![Gert Ledig](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Gert_Ledig.jpg)
' ("Retaliation" or "Payback") is the second novel of the writer
Gert Ledig (1921-1999). It is an apocalyptic autobiographical anti-war novel. It mines the author's own experiences and is considered an important example of the
literary realism genre of postwar novel.
The book was originally published in late 1956, by the long established Frankfurt publishing house
S. Fischer Verlag. It deals with 70 minutes of a mid-night
bomb attack
The following is a list of terrorist incidents that have not been carried out by a state or its forces (see state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism). Assassinations are listed at List of assassinated people.
Definitions of terroris ...
by the
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...
against an unnamed German city towards the end of
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 ...
, during which a large number of civilians and military personnel are killed. The events are described from both the American and German perspectives with great directness, and without shielding the reader from the horrific details.
Ledig's first novel ' ("The
Stalin Organ"), which dealt with the battles of the
Russian Front in the
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
region in the Soviet Union, had been an international success. By contrast, ''Vergeltung'' was widely rejected by readers when it appeared in 1956. The book was quickly forgotten and there were no plans for a reprint. That changed in the late 1990s, shortly before the author's death, when the book encountered much more widespread acceptance, led by scholar-critics including
Max Sebald,
Marcel Reich-Ranicki and
Volker Hage
Volker Hage (born 9 September 1949 in Hamburg) is a retired German journalist, author and literary critic, who has reinvented himself as a novelist.
Life
Hage began his career as a journalist in 1975 as an editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeit ...
. ''Vergeltung'' now acquired a correspondingly wider readership, with several new editions published by
Suhrkamp Verlag
Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the S. Fischer Verlag.
In January 2010 the ...
starting in 1999. Translations followed into Dutch (entitled ''Vergelding'', meaning "Retribution") in 2001; English (as ''Payback'') and French (as ''Sous les bombes'' – "Under the Bombs") in 2003; Spanish (as ''Represalia'' – "Reprisal") in 2006; and Croatian (as ''Odmazda'' – "Reprisal") in 2008. At the same time a new interest in Ledig's
literary output emerged among critics and readers, which would outlive the author himself. In effect, shortly before he died Ledig found himself “rediscovered” by the literary establishment.
The storylines
''Vergeltung'' deals with the fates of the inhabitants and defenders of an unnamed
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
city and of an American bomber crew that has approached the city in a formation of bombers. In total twelve storylines can be identified, all connected with the air attack, and all given more or less equal weight, even though they differ greatly in terms of their more detailed narratives.
Eight of the twelve storylines focus on a single character or group of characters. For instance, during the attack the bomber is shot down by a German fighter-plane and the crew are forced to evacuate. The American pilot, named "Sergeant Jonathan Strenehen", having survived a crash landing, falls into the hands of some Germans and is gruesomely abused physically, contrary to the provisions of to the
Geneva Convention
upright=1.15, Original document in single pages, 1864
The Geneva Conventions are four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term ''Geneva Conven ...
which guarantee the "bodily integrity" of
prisoners of war
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held Captivity, captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
Belligerents hold priso ...
. This occurs despite Strenehen having taken care to crash land his bomber on a public
cemetery
A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...
in order to spare the civilian population - something of which his German captors are unaware. Later two German civilians do come to help Strenehen, but in the end he nevertheless dies as a consequence of brutal treatment received from German civilians whose
sadistic actions can be traced back to their awful experience of the aerial bombings.
Other storylines concerns the fate of the suicidal Cheovski couple, a rescue squad, a group of
forced laborers
Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
from
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...
, a war-shattered lieutenant from a
"Flak squadron", a group of drunken soldiers and a man looking for his family driven almost mad by his predicament. Another of the threads presents a young woman driven to an air-raid shelter by the bombs and later raped by an old German man, reacting under the exceptional circumstances, and who himself later commits suicide. Four other storylines each focus on just one scene or circumstance. These concern an air defense position, a coordination command post, a huge concrete bunker along the lines of those that existed only in the largest cities such as
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
and
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, and a transformer station for the municipal power supply.
With the exception of Sgt. Jonathan Strenehen, who is the mostly fully formed of the protagonists and whose fate is spelled out, it is generally left for the reader to decide which, if any, of the participants in the various storylines survive the bombing raid.
Structural aspects
The novel is divided into thirteen chapters which are sandwiched between a prologue and an epilogue that includes precise information on the time of day covered. The length of time taken by the events recounted exceeds by a good hour the 70 minutes actually covered. From this it is to be inferred that the episodes presented take place simultaneously.
All the chapters are composed of short or very short fragments of text. These present snapshots of the respective plot lines and are arranged in a way that provides the reader with an initially confusing experience. Thus the novel's structure reflects and communicates the disorientating impact of a bomb attack on the characters on the novel. Each chapter starts with an italicized autobiographical interlude, reporting in the first person on the fate of one of the characters, using the formats of letters, personal résumés and monologues. However, this novel provides no continuous action driven narrative, but comprises a succession of short episodes that pick-up on earlier plot-lines and progress them briefly before moving on. What takes place is therefore a constant staccato of rapidly changing locations, narratives and players. In this way the structure resembles that of some movies.
There is little use of protagonists in the traditional sense, to define and progress the storylines. The book is driven, rather, by events around which the central conflicts revolve. Many of the characters are identified only by a military rank or by their profession, and this feeds the impression of a collectivized experience. To some extent narrative context is provided by the brief quasi-autobiographical sketches appearing in italic font at the start of each chapter, but these are nonetheless incomplete and fragmentary.
Apart from those short biographical sections, the narrative developments are presented directly from the author. The all-knowing narrator, who does not himself participate in the action, communicates the thoughts and feelings of the various participants, but he does this by concentrating on external manifestations, and avoids comments or value judgements, leaving it for the reader to form any required assessments of characters' inner motivations and reactions. Through this overwhelmingly neutral narrative stance, which comes close to resembling a documentary approach, the novel becomes authentic and powerfully plausible. At the same time the sparsity of commentary summons up a bleak underlying nihilism. Exceptionally, right at the end, the writer breaches his neutral narrative stance for a moment. The narrator uses the authority which his objectivity has established through the novel to communicate that the allied bombing of German cities in the
Second World War
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 ...
had become unavoidable, but in the same breath he denies the
allied forces any general right to act as they did, while a Christian concept teaches that issues of moral authority regarding such matters must be reserved for the
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Reckoning, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, Doomsday, Day of Resurrection or The Day of the Lord (; ar, یوم القيامة, translit=Yawm al-Qiyāmah or ar, یوم الدین, translit=Yawm ad-Dīn, ...
.
Style
The language in Ledig's second novel comes across as highly laconic and staccato. The rapid narrative pace is reminiscent of the postwar
Trümmerliteratur
''Trümmerliteratur'' ("rubble literature"), also called ''Kahlschlagliteratur'' ("clear-cutting literature"), is a literary movement that began shortly after World War II in Germany and lasted until about 1950.
It is primarily concerned with t ...
employed by
Günter Eich in the
lyric piece . Much the same can be said of Gert Ledig's use of
parataxis
Parataxis (from el, παράταξις, "act of placing side by side"; from παρα, ''para'' "beside" + τάξις, ''táxis'' "arrangement") is a literary technique, in writing or speaking, that favors short, simple sentences, without conjun ...
,
declamatory statements,
ellipsis
The ellipsis (, also known informally as dot dot dot) is a series of dots that indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning. The plural is ellipses. The term origin ...
and the relatively low level of visual imagery. Value related adjectives and adverbs are applied sparingly, in order to reinforce the impression of realism and the impact of facts.
The novel's occasional use of symbolism mostly has a religious dimension, in the context of the
theodicy problem or in reference to the
Passion narrative
In Christianity, the Passion (from the Latin verb ''patior, passus sum''; "to suffer, bear, endure", from which also "patience, patient", etc.) is the short final period in the life of Jesus Christ.
Depending on one's views, the "Passion" m ...
. The symbol of the cross has a particular significance here, both as a
Leitmotif
A leitmotif or leitmotiv () is a "short, recurring musical phrase" associated with a particular person, place, or idea. It is closely related to the musical concepts of ''idée fixe'' or ''motto-theme''. The spelling ''leitmotif'' is an anglici ...
in
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
, and in terms of the military connotations, in Germany, of the
Iron Cross
The Iron Cross (german: link=no, Eisernes Kreuz, , abbreviated EK) was a military decoration in the Kingdom of Prussia, and later in the German Empire (1871–1918) and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). King Frederick William III of Prussia est ...
.
Critical and public reception
In the 1950s, the critical reaction in
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 ...
to ''Vergeltung'' was sharply negative. There were one or two more positive reactions from a handful of reviewers in the
East German
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...
papers, as well as in one or two lower tier West German publications. At that time the dominant opinion formers in the world of German-language literature were writing for the leading newspapers, and these condemned the novel unanimously. As an example, Peter Hornung in
Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The ...
criticised Ledig's prose style as "over-simplified to the point of desolation" Writing in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Wolfgang Schwerbrock found the novel "excessively emotional and declamatory"
Commentators were in particular affronted by the novel's numerous depictions of violence and death. In the
Rheinischer Merkur
The ''Rheinischer Merkur'' (literally "Rhineland Mercury") was a nationwide conservative German weekly newspaper appearing on Thursdays. It was published in Bonn. Its managing director was Bert Günther Wegener, and the editor in chief from 1994 t ...
E. R. Dallontano found Ledig's depiction of rape, and the shattering of a taboo that this represented, "distasteful and obnoxious" (''"widerwärtig"'') and a "mainspring of the author's gruseomeness" (''"Triebfeder seiner Gruselei“''). Writing in the
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
The ''Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger'' (KStA) is a German daily newspaper published in Cologne, and has the largest circulation in the Cologne–Bonn Metropolitan Region. ''Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger'' has a base of over 100 contributing editors and a wide ...
, Rolf Becker's reaction was similarly hyperbolic: he complained that the novel would provide the reader with nothing but a "rapid succession of various horrors bathed in the deathly stench of naked sensation" Assertions of this nature left the critics' many readers to conclude that Gert Ledig had produced not a work of serious literary merit, but an old fashioned "
Penny dreadful". The idea that the novel was a serious attempt at a literary reassessment of the Second World War gained hardly any traction. The novel was underpinned by an ugly and unvarnished presentation of total war, acknowledging no diminution of the industrial-scale brutality of modern war on the so-called home front. This presentation coincided with a sustained push by the West German political establishment towards national rehabilitation, involving
rearmament
Rearmament may refer to:
*German re-armament (''Aufrüstung''), the growth of the German military in contravention of the Versailles treaty (1930s)
*British re-armament, the modernisation of the British military in response to German re-armament ( ...
and the country's recent (in 1955) admission to
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...
. The implications of Ledig's work regarding the contentious issues surrounding West German rearmament and militarism more generally were not particularly welcome to the instinctively rather conservative class of literary critics then dominating the "national" press.
In 2003, nearly fifty years later,
Marcel Reich-Ranicki, himself widely seen as the doyen of a younger generation of literary critics, provided his own assessment of the media rejection that had greeted ''Vergeltung'' back in 1956:
At that time no one was interested in the war, in the war as a subject for a novel or a drama. That was Ledig's misfortune. And it was too bad, because one of the properties of his two important novels 'Vergeltung'' and ''Die Stalinorgel''is the way that they do not spare the reader."
The book was republished in the Autumn/Fall of 1999 at the instigation of the influential literary critic/journalist Volker Hage. This followed a fundamental re-evaluation of post-
war literature more generally that had become mainstream in the German speaking world, following a lecture given by Max Sebald in
Zürich
Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...
in 1997. By 1999 many attitudes had been completely reversed since the original publication of ''Vergeltung'', which now met with a much more positive critical reception. In Die Zeit expressly commended Ledig's "almost hammered out sentences" (''"knapp gehämmerten Sätze"'') and the "breathlessness of the language" (''"Atemlosigkeit der Sprache"''). Stephan Reinhardt in ''
Der Tagesspiegel
''Der Tagesspiegel'' (meaning ''The Daily Mirror'') is a German daily newspaper. It has regional correspondent offices in Washington D.C. and Potsdam. It is the only major newspaper in the capital to have increased its circulation, now 148,000, s ...
'' attested to Ledig's "astonishingly dense realism". writing in the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' was profoundly impressed by Ledig's ''„verzweifelte
Dokumentarliteratur“''.
[Peter Roos: ''Den Toten schlägt keine Zeit''. In: ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'', 19. Januar 2000.]
On 29 October 1999 ''Vergeltung'' was featured on the influential television programme . The programme had an audience of several million viewers in the German speaking world at the time, and Ledig's book was featured alongside the German language version of the bestseller
Atomised (''Elementarteilchen''/''Les Particules Élémentaires'') by
Michel Houellebecq, which must have contributed substantially to the subsequent popularity of ''Vergeltung''. On 26 August 2005 an audio version of ''Vergeltung'', produced by Klaus Prangenberg, was broadcast by
Radio Bremen.
Editions
German language editions
* ''Vergeltung''.
S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1956. (Originalausgabe/''Original edition'')
* ''Vergeltung''.
Suhrkamp Verlag
Suhrkamp Verlag is a German publishing house, established in 1950 and generally acknowledged as one of the leading European publishers of fine literature. Its roots go back to the "arianized" part of the S. Fischer Verlag.
In January 2010 the ...
, Frankfurt am Main, 1999. (Zahlreiche Nachdrucke (''numerous reprints'') u.a. 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004.) .
Audio editions (German language)
* ''Vergeltung: Hörspiel''. Von Klaus Prangenberg (Regie) nach dem gleichnamigen Roman von Gert Ledig. Mit
Nina Petri
Nina Petri (born 16 July 1963) is a German actress. She has appeared in more than one hundred films since 1983.
Partial filmography
Television appearances
Awards
* Bavarian Film Award (best actress) (1994)
* Deutscher Filmpreis (best suppor ...
,
Hannes Jaenicke, Stefan Aretz. Bremen: RB, 2004, 65 Min.
Translations
* Czech (''Odplata'', 1958)
* Dutch (''Vergelding'', 2000)
* French (''Sous les bombes'', 2003)
* English (''Payback'', 2003)
* Spanish (''Represalia'', 2006)
* Croat (''Odmazda'', 2008)
Notes and sources
{{Authority control
Novels by Gert Ledig
1956 German novels