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jenibo 's review for:
The German Lesson
by Siegfried Lenz
This is a delicate and beautiful book about the mentality that led to the following of orders, no matter how destructive of life and spirit, in Germany during WW2.
Written with a frailty which is beautifully conveyed in this translation, the prose is quite lovely and sensitive, as the story unfolds of the erosion of a son's love for his father, due to the policeman father's obsession with duty. Ironically, the son, Siggi, shares an obsessive tendency with his father, and compulsively writes a punishment essay on duty from his cell in a prison to which his father has had him consigned because of his opposition to his work.
Siggi can see the effects of his father's compulsive behaviour on his family, his friendships and the village itself, as the older man's obsession destroys all that humanises him, and all that he loves and appreciates in his life, leaving him an automaton with nothing to offer, who is alienated from those close to him and from the essence of the man that he once was.
It is little short of heartwrenching to follow, through Siggi's eyes, the dehumanisation of the man, as his convictions turn him into a burnt out husk, and result in the loneliness and emotional starvation of Siggi, who has the courage, idealism and youthful foolishness to stand up for his convictions against his father's wrongs, and try to live with him and mitigate his damage, instead of deserting his home in defeat, as his older siblings have done.
The story is a picture, painted slowly and meanderingly by the pen of Siggi, and supplemented with psychological analysis by bits of the reports of his psychologists; and the slowness of the focus, and the ongoing descriptions of the river outside the cell window can be a little frustrating when our reader forgets to enjoy the journey, and seeks too hard for a destination. The destination does arrive, and when the reader steps back from this instrument, s/he is in wonder at the work that has been wrought, so incrementally, and with such magic.
Written with a frailty which is beautifully conveyed in this translation, the prose is quite lovely and sensitive, as the story unfolds of the erosion of a son's love for his father, due to the policeman father's obsession with duty. Ironically, the son, Siggi, shares an obsessive tendency with his father, and compulsively writes a punishment essay on duty from his cell in a prison to which his father has had him consigned because of his opposition to his work.
Siggi can see the effects of his father's compulsive behaviour on his family, his friendships and the village itself, as the older man's obsession destroys all that humanises him, and all that he loves and appreciates in his life, leaving him an automaton with nothing to offer, who is alienated from those close to him and from the essence of the man that he once was.
It is little short of heartwrenching to follow, through Siggi's eyes, the dehumanisation of the man, as his convictions turn him into a burnt out husk, and result in the loneliness and emotional starvation of Siggi, who has the courage, idealism and youthful foolishness to stand up for his convictions against his father's wrongs, and try to live with him and mitigate his damage, instead of deserting his home in defeat, as his older siblings have done.
The story is a picture, painted slowly and meanderingly by the pen of Siggi, and supplemented with psychological analysis by bits of the reports of his psychologists; and the slowness of the focus, and the ongoing descriptions of the river outside the cell window can be a little frustrating when our reader forgets to enjoy the journey, and seeks too hard for a destination. The destination does arrive, and when the reader steps back from this instrument, s/he is in wonder at the work that has been wrought, so incrementally, and with such magic.