Soul of the Age (45 page)

In Berlin my devoted publisher Peter Suhrkamp is doing everything he can to republish some of my books. I am doing what I can to help him direct these books to really serious readers; otherwise people would just buy them as a speculative investment.

Many of the requests, quite apart from those for food and books, show a complete lack of understanding of my real situation: requests for entry visas to Switzerland and work permits, even for immediate citizenship, for jobs and positions. It is painful to have to read all of these often very fanciful requests, none of which can be met.

My friends know that I'm doing whatever I can and have been devoting most of my work and resources to the situation in Germany since war's end. They also realize what an astonishing amount of assistance tiny Switzerland is constantly giving large, starving Germany, even though other countries with whom we are on friendly terms are no better off, and even though there are still very many Swiss who for understandable reasons are not particularly fond of Germany. It is sad that for every case in which we can be of some help, there are hundreds of requests that just cannot be met. We cannot help that.

TO GERHARD (?) BAUER

Marin près Neuchâtel, February 1, 1947

In the last few months I have hardly been able to write a single real letter, and I fear the situation is not going to improve as long as I am here. To get through the correspondence, I would have to have one, or rather two secretaries, and my life isn't set up that way: I have always done everything myself, except for proofreading, which my wife has frequently taken over, and at present she is swamped with business letters (translations, etc.) [ … ]

You need not bother letting me know what your newspapers say about me and my book. That just doesn't interest me. As far as I can see, the press hasn't improved. The tone is democratic now, and rather servile vis-à-vis the victors; the contents are as devoid of substance as ever. But I follow your own thoughts with great interest and sympathy, and am usually delighted with them. And I regard your descriptions, for instance in the passage about your mother, as a true gift.

As regards the attitude people have toward politics, in my opinion the state official who “doesn't want to have anything to do with politics” is merely a parasite, and the soldier who lays waste an entire country and shoots at people every day, always thinking about heroism and a soldier's honor and never about the spilled blood and the destroyed cities, is dangerously simpleminded. The mentality of the officials and soldiers in most nations is similar, and so they cannot point a finger at one another unless the coarse behavior and brutal slaughter so oversteps all customary boundaries that the entire world is aghast. The fact that this has happened in Germany is the fate or “guilt” that has to be assumed and reconciled with life.

Enough. I have often expressed my insignificant ideas on this issue better than I can manage in such a hasty letter.

TO MARGARETE KREBS
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[
February 1947
]

I can only answer your letter briefly since I have been months in the sanatorium, suffering from great exhaustion. I see from your letter that you became acquainted with somebody who was pretending to be me. I myself have never lived in Berlin, was there only once for a few days, and am now sixty-nine years old. But, unfortunately, I have come across that man who pretended to be me and to have written my books, even though I have never seen him in person. He incurred debts in my name and got up to other mischief of that kind. For instance, in the period you mention in your letter, I asked several Berlin newspapers and also my Berlin publisher to issue warnings about him. By the way, he also turned up in Munich, where he made friends with women, introduced himself as a well-known writer to certain families, and carried out all sorts of mischief. I am sorry that a man with my name, or who had at least assumed my name, has apparently harmed you as well. May you never meet him again!

TO LUDWIG FINCKH

Baden, March 6, 1947

I am writing this letter because I think you might be able to use it in court. It is not possible for me to appeal directly to the court or to any other German or Allied authority.

You know my attitude toward your political convictions and passions since about 1915. I have always found your form of patriotism repellent, and you have always stood on the opposite side from me, with your name, talent, and authority as an author. You were and remain a typical German nationalist; they are the ones who brought us Hitler and his diabolic antics. It is sad and unforgivable that you should have regarded Hitler and his party as a purely patriotic and idealistic movement; ninety percent of German intellectuals committed the same sin, and the ordinary people and the whole world have had to pay dearly for this biggest German sin.

But this guilt or sin or idiocy, whatever one wants to call it, is shared by thousands of colleagues on whom nobody has laid a finger. People like Gerhart Hauptmann also committed this sin, yet his work and memory are still being commemorated today.

Morally and in human terms, the most decisive factor in your case is the following: You were silly and inflicted real harm, but you were pure at heart, acted in good faith, and had no ulterior motives. You are as guilty as all those other Germans who tried to sabotage the young German Republic from 1919 onward and thus helped Hitlerism come into being; that behavior had already begun with the election of Hindenburg, even much earlier, and it would be totally perverse to exact punishment for it now. The important thing now is not that you believed in Hitler and the entire swindle, but that your motives were utterly sincere and not just egoistical. Again, the important thing is not that you may, say, have once intervened on behalf of a Jew, contrary to party doctrine, or tried to do so for me (something I would certainly never have asked of you), but that you never avoided conflicts with the representatives and power brokers of the Hitler regime and risked unpopularity whenever your conscience prompted you to take a stand. Morally, that is what is crucial. You were blinded, but you weren't a coward or just out for your own good. You wanted to serve your people and safeguard your ideals, even when this put you in danger and did you some harm. You are thus less guilty than tens of thousands of people who are running around with impunity.

By the way, my books have suffered the same fate as yours. They were destroyed along with my publishers, and for several years the only benefit I have been receiving from all my work has come from tiny Switzerland. That will remain the case, since I have never felt that I would ever get anything more than worthless bulk goods from Germany in exchange for the pieces of mine it is republishing. The Nobel Prize was welcome for that reason, also because I have a few dozen people to feed in your part of the world, but I'm quite indifferent to it otherwise. I gave away the Goethe Prize immediately to people inside Germany.

TO FANNY SCHILER

April 26, 1947

Many thanks for your kind letter and the gift of that etching of the chapel on the bridge;
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I was very pleased with both of them. Standing there on that bridge for hours, rod in hand, watching the river, fish, neighborhood, and traffic on the bridge, etc., was one of the best preparations for my career; God knows what gave me the idea.

Toward the middle of May, Ninon wants to bring me to Lausanne for a few days; they are supposed to do some tests, which may suggest a new form of treatment. I am no longer all that interested in this sort of thing, but since they tell me that the professor there is a decent, fine person who is particularly interested in me, I shall risk it, although I am a little afraid of the arduous journey.

A famous and honored guest appeared unexpectedly at our door recently: André Gide. He is my favorite among my generation in France. The seventy-seven-year-old was very alert and lively, he brought along his beautiful daughter
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and her husband,
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and this young man is thinking of translating
The Journey to the East.

I am glad that you received
War and Peace;
I only rarely get an opportunity to send people books, yours had been on order for months.[ … ]

TO OSKAR BLESSING, MAYOR OF CALW

Montagnola, July 6, 1947

Although my condition makes correspondence virtually impossible, I wish to convey my thanks right away. Your beautiful package
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arrived in good condition, and when we came back from the Bern area, it was ceremoniously opened and admired by everyone, including my sister Adele, who was also present.

I was deeply pleased and touched by the honor that my hometown has thus bestowed on me, even to the extent of making me an honorary citizen. I would like to express my deeply felt gratitude to the town, to the council, and to you, esteemed Herr Bürgermeister, for that and also for not forgetting my sister Marulla at the ceremony.

Beautiful old Calw is still my home, even though I may seem to have moved far afield through my kind of world citizenship and by having become a Swiss citizen. I never regarded home as a political concept and have always seen it in purely human terms. Home is the place where we were children and received our first impressions of the world and of life itself, and learned to see, speak, and think, and I have always gratefully cherished mine.

TO H. C. BODMER

Montagnola, July 8, 1947

Thanks for your kind, beautiful present;
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we shall both have great fun with it. It's a bit late, since we have had to postpone the birthday celebration in Montagnola. We celebrated July 2 in Bremgarten Castle, and sorely missed you and Frau Elsy. Present, aside from my sons and their wives, were Morgenthaler and Louis the Cruel, my eldest granddaughter, and Herr and Frau Leuthold, and so together with our friend Wassmer, the circle was almost the same as ten years ago on the Brestenberg. We dined in the splendid rococo salon, and in the afternoon there was a large celebration, which was very strenuous, yet also pretty and dignified. A few musicians appeared, a pianist and five woodwinds, and played some Danzi and Mozart. After that came two delegations, one consisting of three professors, the other of three students. They handed me the honorary doctorate, and the students brought a ceremonial scroll.

We returned home on the 3rd, opened gifts, and invited a few friends: Böhmer and his wife, the painter Purrmann,
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and Frau Emmy Ball. My sister Adele was present; she was in Bremgarten as well. In the morning Ninon showed me the table with the presents. Then she led me up to her studio, where the radio set is, and there was your splendid present. It was inaugurated, dear friends, with a Handel concerto in your honor.

Then we heard accounts of several festivals and lectures in Germany. Hesse has suddenly become fashionable, and I very much hope that I shall never again have to encounter this kind of thing; I have had more than enough of it. I sometimes felt like an ape decked out as a general. There was a special ceremony in Calw, where they made me an honorary citizen and named a square after me.

Now we are sitting around and have to open, read, and answer a massive quantity of mail.
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I wish you more beautiful days over there and a safe journey home. We are looking forward to seeing you again.

TO HANS FRETZ

Montagnola, August 27, 1947

Thanks for your kind letter of August 25. I have no wish to disregard your sensibility as a publisher or insult you in any way. If you look at my earlier letters to you, you will find that I have often expressed sincere appreciation for your work, especially as regards actual book production. But I must nevertheless turn to you if the contact between publisher and author seems deficient, and the indignant tone which I may perhaps adopt on such occasions reflects the general condition of an ill man who has been overburdened for years with work and worries and has absolutely no secretarial support for his work, which includes a massive amount of correspondence.

One of the issues I became sensitive about was the long delay in reissuing
The Glass Bead Game.
It was almost two years out of print, we made insistent inquiries about it, and I constantly had to put up with letters from readers and booksellers who accused me of neglecting my work and found it scandalous that this book in particular should be out of print for so long and wouldn't even appear now in time for my seventieth birthday. I feel everything would have been fine and good again if, after the interminable wait for
The Glass Bead Game,
my publisher had sent me two lines informing me of its appearance. But I have only just found out about that, accidentally, by means of the letter that my recent demand has enticed from you. And here I am touching on the crux of our relationship: There is nobody in your publishing house who keeps in touch with me on a regular basis. So I often get postcards or letters from your office simply acknowledging the receipt of addresses for complimentary copies, etc.; that sort of thing is quite superfluous, as far as I'm concerned. But if I had never inquired myself, I would, for instance, have only heard later on or never at all that a new edition of
The Blossom Branch
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appeared months ago or that the long-awaited
Glass Bead Game
is finally available. And that is just not right. This has nothing at all to do with your accomplishments as a publisher, for which I have never withheld my grateful acknowledgment, but is connected with the deficiency mentioned above, the lack of a literary director or adviser who would maintain contact with the author. You yourself, dear Herr Fretz, are extremely overworked; Herr Köpfli
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is doing a great job as publisher and businessman, but is not really a colleague of mine when there are literary issues at stake, and your literary adviser, Herr Doktor Korrodi, has never written to me on any matter related to publishing.