A German magazine is going to reveal tomorrow that Gunther Grass, the country's Nobel Prize-winning author who is widely regarded for probing the conscience of post-war German national identity, was
a member of the Waffen SS:
In the weekend interview he said he had volunteered for submarine duty, but was later called up to join the `Frundsberg' tank division, part of the Waffen SS.
[...]
Mr Grass refused to comment specifically, but said he had believed that "what I did as a writer was enough" in terms of tackling his own past. He stressed that between February and April 1945 - his main period in the Waffen SS - he did not fire a bullet or take part in any war crimes. He was injured in April 1945 and remained a prisoner of war until 1946.
The announcement has caused something of a stir in Poland, where Grass was born:
Senior Polish politicians, including Lech Walesa, the former president, called on Mr Grass to return his honorary citizenship of the Polish port city of Gdansk, where the author was born. "I lost my father in the war and Grass was in the SS," Mr Walesa said.
But in Germany people seem to be mostly shocked by the timing of the admission:
Commentators in Germany were less concerned about the revelation itself, but were astonished it had been withheld for so long. Hans-Ulrich Walter, a historian, said he could "not get excited" about the fact that Mr Grass served in this part of the Waffen SS. This was not a central part of the SS, and many young Germans were briefly linked to the Nazi regime, he said.
However he said he "simply could not explain" why Mr Grass had waited so long, adding that it would have been better if he had explained his personal history soon after the publication in 1959 of the The Tin Drum, one of his most famous novels that deals with the need for Germans to confront their own history.
German intellectuals have been coming to grips with individual involvement with Nazism almost since the movement took power when Martin Heidegger joined the party just months after Hitler took power in 1933. Historians and philosophers have the role of Nazi ideology had on Heidegger's philosophy ever since.
Grass is also publishing an autobiography next month, and some critics have called the admission a publicity stunt. I don't know what to make of all of it, but this bit in Der Spiegel caught my attention:
More amusing than sensational is Grass's recollection of a boy named Joseph, with whom he spent time in a prisoner-of-war camp. When asked whether this 17-year-old was in fact the man who became Pope Benedict XVI, Grass says: "He became my friend and we played dice together. I had managed to smuggle my dice shaker into the camp. (...) I wanted to be an artist and he was interested in a career in the church. He seemed a little shy, but he was a nice guy."
Like Grass, Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was in fact imprisoned at Germany's Bad Aibling camp. Whether the Vatican will comment on Grass's recollections remains to be seen.
I don't know if I should sit back and marvel at the machinations of cosmos or start humming the "Twilight Zone" theme song.
Weird...