610. The German Lesson

The German Lesson
Siegfried Lenz
1968
Around 470 pages

Siggi Jepsen is forced to write an essay called "The Joys of Duty" as an inmate of a juvenile detention center. Which is interesting in context, but also intriguing from a reading perspective. A lot of these novels I am reading out of a sense of duty due to my fanatic devotion to this List. And there's definitely some joy to be found in the duty, even if the List tries to break my spirit with an endless barrage of Nazi novels.

In his essay, Siggi writes about his childhood in Nazi Germany. His father was a police officer who commits himself to blind obedience, which involves betraying his old friend, an expressionist painter. Even though expression was banned in Germany at the time, Siggi finds himself fascinated with the paintings and hides some of the confiscated paintings. My Nancy Drew brain wanted him to leave a series of clues about where he stashed the paintings in an elaborate scavenger hunt, but we can't always get what we want.

It's hard to have a novel about this subject and not succeed, because the truth of what happened is so shocking and unsettling that the author merely has to describe what's going on, and bow out. I wasn't a huge fan of Lenz's writing. I don't think he wrote the most believable child narrator, but that's a tough thing to do.

It's interesting getting the perspective of a German author, but nothing too new here in terms of themes or presentation. Still worth reading.

RATING: ***--

Interesting Facts:

Adapted to film in 1971 and 2019.

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