''The Meeting at Telgte'' (german: Das Treffen in Telgte) is a 1979 novel by the West German writer

Günter Grass Günter Wilhelm Grass (born Graß; ; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in the Free City of Da ...

. The narrative revolves around a fictional meeting for intellectuals hosted by

Simon Dach Simon Dach (29 July 1605 – 15 April 1659) was a German lyrical poet and hymnwriter, born in Memel, Duchy of Prussia (now Klaipėda in Lithuania). Early life Although brought up in humble circumstances (his father was a poorly paid court int ...

during the

Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...

. The story combines a depiction of leading seventeenth-century literary figures with an analogy for the post-

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

society in Germany, and of

Group 47 Gruppe 47 (Group 47) was a group of participants in German writers' meetings, invited by Hans Werner Richter between 1947 and 1967. The meetings served the dual goals of literary criticism as well as the promotion of young, unknown authors. In a de ...

in West Germany, of which Grass was a member.

Reception

Theodore Ziolkowski Theodore Ziolkowski (September 30, 1932 – December 5, 2020) was a scholar in the fields of German studies and comparative literature. He coined the term " fifth gospel genre". Early life Theodore J. Ziolkowski was born on September 30, 1932 i ...

wrote in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' that "Grass has chosen his historical analogy with brilliant precision" and that "the book is diverting as a history of 17th-century German literature, liberally sprinkled with quotations from the works and poetic treatises of the period." Ziolkowski continued: "All in all, however, the story remains a lifeless literary construct. The author, whose unerring sense of place put his native Danzig on the literary map along with

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typ ...

's Prague, Joyce's Dublin, and Bellow's

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, has not succeeded in giving us a persuasive

Westphalia Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the regio ...

n town of the 17th century. With the exception of

Dach ''trans''-1,2-Diaminocyclohexane is an organic compound with the formula C6H10(NH2)2. This diamine is a building block for ''C''2-symmetric ligands that are useful in asymmetric catalysis. A mixture of all three stereoisomers of 1,2-diaminocy ...

and the young

Grimmelshausen Grimmelshausen is a municipality in the district of Hildburghausen, in Thuringia, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe afte ...

, whose ebullient novels anticipated Grass's own explosive works, none of the literary figures comes alive."

References

Novels set in the 1640s 1979 German novels German historical novels German-language novels Novels by Günter Grass Thirty Years' War in popular culture {{1970s-hist-novel-stub

Reception

See also

References