvers van de Duitse naoorlogse generatie gerekend worden, een echt ruim lezerspubliek zoals Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, etc. heeft hij nooit bereikt. Of deze nieuwe vertaling daarin verandering zal brengen valt te betwijfelen: op goodreads vind ik wel 209 ratings (gemiddeld aantal sterren: 3,9) en 36 reviews, maar geen enkele daarvan heeft betrekking heeft op de Nederlandse versie. Op andere sociale media (www.iedereenleest, Boats Against the Current): nauwelijks iets. Jammer! Want ‘De dood in Rome’ is een fantastisch sterk boek, een absolute ontdekking. Kende ik Duits, ik zou gelijk al zijn ander werk kopen.
PS: Voor de geïnteresseerden: Hans-Ulrich Treichel schreef een boeiend en verhelderend nawoord bij ‘De dood in Rome’. Een uitgebreid essay over Koeppen is te vinden in De Gids van 1994 (jaargang 157) – auteur Wil Rouleaux.
Ik probeer het verhaal samen te vatten. ‘De dood in Rome’ speelt zich af, in een tijdsbestek van enkele dagen, in het Rome van de vroege jaren vijftig. Leden van een Duitse familie, door WOII van elkaar gescheiden geraakt, ontmoeten er elkaar. De protagonisten zijn de jonge componist en Schönberg-adept Siegfried Pfaffrath en zijn oom en antipode Gottlieb Judejahn, een voormalige SS-generaal die bij verstek ter dood is veroordeeld. Die Judejahn is intussen in dienst van een Arabische staat en is in Rome om een illegale wapenaankoop te regelen. Via de vader van Siegfried Pfaffrath, zijn zwager dus en ook nazi-sympathisant, hoopt hij zijn terugkeer naar Duitsland te kunnen regelen. Want zoveel is duidelijk: het Derde Rijk mag dan wel ingestort zijn (door ‘verraad’), de ideologie is nog springlevend. De oude generatie (de ouders van Pfaffrath, Judejahn en zijn vrouw) hoopt nog steeds op een restauratie van het nazisme. Het is de jongere generatie die radicaal breekt met dat gedachtengoed. De prijs die ze hiervoor betaalt is hoog: eenzaamheid, vertwijfeling, zoekend naar een nieuw houvast. Siegfried vlucht in zijn muziek (en pederastische escapades), zijn neef Adolf (!) zoekt soelaas in het geloof. Op één van zijn zwerftochten door Rome ontmoet de oude Judejahn in een bar Laura, een niet zo snuggere caissière. Judejahn denkt – ten onrechte - dat ze joods is, maar gaat toch met haar naar bed. Stomdronken, woest en ‘in een rode nevel’ wil hij ‘die Sünde wider das Blut’ wreken, eigenhandig zijn bijdrage tot de Endlösung leveren. Moorden zal hij en doet hij, maar - de plotwending is verrassend en ingenieus - het is niet Laura die hij vermoordt…
Zo samengevat lijkt het niet bepaald wereldschokkend. Maar de reconstructie van die verhaallijn is natuurlijk te summier, laat een aantal minder prominente figuren onvermeld, zegt niets over de psychologische diepgang waarmee de protagonisten uitgewerkt worden, en al helemaal niets over Koeppens stilistische virtuositeit. Daarom een fragment (p. 188):
“Ze had niet gedacht dat hij zo hartstochtelijk zou zijn, de mannen met wie ze naar bed ging voor de cadeautjes die een meisje zo nodig heeft waren anders niet zo opgewonden, het waren rustige affaires die zich in bed afspeelden, maar deze wierp zich op haar als een beest, hij duwde haar benen uit elkaar, trok aan haar huid en toen nam hij haar ruw, ging ruw met haar om en zij was toch zo smal en tenger, hij was zwaar, hij lag zwaar op haar lichaam dat zo licht was en zo goed om te omhelzen en zij dacht aan de flikkers, dacht aan de flikkers in de bar, aan hun weke gebaren, aan hun geurende haren, aan hun kleurige hemden en hun rinkelende armbanden en zij dacht misschien is het goed een flikker te zijn, misschien zou ik het ook moeten zijn, dit is walgelijk, hij stinkt naar zweet en hij stinkt als een bok, als een smerige gemene geitenbok in de stal stinkt hij, ze was als kind eens op het platteland geweest, ze was in Calabrië geweest, ze was toen bang en had heimwee naar Rome, naar haar heerlijke stad en het huis in Calabrië had gestonken en zij had moeten zien hoe de geiten naar de bok werden gebracht en op de brug had een jongen zich ontbloot en zij had de jongen moeten aanpakken, zij haatte de boeren en soms droomde ze van de bok en dan wilde ze de jongen pakken maar de jongen had horens en stootte haar en de horens braken af, in haar droom braken de horens af als rotte tanden, ze riep ‘je doet me pijn’ maar Judejahn verstond haar niet want ze riep het in het Italiaans en het deed er ook niet toe of hij haar verstond want het deed pijn maar het deed prettig pijn, ja, zij wilde nu de overgave, die oude man bevredigde haar, de veelbelovende vreemdeling openbaarde zich op onvermoede wijze, zij drukte zich tegen hem aan, dreef zijn opwinding op, stromen zweet liepen van de bok over haar lichaam, vloeiden over haar borst, verzamelden zich in de kleine kuil van haar buik, brandden een beetje maar brandden niet erg en de man was boos, hij fluisterde: ‘Je bent een Jodin, je bent een Jodin’ en zij verstond hem niet maar haar onderbewustzijn begreep hem, toen de Duitse soldaten in Rome waren had het woord een bepaalde betekenis en zij vroeg ‘ebreo?’ en hij fluisterde ‘Hebreeër’ en legde de handen om haar hals en zij riep ‘no e poi no no, cattólico’ en het woord cattólico scheen hem ook te ontvlammen in woede en begeerte en tenslotte was het hetzelfde, woede of begeerte, zij dreef weg en hij putte zich uit, rochelde en viel vermoeid, verslagen, als een dode van haar af.”
Koeppen is vaak zijn pessimisme (en erger) verweten. Hij mag dan intussen gerehabiliteerd zijn en door de literaire kritiek tot de grootste schrijvers van de Duitse naoorlogse generatie gerekend worden, een echt ruim lezerspubliek zoals Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, etc. heeft hij nooit bereikt. Of deze nieuwe vertaling daarin verandering zal brengen valt te betwijfelen: op goodreads vind ik wel 209 ratings (gemiddeld aantal sterren: 3,9) en 36 reviews, maar geen enkele daarvan heeft betrekking heeft op de Nederlandse versie. Op andere sociale media (www.iedereenleest, Boats Against the Current): nauwelijks iets. Jammer! Want ‘De dood in Rome’ is een fantastisch sterk boek, een absolute ontdekking. Kende ik Duits, ik zou gelijk al zijn ander werk kopen.
PS: Voor de geïnteresseerden: Hans-Ulrich Treichel schreef een boeiend en verhelderend nawoord bij ‘De dood in Rome’. Een uitgebreid essay over Koeppen is te vinden in De Gids van 1994 (jaargang 157) – auteur Wil Rouleaux.
January 16, 2017
Wolfgang Koeppen is one of the least well known literary giants of the twentieth century. While his output consists of only five novels they all are at least minor masterpieces and his final novel, Death in Rome, ranks as a major one. In this subtle and spare novel Koeppen creates a vision of the German postwar experience that is at once bleak and devastating. The four main characters of the novel meet in Rome and in small pieces of their thoughts and their lives the anxiety and sordidness of their world is laid bare for the reader. The death motif is perhaps the strongest from title through to the end of the book, but Koeppen also uses symbolism and unique metaphors, particularly animals and insects, to heighten the impact of his story. None of the characters are likable, but like a Kafka novel I found myself fascinated with them and the world inside their heads.
Of particular interest to me was the use of music and the representation of the composer, Siegfried Pfaffrath, as a modern serial composer in the mold of Schoenberg. His music is described as like the "degenerate art" that the Nazis rejected while in its modernism it is not approved by the Catholic Church either. Some readers have made the comparison of the structure of the novel itself with a twelve tone musical composition. Perhaps--but whether the comparison is apt the novel certainly seems surrealistic, especially in the use of time in the movement and activities of the characters. I am impressed even more, as I reread it, with the way Koeppen uses every line and page to build the tension that explodes at the end of the novel. Death permeates this book in a way that few other novels rival. I think of Death in Venice, another twentieth century masterpiece, but Mann's enterprise is more Nietzschean than Koeppen's. While Tolstoy comes to mind also, in The Death of Ivan Ilych he seems a nineteenth-century precursor to the existentialism that would blossom a few decades later.
No, Koeppen is more at home in the post-war dilemma of Europe and Germany in particular. And the world he depicts is brutal and dark. It is as if, at least for some of the characters, the war has not ended. This is particularly true of Gottlieb "Gotz" Judejahn who is at the center of the novel. Having disappeared he is tried in abstentia at Nuremberg and is effectively a ghost (as is his wife Eva) who haunts Germany, not directly but from a distance - in Rome. The other haunting theme mentioned above is the 'new' music of Siegfried Pfaffrath--best described as a latecomer to the atonal style whose priest was Arnold Schoenberg. Late in the novel Siegfried meditates on the nature of music:
"Music was an enigmatic construction to which there was no longer any access, or just a narrow gate that admits only a few people. Whoever sat inside couldn't communicate to those on the outside, and yet they felt that this enigmatic, invisible construction, built by magic formulae, was important to them."
The structure of this novel and the thoughts of the characters, their communication or lack thereof, seems to mirror this image of music and its relation to those who hear and do not understand. Perhaps the only answer is to act out your lack of understanding--to end the dark, unbearable world with death.
Overall the effect is impressive with the result being a novel that challenges the reader with its taut presence. I found the challenge invigorating and it encouraged further meditation on the ideas raised by the author.
Of particular interest to me was the use of music and the representation of the composer, Siegfried Pfaffrath, as a modern serial composer in the mold of Schoenberg. His music is described as like the "degenerate art" that the Nazis rejected while in its modernism it is not approved by the Catholic Church either. Some readers have made the comparison of the structure of the novel itself with a twelve tone musical composition. Perhaps--but whether the comparison is apt the novel certainly seems surrealistic, especially in the use of time in the movement and activities of the characters. I am impressed even more, as I reread it, with the way Koeppen uses every line and page to build the tension that explodes at the end of the novel. Death permeates this book in a way that few other novels rival. I think of Death in Venice, another twentieth century masterpiece, but Mann's enterprise is more Nietzschean than Koeppen's. While Tolstoy comes to mind also, in The Death of Ivan Ilych he seems a nineteenth-century precursor to the existentialism that would blossom a few decades later.
No, Koeppen is more at home in the post-war dilemma of Europe and Germany in particular. And the world he depicts is brutal and dark. It is as if, at least for some of the characters, the war has not ended. This is particularly true of Gottlieb "Gotz" Judejahn who is at the center of the novel. Having disappeared he is tried in abstentia at Nuremberg and is effectively a ghost (as is his wife Eva) who haunts Germany, not directly but from a distance - in Rome. The other haunting theme mentioned above is the 'new' music of Siegfried Pfaffrath--best described as a latecomer to the atonal style whose priest was Arnold Schoenberg. Late in the novel Siegfried meditates on the nature of music:
"Music was an enigmatic construction to which there was no longer any access, or just a narrow gate that admits only a few people. Whoever sat inside couldn't communicate to those on the outside, and yet they felt that this enigmatic, invisible construction, built by magic formulae, was important to them."
The structure of this novel and the thoughts of the characters, their communication or lack thereof, seems to mirror this image of music and its relation to those who hear and do not understand. Perhaps the only answer is to act out your lack of understanding--to end the dark, unbearable world with death.
Overall the effect is impressive with the result being a novel that challenges the reader with its taut presence. I found the challenge invigorating and it encouraged further meditation on the ideas raised by the author.
September 25, 2011
A beautifully written 1954 novel whose characters, members of an extended German family, gather in Rome after the end of World War II. They are archetypes of German society and the German "soul;" the most repugnant, Gottlieb Judejahn, is a former SS general traveling under an assumed name, arranging arms deals for an army he is assembling in the desert. He misses the killing and wishes he could have done more to exterminate the Jews. His wife Eva is in permanent mourning (for Hitler and the death of the Reich). His brother Friedrich is a small-time town official, not as grotesque as Judejahn but still responsible for easing the way for Jews to die. Friedrich's son Siegfried is repulsed by the family patriarchs and has gone in the opposite direction, becoming a composer of vaguely discordant orchestral music. Judejahn's son Adolf has also undergone a conversion of sorts and is becoming a Catholic priest, to the disgust of his parents.
Not much happens, in the present. Some family members arrange a picnic at Monte Cassino. Siegfried indulges his pederasty. They gather to hear the premiere of Siegfried's music at a concert hall. Judejahn drives around Rome in his giant car and lusts after women who are part Jewish. Dialogue is minimal. Description is thick and occasionally dreamlike, peppered with references to Greek and Teutonic mythology. Sentences and paragraphs are long; perspectives change. Siegfried is sometimes discussed in the third person, and sometimes slips into first person.
He felt good, like a scorched wild boar, he thought to himself. He heard man sounds: water splashing, buckets clanging, whistling, oaths, jokes, orders, boots scraping, doors banging. He smelled the barracks smell compounded from detention, service, leather polish, gun grease, strong soap, sweet pomade, sour sweat, coffee, heated aluminum dishes and piss. It was the smell of fear, only Judejahn didn't know it: after all, he didn't know what fear was. He told himself so in front of the mirror; naked, thick-bellied, he stood in front of the fly-blown glass. He did up his belt. He was old school in this. The belt held in his paunch and hitched up his buttocks. An old general's trick. Judejahn went out into the passage. Men flattened themselves against the walls, dutiful shadows. He ignored them. He was going outside.
Not much happens, in the present. Some family members arrange a picnic at Monte Cassino. Siegfried indulges his pederasty. They gather to hear the premiere of Siegfried's music at a concert hall. Judejahn drives around Rome in his giant car and lusts after women who are part Jewish. Dialogue is minimal. Description is thick and occasionally dreamlike, peppered with references to Greek and Teutonic mythology. Sentences and paragraphs are long; perspectives change. Siegfried is sometimes discussed in the third person, and sometimes slips into first person.
He felt good, like a scorched wild boar, he thought to himself. He heard man sounds: water splashing, buckets clanging, whistling, oaths, jokes, orders, boots scraping, doors banging. He smelled the barracks smell compounded from detention, service, leather polish, gun grease, strong soap, sweet pomade, sour sweat, coffee, heated aluminum dishes and piss. It was the smell of fear, only Judejahn didn't know it: after all, he didn't know what fear was. He told himself so in front of the mirror; naked, thick-bellied, he stood in front of the fly-blown glass. He did up his belt. He was old school in this. The belt held in his paunch and hitched up his buttocks. An old general's trick. Judejahn went out into the passage. Men flattened themselves against the walls, dutiful shadows. He ignored them. He was going outside.
May 20, 2021
Having read the first 2 novels of Wolfgang Koeppen's famed Trilogy of Failure and having drawn certain conclusions from the readings I began the final novel Death in Rome with expectations. I'd earlier interpreted rhymes with Dante and so began a novel set in Rome looking for Paradiso. The allusions went farther into the past, beyond the Renaissance to classical mythology. Instead of Heaven in the realm of God's light, Death in Rome probably takes place on the slopes of Olympus. All the old gods are alluded to and in observant attendance without really influencing events. Satyrs scurry behind the shrubbery, naiads live in the famous fountains, glimpses down darkened Roman alleys show us the Underworld.
The realism of plot involves a German family's reunion in Rome some years after the war. History has more authority than the gods, and the characters fear it more than them. The 4 primary characters represent the main elements of German culture in the 1st half of the century: war, music, the church, and diplomacy. Gottlieb is an old SS man who's been living undercover until he surfaces in Rome for the premier of his nephew Siegfried's symphony. Gottlieb's brother is Friedrich, a government administrator. Adolf, a deacon of the church, is Gottlieb's son. I've used Gottlieb here as the principal referent because if the novel has a main character it's probably him. The others orbit him and his angst. There are other characters who're woven into the plot, wives, business associates, and even a young woman who could serve as a Beatrice figure except the only Heaven she leads to is sexual. As you'd expect, his characters' traits and the events surrounding the reunion have much to say about Germany during the war and after.
I'd also begun the novel looking for the bouquet of other, earlier novelists in Koeppen's work. We associate Thomas Mann with death in Italian cities, but I don't think I saw him in the novel. I'm frequently wrong, however. I saw mostly Wolfgang Koeppen, which is more than acceptable because his trilogy is made up of 3 muscular novels, and I think Death in Rome the best of them.
The realism of plot involves a German family's reunion in Rome some years after the war. History has more authority than the gods, and the characters fear it more than them. The 4 primary characters represent the main elements of German culture in the 1st half of the century: war, music, the church, and diplomacy. Gottlieb is an old SS man who's been living undercover until he surfaces in Rome for the premier of his nephew Siegfried's symphony. Gottlieb's brother is Friedrich, a government administrator. Adolf, a deacon of the church, is Gottlieb's son. I've used Gottlieb here as the principal referent because if the novel has a main character it's probably him. The others orbit him and his angst. There are other characters who're woven into the plot, wives, business associates, and even a young woman who could serve as a Beatrice figure except the only Heaven she leads to is sexual. As you'd expect, his characters' traits and the events surrounding the reunion have much to say about Germany during the war and after.
I'd also begun the novel looking for the bouquet of other, earlier novelists in Koeppen's work. We associate Thomas Mann with death in Italian cities, but I don't think I saw him in the novel. I'm frequently wrong, however. I saw mostly Wolfgang Koeppen, which is more than acceptable because his trilogy is made up of 3 muscular novels, and I think Death in Rome the best of them.
July 25, 2021
What makes books indispensable classics? Certainly not their length, otherwise this 180-page gem could not claim its well-deserved status as a classic. In addition to writing style and themes, I think this also includes a certain multilayeredness, so that you can keep rereading the book and discover new things with every new reading.
I just finished reading this book for the first time and would love to dive in again. However, this book was not well received by the literary press when it was published in the 1950s. The new Germany was presented with a mirror image by Koeppen that is also anything but flattering: the old generation longs either radically or rather via a detour fervently for the Nazi era, so much for successful post-war denazification. The only bright spots are the two young protagonists who - traumatized by a Nazi childhood - have turned their backs on their families and have found solace in faith on the one hand (Adolf is in Rome to become a priest) and music on the other (Siegfried (!) is a modern composer who is taking part in a competition in Rome). The two generations cannot escape each other in the eternal city. Highly recommended! You get in addition the numerous references to Thomas Mann (Tod in Venedig) and Wagner among others
I just finished reading this book for the first time and would love to dive in again. However, this book was not well received by the literary press when it was published in the 1950s. The new Germany was presented with a mirror image by Koeppen that is also anything but flattering: the old generation longs either radically or rather via a detour fervently for the Nazi era, so much for successful post-war denazification. The only bright spots are the two young protagonists who - traumatized by a Nazi childhood - have turned their backs on their families and have found solace in faith on the one hand (Adolf is in Rome to become a priest) and music on the other (Siegfried (!) is a modern composer who is taking part in a competition in Rome). The two generations cannot escape each other in the eternal city. Highly recommended! You get in addition the numerous references to Thomas Mann (Tod in Venedig) and Wagner among others
March 5, 2014
Koeppen and I go way back. I tried several time to read his master piece Tauben im Gras but never made it through but after this book I am keen to finally finish it. There are not many people who can quote thomas mann in their book. he can. a must read book in my opnion.
May 2, 2022
What an utterly fascinating book! A deep examination into the distorted minds of post-Nazi (written in 1954) Germany, but set in Rome, a city of angles, now crawling with demons.
The style is modernist in the extreme — fragmentation, parataxis, interiority and stream-of-consciousness — and Hofmann’s translation is masterful.
A book that deserves 6 stars, 7 stars, and should be *far* more widely known by an english readership.
The style is modernist in the extreme — fragmentation, parataxis, interiority and stream-of-consciousness — and Hofmann’s translation is masterful.
A book that deserves 6 stars, 7 stars, and should be *far* more widely known by an english readership.
October 30, 2017
Death in Rome by Wolfgang Koeppen
The Brilliant and Powerful Novel You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.
The Brilliant and Powerful Novel You’ve Probably Never Heard Of.
June 21, 2011
‘I do believe, but what I believe is the futility of everything.’
Death in Rome recounts a family reunion, of two generations of an extended German family, in post-war Rome. The present day events of the novel take place over a two day period, mostly at night. The four primary characters are Siegfried Pfaffrath, his father Friederich, his uncle Gottlieb Judejahn and Judejahn’s son Adolf. The story is told in a mix of first person (Siegfried) and third person. But who are these characters, and what is the significance of their meeting? What role does Rome play in this story? Siegfried is an avant-garde composer, rebelling against his family and their traditions. He is in Rome for a performance of his work. Friederich, once a Nazi bureaucrat is now a respectable mayor. Judejahn, a former SS general, has been sentenced to death in absentia, and travels under a false identity. Judejahn has found a refuge in the army of an Arab state where he has easily exchanged being a Nazi for being a mercenary. Violence remains his primary driver. Judejahn’s son Adolf is in training as a Catholic priest, but suffering a crisis of faith. In this novel, music, bureaucracy, arms and religion depict elements of the German soul. But distinctions between what might be good and bad within those elements cannot always be clear.
Siegfried exclaims: 'In my daydreams and nightmares I see the Browns and the nationalist idiocy on the march again.' Yes, I can understand why this book was ignored or criticized at the time it was published.
The interactions between members of this extended family, and their reactions to Rome, expose the extent to which they remain governed by the past. And not only their own individual pasts: each of the four elements (music, bureaucracy, arms and religion) has a past, as does Germany and Rome. Cultural collapse is a component of the novel but so, too, is the possibility of a different future.
‘You’ve outlived yourself, you’re out of power.’
Wolfgang Koeppen (1906-1996) wrote three novels between 1951 and 1954. Death in Rome is the third of those novels, but the first that I have read. I’ll be looking to read the other two. This is a powerful novel, one which I’ll need to reread in order to appreciate it more fully. I wonder whether (and how) Wolfgang Koeppen’s world view changed after writing this novel. Perhaps it became less bleak. Perhaps the younger generation (represented by Siegfried and Adolf) have exceeded expectations.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Death in Rome recounts a family reunion, of two generations of an extended German family, in post-war Rome. The present day events of the novel take place over a two day period, mostly at night. The four primary characters are Siegfried Pfaffrath, his father Friederich, his uncle Gottlieb Judejahn and Judejahn’s son Adolf. The story is told in a mix of first person (Siegfried) and third person. But who are these characters, and what is the significance of their meeting? What role does Rome play in this story? Siegfried is an avant-garde composer, rebelling against his family and their traditions. He is in Rome for a performance of his work. Friederich, once a Nazi bureaucrat is now a respectable mayor. Judejahn, a former SS general, has been sentenced to death in absentia, and travels under a false identity. Judejahn has found a refuge in the army of an Arab state where he has easily exchanged being a Nazi for being a mercenary. Violence remains his primary driver. Judejahn’s son Adolf is in training as a Catholic priest, but suffering a crisis of faith. In this novel, music, bureaucracy, arms and religion depict elements of the German soul. But distinctions between what might be good and bad within those elements cannot always be clear.
Siegfried exclaims: 'In my daydreams and nightmares I see the Browns and the nationalist idiocy on the march again.' Yes, I can understand why this book was ignored or criticized at the time it was published.
The interactions between members of this extended family, and their reactions to Rome, expose the extent to which they remain governed by the past. And not only their own individual pasts: each of the four elements (music, bureaucracy, arms and religion) has a past, as does Germany and Rome. Cultural collapse is a component of the novel but so, too, is the possibility of a different future.
‘You’ve outlived yourself, you’re out of power.’
Wolfgang Koeppen (1906-1996) wrote three novels between 1951 and 1954. Death in Rome is the third of those novels, but the first that I have read. I’ll be looking to read the other two. This is a powerful novel, one which I’ll need to reread in order to appreciate it more fully. I wonder whether (and how) Wolfgang Koeppen’s world view changed after writing this novel. Perhaps it became less bleak. Perhaps the younger generation (represented by Siegfried and Adolf) have exceeded expectations.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
November 22, 2023
Wolfgang Koeppen (nato a Greifswald nel 1906 e morto a Monaco nel 1996), apprendo dalla postfazione di Michele Sisto, è in Germania uno scrittore di grande fama, considerato, al pari di Heinrich Böll, uno dei più importanti autori della “letteratura del dopoguerra”, nonché punto di riferimento di scrittori come Günter Grass. Nel 1962 ha vinto il Georg-Büchner-Preis e nel 1986 è uscita per Suhrkamp una prima edizione in sei volumi delle sue opere complete, mentre nel 2006 il Koeppen Archiv della sua città natale ha avviato una nuova edizione delle opere complete in ben quattordici volumi.
In Italia, invece, la sua opera ha avuto poca fortuna: oltre a questo romanzo, sono stati tradotti soltanto Il muro vacilla (Mondadori, 1989, fuori catalogo) e La tana di fango (Giuntina, 2002). La morte a Roma, pubblicato nel 1959 da Einaudi nella traduzione di Letizia Fuchs Vidotto, non viene apprezzato né dalla critica né dal pubblico. A distanza di quasi cinquant’anni, la casa editrice Zandonai ha riproposto al pubblico italiano la stessa traduzione.
Uscito nel 1954, La morte a Roma non fu affatto ben accolto dalla critica tedesca, e non poteva essere altrimenti. Infatti, per citare un passo di una recensione apparsa sul “Contemporaneo” e riportata da Sisto, il romanzo sembra più «un lungo pamphlet antitedesco, un gesto di schifo e di totale condanna verso una certa Germania, tutt’altro che scomparsa».
Il richiamo a Thomas Mann è esplicito fin dal titolo e dall’epigrafe, che riprende la nota frase di chiusura de La morte a Venezia: «E quello stesso giorno un mondo reverente e attonito ebbe l’annunzio della sua morte». Frase che sarà poi ribaltata nelle ultime righe del libro, che ovviamente non posso anticipare.
Il romanzo è ambientato a Roma in epoca contemporanea, perciò non molti anni dopo la fine della seconda guerra mondiale, e protagoniste sono due famiglie tedesche con un passato (recente) attivamente nazista.
Una è la famiglia Pfaffrath, il cui capofamiglia era stato uno di quei nazisti che operavano senza mai sporcarsi le mani, riciclatosi a borgomastro dopo la guerra.
L’altra è la famiglia Judejahn, ormai divisa perché l’uomo della famiglia, Gottlieb Judejahn, era un alto gerarca nazista condannato a morte al processo di Norimberga, e perciò scappato dalla Germania e ora trafficante d’armi in Medio Oriente sotto falso nome. La moglie, Eva, è forse persino più esaltata di lui, una vera Erinni nordica dedita solo al culto del Führer e costantemente in lutto per la fine della sua idea grandiosa.
Queste due famiglie hanno dei figli giovani, ovviamente educati al collegio nazista.
Dietrich Pfaffrath ha idee naziste, ma è più che altro un arrivista convinto che si debba cercare di rendersi amiche le persone influenti o presunte tali, perché non si sa mai.
Suo fratello Siegfried, invece, è un compositore e per giunta omosessuale. Ma non è un compositore qualsiasi: la sua è musica dodecafonica, e ad essa si è dedicato proprio perché era invisa al regime nazista.
Come Siegfried, anche Adolf Judejahn è la vergogna della famiglia perché, in seguito all’incontro con un ebreo liberato da un lager alla fine della guerra, ha deciso di farsi prete.
Tutti questi personaggi si incontrano a Roma: i non rinnegati nel tentativo di convincere Judejahn a tornare in Germania, dove Pfaffrath avrebbe fatto in modo di sistemare le cose al fine di far cadere la condanna e tornare a operare per il loro sogno. Siegfried, invece, è a Roma per la prima della sua sinfonia, mentre Adolf vorrebbe rivedere i suoi genitori.
I vari personaggi finiscono spesso per incrociarsi in maniera casuale, a volte senza neppure riconoscersi, in un continuo gioco di intrecci.
Protagonisti assoluti sono soprattutto Siegfried e Judejahn nonché, ovviamente, tutta una mentalità tedesca per nulla sopita.
Judejahn è un personaggio disgustoso, e lo è tanto più perché nella sua esaltazione ogni tanto lo vediamo regredire a bambino, al piccolo Gottlieb, che è spaventato da tante cose ma non fa per niente pena. Judejahn, che ironicamente porta gli ebrei nel nome (Jude), vede ebrei dappertutto e vorrebbe, se potesse, proseguire nell’opera di sterminio non conclusa, così come aspira a schiacciare tutti i deboli pur essendo eccitato da loro – o, più che altro, dall’idea di poterli dominare.
Esemplificativo di tutto il suo modo di pensare è questo ragionamento che fa su una donna che vuole portarsi a letto e che, secondo lui, non può che essere una puttana:
Siegfried è un uomo che vorrebbe dimenticare e invece è costretto dalla presenza dei suoi familiari a ricordare, che traspone nella sua musica il suo dissenso, il suo essere diverso da coloro che l’hanno generato. Un uomo per cui la procreazione è il male assoluto, perché troppo disgustato da quello che c’è stato.
Colpisce lo stile di Koeppen, che non narra ma fa parlare i suoi personaggi o, meglio, li segue nel flusso dei loro pensieri, addomesticandolo così da allontanarlo dal flusso di coscienza e avvicinarlo invece a un monologo interiore reso docile alla scrittura.
Inoltre Koeppen passa in continuazione dalla voce di un personaggio a quella di un altro, a volte usando i puntini di sospensione all’inizio e alla fine di ogni voce, altre volte senza soluzione di continuità. E devo dire che è uno stile che ammalia, piacevolissimo da leggere. Inoltre la prosa è raffinata ed elegante, come se ne trovano poche.
Le voci parlano tutte in terza persona, l’unico per cui l’autore usa la prima persona è Siegfried, quasi a voler significare che è l’unico a poter rivendicare un’identità, essendo anche l’unico a voler sinceramente rinnegare il passato, benché la sua sia una cancellazione più che una riflessione. (Vedremo infatti che il prete Adolf tenta di perdonare cristianamente, ma forse si spinge troppo oltre per i crimini commessi, imperdonabili…)
Da leggere tenendo conto che questo romanzo richiede una soglia di attenzione alta.
In Italia, invece, la sua opera ha avuto poca fortuna: oltre a questo romanzo, sono stati tradotti soltanto Il muro vacilla (Mondadori, 1989, fuori catalogo) e La tana di fango (Giuntina, 2002). La morte a Roma, pubblicato nel 1959 da Einaudi nella traduzione di Letizia Fuchs Vidotto, non viene apprezzato né dalla critica né dal pubblico. A distanza di quasi cinquant’anni, la casa editrice Zandonai ha riproposto al pubblico italiano la stessa traduzione.
Uscito nel 1954, La morte a Roma non fu affatto ben accolto dalla critica tedesca, e non poteva essere altrimenti. Infatti, per citare un passo di una recensione apparsa sul “Contemporaneo” e riportata da Sisto, il romanzo sembra più «un lungo pamphlet antitedesco, un gesto di schifo e di totale condanna verso una certa Germania, tutt’altro che scomparsa».
Il richiamo a Thomas Mann è esplicito fin dal titolo e dall’epigrafe, che riprende la nota frase di chiusura de La morte a Venezia: «E quello stesso giorno un mondo reverente e attonito ebbe l’annunzio della sua morte». Frase che sarà poi ribaltata nelle ultime righe del libro, che ovviamente non posso anticipare.
Il romanzo è ambientato a Roma in epoca contemporanea, perciò non molti anni dopo la fine della seconda guerra mondiale, e protagoniste sono due famiglie tedesche con un passato (recente) attivamente nazista.
Una è la famiglia Pfaffrath, il cui capofamiglia era stato uno di quei nazisti che operavano senza mai sporcarsi le mani, riciclatosi a borgomastro dopo la guerra.
L’altra è la famiglia Judejahn, ormai divisa perché l’uomo della famiglia, Gottlieb Judejahn, era un alto gerarca nazista condannato a morte al processo di Norimberga, e perciò scappato dalla Germania e ora trafficante d’armi in Medio Oriente sotto falso nome. La moglie, Eva, è forse persino più esaltata di lui, una vera Erinni nordica dedita solo al culto del Führer e costantemente in lutto per la fine della sua idea grandiosa.
Queste due famiglie hanno dei figli giovani, ovviamente educati al collegio nazista.
Dietrich Pfaffrath ha idee naziste, ma è più che altro un arrivista convinto che si debba cercare di rendersi amiche le persone influenti o presunte tali, perché non si sa mai.
Suo fratello Siegfried, invece, è un compositore e per giunta omosessuale. Ma non è un compositore qualsiasi: la sua è musica dodecafonica, e ad essa si è dedicato proprio perché era invisa al regime nazista.
Come Siegfried, anche Adolf Judejahn è la vergogna della famiglia perché, in seguito all’incontro con un ebreo liberato da un lager alla fine della guerra, ha deciso di farsi prete.
Tutti questi personaggi si incontrano a Roma: i non rinnegati nel tentativo di convincere Judejahn a tornare in Germania, dove Pfaffrath avrebbe fatto in modo di sistemare le cose al fine di far cadere la condanna e tornare a operare per il loro sogno. Siegfried, invece, è a Roma per la prima della sua sinfonia, mentre Adolf vorrebbe rivedere i suoi genitori.
I vari personaggi finiscono spesso per incrociarsi in maniera casuale, a volte senza neppure riconoscersi, in un continuo gioco di intrecci.
Protagonisti assoluti sono soprattutto Siegfried e Judejahn nonché, ovviamente, tutta una mentalità tedesca per nulla sopita.
Judejahn è un personaggio disgustoso, e lo è tanto più perché nella sua esaltazione ogni tanto lo vediamo regredire a bambino, al piccolo Gottlieb, che è spaventato da tante cose ma non fa per niente pena. Judejahn, che ironicamente porta gli ebrei nel nome (Jude), vede ebrei dappertutto e vorrebbe, se potesse, proseguire nell’opera di sterminio non conclusa, così come aspira a schiacciare tutti i deboli pur essendo eccitato da loro – o, più che altro, dall’idea di poterli dominare.
Esemplificativo di tutto il suo modo di pensare è questo ragionamento che fa su una donna che vuole portarsi a letto e che, secondo lui, non può che essere una puttana:
Come per tutte le donne, anche per lei la potenza del motore, il vigoroso avanzare come di pantera della macchina era un simbolo sessuale, che mette in buona luce il proprietario dell’automobile, al quale la femmina si sottomette, non perché il proprietario, come si suppone, sia un uomo ricco, un buon pretendente, ma per istinto da schiava, perché egli è un potente, signore della potenza dei cavalli, che pulsando con forza spingono avanti la vettura della sua vita.
Siegfried è un uomo che vorrebbe dimenticare e invece è costretto dalla presenza dei suoi familiari a ricordare, che traspone nella sua musica il suo dissenso, il suo essere diverso da coloro che l’hanno generato. Un uomo per cui la procreazione è il male assoluto, perché troppo disgustato da quello che c’è stato.
Colpisce lo stile di Koeppen, che non narra ma fa parlare i suoi personaggi o, meglio, li segue nel flusso dei loro pensieri, addomesticandolo così da allontanarlo dal flusso di coscienza e avvicinarlo invece a un monologo interiore reso docile alla scrittura.
Inoltre Koeppen passa in continuazione dalla voce di un personaggio a quella di un altro, a volte usando i puntini di sospensione all’inizio e alla fine di ogni voce, altre volte senza soluzione di continuità. E devo dire che è uno stile che ammalia, piacevolissimo da leggere. Inoltre la prosa è raffinata ed elegante, come se ne trovano poche.
Le voci parlano tutte in terza persona, l’unico per cui l’autore usa la prima persona è Siegfried, quasi a voler significare che è l’unico a poter rivendicare un’identità, essendo anche l’unico a voler sinceramente rinnegare il passato, benché la sua sia una cancellazione più che una riflessione. (Vedremo infatti che il prete Adolf tenta di perdonare cristianamente, ma forse si spinge troppo oltre per i crimini commessi, imperdonabili…)
Da leggere tenendo conto che questo romanzo richiede una soglia di attenzione alta.
November 19, 2022
Mit "Der Tod in Rom" schloss Wolfgang Koeppen 1954 seine Trilogie des Scheiterns ab, die er 1951 mit "Tauben im Gras" begonnen und 1953 mit "Das Treibhaus" fortgesetzt hatte. Wobei zu sagen ist, dass die Trilogie des Scheiterns ein Begriff des Verlags ist, denn Koeppen hatte die Romane ohne diese Intention einzeln veröffentlicht. Allen drei Romanen ist gemein, dass sie die Deutschen und ihre Gesellschaft nach dem Ende des Krieges und den Beginn der bundesdeutschen Zeit zeigen mit all ihren Brüchen und Kontinuitäten.
Im "Der Tod in Rom" erzählt Koeppen anhand der beiden Familien Pfaffrath und Judejahn von den deutschen Sehnsüchten nach Italien und der ewigen Stadt, in die sie entfliehen, um ihre eigene Vergangenheit vermeintlich hinter sich zu lassen.
Die beiden Familien stehen beispielhaft für die Deutschen an sich. Beide haben in der Nazizeit Schuld auf sich geladen, sei es als Mitläufer oder als überzeugte Nationalsozialisten. Nur die jeweiligen Söhne der beiden Familien stellen sich, jeder auf seine Weise, der eigenen Vergangenheit.
So begegnen wir am Beginn Siegfried(!!) Pfaffrath, der als zeitgenössischer Komponist mit seinem Mentor, dem Dirigenten Kürenberg, für einen Kongress nach Rom gereist ist, um dort seine neues symphonisches Werk zur Aufführung zu bringen. Als zweite Person lernen wir Gottlieb(!!) Judejahn, Siegfrieds Onkel, kennen, ein ehemaliger SS-General, der nach dem Krieg in Nordafrika untergetaucht ist und dort im Dienste eines Diktators steht. Er ist in Rom, um sich mit Siegfrieds Vater zu treffen, der ihm dabei helfen soll, ihm die Rückkehr nach Deutschland zu ermöglichen. Dieser Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath verkörpert den den antidemokratischen deutschen Mitläufer, der im Nationalsozialismus seinen Aufstieg begründete und diesen auch in der Bundesrepublik nach einer kurzen Unterbrechung fortsetzen konnte. Auch Judejahns Sohn Adolf(!!) ist in Rom, um sich als Diakon auf seine Priesterweihe vorzubereiten.
Es ist hier ersichtlich, dass Adolf und Siegfried für ihre Familien die schwarzen Schafe sind. Beide waren in der Nazizeit Schüler einer Napola. Beide versuchen ihrer Vergangenheit und ihren Familien zu entfliehen, Siegfried in der Kunst und Adolf in der Religion. Während Siegfried schon lange mit seiner Familie gebrochen hat, zögert Adolf noch.
Adolf, Siegfried und Gottlieb erhalten bei Koeppen den meisten Raum. Doch auch die restlichen Familienmitglieder und weitere Nebenfiguren wird eine Stimme gegeben. Koeppen konzentriert sich nicht auf eine Erzählstimme, weder auktorialer Erzähler noch Ich-Erzähler. Sein Erzählstil ist sehr fragmentiert. Man befindet sich beim Lesen immer wieder in einem anderen Kopf. Da kann es schon einmal passieren, dass Koeppen einen Gedankengang Siegfrieds mitten im Satz abbricht, um zu Gottlieb Judejahn zu wechseln. Dazwischen finden sich dann auch Passagen eines allwissenden Erzählers, der einen Überblick über das gesamte Panorama gibt. Doch erfolgen diese Wechsel nicht aprupt. Vielmehr wird ein Gedanke oder ein Motiv aufgegriffen, und dies mit der nächsten Person verknüpft.
Dies macht die Lektüre nicht einfach, aber ausgesprochen intensiv. Und es beeindruckt, mit welcher Klarsicht Koeppen schon Mitte der fünfziger Jahre ein Sittenbild des Nachkriegsdeutschland zeichnet und seinen Mitmenschen den Spiegel vorhält und die dunkle Vergangenheit immer wieder gnadenlos ins grelle Licht zieht. Daher überrascht es wenig, dass der Roman nur wenig Resonanz in der zeitgenössischen Kritik fand. Doch im Laufe der Zeit wurde immer stärker anerkannt, dass Koeppen mit seiner Trilogie des Scheiterns die wohl wichtigsten Romane der deutschen Nachkriegszeit geschrieben hat. Umso bedauerlicher ist, dass "Der Tod in Rom" Koeppens letzter Roman blieb. Sein Verleger Siegfried Unseld bemühte sich, Koeppen die besten Bedingungen für das Schreiben eines weiteren Buches zu bieten, aber Koeppen scheiterte. Dies lässt sich genauestens in dem 500 Briefe umfassenden Briefwechsel nachlesen, der unter dem Titel "Ich bitte um ein Wort ..." erschienen ist.
Somit bleibt dem Leser nichts weiter übrig, als immer wieder einmal zu diesen drei Büchern zu greifen, um sich an Koeppens Genialität zu erfreuen.
Im "Der Tod in Rom" erzählt Koeppen anhand der beiden Familien Pfaffrath und Judejahn von den deutschen Sehnsüchten nach Italien und der ewigen Stadt, in die sie entfliehen, um ihre eigene Vergangenheit vermeintlich hinter sich zu lassen.
Die beiden Familien stehen beispielhaft für die Deutschen an sich. Beide haben in der Nazizeit Schuld auf sich geladen, sei es als Mitläufer oder als überzeugte Nationalsozialisten. Nur die jeweiligen Söhne der beiden Familien stellen sich, jeder auf seine Weise, der eigenen Vergangenheit.
So begegnen wir am Beginn Siegfried(!!) Pfaffrath, der als zeitgenössischer Komponist mit seinem Mentor, dem Dirigenten Kürenberg, für einen Kongress nach Rom gereist ist, um dort seine neues symphonisches Werk zur Aufführung zu bringen. Als zweite Person lernen wir Gottlieb(!!) Judejahn, Siegfrieds Onkel, kennen, ein ehemaliger SS-General, der nach dem Krieg in Nordafrika untergetaucht ist und dort im Dienste eines Diktators steht. Er ist in Rom, um sich mit Siegfrieds Vater zu treffen, der ihm dabei helfen soll, ihm die Rückkehr nach Deutschland zu ermöglichen. Dieser Friedrich Wilhelm Pfaffrath verkörpert den den antidemokratischen deutschen Mitläufer, der im Nationalsozialismus seinen Aufstieg begründete und diesen auch in der Bundesrepublik nach einer kurzen Unterbrechung fortsetzen konnte. Auch Judejahns Sohn Adolf(!!) ist in Rom, um sich als Diakon auf seine Priesterweihe vorzubereiten.
Es ist hier ersichtlich, dass Adolf und Siegfried für ihre Familien die schwarzen Schafe sind. Beide waren in der Nazizeit Schüler einer Napola. Beide versuchen ihrer Vergangenheit und ihren Familien zu entfliehen, Siegfried in der Kunst und Adolf in der Religion. Während Siegfried schon lange mit seiner Familie gebrochen hat, zögert Adolf noch.
Adolf, Siegfried und Gottlieb erhalten bei Koeppen den meisten Raum. Doch auch die restlichen Familienmitglieder und weitere Nebenfiguren wird eine Stimme gegeben. Koeppen konzentriert sich nicht auf eine Erzählstimme, weder auktorialer Erzähler noch Ich-Erzähler. Sein Erzählstil ist sehr fragmentiert. Man befindet sich beim Lesen immer wieder in einem anderen Kopf. Da kann es schon einmal passieren, dass Koeppen einen Gedankengang Siegfrieds mitten im Satz abbricht, um zu Gottlieb Judejahn zu wechseln. Dazwischen finden sich dann auch Passagen eines allwissenden Erzählers, der einen Überblick über das gesamte Panorama gibt. Doch erfolgen diese Wechsel nicht aprupt. Vielmehr wird ein Gedanke oder ein Motiv aufgegriffen, und dies mit der nächsten Person verknüpft.
Dies macht die Lektüre nicht einfach, aber ausgesprochen intensiv. Und es beeindruckt, mit welcher Klarsicht Koeppen schon Mitte der fünfziger Jahre ein Sittenbild des Nachkriegsdeutschland zeichnet und seinen Mitmenschen den Spiegel vorhält und die dunkle Vergangenheit immer wieder gnadenlos ins grelle Licht zieht. Daher überrascht es wenig, dass der Roman nur wenig Resonanz in der zeitgenössischen Kritik fand. Doch im Laufe der Zeit wurde immer stärker anerkannt, dass Koeppen mit seiner Trilogie des Scheiterns die wohl wichtigsten Romane der deutschen Nachkriegszeit geschrieben hat. Umso bedauerlicher ist, dass "Der Tod in Rom" Koeppens letzter Roman blieb. Sein Verleger Siegfried Unseld bemühte sich, Koeppen die besten Bedingungen für das Schreiben eines weiteren Buches zu bieten, aber Koeppen scheiterte. Dies lässt sich genauestens in dem 500 Briefe umfassenden Briefwechsel nachlesen, der unter dem Titel "Ich bitte um ein Wort ..." erschienen ist.
Somit bleibt dem Leser nichts weiter übrig, als immer wieder einmal zu diesen drei Büchern zu greifen, um sich an Koeppens Genialität zu erfreuen.
March 17, 2017
I respect this more than I admire it. Written close to the event.
Cousins whom their Nazi fathers have named Adolf and Siegfried, who spent childhood in Nazi facilities for the young, we meet now as an unconvinced Roman Catholic priest and an irresolute composer of modernist music, in rejection of their fathers and mothers (the introduction, by the translator, says women are scarcely present, that this Nazi clan is a male thing. But Adolf's mother was so wedded to the Reich that she goes about as its widow, explicitly). Both deacon -- he's not a priest yet -- and composer give glimmerings of hope, of escape, of another past alternate to the Nazi narrative of culture. Merely glimmerings; both might be utter failures. This is book three of the Trilogy of Failure.
Siegfried's father works for the government, any government whatsoever, and is again installed in spite of his governmental crimes. Adolf's father was a murderer by trade and temperament, portrait of a Nazi driver, behind everything (as the introduction notes, he can't have been involved in every famous crime: it works as myth). He is the worst person in fiction, and although often seen from the inside, I agree with another reviewer who finds he verges on cartoon. Perhaps there is a point to that. Perhaps to make him human was impossible.
To upset the Nazi parents more, Siegfried is also homosexual, although once he seems to say this is in order to upset the Nazi parents more. It is not a healthy lifestyle for him. The novel has a lot of sexual content, none healthy: the man whose name is Judejahn -- Jew with 'madness' or 'to weed out', says the introduction -- is illicitly attracted to miscegenation; there is plenty of exploration of the idea that Nazi-types are sexually compelling, although ours turns out to have a disgusting effect in the act. The n word is scattered throughout, as with the Third Reich's failure Jews and blacks make a cultural comeback in Rome.
The only health is in two women, one Jewish, one suspected to be Jewish; Ilse who is a blessed rest in these pages (spoiler: you'll know not to get too attached), and Laura, bartend in a queer bar, whom the author seems to write contemptuously down most of the time but who emerges as a human portrait by the end.
Modernist in style, it was an odd read to interrupt Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus with, as I did; Mann was blamed for being old-fashioned as a novelist, but I look forward to resumption of his more intellectual take on this subject. Interestingly, both use music to describe modernity and its discontents. Death in Rome riffs on Death in Venice, of course; I’d meant to brush up on Venice first to spot the bounce-off.
Cousins whom their Nazi fathers have named Adolf and Siegfried, who spent childhood in Nazi facilities for the young, we meet now as an unconvinced Roman Catholic priest and an irresolute composer of modernist music, in rejection of their fathers and mothers (the introduction, by the translator, says women are scarcely present, that this Nazi clan is a male thing. But Adolf's mother was so wedded to the Reich that she goes about as its widow, explicitly). Both deacon -- he's not a priest yet -- and composer give glimmerings of hope, of escape, of another past alternate to the Nazi narrative of culture. Merely glimmerings; both might be utter failures. This is book three of the Trilogy of Failure.
Siegfried's father works for the government, any government whatsoever, and is again installed in spite of his governmental crimes. Adolf's father was a murderer by trade and temperament, portrait of a Nazi driver, behind everything (as the introduction notes, he can't have been involved in every famous crime: it works as myth). He is the worst person in fiction, and although often seen from the inside, I agree with another reviewer who finds he verges on cartoon. Perhaps there is a point to that. Perhaps to make him human was impossible.
To upset the Nazi parents more, Siegfried is also homosexual, although once he seems to say this is in order to upset the Nazi parents more. It is not a healthy lifestyle for him. The novel has a lot of sexual content, none healthy: the man whose name is Judejahn -- Jew with 'madness' or 'to weed out', says the introduction -- is illicitly attracted to miscegenation; there is plenty of exploration of the idea that Nazi-types are sexually compelling, although ours turns out to have a disgusting effect in the act. The n word is scattered throughout, as with the Third Reich's failure Jews and blacks make a cultural comeback in Rome.
The only health is in two women, one Jewish, one suspected to be Jewish; Ilse who is a blessed rest in these pages (spoiler: you'll know not to get too attached), and Laura, bartend in a queer bar, whom the author seems to write contemptuously down most of the time but who emerges as a human portrait by the end.
Modernist in style, it was an odd read to interrupt Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus with, as I did; Mann was blamed for being old-fashioned as a novelist, but I look forward to resumption of his more intellectual take on this subject. Interestingly, both use music to describe modernity and its discontents. Death in Rome riffs on Death in Venice, of course; I’d meant to brush up on Venice first to spot the bounce-off.
February 23, 2022
Early 1950s, a German family meet up in Rome; an unregenerate Nazi, his conformist brother-in-law, their sons, a composer, a trainee priest and an ambitious young place seeker. Described as 'the most devastating novel about the Germans I have ever read'. I can only agree. Once a Nazi, always a Nazi... no wonder the author is a prophet without honour in his own country.
January 3, 2016
Since I am studying German literature I had to read this for a project. This book is pretty good for a classic. Interesting and not too dense. I have to be honest though, I didn't read the last twenty pages because I know what happens in the end and because I had a deadline.
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