''Dog Years'' (german: Hundejahre) is a novel by
Günter Grass. It was first published in Germany in 1963. Its English translation, by Ralph Manheim, was first published in 1965.
It is the third and last volume of his ''
Danzig Trilogy
The ''Danzig Trilogy'' (german: Danziger Trilogie) is series of novels and novellas by German author Günter Grass. The trilogy focuses on the interwar and wartime period in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland).
The three books in the ...
'', the other two being ''
The Tin Drum
''The Tin Drum'' (german: Die Blechtrommel, ) is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass. The novel is the first book of Grass's ' ('' Danzig Trilogy''). It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Bes ...
'' and ''
Cat and Mouse
Cat and mouse, often expressed as cat-and-mouse game, is an English-language idiom that means "a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes." The "cat" is unable to secure a definitive victory over the "mouse ...
''. The novel consists of three different chronological parts, from the 1920s to the 1950s.
The main characters are Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel.
Plot
Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel are friends.
Eduard is half
Jew
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...
ish
and at the young age of five is a genius at making
scarecrow
A scarecrow is a decoy or mannequin, often in the shape of a human. Humanoid scarecrows are usually dressed in old clothes and placed in open fields to discourage birds from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.Lesley ...
s.
The narrator in Book One, the mine owner Brauxel,
tells of the friendship of Walter and Eduard when they are children in the
Vistula
The Vistula (; pl, Wisła, ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest river in Europe, at in length. The drainage basin, reaching into three other nations, covers , of which is in Poland.
The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in ...
estuary, which is a German-Polish borderland (the interwar
Free City of Danzig) peopled by
Mennonite
Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radi ...
s,
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
s and
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
s.
Eduard keeps a diary which he fills with drawings of ideas for scarecrows. The history of this country is told with cruel images of horror and violence from that past that echoes into the present, which becomes Hitler's Germany.
The story in the second part of the book is narrated by Harry Liebenau, and consists of letters from him addressed to his cousin Tulla.
This part of the story occurs during the war period, when Amsel collects vast numbers of
S.A. uniforms, and dresses his scarecrows in them.
He also persuades his childhood friend Walter to become a member of the S.A., in order to help him obtain the uniforms.
But since the confusion in this country has reached its maximum at this point in time, it is inevitable that the two friends end up on a collision course. At one point Walter denounces Amsel as a Jew, hits him in the face and knocks out all of his teeth.
The last part of the novel is narrated by Walter and takes place after he has found his new friend Prinz. They leave on a journey in the postwar
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
, where they systematically attack former Nazis who are now posing as respectable officials throughout the country.
Discussion
Grass's style frequently parodies
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...
's arcane philosophical syntax in ''
Being and Time
''Being and Time'' (german: Sein und Zeit) is the 1927 '' magnum opus'' of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and a key document of existentialism. ''Being and Time'' had a notable impact on subsequent philosophy, literary theory and many oth ...
'', which one of the teenage protagonists likes to poke fun at. The years from the prewar to the postwar era are presented in ''Dog Years'' through the perspective of three different narrators, a team directed by Amsel — alias Brauxel — who makes scarecrows in man's image. The seemingly solid childhood friendship of Amsel and Matern evolves into the love-hate relationship between Jew and non-Jew under the impact of Nazi ideology. When the former friends from the region of the Vistula Delta finally meet again in the West, the ominous
Alsatian dog
The German Shepherd or Alsatian is a German breed of working dog of medium to large size. The breed was developed by Max von Stephanitz using various traditional German herding dogs from 1899.
It was originally bred as a herding dog, for ...
(
German Shepherd
The German Shepherd or Alsatian is a German breed of working dog of medium to large size. The breed was developed by Max von Stephanitz using various traditional German herding dogs from 1899.
It was originally bred as a herding dog, for ...
) that followed Matern on his odyssey is left behind in Brauxel's subterranean world of scarecrows. While ''Dog Years'', like ''The Tin Drum'', again accounts for the past through the eyes of an artist, the artist is no longer a demonic tin-drummer in the guise of a child but the ingenious maker of a world of objects reflecting the break between the creations of nature and those of men. The narrator refers to Amsel's "keen sense of reality in all its innumerable forms."
References
{{Authority control
1965 German novels
Danzig Trilogy
Novels by Günter Grass
German historical novels