World Books Review: The Weekend – A Portrait of German Guilt

In this novel, German writer Bernhard Schlink wants to explore the powerful guilt that the German people still feel after World War II, how they are still rightly disturbed by displays of nationalism and religiosity parading under the banners of truth and justice.

The Weekend, by Bernhard Schlink. Translated from the German by Shaun Whiteside. Pantheon; 215 pages; $24.95

Reviewed by Christopher M. Ohge

Following in the footsteps of the mega-bestselling The Reader (1995), Bernhard Schlink‘s novel, The Weekend, offers another portrait of contemporary German guilt, ethical exploration, and erotic compulsion. The sister of recently-pardoned terrorist arranges a get-together in her country home with the hope that Jörg will re-engage in the “social contract” amid the tranquil setting with former friends and comrades. The obligatory revelations and confessions follow, enlivened by some clever plot twists and asides that occasionally make the book engaging. Still, the artlessness of Schlink’s prose (at least in Shaun Whiteside’s translation) flattens the story’s characters and potentially fascinating debates about action and inaction in today’s Germany.

In terms of history, the novel will be somewhat opaque, at least for some American readers. To appreciate the moral intricacy of Schlink’s story, one has to be more familiar with the political turmoil resulting from the terrorists actions of the leftist Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) in 1970s West Germany.

Born during the non-violent student protests of the 1960s, the RAF became a political target of the German authorities by initially staging protests, then bombing right-wing or capitalist institutions, and eventually assassinating government officials. In an effort to crush the RAF, the country’s much-beloved President Willy Brandt passed anti-terrorist legislation that, for a time, trampled on the civil liberties of West German citizens. To combat these (perceived) authoritarian measures, the RAF escalated the violence in its succeeding iterations. In all, it is a complicated, fascinating story of power politics in the age of terrorism (sound familiar?).

Thus Schlink’s novel has fascinating history and issues to deal with, and the book begins with promising discussions about Jörg and the past among the weekenders. They belong to a generation whose parents “conformed and shirked resistance.” So, to counter the passivity that led to the rise of the Nazis, revolutionaries like Jörg and his comrades believe they were forced to fight a state that was becoming authoritarian (the RAF’s standard justification for violence).

Schlink wants to convey the powerful guilt that the German people still feel after World War II, how they are still rightly disturbed by displays of nationalism and religiosity under the banners of truth and justice. While one of the visitors, Karin the bishop, suggests danger in the relativistic idea that “Time and time again in history truths have been imposed successfully—right truths as well as wrong ones,” the narrator makes it seem as if “there are as many truths as people freely living their lives.” This illustrates how the lack of a coherent national purpose complicates the actions driven by lofty proclamations of idealism.

Author Bernhard Schlink -- His novel is fascinated by the power of resignation.

Quickly, however, it becomes clear that former comrades-in-arms have bought into the conventional thinking. Most, despite their reluctance in seeing Jörg, use the opportunity to sort out old scores with him. Worse, Jörg’s defense comes off as unimpressive and rather insipid. Ultimately, Schlink admires the former revolutionaries for slogging through the mechanisms—also aptly called, “small successes”—of daily bourgeois life. In the end, when the weekenders bail water out of the cellar, their “spectacle of collaboration” trumps the revolutionary proselytizing.

The awkwardness of Schlink’s writing compounds the story’s lack of intellectual and dramatic tension. The rain is always “rustling” in this book: there’s the “rustle of the rain,” “the rain rustled,” and so on—sometimes twice in the span of two pages, and a couple of instances in the same paragraph. Schlink even creates water-logged romance: “Ulrich held his wife in his arms until the rustle of the rain reached their hearts. Then they too made love.” Rustling love?

The leftists attending The Weekend are also cliches. Marko, the lone archetypal radical in the house, spouts uninspiring rhetoric about “the revolution,” including rants about joining “forces with our Muslim comrades” to “fight the system.” It may be an example of Schlink’s ironic jab at the far Left, but Ilse’s jottings in her notebook about her novel-in-progress about a German terrorist and 9/11 are cringe-worthy: “It had been emotional, emotional and gooey. Now Jan felt as if he and the woman were dancing a perfect dance in bright, cold light. What purity of pleasure, and again: what rush of freedom!”

Schlink’s most interesting observations are on the nature of German resignation to the way things are. One character posits that “we live in exile. What we were and wanted to remain and were perhaps destined to become, we lose. Instead we find something else.” The problem is that his figures have no counterculture juice left in them, except for Marko, who is an emotionally overwrought half-wit. Jörg should have been a flawed pillar of rebellion, but he comes off as a failed father battered by defeat.

Thus the novel is a sedate testament to giving up by giving in. Jörg is reconciled to his exile from idealism, like everyone else. And while The Weekend underscores the continuing tensions between Ossies and Wessies, the novel ends just as it began — disinterested in political solutions, reconciled to living in a society raising generations that are content to be disenchanted, guilt-ridden, and terrorized by specters of the past.