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Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Layers of Meaning, War, Art: Grass's "Beim Häuten der Zwiebel"
Contributor:
Schade, Richard E.
imprint:
American Association of Teachers of German, 2007
Published in:The German Quarterly
Language:
English
ISSN:
0016-8831;
1756-1183
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>The stir caused by the revelation of Günter Grass's service in the Waffen SS, while justified, hardly allowed for a dispassionate evaluation of his autobiography "Beim Häuten der Zwiebel" (2006). After an introductory consideration of Grass's thematization of memory, attention shifts to the author's application of the "Zwiebel"-metaphor. In the section devoted to a discussion of war, the fast-paced battlefield narrative explicitly schooled on Grimmelshausen is seen in terms of Grass's distancing himself from horrific realities and moral culpability. Finally, the thematization of Grass's obsession with art (drawing, painting, sculpture) makes apparent the fruitful linkage between artistic and literary creativity. His privileging of art throughout the memoir results in the assessment that the memoir is very much a self-portrait of a representational, not so much a literary artist as a young man.</p>