THE TIN DRUM (Die Blechtrommel)

Novel by Günter Grass, 1959

While he was living in poverty in Paris in 1956-60, the German writer Günter Grass received intellectual stimulation from Paul Celan , a Jewish poet who had survived the Holocaust but who struggled with horrible memories of the ordeal. Celan supplied valuable advice while Grass was working on the novel Die Blechtrommel, which was about to make literary history. Published in 1959, it was issued in an English translation as The Tin Drum in 1961. The complexity of The Tin Drum may be understood by recognizing the sheer number and variety of critical approaches to Grass's novel. It has been the focal point of numerous sociological, political, historical, philosophical, and psychological interpretations and of genre and symbolism studies. The Tin Drum has continued to be regarded as the masterpiece that ultimately led to Grass's highest honor, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

This picaresque novel addresses the interpretation of history, especially the German past between 1933 and 1945, the period of National Socialism, World War II, and the Holocaust. Oskar Matzerath, the schizophrenic protagonist and narrator of his own story, is in an insane asylum as he writes his ambiguous memoirs and family history covering the first half of the twentieth century. As his story unfolds, it becomes more and more apparent that he has problems with his past, and we cannot believe everything he says. Matzerath lies, displays amoral, even devilish behavior, and is responsible for multiple deaths in his own family. Yet at other times his acts are full of resistance and protest as he reveals the totalitarian and hateful nature of fascism, its appeal to the masses, and its heinous crimes against the Jewish people.

At the age of three Oskar chooses to stop growing by throwing himself down the basement stairs. This act of defiance allows him later to demask the hypocritical nature of adult life in the lower middle class and its complicity in the Third Reich. Oskar's tin drum, a present for his third birthday, is an instrument of protest against the world of adults in a fascist state. As his protest drum wears out every so often, Oskar receives replacements from a Jewish toy store owner named Sigismund Markus. On Kristallnacht (Crystal Night, 9-10 November 1938), while synagogues are burning and Jewish stores are being destroyed, Markus becomes the victim of Nazi atrocities: "There once was a toy dealer named Markus, and he took all the toys out of the world with him."

A prime example in the novel of indifference to the plight of the Jews is the behavior of Oskar's father during Kristallnacht: "Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the blaze." The German shopkeeper serves as a representative of the petite bourgeoisie. When he realizes that it was a mistake to have joined the Nazis, it is too late. In the end he chokes to death on his Nazi Party pin.

A significant part of The Tin Drum depicts everyday life in Danzig while the monstrous murder of Europe's Jewry is taking place in the concentration camps, which Oskar learns about from Mr. Fajngold, a Holocaust survivor. Fajngold remembers the way his relatives had lain "before being taken to the crematoria of Treblinka … except for him because he had to strew lime on them." More details about the horrors of Treblinka are revealed later: "I learned about the whole carloads of carbolic acid, lime, and Lysol that he had sprayed, strewn, and sprinkled … over the barracks, the shower rooms, the cremating furnaces, the bundles of clothing, over those who were waiting to shower, over those who lay recumbent after their showers, over all that came out of the ovens and all who were about to go in. He listed the names, for he knew them all."

Grass describes his hometown of Danzig (now Gdansk), the main setting of the novel, in a manner that adds historical flavor. Furthermore, he frequently draws parallels between Oskar's life and the course of German history. But Grass is far from historicizing the events. To the contrary, in Grass's view the Nazi past and its victims should continue to play a significant role in people's consciousness. Unless we are not interested in one another's welfare, we cannot afford to forget. What happened yesterday can happen tomorrow. This is the most powerful insight behind Grass's amazing work.

—Mark Gruettner