Günter Grass, widely considered to be the greatest German writer of his generation, died on 13 April, aged 87. Grass achieved international recognition for his first novel, Die Blechtrommel, The Tin Drum (1959), an example of the literary movement called the Vergangenheitsbewältigung, that is “coming to terms with the past”. It was followed by Katz und Maus (Cat and Mouse, 1961) and Hundejahre (Dog Years, 1963), the three becoming the Danzig Trilogy. In 1965, he was awarded the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize. Grass was an active supporter of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) and was a frequent critic not just of the Right, but, during the SDP chancellorship of Willy Brandt (1969-74), of radicals on the Left. He became a recognised public intellectual who frequently commented on current events. He opposed the reunification of Germany, saying it could only lead to its again becoming a belligerent nation-state, and in 2012 controversially criticised the armed forces for supplying a submarine to Israel. He became an active supporter of the peace movement in the 1980s. In 1999, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and published in the same year Mein Jahrhundert (My Century), an overview of the brutalities of the 20th-century.
His standing in the eyes of the world suffered a blow, however, in 2006 when it was revealed the he had been a member of the Waffen-SS during the Second World War and served as a tank gunner, fighting with the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg until it surrender to US forces at Marienbad. Friends forgave him on the grounds of his youth (he was 15) and critics seized on the fact that, for all his high-minded pronouncements on post-war Germany, he had kept this fact a secret for 60 years.
Immediately after the Second World War Grass had trained as a stonemason and studied sculpture and graphics at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at Berlin University. He was the president of the Berlin Academy of the Arts from 1983 to 1986. Thus, in addition to his literary gifts, Grass was also a practicing artist and the Günter Grass House in Lübeck presents exhibitions of his work and houses his archive and library.
In 1990, the German army used Picasso’s tortured image of Guernica—bombed by the Germans in the Spanish civil war—as a recruiting image. Was this just a grotesque gaffe, or something worse? Grass, in a furious speech on 8 March 1991 before Richard von Weizsäcker, then president of Germany, saw it as culpable and dangerous ignorance of the nation’s history: “I claim an unwritten right, the human right to a past”.
In homage to Grass, The Art Newspaper here presents in full his speech on the Guernica incident:
“Even though I know that pictures aim at no more than an approximate description and that words aim at nailing down meanings, an attempt should nevertheless be made to describe a picture that is being publicly dishonoured. The canvas [Guernica] has a width of eight by about four metres.
In the painting, internal and external space merge into one another. The gestures of all the characters, whether human or animal, aim towards the edges of the picture, as if they were trying to burst the format.
Suspended in that internal-external space is a light bulb, casting a cold light. As if the electric light were not enough, a woman, her arm dominating the centre of the picture, thrusts an oil lamp through the open window. She wants to light up what is happening, lighting it to the ultimate angle of vision: the stricken horse whinnying; the motionless head of the bull, shown in harsh contrast with its massive body, in profile yet with both eyes; impelled by horror the girl leaps up, bare-arsed; between raised hands, fingers spread apart, a woman screams; and with emphatic clarity the fallen horseman holds a flower in his cramp-clenched hand that will not or cannot let go.
The simultaneity of what is happening in the picture obeys some invisible power which comes, which strikes, from outside, which produces these effects. But even where the external space is suggested by a hatch-like window, that power does not reveal itself. The fallen rider, who forms the lower edge of the painting, and the two women in the right and left fields of vision are crying out to heaven.
Does the invisible power come from there? What happened to make this painting, predominantly painted grey on grey, become the picture of our century, still and again valid in view of present horrors? Where, since only victims dominate the scene, have the culprits fled? Everything screams: the electric light, the people, the horse. By ambiguously remaining silent, the bull intensifies the screaming. And “Scream” is what the painting might be called, were its name not “Guernica”.
I saw it again and again when, still exiled to New York, it remained a stranger in the Museum of Modern Art among so much art. (Only a triptych by the painter Max Beckmann, similarly lost, hung in the next room, inviting comparison: in both instances, expression heightened to the ultimate lim it of pain; strictly separated, yet akin to each other—the German and the Spanish painter.) In the meantime Picasso’s “Guernica” has returned home. more accurately to within a short distance of the Prado Museum, though belonging to it —and thus in the proximity of Goya’s “black pictures”. In a building specially provided for this wall-size painting and the studies and sketches for it, that horror turned picture, that piercing silent scream, is put on show in an air-conditioned room, protected against attack by special glass.
Removed from the civil war in his homeland only in terms of physical distance, Pablo Picasso began the preliminary work in the spring of 1937. By the summer, the result was presented to the public in the Spanish pavilion of the Paris World Exhibition. The Republican government had commissioned the artist during the first winter of the war, in 1936. A room, wide enough for a large wall painting, was rented but remained unused for several months until a particular item of news from among the daily happenings of the Spanish Civil War induced the Picasso to paint this picture, his picture, our picture.
The small town, once the capital of the Basque country, is situated near the sea, not far from Bilbao. On 26 April 1937 Guernica was bombed from late afternoon until well into the evening. Wave after wave of brand-new aircraft just off the production line, the most up-to-date models that military technology had to offer before the outbreak of the Second World War, Heinkel-111 and Junkers-52 bombers, dropped their load of bombs: incendiaries and high-explosives of up to 500 kg. Bombers were being tested: the première of carpet bombing.
The day, a Monday, was market day, and the town centre was crowded. The first bursts caused chaos and flight. No sooner had they dropped their load of bombs than the air crews opened up with their machine-guns on the fleeing civilians.
Of Guernica’s roughly 7,000 inhabitants 1,654 were left dead and 889 wounded after the attack. Not from just any aircraft—from German aircraft German crews dropped bombs of German manufacture.
Responsible for the terror raid was the German Condor Legion, an elite unit. But it was not hatred of the Germans, not loathing for the putschist General Franco, not his declared support for the threatened Republic—it was the horror of Picasso the painter that was pictorially expressed.
No enemy was identified. Not a single fascist symbol, no hint of German authorship, however concealed, was there to be discovered in the complex composition. Only the victims existed for the painter. It was their pain, their fright, their screams that he expressed by artistic means, not merely to satisfy his own art, but to make sure the world saw and heard.
But the world neither saw nor heard. When Guernica was put on show in the Spanish Republic’s pavilion at the World Exhibition, the Right wing bridled at an artistic form that defied all conventions, while the Left, especially the Communists, missed an explicit party-political commitment. A minority saw, heard, and, shocked, spoke of art.
Thus it has remained to this day. Accepted as an epoch-making work in the history of art, as the zenith of the “modern movement”, and by now tolerated with equanimity, Picasso’s Guernica continues to be at the mercy of deliberate misinterpretation and dishonour, including that infamy against which no special glass can protect the original in its museum.
Towards the end of September 1990 certain periodicals (Gong, Stern, Der Spiegel) disseminated a technically flawless reproduction of the painting in conjunction with an advertising text. That was a few days before the Day of German Unity, before all the bells rang out. In bold type, broken into four lines under the right-hand side of the picture, the gimmicky headline read “Enemy images breed war”. A slender column of text, set to the right-hand edge of the picture, advertised the Bundeswehr [German army] and, in semi-bold font, revealed the Bundeswehr as the author. With a discreetly placed logo—the Iron Cross, surrounded by keyhole-shaped lettering—the army accepted responsibility for this advertisement paid for with taxpayers’ money.
The advertising copy for which Picasso’s Guernica had to serve as a typical “enemy image”, provided information on cause and effect under the headline “Enemy images breed war”. It expatiated for 23 lines of text on the point that the Bundeswehr had no such thing as an enemy image and that enemy images were used only by totalitarian regimes: “Their images demonise the enemy so that they can justify the sacrifices they continually demand from the people”.
Further down in the advertising text we read of the war-breeding danger of enemy images and of the virtues of the Bundeswehr, which had never justified its role with enemy images: “Not ‘Against what?’ but ‘For what?’ is how we put the question about the purpose of service”. The text then enumerates all the things that have to be defended, and concludes by defining the Bundeswehr: “It is our insurance against unpredictable vicissitudes”.
As it continued with a multitude of similar, worthy, anodyne statements, one might suppose the Bundeswehr was being advertised as a branch of the Allianz life insurance company. Nothing, not a single line, explains to the reader why Picasso’s Guernica has to do service here for an enemy image generally.
What caused this picture to be painted is dishonestly concealed. The fact that not an enemy but war’s screaming victims were turned into a picture is ignored. Mendacious concealment brushes aside the fact that it was German pilots, planes, bombs and machine-guns that destroyed Guernica and murdered 1,654 of its citizens; no footnote discloses the name of that criminal body, the Condor Legion.
The text is shameless and follows the worst models from the past. By dishonouring Picasso’s Guernica, the Bundeswehr allows its text, with its suggestion of innocence, to turn into its opposite: it builds up an enemy image and uses the methods practised under fascism and Stalinism.
In small print, at the bottom left corner of the painting, is the title of the picture and the full name of its painter. Behind the copyright symbol we read the name of the VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. VG stands for Verwertungsgesellschaft, or commercial utilisation company. Presumably that part of the reproduction fee has been properly transmitted to Picasso’s heirs, along with an author’s copy.
But because it is entirely possible that the heirs are unaware that they have just collected Judas money, I thought it advisable to have them informed through a Hamburg law firm, as I lack any legal title for laying a complaint against the Bundeswehr.
Under the advertising text, again in small type, we read: “Would you like to know more about this subject? Apply to the Streitkräfteamt [ministry for the armed forces], PBO 14 01 89, 5300 Bonn”. My protest is not addressed to the Streitkräfteamt. As, with the exception of the periodical Art, I have not encountered any critical reaction to the calculated monstrosity of the Bundeswehr’s recruitment advertisement—neither the Deutscher Künstlerbund (the union of German artists nor the Abteilung Bildende Kunst (painting and sculpture section) of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts felt offended by the dishonouring of the Picasso painting; and in parliament, too, the matter was passed over in silence—I have nursed my protest within me for six months, knowing that, together with [the author] Günther de Bruyn, I would have the opportunity of speaking on this special occasion.
The federal president’s invitation was issued 18 months ago, at a time when the East Germany still seemed secure in its massive power. Since then more has happened than will be recorded in the history books. In the meantime the reunited Germans have found they are greater strangers to each other than anyone had expected. Instead of political partition it is now social degradation that divides the enlarged country. Diddled by electoral cheats, the new citizens are once more written off and may well feel forgotten, especially since the Gulf crisis has almost inevitably flipped over into war and revealed the reverse side of German peacefulness.
Now we know that the criminal arms trade with Iraq has to be answered for not only by West German firms—including some of worldwide reputation; no, the Federal Government knowingly, connivingly and, by means of guarantees, actively supported that portentous crime; we are being governed, to call the Bonn set-up accurately, by a mafia.
One might ask: how important is this six-month old advertisement of the Bundeswehr, when so much water has since flowed under the bridge, when it has now become known that the ministry in question stinks, like a rotten fish, from its head?
Does anybody still care about the dishonouring of an admittedly important painting when articles in leading newspapers recently have denied all social acceptability to any kind of “ideological aesthetics”?
Can people still be roused from their cosy couches by my protest against the posthumous affront to the citizens of Guernica murdered by Germans—1,654 of them —when similar shameless actions have become quite acceptable among friends?
At most, since we always remember our good manners, the Amt für Streitkräfte will be given a reprimand, much as one might reprimand the Bayer works at Leverkusen if its publicity department conceived the idea of advertising painkillers with a perfectly printed reproduction of Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altar. And before long the next scandal would come round.
I feel a little old-fashioned amidst such accelerated communication. Used to the fact that, ever since Heinrich Böll’s days, the label of “preacher of morality” has tended to stick, I know just how widespread is that scoundrels’ morality which states that what has been has been. Nevertheless I claim an unwritten right, the human right to a past. More than that: by dedicating this polemic of mine, entitled “The Dishonoured Picture”, to my host, the federal president, I put my trust in his widely heard speeches, in his words that do not shy away from the burden of Germany’s past.
He knows what Guernica means. His generation—and even my own—was marked by Guernica and its consequences. Contrary to the spirit of our time, which calls for forgetfulness, he has repeatedly, and at the price of making the conduct of his office more difficult, uttered words that place an obligation also on the posthumous inheritors of that past.
I do not want to make the conduct of his office any easier for him. My words, perhaps, can give offence–his words sometimes carries weight. The federal minister of defence is responsible for this advertisement, an advertisement whose approach brings shame on every man in its ranks. Just because the Bundeswehr participated in a war whose disastrous consequences are incalculable and whose victims are uncounted, the damage caused by that advertisement can scarcely be made good. It must not be tolerated. By asking Richard von Weizsäcker to invite the minister of defence to apologise to the citizens of Guernica. I am not expecting much, no resignation—after all, does anyone ever resign?—but I do expect the highest representative of the federal republic of Germany to do his duty.”
Published in Die Zeit 13-22 March 1991 © Günter Grass and for the translation © Günter Grass and Ewald Osers 1991, published in English in The Art Newspaper, May, 1991