GERT HEIDENREICH
581
Immediately after recelvmg the Peace Prize of the German Book
Trade, Martin Walser intimated in a television interview that he had a
problem believing the facts reported about his country, when they were
all so horrible: "I am protecting myself against a lasting fear." Where
Heimat
fails to be edible, Walser flattens the unbearable into "normal–
ity."
His mention of "the monumentalization of shame," related to the
debate about the Berlin memorial, clearly reveals that he feels his
Heimat
threatened by the stigmatization of its capital. Walser shares this
belief with Rudolf Augstein, the publisher of
Der Spiegel,
who wrote
about the planned memorial for the murdered Jews: "One has a hunch
that this monument of shame is directed against the capital and the new
Germany which constitutes itself in Berlin."
Here, the protection of a
Heimat
that is normal from a history that
is not, is being displayed in its pure form. Home as a castle, history as
an attack. The German discussion about the Berlin memorial comes
down to the question of how to build a commemorative monument that
does not admonish but accommodates.
Let's make it smaller.
. ..
But,
wanting to symbolize the extreme atrocity by an aesthetically tolerable
mediocrity is wretchedly mean.
Heimat
cannot withstand this.
While writing this essay, I kept asking myself if what I'm really deal–
ing with is a kind of nineteenth-century yearning. Yet Schubert's
Lieder
cycle,
Winterreise,
has proved to be surprisingly topical:
a stranger
when I entered, a stranger when I leave.
No reason for self-pity, just for political and cultural work.
