Department of German Studies

GE431
German Memories of the War:
From Perpetration to Suffering






The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the Eastern Territories
A comparative analysis of Hans-Ulrich Treichels Der Verlorene (1998) and
Gnter Grasss Im Krebsgang (2002)


QUESTION THREE:
Compare and contrast Treichels Der Verlorene and Grasss Im Krebsgang as
narratives about the legacy of flight and expulsion from the German Eastern
territories.




Student
Andrew Jones

Module Convenor
Helmut Schmitz
WORD COUNT
4076 excluding footnotes
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
1
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the Eastern
Territories
A comparative analysis of Hans-Ulrich Treichels Der Verlorene (1998) and
Gnter Grasss Im Krebsgang (2002)

Despite nearly seventy years having passed since the end of the Second World
War and the concurrent flight and expulsion of some 14 million ethnic Germans
from Eastern Europe,
1
the legacy of these mass population transfers continues
to play a significant role in contemporary German politics and society. This
significant role has its roots in the former Bonn Republic, where around
two-thirds of the survivors of flight and expulsion would settle,
2
represented by
their own political party until the late 1950s,
3
their own ministry until 1969,
4
and
various pressure groups that continue to wield power and garner attention to
this day.
5

Notwithstanding the great attention flight and expulsion has attracted in the
political sphere, as lke explains:
in der historischen und der literaturwissenschaftlichen Forschung stellte
das Erinnern an Flucht und Vertreibung ebenfalls ein Randthema dar,
das bis ber die Wende hinaus nur vereinzelt oder mit ideologisch
problematischer Tendenz bearbeitet wurde.
6

Such bias was recently exhibited by Erika Steinbach, president of Der Bund der
Vertriebenen, who, when expressing the desire for a museum documenting
flight and expulsion to be built in close proximity to the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin, referred to the flight and expulsion of the Germans as an entmenschte

1. See Karoline von Oppen and Stefan Wolff, From the Margins to the Centre? The Discourse on
Expellees and Victimhood in Germany, in Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in
Contemporary Germany, ed. Bill Niven (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 194.
2. See Oppen and Wolff, From the Margins to the Centre?, 194.
3. See Bill Niven, Introduction: German Victimhood at the Turn of the Millennium, in Germans as
Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary Germany, ed. Bill Niven (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006), 3.
4. See Frank Brunssen, Tabubruch? Deutsche als Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Gnter Grass
Novelle Im Krebsgang, Oxford German Studies 35, no. 2 (2006): 119.
5. See Jeffrey Luppes, Den Toten der ostdeutschen Heimat: Local Expellee Monuments and the
Construction of Post-war Narratives, in Narratives of Trauma: Discourses of German Wartime
Suffering in National and International Perspective, ed. Helmut Schmitz et al. (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2011), 89ff.
6. Martina lke, Flucht und Vertreibung in Hans-Ulrich Treichels Der Verlorene und Menschenflug
und in Gnter Grass Im Krebsgang, Seminar 43, no. 2 (2007): 119.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
2
Rassenwahn comparable to the treatment of the Jews in the Holocaust.
7
Not
only is this statement highly problematic, it clearly lacks any historical
understanding. The Holocaust was the systematic murder of a people due to
their race, whilst expulsion was the legal population transfer of a people in order
to strengthen the geopolitical integrity of Europes nations in order to prevent
future conflict.
8
Steinbachs statement is thus symptomatic of a revisionist trend
that attempts to realign the victim-perpetrator paradigm in favour of German
suffering and victimhood. This realignment, due to the failure to recognise or
understand how German suffering is intrinsically linked to German perpetration,
transforms the Germans retrospectively into absolute victims.
9

In response to such debates surrounding German suffering and victimhood,
Taberner explains how contemporary German novels concerned with the
expulsions from the East, and indeed with German wartime suffering as a
whole, engage not only (and often not even primarily) with the events
themselves but also participate in a series of related discussions.
10
Two such
texts are Hans-Ulrich Treichels Der Verlorene and Gnter Grasss
Im Krebsgang. Whilst both texts are concerned with flight and expulsion from
the Eastern territories, the events themselves take a secondary role, with
greater focus given to the legacy of these events. This legacy is shown to be
unavoidably linked to that of National Socialism and its crimes, hence other
issues of the past, such as issues of guilt and responsibility (individual or
collective), denial and repression, and Vergangenheitsbewltigung, are thus
interwoven throughout the authors respective narratives, allowing them to
engage in wider debates and to avoid such problematic decontextualisation as
exhibited by Steinbach.
Grasss Im Krebsgang focuses on three generations of the Pokriefke family: the
narrator, Paul, his mother, Tulla, and his son, Konny. Tulla fled from the East on

7. See Samuel Salzborn, The German Myth of A Victim Nation: (Re-)presenting Germans as Victims in
the New Debate on their Flight and Expulsion from Eastern Europe in A Nation of Victims?
Representations of German Wartime Suffering from 1945 to the Present, ed. Helmut Schmitz
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007) 92.
8. See Salzborn, The German Myth of A Victim Nation, 92.
Also see Niven, Introduction: German Victimhood, 16f.
9. See Niven, Introduction: German Victimhood, 13.
10. Stuart Taberner, Literary Representations in Contemporary German Fiction of the Expulsions of
Germans from the East in 1945, in A Nation of Victims? Representations of German Wartime
Suffering from 1945 to the Present, ed. Helmut Schmitz (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 243.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
3
the Wilhelm Gustloff, which, torpedoed by a Russian submarine, sank, killing
thousands of people in historys biggest ever maritime disaster. Tulla wishes for
her story to be remembered in literary form, but her son is reluctant to fulfil this
wish, for he fails to see her as a victim. Paul instead insists on relativising and
contextualising her suffering in the light of German perpetration. The novella is
thus a complex multi-layered narrative that, in a crab-like manner, constantly
moves backward, forward and sideward in time, from as early as 1895 up until
the present day, to tell of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and a familial
trauma that is transferred from one generation to the next.
Treichels Der Verlorene, by contrast, is temporally more constrained than
Grasss text, concerning itself with an expellee family living in West Germany in
the immediate post-war years of the 1950s. Nevertheless, although the novel is
told from a contemporarily situated first-person perspective, from that of a
young boy growing up at the time, due to this narrators unrealistic
precociousness, both in terms of knowledge and writing style, it can be
presumed that a later, more reflective perspective bleeds through. The reader
consequently gains a sense of how the narrator (both then and now) fails to
understand or empathise with his parents suffering. The narrator even appears
to resent his parents, for, indeed, the narrative perspectives of both texts
highlight how the war generation has failed to adequately come to terms with
the past, leaving it to the second generation to tell of the parents suffering, a
suffering that has also become their own.
For the family of Der Verlorene, their suffering is made metaphysically visible by
the absence of the narrators brother, Arnold, who was lost during the parents
flight. The truth behind the loss of Arnold is, however, supressed. The narrator
is at first led to believe da Arnold auf der Flucht vor dem Russen verhungert
sei.
11
This intrigues the narrator and we are informed that alle [s]eine [!]
Fragen nach den nheren Umstnden der Flucht und dem Verhungern [s]eines
Bruders Arnold beantworte sie [die Mutter] nicht (DV:11). Despite the events
having a major impact on her life, the mother is reluctant to talk about what
happened in detail, which indicates that she is concealing something.

11. Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Der Verlorene (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999), 11.
Subsequent references to this text shall appear in the body of the essay, appearing in parentheses
with the abbreviation DV followed by the relevant page number.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
4
Indeed, only when the mother deems that the narrator is alt genug [!], um die
Wahrheit zu hren (DV:12) does he learn that Arnold ist nicht tot. Er ist auch
nicht verhungert [!]. Er ist gar nicht gestorben [!], er ist verlorengegangen
(DV:13). The mothers previous denial can be seen as a coping mechanism that
allows her to supress feelings of guilt and shame, which would enable her to
live a relatively stable life. However, when the prospect of finding this lost son
becomes a reality, the truth and her guilt has to be acknowledged so she can
find what she has lost.
When the narrator learns the truth, he subsequently realises da Arnold
verantwortlich dafr war, da ich von Anfang an in einer von Schuld und Scham
vergifteten Atmosphre aufgewachsen war (DV:17). This atmosphere is
created by the parents inability to come to terms with the loss of their son and
to acknowledge their role in this loss. Indeed, they have little time to, for der
Vater kmmerte sich sieben Tage in der Woche um das Geschft, und die
Mutter half ihm sieben Tage in der Woche dabei (DV:79). The parents have
instead heavily invested themselves in the world of work and business, again to
supress their feelings of guilt and grief. Their dedication to work parallels the
theories put forward in the Mitscherlichs Die Unfhigkeit zu trauern, where the
Germans wholeheartedly devote themselves to the Wirtschaftswunder so they
can avoid having to come to terms with their troubled past.
12

The parents inability to mourn, however, has not only created a poisonous
atmosphere, but it has resulted in their remaining son also becoming lost. Die
Eltern [bersehen] durch die Trauer um den auf der Flucht verlorenen Sohn den
anwesenden Sohn und ihn dadurch gleichfalls zu einem Verlorenen machen,
13

writes Nuber. The narrator thus feels detached from the family and has little
sense of identity. This, in literary terms, is made visible by the narrators use of
the definite article instead of the possessive when referring to his parents, and
the narrator himself even remains nameless throughout. The narrators
detachment from the family also visually manifests itself in the family photo
album, which depicts Arnold wie ein bedeutender Mensch, whilst the narrator

12. See Alexander Mitscherlich and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfhigkeit zu trauern: Grundlagen
kollektiven Verhaltens (Mnchen: Piper, 1977).
13. Achim Nuber, "Kindheit und Jugend im Zeichen von Flucht und Vertreibung: Hans-Ulrich Treichels Der
Verlorene im Kontext zeitgenssischer Biographieerzhlungen, in Flucht und Vertreibung in der
deutschen Literatur: Beitrge, ed. Sascha Feuchert (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001), 278.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
5
is auf den meisten Photos nur teilweise und manchmal auch so gut wie
berhaupt nicht zu sehen (DV:9). The narrators subordinate status and the
importance of the lost son is thus highlighted by the prominence of Arnold and
the insignificance of the narrator in the photos his mother shows with pride.
Discovering the truth about his brother therefore also makes the narrator realise
da Arnold, der untote Bruder, die Hauptrolle in der Familie spielte und mir
eine Nebenrolle zugewiesen hatte (DV:17).
The narrator is assigned a Nebenrolle for he is temporally and emotionally
distanced from the trauma that dominates family life and therefore lacks
empathy for his parents and even his brothers plight, having no direct
experience of this trauma: Schlielich hatte ich ja auch niemanden verloren.
Ich hatte nur erfahren, da die Eltern jemanden verloren [!] hatten (DV:49).
Here we again gain a sense of the narrators detachment and distance through
the use of depersonalised terms. Nevertheless, despite struggling to fully
understand what he has been told (DV:13), he initially attempts to comfort his
mother, reassuring her that she saved his brothers life (DV:16). The mother,
however, admits da das Leben Arnolds gar nicht bedroht gewesen sei
(DV:16). We are told that die Russen htten es immer nur auf eines
abgesehen gehabt (DV:16), which corroborates the previous statement,
alluding to the presumed rape of the mother, an event that she similarly
represses. She only refers to the rape in euphemistic terms, for example,
describing it constantly as etwas Schreckliches (DV:14). Whilst there is no
denying the horror nor the injustice of her rape, the fact remains that sie habe
voreilig Angst um ihr eigenes Leben und das Leben ihres Kindes gehabt, und in
Wahrheit habe sie auch voreilig das Kind weggegeben (DV:16). It is thus
indicated that the mothers fear was rather presumptuous and premature, and,
as Clarke explains, a misapprehension [that] is founded to a large extent on
her racist belief that the Russians are murderous barbarians.
14
This racism is
evident through her use of the collective singular (der Russe) when referring to
the Russians, a usage reminiscent of the Nazi periods use of the collective
term der Jude, which implies that the Russians have replaced the Jews as
Germanys new scapegoat. The mother, for example, fails to mention why they

14. David Clarke, Guilt and Shame in Hans-Ulrich Treichels Der Verlorene, in Hans-Ulrich Treichel, ed.
David Basker (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 65.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
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indeed had to flee in the first place, emphasising instead the role of the
Russians and thus shifting blame.
The mothers racism is a relic of National Socialism but is not exclusive to her.
This becomes clear when the family go to Heidelberg, just one stop in the
parents journey to be reunited with Arnold. lke describes the trip as eine
symbolisch verdichtete Reise in die deutsche Vergangenheit,
15
for such
racism, and even ideas of racial superiority (both relics of the Nazi past) are
shown to remain rife in post-war West Germany. The parents believe Arnold to
be the Findelkind 2307 and as a result they must be subjected to various tests
and measurements in Heidelberg to prove their relation to this mysterious
figure. Not only has this figure been dehumanised, becoming a categorised
number in a manner reminiscent of the National Socialist period, but the tests
the family are subjected to are also reminiscent of the period, of Nazi eugenics.
The professor who administers these tests is similarly stuck in the past, for, as
Preece points out, his scientific methods are no more advanced than his social
views, which, insofar as they contain a racial component, are consonant with
his science.
16
Echoing the politics of expellee organisations and of National
Socialism, the professor implies that the expulsion from and the confiscation of
the German Eastern territories is vorlufig jedenfalls (DV:109). The father,
encouraged by this, then reminisces about the East. He says that the der
Boden war gut in Rakowiec, guter Weizenboden, to which the professor
replies, in a statement that demonstrates his racism and ideas of racial
superiority, da ein Boden so gut sei wie die Menschen, die ihn bearbeiteten
(DV:109). The father is also shown to subscribe to this view, telling of the
superiority of the German Rakowiec I over the Polish Rakowiec II, in addition to
the perceived suitability of the Poles for use as Knechte (DV:110). As Clarke
explains, this possible ideological identification with Nazism does not lead to a
sense of responsibility for the crimes of Hitler's regime, [and] since the parents

15. lke, Flucht und Vertreibung, 126.
16. Julian Preece, The German Imagination and the Decline of the East: Three Recent German Novels
(Edgar Hilsenrath, Jossel Wassermanns Heimkehr; Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Der Verlorene; Gnter
Grass, Im Krebsgang), German Monitor 59 (2004): 38.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
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tend to focus their attention on their own suffering at the hands of Russian
troops,
17
denazification appears to have faltered or even failed.
With the failure of denazification and the ever-present reminders of the past in
Treichels novella, the idea that the end of the war marked a new start in
Germany, a Stunde Null, is constantly undermined. Germany is shown to be a
repressive environment where little has been learnt from the past. Family life is
also dominated by the past, in this instance, memories of flight and expulsion as
well as the simultaneous loss of the German Eastern territories and their son.
The legacy of this familys flight and signs of their trauma are everywhere and
this trauma is instilled into the narrator. We are told, for example, how die
Eltern reisten nicht [...] wegen der Flucht. Zwar war die Flucht keine Reise
gewesen, doch alle Reisen schien sie an die Flucht zu erinnern (DV:122). This
infects the surviving son, who throughout the novel becomes increasingly travel
sick. As Taberner argues, [the parents] connection to the past infects the
present in which the son exists. If he enjoys the pleasures of an economic and
political stability in part enabled by a continuity of ideology and personnel, he
also becomes identified with Nazism.
18
This is why the narrator develops travel
sickness, seemingly allergic to the products of his familys labour, enabled by a
continuation of the past; it is also why he is so reluctant to conform to his
parents concept of identity: Ich wollte niemandem hnlich sein (DV:57).
The same fear of becoming infected by Nazism is why Paul in Im Krebsgang is
at first reluctant to fulfil his mothers wishes and write of the sinking of the
Wilhelm Gustloff. Like the mother in Der Verlorene, Tulla fails to mention why
she had to flee the East with this part of her past having been decoupled from
its context. However, by contrast, Tulla constantly talks of her suffering and
appears not to repress or supress anything else. As a result, Paul, defined by
his mother as das Jongchen, das mitten im Unjlick jeboren wurd,
19
rebels, for
he does not want to be seen as a victim nor does he wish to be associated with
the history of perpetrators. Consequently, as Krimmer explains, we have a

17. Clarke, Guilt and Shame, 64.
18. Stuart Taberner, Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Der Verlorene and the Problem of German Wartime
Suffering, The Modern Language Review 97, no. 1 (2002): 133.
19. Gnter Grass, Im Krebsgang (Mnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2004), 93.
Subsequent references to this text shall appear in the body of the essay, appearing in parentheses
with the abbreviation IK followed by the relevant page number.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
8
narrator who is engaged in a prolonged struggle to overcome his victim
status.
20

Due to the timing of Pauls birth, his victim status is, nonetheless, rather
coincidental. Unable to remember his suffering, this trauma is in a sense
inherited, like the narrators in Der Verlorene, and Paul therefore similarly
resents his family. Paul even wishes he had been lost like Arnold: lieber als von
Mutter auf der Lwe geboren, wre ich jenes Findelkind gewesen, das sieben
Stunden nach dem Schiffsuntergang von dem Vorpostenboot VP1703 geborgen
wurde (IK:142). Separated from the mother, who instils this sense of trauma
into the sons life narrative, Paul, in a sense, would be liberated from its legacy.
Indeed, due to his emotional distance from his mother, he manages to similarly
distance himself from flight and expulsion for a long time. However, with the fall
of the Wall, Tulla is able to meet her grandson, Konny, and, as her own son is
unreceptive to her stories and wishes, hope is instead reignited by her
encounter with the third generation: Na, vleicht wird mal main Konradchen
eines Tages drieber was schraiben! (IK:94).
Konny is more receptive to the idea of Germans as victims than his father is,
due to a temporal and contextual distance. Konny is an empty vessel waiting to
be filled, and, indeed, Paul tells of how his mother [hat] ihm [Konny] mit
Flchtlingsgeschichten, Greuelgeschichten, Vergewaltigungsgeschichten
vollgepumpt, die sie zwar nicht leibhaftig erlebt hatte (IK:100f.). Furthering the
idea of being infected by the past, Paul comments how Konny has been
eingeimpft with these tales of German suffering by Tulla (IK:70). The past is an
infectious and dangerous disease that is still to be cured. Indeed, Im Krebsgang
shows how Vergangenheitsbewltigung and its focus on German perpetration
has resulted in the creation of a repressive, dogmatic and potentially dangerous
atmosphere, where important parts of the countrys past, such as German
suffering (in this instance flight and expulsion), are ignored and considered
taboo. Paul, for example, explains how part of his reluctance to write about the
Wilhelm Gustloff stems from the fact that doch keiner [mochte] was davon
hren [!]. Die Gustloff und ihre verfluchte Geschichte waren jahrzehntelang

20. Elizabeth Krimmer, Ein Volk von Opfern?: Germans as Victims in Gnter Grasss Die Blechtrommel
and Im Krebsgang, Seminar 44, no. 2 (2008): 272.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
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tabu, gesamtdeutsch sozusagen (IK:31). Tulla corroborates this, explaining
that [man] ieber die Justloff nicht reden jedurft hat. Bai ons im Osten sowieso
nicht (IK:50). In the GDR at least, due to the role of the Soviets in society and
in the sinking of the ship, the topic could be considered taboo. However, this
taboo status elsewhere, both past, in the Bonn Republic, and present, in its
successor, the Berlin Republic, is rather questionable. As has already been
pointed out, the expellees were a sizeable contingent of the populations of both
Germanys and were in particular highly visible in the West German political
system. Consequently, Grass hat mit Im Krebsgang kein Tabu im Sinne eines
Verbots gebrochen, explains Brunssen, for die Geschichte der Wilhelm
Gustloff [!] ist seit den frhen 1950er Jahren ausfhrlich dokumentiert.
21
Tulla
acknowledges this, but she instead desires an emotive account that
encapsulates the full extent of her suffering: Wie aisig die See jewesen is und
wie die Kinderchen alle koppunter. Das mute aufschraiben (IK:31). The
(factual) events themselves are thus not taboo, rather (emotive) German
suffering is perceived taboo due to the perceived emphasis on German
perpetration in Vergangenheitsbewltigung.
Konny, having grown up in a society where history is considered to be schon
bewltigt, struggles to see German suffering as his father does, in the context
of German perpetration, and hence aims to cast the Germans as absolute
victims. When Konny takes up the challenge of writing of the Gustloff, one that
his father until then had failed to tackle, Paul is critical of Konnys Bedrfnis
nach einer sauberen Opferbilanz (IK:104). The same could easily be said of
Paul himself however, who similarly seeks a clean balance, but rather in favour
of casting the Germans collectively into the role of the guilty perpetrator: die
waren alle, ob noch unschuldig oder nicht, militrisch gedrillt und auf ihren
Fhrer vereidigt! (IK:105). Paul, nevertheless, later recognises the failings of
his dogmatic approach influenced by Vergangenheitsbewltigung. At Konnys
trial he realises that the process has failed, for it has instead created a stifling
political correctness that has allowed his sons extremist views to breed:


21. Brunssen, Tabubruch?, 130.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
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Was tun, wenn der Sohn des Vaters verbotene, seit Jahren unter
Hausarrest leidende Gedanken liest, auf einen Schlag in Besitz nimmt
und sogar in die Tat umsetzt? Immer bin ich bemht gewesen, zumindest
politisch richtig zu liegen, nur nicht Falsches zu sagen, nach auen hin
korrekt zu erscheinen. Selbstdisziplin nennt man das. (IK:210).
This statement implies that he always, to some extent, felt sympathy for
German suffering, a suffering that is actually his own. He realises German
suffering, intrinsically linked with German perpetration, had been wrongly
repressed, a conclusion with which Tulla and Konny would both agree. Tulla, for
example, bemoans that im Westen ham se [!] immerzu nur von andere
schlimme Sachen, von Auschwitz und sowas jeredet (IK:50), whilst Konny
similarly complains that his mother mir mit ihrem dauernden Auschwitzgerede
oft auf die Nerven gegangen ist (IK:195). The schools in both former East and
West Germany also fail to allow Konny to present on the topic of the Gustloff
(IK:183f.). The dawn of modern technology and reunification has, however,
complicated things. As Midgley explains, away from the constraints of reality,
Konnys chatroom provides an environment in which people can assume
conflictual attitudes in the absence of any socially restraining influence,
22
and
the restrictive political correctness of Vergangenheitsbewltigung is removed
with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Grass, under the alias of the mysterious Arbeitgeber, admits to his own guilt, to
his complicity in the failings of Vergangenheitsbewltigung: Eigentlich, sagt er,
wre es Aufgabe seiner Generation gewesen, dem Elend der ostpreuischen
Flchtlinge Ausdruck zu geben (IK:99). He points the finger of blame at his own
generation for the failure of Vergangenheitsbewltigung, which, focusing on
German perpetration, largely ignoring German suffering, has created this
dangerous political correctness. As Florack explains, das Versagen der Eltern
[fhrt] zur Verblendung der Kinder.
23
A story of German victimhood is thus
littered with stories of German guilt.

22. David Midgley, Gnter Grass, Im Krebsgang: Memory, Medium, and Message, Seminar 41, no. 1
(2005): 64.
23. Ruth Florack, Kpfchen in das Wasser, Beinchen in die Hh: Anmerkungen zum Verhltnis von
Opfern, Ttern und Trauma in Gnter Grass' Novelle Im Krebsgang, in Tter als Opfer?
Deutschsprachige Literatur zu Krieg und Vertreibung im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Stefan Hermes, et al.
(Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovac, 2007), 48.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
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Part of the problem of the legacy of flight and expulsion in this novella, lies in
the symbolism of the date on which the ship sank, a date that Paul describes as
a dreimal verfluchtem Datum (IK:16). It is a date loaded with meaning in
German history, the date of Wilhelm Gustloffs birth, the date of his namesakes
sinking, and the date of the Nazi seizure of power (IK:11). This day of German
suffering is unavoidably linked with the start of German perpetration.
Nevertheless, as Paul explains, Geschichte ist ein verstopftes Klo. Wir splen
und splen, die Scheie kommt dennoch hoch (IK:116) and the process of
coming to terms with the past, in this instance with the legacy of flight and
expulsion that is intrinsically linked to the legacy of National Socialism, hrt
nicht auf. Nie hrt das auf (IK:216). Paul sees the process of
Vergangenheitsbewltigung and its counter movement as never ending, a view
with which Grass implicitly agrees. Throughout the course of this complex
novella, Grass thus aims to show that if the memory of the Holocaust victims [is
supressed !], nationalism and neo-Nazism may easily rise again, but if you
suppress the memory and mourning of German victims, the same might
happen.
24

All things considered, flight and expulsion from the German Eastern territories is
shown in both texts to be a complex and multi-layered issue. Indeed, whilst the
suffering of those involved is undeniable, the absolute victim status desired so
much by the war generation is denied them by the second generation, who
relativise German victimhood with German perpetration. As a result, the
novellas, rather than focusing primarily on the events themselves, contextualise
flight and expulsion by exploring interrelated issues and focusing to a greater
extent on its legacy, with this legacy being largely interchangeable with the
legacy of National Socialism. This allows both authors to pass comment on
contemporary Germany and its memory culture. Grasss emphasis on
perpetration, for example, reiterates the authors anxiety in the early 1990s that
a reawakened interest in formerly German territories further to the East in the
newly expanded, post-unification Federal Republic might lead to revisionism or

24. Peter Oliver Arnds, Beyond Die Blechtrommel: Germans as victims in Im Krebsgang, in
Representation, Subversion, and Eugenics in Gnter Grass's The Tin Drum, ed. Peter Oliver Arnds
(Rochester: Camden House, 2004), 154.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
12
even revanchism.
25
Treichel, on the other hand, in the legacy of flight and
expulsion, hat [!] ein wesentliches Motiv fr die Entstehung der deutschen
Nachkriegsmentalitt erkannt
26
and sees the roots of many of the debates and
issues surrounding German victimhood to stem from this mentality. A denial and
repression of the past has resulted in a failure to adequately come to terms with
this past, which, in turn, has also produced an enduring trans-generational
sense of guilt and shame and a repressive environment where German victims
are largely ignored and deprived of sympathy.
The legacy of flight and expulsion is also shown to have had devastating effects
upon intrafamilial relationships. Parents, who experienced flight and expulsion,
are distant and lack empathy, whilst their children fail to empathise with their
parents trauma. There is also a distinct lack of (caring) father figures, with the
father of the narrator in Treichels text a strict emotionally-stunted disciplinarian,
whilst Paul in Grasss text has no idea who is father actually is and fails to be
there for his own son. Furthermore, Paul in Grasss text, in contrast to Treichels
narrator, feels overburdened by the stories of his mothers trauma, for she, by
contrast, never ceases to talk of her suffering. Additionally, due to Grass setting
Im Krebsgang in the present, and when read in conjunction with Treichels Der
Verlorene, the reader is able to realise that the process of coming to terms with
the past is a flawed continuing process. Remnants of the past remain and
threaten to crawl out of the woodwork, in turn threatening the stability and
normalisation of Germany. Indeed, common in both texts is the wish of the
second generation to break from the haunting spectre of the past, but, as both
authors make clear, the past, the legacy of flight and expulsion, cannot simply
be forgotten and broken away from the mainstream, the past should instead be
remembered so future generations can learn from it mistakes.

25. Taberner, Literary Representations in Contemporary German Fiction of the Expulsions, 241.
26. Thomas Schfer, as quoted by Nuber, "Kindheit und Jugend, 275.
GE431 GERMAN MEMORIES OF THE WAR: FROM PERPETRATION TO SUFFERING
The Legacy of Flight and Expulsion from the German Eastern Territories
German Studies Andrew Jones 2014
13
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