literature
Bad premonitions – “The Comet” by Durs Grünbein
Durs Grünbein explores his grandmother’s life in “The Comet”. photo
© Gerald Matzka/dpa
Using the story of his grandmother, Durs Grünbein impressively tells of everyday life in the Third Reich and the beguiling beauty of his hometown of Dresden.
Durs Grünbein (61) is a global citizen who has long been at home in various metropolises. In his works, however, he always returns to his Saxon hometown of Dresden. “The Years in the Zoo” was an autobiographical look back at life in the Hellerau garden colony. His new book “The Comet” is also inspired by his own family history, but this time focuses on the life of his grandmother Dora.
The second main protagonist of the book is the city Dresden during the time of National Socialism up to its collapse in the bombing night of February 13, 1945, which also forms the dramatic conclusion of the book.
The work cannot be classified as a novel or a non-fiction book; it is most likely a report with fictional elements. A lot of it is undoubtedly based on the grandmother’s stories; we mostly experience the world from her point of view, only rarely does the author intervene directly. In this way the book seems very immediate and moving. “The Comet” is the story of a simple woman in the Nazi state, making it a classic story from below.
Dora was born into humble circumstances in rural Silesia. She grew up in a loveless home, had to herd goats as a child, and her education was neglected. Then she falls in love with the butcher Oskar, a young man who is both handsome and down-to-earth. She follows him to Dresden, where he takes a job in one of the most modern and largest slaughterhouses in Germany. Dora became a mother at just 16 years old, later she married Oskar and had a second child with him.
For the country girl, the big city is a revelation. Dresden combines vibrant modernity with the beauty of its baroque heritage. The city also offers her an informality and freedom that she sorely missed during her suffocating childhood. Together with her unconventional friend and neighbor Trude, she enjoys urban life in parks, shopping streets and picture galleries during these few good years. Here, the poet Durs Grünbein uses brilliant descriptions to appropriately showcase his hometown, which was still undestroyed at the time.
Dora may be a simple woman, but she has a keen sense of coming disaster and lurking dangers. She senses how the Nazi state is getting more and more on people’s skin, for example through air raid drills in the midst of peace: “She had this idea from an early age. At any time, something bigger than everyday life could happen to her little everyday lives. Then she remembered the comet that everyone had expected back then…”
Halley’s Comet, to which the author alludes in his book title, sent many people into a doomsday panic in 1910. Dora will be right with her bad premonition. The war soon begins and Oskar has to go to the front. Neither Dora nor Oskar are convinced National Socialists, quite the opposite. Oskar, the great silencer and refuser, hermetically seals off his inner life. Dora distrusts the grandiose propaganda and condemns the harassment of the Jews, which she witnesses on the streets and in her own home. She sees herself and the little people in general as passive toleraters of overwhelming circumstances: “We have always been the stupid ones.” A sentence that becomes the family’s leitmotif.
Durs Grünbein doesn’t justify this kind of bandwagonism, but he doesn’t condemn it either. He shows a lot of empathy for the life of this simple woman, his grandmother, who you have to find sympathetic in her genuine, lively manner. This beautifully written portrait of a woman is not only an enriching read, but also an important puzzle about everyday history in the Nazi state.
Durs Grünbein: The Comet, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 282 pages, 25.00 euros, ISBN 978-3-518-43020-0