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Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR. Letzte Reden vorm Glockengeläut
Über die Verletzung des Grundgesetzes.
Deutsche Einheit 1990 - fünf kritische Beiträge des Nobelpreisträgers für Literatur.
Günter Grass hat sich immer als Verfassungspatriot begriffen. Die leichte Liebe zu ewigen Werten, die auch »national« heißen und sowieso schnell die Fahne wechseln, das ganze dröhnend aufgeblähte Vaterland waren und sind ihm fremd und viel zu dürftig. Sein Patriotismus stützt sich auf die beste Verfassung, die es in Deutschland je gegeben hat: das Grundgesetz.
Mit der Einheit 1990 wurde es verletzt. Davon handeln die in diesem Buch gesammelten Reden eines »vaterlandslosen Gesellen«: im Februar des Einheitsjahres in der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing gehalten oder im Oktober im Reichstag in Berlin vor den Fraktionen der Grünen und Bündnis 90.
Inhalt:
- Kurze Rede eines vaterlandslosen Gesellen
- Der Zug ist abgefahren – aber wohin?
- Einige Ausblicke vom Platz der Angeschmierten
- Bericht aus Altdöbern
- Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR
Deutsche Einheit 1990 - fünf kritische Beiträge des Nobelpreisträgers für Literatur.
Günter Grass hat sich immer als Verfassungspatriot begriffen. Die leichte Liebe zu ewigen Werten, die auch »national« heißen und sowieso schnell die Fahne wechseln, das ganze dröhnend aufgeblähte Vaterland waren und sind ihm fremd und viel zu dürftig. Sein Patriotismus stützt sich auf die beste Verfassung, die es in Deutschland je gegeben hat: das Grundgesetz.
Mit der Einheit 1990 wurde es verletzt. Davon handeln die in diesem Buch gesammelten Reden eines »vaterlandslosen Gesellen«: im Februar des Einheitsjahres in der Evangelischen Akademie Tutzing gehalten oder im Oktober im Reichstag in Berlin vor den Fraktionen der Grünen und Bündnis 90.
Inhalt:
- Kurze Rede eines vaterlandslosen Gesellen
- Der Zug ist abgefahren – aber wohin?
- Einige Ausblicke vom Platz der Angeschmierten
- Bericht aus Altdöbern
- Ein Schnäppchen namens DDR
64 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1993
14 people want to read
About the author
Günter Grass
304 books1,833 followersNovels, notably
The Tin Drum
(1959) and
Dog Years
(1963), of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize of 1999 for literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II.
This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor since 1945 lived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. He always identified as a Kashubian.
He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. He named this style “broadened reality.” “Cat and Mouse” (1961) and Dog Years (1963) also succeeded in the period. These three novels make up his “Danzig trilogy.”
Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898 - 1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin, bore Günter Grass to Willy Grass (1899 - 1979), a Protestant ethnic German. Parents reared Grass as a Catholic. The family lived in an apartment, attached to its grocery store in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, born in 1930.
Grass attended the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum. He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered - in a very negative way - civic Catholic lower middle class. In 1943 he became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen-Schutzstaffel. The seventeen-year-old Grass saw combat with the 10th Schutzstaffel panzer division Frundsberg from February 1945 until he was wounded on 20 April 1945 and sent to an American prisoner of war camp.
In 1946 and 1947, he worked in a mine and received an education of a stonemason. For many years, he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also worked as an author and traveled frequently. He married in 1954 and from 1960 lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).
During the German unification process in 1989 he argued for separation of the two states, because he thought a unified Germany would resume its past aggression. He moved to the northern German city of Lübeck in 1995. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. In 2006, Grass caused controversy with his disclosure of his Waffen-Schutzstaffel service during the final months of World War II, which he had kept a secret until publishing his memoir that year. He died of complications of lung infection on 13th of April, 2015 at a Lübeck hospital. He was 87.
This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor since 1945 lived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. He always identified as a Kashubian.
He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. He named this style “broadened reality.” “Cat and Mouse” (1961) and Dog Years (1963) also succeeded in the period. These three novels make up his “Danzig trilogy.”
Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898 - 1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin, bore Günter Grass to Willy Grass (1899 - 1979), a Protestant ethnic German. Parents reared Grass as a Catholic. The family lived in an apartment, attached to its grocery store in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, born in 1930.
Grass attended the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum. He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered - in a very negative way - civic Catholic lower middle class. In 1943 he became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen-Schutzstaffel. The seventeen-year-old Grass saw combat with the 10th Schutzstaffel panzer division Frundsberg from February 1945 until he was wounded on 20 April 1945 and sent to an American prisoner of war camp.
In 1946 and 1947, he worked in a mine and received an education of a stonemason. For many years, he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also worked as an author and traveled frequently. He married in 1954 and from 1960 lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).
During the German unification process in 1989 he argued for separation of the two states, because he thought a unified Germany would resume its past aggression. He moved to the northern German city of Lübeck in 1995. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. In 2006, Grass caused controversy with his disclosure of his Waffen-Schutzstaffel service during the final months of World War II, which he had kept a secret until publishing his memoir that year. He died of complications of lung infection on 13th of April, 2015 at a Lübeck hospital. He was 87.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 21, 2015
Günter Grass was one of the very few public figures in Germany who expressed serious doubts about both the method and the form of German "reunification" 15 years ago. Reading this collection of speeches and articles from 1990 confirms how prophetic Mr Grass's predictions were. But as he said at the end of his article "Einige Ausblicke vom Platz der Angeschmierten" (Some Predictions from the Square of the Duped), "Aber was rede ich. Wer hört noch zu." ("But why am I talking. Who is still listening.")
I can highly recommend this little book to anyone who experienced the events of 1989 and 1990 live and have wondered about them since. You can read its 60 pages between lunch and tea (assuming of course that you can read German).
I can highly recommend this little book to anyone who experienced the events of 1989 and 1990 live and have wondered about them since. You can read its 60 pages between lunch and tea (assuming of course that you can read German).
Displaying 1 of 1 review