338
URSULA BRUMM
Bridge,
deals with the last crime of the war, the mobilization of
17-year-old children for a war that was already lost. Seven boys
defend their village bridge, due to be blown up anyway, agaimt
advancing American tanks. They are, and this is the achievement
of the picture-not only seduced victims but active characters whose
picture-not only seduced victims but active characters whose
juvenile incomprehension and presumption makes them guilty and
brings them and their village to a terrible end.
Another problem for both drama and novel is that in a deeper
sense there is no society as a breeding ground for literature. There
are only these two provisional societies, each claiming the whole
without being able to enforce its claims, and therefore tending
willy-nilly to go it alone. Where, then, is the writer to locate his
characters and their fate? Which of these two societies provides
his
standards? Among the new fall publications this dilemma has, in dif–
ferent ways, found virtually symbolic expression. Two novels about
the recent past have appeared, both written by women of the older
generation, one in the East and one in the West. Anna Seghers'
new novel,
The Decision,
her first after a long silence, takes place
after the war, partly in the Eastern Zone, partly in West Germany.
The people in the East are workers and good; those in the West
are factory owners, engineers, schemers, and bad. Anna Seghers
can still tell a tight and graphic story, but her judgment of men
has been corrupted. The Western writer is Ina Seidel, descended
from a family of writers and widely read as an author of voluminous
educational novels of a Protestant-humanist tendency. She would
probably be shocked to hear that in her new novel,
Michaela,
the
protagonists belonging to her educated bourgeoisie-a doctor, a
historian, a Swiss-German general's daughter, a Jewish archaeolo–
gist-are all good, while the few plain people
in
the book are
dubious characters or downright bad. Nor can Ina Seidel grasp
the perfidious dynamics of the time of 1930 to 1945. As Frau
Seghers has been corrupted by too much politics and doctrine, Frau
Seidel's idealistic upbringing has cut her off from political reality.
She is the representative of a German cultural type whose aversion
to the dirty business of politics strengthened the very forces respon–
sible for the time of 1933 to 1945.
