The Germans

Konrad Adenauer, Time magazine tells me, has just been reelected Chancellor of Germany (Beamter von Deutschland) after a period of prolonged uncertainty. This is so much Drucksachen. I, and several others, have known since September 27, to be precise, that Adenauer's reelection would be inevitable.

How (wie) do I, and others, know all this, you ought (sollen) now to ask? Nun, on September 27, the German, or at least the West German, character was laid bare to me, when I bought what has yet to be recognized as one of the more influential volumes of our time: German--unassuming title--by the two greatest students of national numina since Hegel, Herrn Helmut Rehder and Freeman Twaddell.

The Germans, believe Rehder and Twaddell, are a simple, happy affluent people. They are gemuetlich. They live in small, unnamed towns (each one has one Post--links um die Ecke--two Hotels--of which one is ein gut buergerliches Haus--and a Bahnhof--geradeaus). Their names are, primarily, Schmidt, Steinhauer, Limberger and Reiff. Their men are proud of various civic monuments; their women are proud of their TVs and VWs; they all gossip an awful lot; none of them ever mentions World War II.

These at least are Rehder and Twaddell's preliminary and tentative observations. A bustling, active country: trains come and go; Kinos start; hundreds of Wiener Schnitzels (auch etwas Salat) are consumed at every meal. And the people talk about all of these things freely, and with a morbid intensity. And yet Rehder and Twaddell are not blinded by this voluble happiness; honest men that they are, they have recorded other more ominous conversations. Consider this exchange (found in chapter 20:

A [names withheld]: Warum derf nicht im Flusse schwimmen?

B: Die Polizei hat es verboten, im Flusse zu schwimmen.

Or this sardonic utterance:

Es ist gefachrlich, hier ueber die Strasse zu gehen.

Well, there are rotten Aepfel in every barrel, and this doesn't disturb me nearly so much as the comments of a certain deranged Herr Dieringer, who, in Chapter 32, is told of a large fire in his unnamed town. Sagt Herr Dieringer (who, we later learn, is a member of the local health insurance fund association):

Brandsiftung, vermutlich? [Arson, presumably?] Evidently, fear and chaos lurk behind the bland prosperity.

Sadly, Kultur is shunned in modern and western Germany. A man named Grunert (some out-of-towner) does quote a line of poetry in a conversation preserved in Chapter 26, but he confesses he thinks it's "schmalxig." Rehder and Twaddell have in fact found only one man who is culturally aware (he is, I think, one of the Schmidts). Herr Schmidt has written a book Ueber den Untergang der Weltl, he announces with pride. But Schmidt is resolutely cold-shouldered by average-man Steinhauer, who remarks (witheringly) "So? Das ist ja sehr interessant."

As for Adanauer's reelection, that was inevitable simply because the main square in every West German town is called Adenauerplatx. And in the West, textbooks cannot be revised with such facility as on the Other Side. Keeping Adenauer is convenient, and for the Germans, as Mrs. Reiff points out in Chapter 9, anything das macht das Leben viel leichter is of primary importance.

Rehder and Twaddell's faithful transcription of Mrs. Reiff's remarks has undoubtedly the modern German Volksgeist encaptured. And that is a major service. Zum wohl, die Herrnl