Seldom has the public appetite for home-grown modern German literature outstripped the demand for imported products. For centuries authors here have had the reputation of ruminating for ages before finally producing a book over which the reader is also obliged to ruminate for ages. In terms of national literature, this urge to achieve validity, relevance and balance was seen as something of a competitive disadvantage. Even Goethe sighed: “Whilst the Germans torment themselves with the solving of philosophical problems, the English laugh at us with their great practical common sense and win the world.”
/1//The privy councillor would not be saying that any more today. A few years ago, German literature, which of course thankfully includes the Austrians and the Swiss, managed to emerge from its state of hibernation. Or rather, this sleeping beauty willingly allowed herself to be kissed awake. The prince, who brought this beautiful but shy damsel into the floodlights for the world to finally see, came in the guise of the German Book Prize. And it was precisely the novel that just missed out on the award, Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World, that heralded a thorough rehabilitation. Meanwhile, the word has spread, not just around the world, but especially among the German public, that demanding literature does not automatically have to be a strain on the reader.
The German Book Prize has brought renewed attention to German literature, but at the same time it has strengthened a fatal development: the inability of the book trade and the public to focus appropriately on more than just a few titles at a time. Whilst the last German bestsellers on the New York Times list lie some years back with Süskind’s Perfume and Schlink’s The Reader, the interesting thing about the new development is that the domestic hit parade is again being led by German novels – from Martin Walser’s Ein liebender Mann to Julia Franck’s Die Mittagsfrau.
/2//The days of literary movements and passing fashions, of pop literature and the Fräuleinwunder is now over. They pioneered the great breadth and diversity that now characterizes present-day German literature. Our literature has reached a relaxed assurance that can be historically attributed to reunification, but could have just as much to do with the world moving closer together, and not simply in virtual terms. As people become more detached from the experiences of World War II, a younger generation has managed to emerge from the shadows cast by Günter Grass, Martin Walser, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger and Siegfried Lenz. This does not mean that intense thought about Germany, its history and its various states of mind has ceased in the sense that Dolf Sternberger once noted: “We don’t know who we are. That’s the German question.” But it has become more polyphonic and has gained in international substance. This can also be seen in the fact that writers such as Feridun Zaimoglu or Terézia Mora, whose native language isn’t German, have written their way into leading positions.
A new freedom is visible: everyone can write what they want. The ideological pigeon holes have been discarded. The main focus is not so much on how something is told, but above all on what is being told. The age-old divide between “serious” and “light” seems to have finally been closed. The competing aesthetic movements have disappeared and nothing is contentious any more. The writers who are shaping this image, from Kracht to Kehlmann, Hacker to Hettche and Tellkamp to Trojanow, are superbly networked. But the authors do not model themselves on each other, and there is no longer any false admiration of classic writers, such as Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. The heroes are Americans, from Faulkner to Franzen, or styles like the magic realism of its sober representative Roberto Bolaño. The process of professionalizing the fresh “as we like it” approach is now being propelled by the new writing schools, especially the Deutsches Literaturinstitut in Leipzig. The diversity is reflected in the publishing scene: Germany is not completely ruled by the major publishing conglomerates and bookshop chains. There are still publishers who resist producing programmes that are solely committed to satisfying their sales figures. America and Great Britain can only dream of such publishing diversity and conscientiousness.
/3//Has nothing remained typically German? Definitely: the introspective depth, the complexity and the self-doubt are still there; an earnestness that never aspires to being art for art’s sake, despite all the playful ease. This enriches reading immensely. Anyone still in need of proof should ask the Swedish Academy. Günter Grass in 1999, Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and Herta Müller in 2009: the current rhythm of German-language writers receiving the Nobel Prize every five years is becoming something of a pleasantly addictive phenomenon.//
