Layers of Meaning, War, Art: Grass's Beim Häuten der Zwiebel

The international uproar that met the publication of Gunter Grass's memoir Beim Hauten der Zwiebell in late summer 2006 all but obscured the entirety of the author's statement. The revelation that he had served in the Waffen SS (125-27), in commando units under regular army (Wehrmachi) command, even though both newsworthy and meaningful in terms of his past, present, and future status as a writer and public intellectual, justifiably generated sound and fury. My reading of the text examines this startling revelation, but focuses more on three themes of Grass's controversial autobiography. The genre presupposes the subject's dependence on recollection2 and the nearly 80-year-old Grass remembers well, even as he admits to memory lapses -"Wer sich ungenau erinnert, kommt manchmal dennoch der Wahrheit um Streichholzlange naher, und sei es auf krummen Wegen." (10) His memory is keen, especially when keyed to objects ("Zumeist sind es Gegenstande, an denen sich meine Erinnerung reibt" [ibid.]), while he also recognizes memory's secretive and dissembling traits: "Die Erinnerung liebt das Versteckspiel der Kinder. Sie verkriecht sich. Zum Schonreden neigt sie und schmuckt gerne, oft ohne Not." (8) In the memoir, Grass understands and thematizes "die fragwurdigste aller Zeuginnen, die Dame Erinnerung" (64), labeling recollection elsewhere the essential task of the writer: "Der Schriftsteller erinnert sich professionell. Als Erzahler ist er in dieser Disziplin trainiert."3 On first reading, Beim Hauten tier Zwiebel, an autobiographical narrative encompassing the years 1939 to 1959, offers the reader a seemingly serendipitous myriad of details arranged in a chronological sequence, albeit replete with fast-forwards and flashbacks. Some episodes seem to be overly long, others less than important, many all too familiar to readers of Grass. My intent is to present and discuss the core issues informing the thrust of the memoir by systematizing the author's narrative thematically. The first section introduces the Waffen SS issue and the nature of autobiography as keyed to the central metaphor-the Zwiebel, implicitly making the case that the reading of the book, the very turning of the pages, is a form of dealing with a multi-layered Zwiebel too. The metaphorical medium is the method. The second section treats Grass's narrative of wartime experiences, from recruitment to battle to release from POW camp. The importance the author ascribes to these events is evident from the fact that the chapters make up more than a quarter of the book's length (141 of 481 pages). seen otherwise, it is these experiences that generate the most action-packed prose, war-stories specifically keyed to the imagination of Grimmelshausen, Grass's 17th-century model. In assuming the (dis)guise of his predecessor and his literary creations (Simplicissmus, Herzbruder, Baldanders), Grass valorizes his tale even as he hides behind Grimmelshausen's persona. The third section evaluates the theme of representational art, both the origins of his obsession with art history as a boy and his later training as a sculptor in Dusseldorf and Berlin. The entire memoir clearly intends to be very much the "portrait of an artist as a young man," rather than a narrative privileging only his literariness. For Grass, the putative separation of the arts does not exist; one informs the other-visual representation is just as much text as vice versa. It is, then, perhaps not coincidental that near the end of the memoir Grass reminds the reader of his graphic self-portraits by including the one keyed to Beim Hauten tier Zwiebel-"ich mit halbierter Zwiebel und Messer" (476). They are visual representations of self as meaningful as any other layer of memory. Layers of Meaning On August 21, 2006, Gunter Grass was featured on the cover of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel for the sixth time in his life.4 The portrait of the elder Grass gazes at the viewer from over his glasses. …