The New German Migrant Crisis: Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, ging, gegangen

Jenny Erpenbeck’s 2015 novel Gehen, ging, gegangen deals with a topic of “immediate

relevance” to a German readership, the current migrant crisis in Europe, “brandaktuell” as the

FAZ reviewer Friedmar Apel put it. The title alludes to the difficulties migrants face in learning a

new and difficult language and, by extension, surviving in a new country with unfamiliar laws

and customs. While the principle parts of the irregular verb “to go” exemplify this learning

difficulty, their meaning carries the additional allusion to the journey the migrants have faced

and will face in their flight from untenable conditions at home. What I wish to address here,

however, is not the migrant crisis as presented in the novel per se, but rather what would make

one want to pick up a work of fiction and read about something at length that is nearly

inescapable in the daily media and one’s daily life. What does one gain from Erpenbeck’s novel

that is missing from journalistic sources or protesters or even talk shows, which then makes the

extra time and effort spent worthwhile? Can this or any novel help reader/citizens better

understand a current social crisis or better decide among various options which may be the

most appropriate action to take in response? The multiple meanings of the title - and the

freedom we have to discover and play with them - present one answer, the one I wish to pursue:

the opportunity to reflect and gain insight on a social issue through pleasure, that thing which

aesthetics can bring a topic that is usually presented without it.

Last year, when I learned that Jenny Erpenbeck had published a new novel, I was quite excited

to hear it, as I had found the earlier novels Heimsuchung and Aller Tage Abend beautifully

constructed and conceived. I went online and found a review in the FAZ of her latest, the

“Tatsachenroman” (factual novel) Gehen, ging, gegangen: retired Classics professor takes up

the cause of African migrants and becomes their advocate. Hm. “Tatsachenroman.” Well, after

the two historically-based but highly imaginative and philosophically reflective earlier novels, the

characterization of the new one as a “factual novel” dampened my enthusiasm. Sure, the work

2

was on the short list for the 2015 German Book Prize, but an Amazon.de review questioned

whether this “Tatsachenroman” should even be considered literature: “If this book by this author

is being seriously considered as a favorite for the German Book Prize, then German literature in

the 21st century is dead.”1 Perhaps, or the reviewer is just anti-migrant. And then, there was the

retired professor. Not only would the book likely add to the information overload about the

migrant crisis I already felt subject to but might also present me with a character not unlike the

one I see every morning in the mirror, myself, a recently retired professor in the humanities. I

like to choose fiction that takes me where I can learn something new.

But I did read this novel to the end, a couple times now, and want today to explore my

original concerns about its characterization as a “Tatsachenroman” and then ask what one

gains by viewing controversial current events through a literary lens. Indeed, Erpenbeck’s novel

portrays highly contemporary events surrounding the dissolution of an African migrant

encampment on the Oranienplatz in Berlin two years before, the relocation of the migrants to

shelters for the winter, and the extended legal wrangling to decide whether or not they would be

granted asylum, all widely publicized moments in the politicized struggle of this group of

migrants. A highly emotional topic and thus risky endeavor on Erpenbeck’s part. Not a novel of

historical fiction, introducing readers to fascinating, but distant, events and personalities, that

are often of little consequence in their everyday life. Rather, the book confronts German

readers with social and moral issues they wake up to every morning. Various officials explain to

the former Classics professor Dublin II, Italian laws on work and residence permits, the German

policy of “Duldung,” that is, of tolerating migrants until their request for asylum is decided, even

a provision in the law that says a refugee shelter cannot be disbanded if an infectious disease

has broken out there. In all cases we also see how these real informational items change the

lives of the characters in the novel, each of significance in the lives of the readers. It thus 1 All translations mine. “Wenn dieses Buch dieser Schriftstellerin ernsthaft als Favorit für den deutschen Buchpreis gehandelt wurde, dann ist die deutsche Literatur des 21. Jahrhunderts tot.” (Von Glen Runciter am 13. November 2015)

3

shares many features of Brecht’s or Grips Theater’s teaching plays (Lehrstücke), which show

the reader what is happening in the world around them and then allow theater-goers or readers

to draw moral conclusions from what they are witnessing and determine what they should do

about it - notwithstanding that Brecht or Grips may have used particular techniques to achieve

that effect or had a desired lesson in mind. And yes, after initial painful descriptions almost

identical with the early days of my retirement, the life of Richard, the main character, begins to

develop in quite remarkable directions.

The Facts

As the author of a Tatsachenroman, Erpenbeck is presenting her readers with actual

controversies around them and then showing how her fictional characters come to grips with

these realities, migrant fears engendered by the totally foreign culture they now inhabit or

German fears engendered by the appearance of large numbers of migrants from Africa and the

Middle East in their midst, that is, unknown people with unknown pasts, unknown beliefs,

unknown customs. Her Tatsachenroman combines real conditions we usually learn only

second-hand from the news with those of individuals we usually never see, presented through

the eyes of an individual deeply invested in Western European cultural traditions. And it allows

for reflection and the development of a subsequent response over time rather than provoke, on

the one hand, immediate knee-jerk ideological rigidity or an emotional outburst, on the other.

The real conditions as presented here are thinly disguised by rather prosaic narrative tools. A

migrant protest is heard on a televised news report, Richard reads of the history of West Africa

in a reference book, France’s current exploitation of Niger for uranium is the topic of a rather

stilted conversation among friends on a walk through the woods, a court-appointed immigration

lawyer explains the intricacies of immigration law to Richard and the totally befuddled Nigerian

migrant Ithemba (301-10), and Berlin Senate officials recite relevant regulations in a migrant

4

meeting about future housing (100-03). Every chapter of the novel teaches us about migrant

conditions and German or European regulations.

Along with the chronology of the migrant camp on Berlin’s Oranienplatz, the novel

explains relevant aspects of German and European immigration law, often in such pedantic

detail, especially in juxtaposition to the critical and immediate needs of the migrants, that its use

here as a super-rational impediment to migrant acceptance and integration is hard to dispute.

Such impersonal rules to govern and ensure the integrity of a polity, by which one can

segregate the outsider, are perhaps the ultimate, if not intended, expression of the

Enlightenment Rechtsstaat, something that attracted all these migrants to Europe in the first

place, as victims of war, chaos, and arbitrary justice, but at the same time also something that

often disallows a human response to injustice and delays action on their cases interminably:

“Those, who occupy this country - for only 150 years now it has been called ‘Germany’ - defend

their territory with paragraphs, attack the new arrivals with that super weapon2 time . . .” (102-

03). Erpenbeck’s narrator criticizes the bureaucracy of the Rechtsstaat more directly later: “ . . .

this never-ending stream of human beings, who, having survived a voyage on the high seas, are

now drowning in rivers and seas of documents” (310).3

The scholarly task that Richard sets for himself, namely, to conduct interviews with the

migrants and turn them into a scholarly article or book, is also part of a Western objectivity that

sets itself as superior to and more valid than emotional, personal responses, that is, what one

sees in public rallies from left or right, TV talk shows, on the floor of the Bundestag, or at private

2 The term used here „Wunderwaffe“ is the same one used in Nazi propaganda to describe weapons the Third Reich was purportedly developing that would lead to immediate and total victory. Today, it usually carries ironic implications.3 The all-knowing narrator of Gehen, ging, gegangen remains primarily neutral in telling the story. However, episodes are juxtaposed and observations offered in such a way that the irony of Germans pursuing their daily routines and enjoying an orderly, comfortable, secure life with so many unsettled migrants in their midst cannot be missed. Criticism of the situation is usually left to insights of Richard and his friends, often with Richard in free indirect speech so that it is at times difficult to separate narrative stance from the views of the characters.

5

parties. Through this ruse of objectivity he gains access to the migrants, from whom the

external world is prevented entry, the door to the shelter “is always locked, from the inside”

(189). Unsuspecting of any difficulties, Richard appears at the shelter and asks to speak with

the migrants, initially refused by security: “It’s not as easy as that” (55). Even being a professor

is not sufficiently persuasive. Finally, the director is convinced by his explanation: “I’m working

on a research project” (56). And though this impersonal backdrop may evoke our empathy with

the migrants, the characters in the novel do not all evoke our sympathy. Besides, the factual

nature of the novel predisposes readers to believe they are in a value-free environment and

thus still free to draw their own conclusions about actions they might take in their personal lives

after reading it. As Erpenbeck says in her interview with ARD on October 4, 2015, there is a

certain fluidity in the contemporary scene: what Germany and Germans are confronting cannot

be viewed against the past but rather recognize that history is always changing and that our

responses to this crisis should not necessarily perpetuate our past, but allow history to move us

on to new social configurations. “Writing means that one can take one’s time to look at things

in peace. And perhaps this is actually a new phase of history. We never think that even history

can change.“4 She speaks of writing but her comments are equally valid for reading and writing.

The Aesthetic

So what does the “Roman” part of “Tatsachenroman,” in other words, the aesthetic

dimension of fiction, bring to the migrant debate that is missing in other forms of expression, be

they hyper-rational and partisan (public policy papers and legal debates) or hyper-irrational and

inflammatory (internet and street polemics and politically-oriented journalism) or even the

related genre of narrative literary journalism5 most recently exemplified by Navid Kermani’s

compilation of interviews with migrants entering Europe via the island of Lesbos, Einbruch der

4 “Schreiben heißt, dass man sich Zeit nehmen kann, um die Dinge in Ruhe anzuschauen. Und vielleicht ist es tatsächlich ein ganz neuer Anschnitt in der Geschichte. Daran denken wir immer nicht, dass die Geschichte sich auch ändern könnte.“5 I take this term from John C. Hartsock’s Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience, p. 3.

6

Wirklichkeit: Auf dem Flüchtlingstreck durch Europa?6 If asked to answer that, our Classics

scholar Richard might begin by looking at Cicero’s three-part prescription for classical

rhetoricians, later adopted by the classically educated poets in the High Courtly Period of

German literature, as they provided moral guidance for the state: docere, delectare, movere.

The link to rhetorical speech reveals the possibility of aesthetics in areas with motivational

objectives: talk radio, sermons, and narrative literary journalism, where its inclusion introduces

subversive, culturally critical elements and distinguishes from “objective journalism.7 In the

courtly epic, however, Cicero’s directives resulted in stories that brought pleasure to God and

mortals while teaching life lessons that motivated readers to right ways of thinking and acting

that combined an evolving understanding of both Christian ethics and the refinements of the

French courtly life and chivalry - an aesthetic realized through the craft of storytelling that was

purposeful and sought a desired social impact. The moral guarantor in Gehen, ging, gegangen,

however, is not the Christian God of the Middle Ages, but rather, as I hope to show, an

empathetic cosmopolitanism based on our common humanity and common experiences of

trauma, suffering, and loss. Imbedded in the story are lessons about the nature of our common

humanity and how cultural memory transmits conceptual barriers to embracing commonality

beyond the parochial. Late in the novel, prompted by the appearance of a police line effectively

cutting him and other Germans off from the African migrants in the shelter, Richard muses on

the nature of barriers that distinguish between cultures, languages, skin color, and customs and

concludes that on a universal scale the erection of boundaries between people “is based only

on the absurd misunderstanding that humanity is divided and keeps it from seeing how much

more enduring the life of the planet is compared to the lives of any individuals” (261). I will

elaborate on this cosmopolitan message later. This idea is one prompted by an earlier insight

Richard gleans from the migrant, a nomadic Tuareg he calls “Apollo,” who doesn’t really know 6 First published as article in the October 2, 2015 issue of Der Spiegel and then the unabridged paperback version: Einbruch der Wirklichkeit: Auf dem Flüchtlingstreck durch Europa. C. H. Beck: München, 2016.7 See Hartsock 4-5.

7

what country he is from. “For the first time it occurs to him [Richard] that the Africans really don’t

care about the borders drawn by the European powers. Recently, as he was looking up the

capital cities, he noted the border lines in the atlas, straight as an arrow, but it wasn’t clear to

him until now how lines like that reveal the arbitrariness of it all” (66).8

Or should the critic find some entry to the aesthetic through Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters

from Weimar Classicism, a period so named as it too harkens back to the harmonies and ideals

of Greek antiquity? Richard recites the beginning of Faust, as he nervously listens to African

migrants introduce themselves and their histories at a migrant/community meeting in Kreuzberg,

seeking some reassurance in his insecurity there by the bedrock familiarity of his culture: “I have

alas studied philosophy . . . .” (36-37). In his Letters, Schiller looks to the aesthetic as the

mediating corrective to, and at the same time connective between, the super-rationalism of the

Enlightenment and the super-emotional excesses of the French Revolution, through which we

not only can discover and create an integrated human nature, but are also able to transfer that

integration to the organization of the state, something that frees the individual within society to

make ethical decisions consistent with the dignity of our humanity.9 In such a light, the aesthetic

aspects of Erpenbeck’s novel can free us, on the one hand, from the irrational response of our

emotions to the migrant crisis, visceral and defensive responses to the flood of migrants

overwhelming Europe or even the overly-optimistic “We can do this” empathic, open-door policy

that follows from viewing photographs of a child washed ashore on a Turkish beach. “What’s a

refugee doing with a laptop anyway, the one neighbor thinks. Then it must be one of the men

who deal drugs in the park around the corner, the other neighbor thinks” (39), opinionated

reactions to a migrant screaming that his laptop has been stolen at the community/migrant

8 “Zum ersten Mal kommt ihm der Gedanke, dass die von Europäern gezogenen Grenzen die Afrikaner eigentlich gar nichts angehen. Kürzlich hat er, als er die Hauptstädte gesucht hat, wieder die schnurgeraden Linien im Atlas gesehen, aber erst jetzt wird ihm klar, welche Willkür da sichtbar wird an so einer Linie“ (66)9 One might explore more modern re-conceptions of this idea, for example in Elliott and Turner’s understanding of society not as structure or solidarity but as creation.

8

meeting. Or Richard’s impulsive I-can-fix-this gift of €3,000 to fulfill Karon’s dream of purchase

a farm in Ghana (275ff). On the other hand, the aesthetic can temper the super-rationalism of

the Rechtsstaat, where individual cases are decided by rulings of abstract law, unmoved by

exception or compassion to put mercy before justice, the option once available to autocrats and

kings. The rule of law prohibits the migrants from demonstrating against another relocation,

because they have not submitted answers to three questions required by official ordinances: “1)

Who is applying for the demonstration, 2) What is the route, and 3) What is the motto?” (265).

By placing such examples in an aesthetic context, a novel can offer us a place of freedom to

experience, evaluate, and experiment with the immediate social challenges that confront us

within a fictional frame

With his retirement, Richard is starting to live according to Schiller’s ideal, transferring

the aesthetic from the realm of philosophy into his everyday life. He has learned the way to

slice an onion so that it doesn’t slip off the knife while he’s cutting: “there’s an ideal way of doing

everything, in everyday life, at work, in art . . . the art of slicing an onion” (24).10 Widowed and

alone he can live this way, no one is there to criticize or make fun of him for it, as his former

lover used to do. He may, unimpeded, strive to live in harmony with the world around him and

enjoy that life. Within the novel, this new freedom certainly opens him to new learning, for

example, an otherwise unmotivated desire to get to know and assist the migrants.

Nevertheless, Erpenbeck is no Pollyanna in this regard and acknowledges the struggle

between cultivating such an aesthetic harmony and simply reverting to the comfort of routines

determined by the culturally transmitted order. The sense of security they provide are difficult to

abandon, can hinder new learning, and resist change. Richard still writes his shopping lists

according to how the groceries are arranged in the store and the narrator quickly exposes how

10 Richard’s aesthetic experience here also conforms with the properties of Tom Leddy’s “everyday aesthetics,” which he describes as “neither wholly objective nor wholly subjective. They are properties of experienced things, not of physical objects abstracted from our experienced world.” (7)

9

enduring such fastidious attention to order and security can be, commenting: “And on his death

bed, he will know in which aisle they stack the beer” (72). The appearance of the migrants in

Richard’s world makes his idea of harmony with a static set of conditions no longer tenable, and

he, like the reader, must make decisions about their routines and cultural practices. Where

Germans used to know what to do on the Oranienplatz: relax on the park benches, have their

lunch or a beer break, rock their baby carriages, feed the sparrows, walk hand-in-hand with their

lovers, now, since the migrants arrived, none of that seems right: “Since the blacks began

camping out on the lawns, those things one used to take for granted, like sitting on a bench, are

no longer taken for granted” (46).11 Yet, as he sits on the park bench observing the migrants

and taking notes, the aesthetic modification of the order Richard has enjoyed also allows him

new insights and allows initial stirrings of interaction and mingling. He delights in perhaps

retitling his essay on the migrants “A Transformation in Sitting.” Although the usual cultural

practices are gone, he sits on the park bench regardless. As he looks at the migrants, a second

title occurs to him: “The Birth of Regardless.” In his aesthetic discovery about slicing onions, he

notes that it makes him feel one with a world outside himself, something that opens him to that

world, in this case, the camping migrants. “Finding pleasure in an order of things,” we are told

about Richard, “something not of his creation but something to be discovered, something apart

from him and precisely for that reason connecting him with those things that grow, fly or float,

something that in fact separates him from many people, but he doesn’t care about that” (25).12

This is the function of the aesthetic here in this Tatsachenroman.

While Richard may be striving toward a Schillerean aesthetic within the novel, the reader

experiences a more conventional aesthetic through the craft of writing itself, namely

Erpenbeck’s story-telling. No news report would afford us the pleasure dramatic irony as here 11 “Das selbstverständliche Sitzen auf einer Parkbank hat durch die schwarzhäutigen Menschen, die auf den Grünflächen hinter den Bänken kampieren, aufgehört, etwas Selbstverständliches zu sein.“ 12 In describing the role of the aesthetic in narrative literary journalism, Hartsock notes that „ . . . the varieties of aesthetic experience do not necessarily have to confirm existing shared (and abstract) values, and therein lies . . . a subversive nature to the genre.” (5)

10

where the narrator calls our attention to the hunger strike on the Alexanderplatz while our main

character hurries past without noticing, or when we learn what a reluctant Apollo is withholding

in his answers to Richard’s interview questions (67-68). A sensationalist talk show host would

certainly cite the ransacking of Richard’s home as a sign of what happens when you befriend a

migrant but none would then introduce unresolved doubt and nuance in the viewer’s mind about

the migrant Osarobo’s guilt through a wonderful scene where Richard, amidst wondering if the

break-in had been his own fault by bringing the migrants into his home, surfs the internet,

randomly lands on “Probability” (ironic in its own right), proceeds to click on Schrödinger’s cat

(alive or dead or both?), and then on multiple universes (simultaneity or statistical likelihood?),

all the while wondering if his being away, delivering a paper at an academic conference, was

the cause of the break-in or whether it had saved him from personal harm (318-22). Through

storytelling one can linger in the enjoyment of the storyteller’s craft, fully apart from the serious

matters that elsewhere might elicit only casual interest, self-righteousness, or impersonal

legalism.

The Trope of Visibility

But I want to focus on an aesthetic dimension of greater structural significance for the

novel, one that dominates the narrative, namely the trope of visibility. I believe Erpenbeck’s use

of visibility is central to understanding the value added by the aesthetic to the politically charged

migrant debate and central to unlocking the way to move forward in interpretation. Erpenbeck

employs the trope in remarkably creative ways not only to give the reader pleasure in their

discovery, but also to indicate the interconnectedness and mutuality of the efforts that must be

undertaken if the migrant crisis will be addressed through personal resolve and action.

11

Two major narrative moments establish the centrality of “becoming visible” from the

outset.13 The first intrudes into the introduction of Richard as a character, his obsession with the

drowning of a tourist in the lake behind his home that summer, more accurately, with his anxiety

about the moment the body will resurface and become visible again (11). References to the

decomposing corpse suddenly and repeatedly appear in the narrative at unexpected moments,

mimicking the presence of an ongoing fear that continually interrupts the course of our daily

lives. The second appears as a motto on a sign alongside the asylum seekers on the

Alexanderplatz, “We become visible” and underneath for non-English-speakers, “Wir werden

sichtbar” (23). It characterizes the strivings of the migrants throughout the novel to be seen in

the daily life and conscience of everyday Germans. Visibility for the asylum seekers takes the

form of public protest here and later, when the group is scheduled for relocation to Buckow

(101), but becomes more personal for Richard when individuals begin to reveal their personal

histories to him in his interviews, and becomes more intimate when they begin visiting him, and

culminates when they are even living with him in his home.

13 A good example of “becoming visible” in the visual arts is found in the art of California painter, Ramiro Gomez. Here, No Splash (2013), Gomez’ version of David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash (1967), which reveals the domestic workers who labor behind the scenes to enable the southern Californian life of the well-to-do, however vacant that life might be.

A Bigger Splash, Hockney (1967) No Splash, Gomez (2013)

12

The first part of the trope deals with Richard’s willingness and ability to see things

around him, the second, the ability and willingness of the migrants to be seen. Visibility is a

two-way street, a type of epistemology where there are contingencies on both the object and the

subject. The object must come to light, become visible – here, as individuals, through a

willingness to publically expose traits, behaviors, and personal histories - and the subject must

be in a position to see and understand what one is seeing - here, associating at first what one

sees and learns from the migrants with what one superficially knows and later with more

substantive cultural and personal knowledge whereby their sufferings and trauma can be known

and seen deeply empathetically. The success of any interaction between them then depends

on the visibility of one and the ability of the other to see. In this study I wish to focus on

individual actions and decisions that make this possible, rather than broad social forces that

may hinder or alter it, for example the media and governmental regulation.14 Richard first learns

of the migrant hunger strike through the news, but resists an honest response to what he sees,

knowing how manipulative the media can be: he distrusts the sincerity of the reporter and the

validity of the video being shown. In their shelter, the visibility of the migrants is physically

restricted by the supervisors and security guards, few visitors are allowed and the migrants

rarely leave; once granted admission and permission to interview the migrants, Richard is

advised to conduct his interviews there, not outside, not where the migrants will be seen.

Becoming Visible

How do the migrants become visible to Germans? Stories like Gehen, ging gegangen

present us with behavior and events where migrants become recognizable as individuals,

situations they face as individuals and where readers may sympathize with, disapprove of, and

make moral judgments about the migrants in disinterested ways, all of which serves as a

14 In her study of Virginia Woolf, Claudia Olk takes a similar approach: “This study will not be concerned with vision as a vehicle of the dominant social ideology or a subversive articulation of competing discourses, but with vision and its potentialities as a metaphor, a process, and a formal and structural means of creating narrative reality and perceptual cognition in literature” (7).

13

background or playground and prepares us to act and judge when reader/citizens confront

similar individuals, events, and histories in their own lives. This phenomenon or function of

literature occurs within Gehen, ging, gegangen repeatedly, as Richard gets to know the African

migrants as a group during the hunger strike and as individuals in the shelter. It is a

contemporary epistemic journey from no knowledge, to mediated knowledge, to direct

knowledge gained through his personal experience of people and events.

From a passive form of visibility in the German consciousness as seen in their camp on

the Oranienplatz, the migrants seek active visibility in the German conscience with their hunger

strike on the Alexanderplatz: “We become visible.” The well-intentioned and sympathetic

reporter, however, cannot convince the migrants to give up their names. Too much visibility, it

seems - the visibility of individuality - can be risky. And indeed, as we learn later, the authorities

do not treat these migrants from Africa via Libya via Italy via Switzerland as a group, but as

individual cases - on the one hand, legitimately so as one would expect from any Rechtsstaat,

but on the other, dealing with an individual is a strategy by which the state can take action.

Richard muses: “in terms of physics, to break a group into individual cases is surely a smart

thing to do” (171) – and later when the migrants are told to vacate their shelter in Berlin, he also

realizes how the visibility of individuals serves the interests of the state: “Richard had not

understood until now why the migrants had to provide their names before the Senate would sign

the [relocation] agreement. How can you enter someone’s name on an eviction list, unless you

know what it is?” (257-58). Richard notes the irony or paradox of the migrant strategy of limited

visibility when he learns on the evening news that the strike had ended, the hunger-strikers

removed from the Alexanderplatz, the migrants again invisible, the “We become visible” sign in

some trash can: “Too bad, he thought. He had found the idea of becoming visible by not

revealing your name publicly, quite amusing” (31). This bit of irony, however, may have peeked

his interest about the whereabouts of these particular migrants and, seeking and finding

information that they are camped out on Oranienplatz in Kreuzberg, he decides to attend a

14

community/migrant meeting scheduled there. Richard sees the migrants again, personally this

time, but in a clever narrative parallel to the boldness and anxiety of the hunger strikers, that is

the desire to become visible and exposed while remaining invisible and safe, Richard, fearful he

will be unmasked as an outsider and asked to leave, decides to remain silent when it’s his turn

to introduce himself (37). In fact, he ironically leaves the room and escapes when the

opportunity presents itself in order to keep his identity and name secret and, like the hungers

strikers, becomes invisible again. Visibility in unfamiliar surroundings is risky for anyone, here

psychologically for Richard rather than politically.

Mutual visibility, however, does finally occur after the dissolution and relocation of the

Oranienplatz camp to a shelter near Richard’s home. Richard cloaks his personal visibility by

appearing there in the familiar and safe role of impersonal observer, a researcher conducting

interviews with the migrants for a book project (notably, as did Erpenbeck for this book project).

Of the migrants, most agree to interviews, becoming individuals with personal characteristics

and histories, some, as Apollo and Osarobo, skeptical and reluctant to divulge much about

themselves (67, 121), others, as Awad (Tristan), over-eager, claiming one should hide nothing if

one seeks acceptance in a country or with a person (73). In the interviews, the migrants

become individuals with names and personal histories, almost exclusively ones of loss and

trauma: deprivation as children; the experience of war, violence, terrorism; loss of parents and

loved ones; flight from one’s home, dependency on unscrupulous traffickers; dangerous

crossings of the Mediterranean, witnesses to further death by drownings; humiliating and

unpredictable lives in refugee camps; and finally arrival in Germany – these narratives, a part of

the education Richard as well as Erpenbeck’s readers receive through the mediation of her

novel. The visibility of the migrants appears in increasingly intimate spheres for Richard, until

they literally become part of his daily life. What began with Richard not noticing their presence

as he walked across the Alexanderplatz, was first mediated by news reports, became a fleeting

encounter at the community-migrant meeting in Kreuzberg, took shape in brief interviews in the

15

neighborhood shelter, then in a café nearby, then on the evening where “the thin one with the

broom” (Karon) entered Richard’s home, telling his story, cleaning the hallway, collecting dirt on

the carpet, leaning his broom up against the bookshelf reserved for “German Classics,” and

sweeping the staircase leading up to Richard’s guestroom - all in Richard’s fantasy and

conscience (135-45), progressed to where Richard is inviting selected migrants to his home for

dinner and distraction (Apollo, piano player [Osarobo] and Rufu 173), and finally ended where

he decides to offer room in his house for twelve of the evicted migrants facing imminent

deportation (326ff.).

The Ability to See

A key to the epistemic journey in the novel, marked by the stages in Richard’s ability to

actually see what is visible to him, is offered to readers through a misunderstanding. In telling

Richard: “They have to find something to do with all their free time,” the attractive Ethiopian

German teacher at the shelter is simply explaining to Richard why the migrants come to class at

all. But the German original: “Ihre Zeit muss mit irgendetwas gefüllt sein,” is ambiguous and

Richard immediately, wishfully, and mistakenly takes the German third-person plural pronoun

(they) for the like-sounding formal (you), believing that the young woman may be flirting with

him, inviting him to spend his free time teaching alongside her: “You have to do something with

all your free time.” Embarrassed for himself, Richard reflects on the nature of communication

and misunderstanding: “Basically, if one wants to understand what someone means or says,

one already has to know what someone means or says” (94-95).15 The insight explains how

Richard has been trying to relate to the migrants from the beginning, how they have become

visible, understandable to him.

Martha Nussbaum contends in Cultivating Humanity that those wishing to advance

beyond parochial identities and to embrace world citizenship must abandon attempts to

15 “Wenn man verstehen will, was einer meint oder sagt, muss man im Grunde das, was er meint oder sagt, immer schon wissen.” (94-95)

16

understand the other through what they already know and instead put themselves in the shoes

of the other. This transformative change of perspective is particularly difficult in that “we always

bring ourselves and our own judgments to the encounter . . . we inevitably will not merely

identify; we will also judge [their stories] in the light of our own goals and aspirations” (11). And

indeed, we make our goals and aspirations theirs as well. I choose Nussbaum as a reference

not arbitrarily, for she focuses on the lessons we moderns can learn from ancient Greek and

Roman philosophy and literature, the specialty of our main character, in opening ourselves to

others. Understandably, Richard first relates the unknown things he sees and hears to the

Western European cultural base that has defined his life.

Richard’s journey to the kind of knowledge and understanding of the African migrants

that Nussbaum advocates begins from a state of ignorance. Hurrying to make his train, he

walks past the hunger strikers on the Alexanderplatz without seeing them at all, not unlike the

vast majority of others around him that afternoon (23). First awareness of the African hunger

strikers comes to him when he watches the news that evening, knowledge of his non-immediate

surroundings entering his life through the mediation of television journalism, the sign We

become visible in the background. So why hadn’t he seen them? Although his first reaction to

the hunger strike, as with all the mediated suffering that television brings into his home from all

corners of the world, is defensive – Richard is not going to stop eating just because they have

stopped eating; he starved as a child at the end of WWII and he doesn’t need to experience that

again – the sign and what it means troubles him. He is intrigued by the curious paradox of

seeking visibility while remaining anonymous and it reminds him of a similar event in the

Odyssey: to escape captivity Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name is “No one.”16 Prompted by

his curiosity and reassured by the classical analogy, he takes the first active step to see the

16 see also p. 73 where Awad (Tristan) tells him that migrants must be totally honest and open if they expect to be accepted in a place. Richard thinks about Nobody Odysseus and his escape.

17

migrants in person on their own grounds, the migrant camp on the Oranienplatz, not far away

(43).

The process of seeing, of knowing the other, the migrant, begins for Richard in a non-

verbal realm. He first notes individuals through differences in their physical characteristics (the

tall one, the one wearing sneakers) or behavior (the one who rides a bike, the one with the

broom), things he recognizes, can identify with, remember. As further memory aid he begins to

give the migrants nicknames: an especially handsome African becomes Apollo (66); a

particularly powerful, intemperate one, “the Hurler of Thunderbolts,” Zeus (“der

Blitzeschleuderer" 98); the Ethiopian German instructor in the shelter becomes Astraia, the

virgin-goddess of justice (96); the one wearing golden tennis shoes becomes Hermes, an

association with the wing-footed Greek god, also known as the god of transitions and

boundaries (i.e. migrants?) (44). Or is it with the shoe manufacturer? As Richard moves from

simple observation to recording their personal lives via interviews, his nicknaming continues. A

migrant from room 2020 introduces himself as Awad, but upon learning that his mother died with

his childbirth Richard thinks of Blanscheflur’s death at Tristan’s birth (75). The narrator

explains: “Richard finds it difficult to remember the strange names of the Africans and so when

he writes up his notes in the evening he changes Awad to Tristan, and the young man from the

day before yesterday becomes Apollo. That way he recognizes them later“ (84).17 And to justify

or explain his growing sympathy for the migrants he recalls that Goethe’s Iphigenia was also an

emigrant, on Tauris (82). When Osarobo tells him all he wants to do is work, but is not allowed

to, Richard “thinks about how Mozart’s Tamino was tested and at every door he tries to open

he’s prevented from going forward: Back!” (125).18 In some ways a paradigmatic educated

middle class German with firmly embedded daily routines and a career where he taught and

explicated German and Western European culture reaching back to the classics, things that 17 “Es fällt Richard schwer, sich die fremden Namen der Afrikaner zu merken, und so verwandelt er, als er abends seine Notizen aufschreibt, Awad in Tristan, und den Jungen von vorgestern in Apoll.” (84)18 “Richard denkt daran, wie Mozarts Tamino geprüft wird, und ihn bei jeder Tür, die er öffnen will, eine Stimme vom Weitergehen abhält: Zurück!“ (125)

18

open seemingly unbridgeable gaps between him and the migrants culturally, Richard uses his

vast knowledge of Greek mythology, German medieval and Classical literature to gain initial

access to the individual persons of the migrants, personalizing them by giving them temporary

identities as Greek or German heroes. Literary texts not only provide examples of similar

behavior, personality traits, and personal histories but also enable Richard to begin to

distinguish and remember individual migrants from an impersonal grouping.

Richard’s next step is at once a bold and a careful one: interaction with individual

migrants by conducting personal interviews for a book project. He begins to see these lives

almost in spite of himself. The scholarly approach is a safe, impersonal way to get to know

another human being, whereby Richard as researcher can almost disappear from the process,

much as he chose to do at that first encounter in the Kreuzberg community meeting. Richard

constructs a list of questions he will ask them, as any field researcher would do to ensure

scholarly credibility in the gathering and interpretation of data (52). Many of the questions,

however, reveal the cultural bias we had seen earlier, a curious mixture of things typically part of

life in Europe and stereotypes of a more primitive African culture, e.g. where did your parents

meet, what did the house look like you grew up in, did you have a television, any pets, did you

attend school, etc. All this leads to an embarrassingly insensitive adherence to protocol when it

becomes contextually fully inappropriate. After learning that Rashid (the Hurler of Thunderbolts)

and Zair almost drowned on their crossing from Libya to Lampedusa, he still asks what their

favorite hiding place was as children (61). The Libyan war and the death of his father have so

traumatized Awad (Tristan) that he is beset with splitting headaches after relating these things

during his interview, but “the elderly gentleman, who is very polite, but maybe also crazy”

nevertheless asks him what he has packed to take to the new shelter (165).

The migrants become more visible to Richard through their stories, stories that teach

him things he records in his notebook at night (docere), but which also allow him to see the

migrants more intimately, something powerful enough to motivate him to action (movere). He

19

leaves behind the impersonality of scholarly research and begins to actively assist the migrants

with their German, with their legal affairs, and with access to a better life in Germany. By his

doing so is evidence of a shift from his viewing the migrants as figures in the news or products

of textbook histories but individuals he knows and must interact with in an actual, purposeful,

and ethical way. Although his initial actions may be cumbersome, something I will elaborate on

later, he, for example, brings Osarobo home with him to fulfill his dream of one day playing the

piano. He invites Italian-speaking Rufu, who has loaned him €20 in the grocery store, to dinner

and to read The Divine Comedy in his library in the original, he accompanies Karon to the local

precinct to correct his passport picture, explains to Ithemba what the designation “tolerance”

means at the migrant attorney’s office. His intervention, prompted by his sharpened ability to

see, intensifies to where, after many of his new migrant acquaintances have been evicted from

the shelter in Berlin, he agrees to take twelve into his home and provide them shelter there

(330ff).

I would like to return now to the second initial and central metaphor of visibility and

invisibility in the novel: the drowning of the swimmer in the lake behind Richard’s house. The

body never resurfaces but remains ever-present in Richard’s mind, the trauma of the event and

its aftermath upsetting the calm and beauty of a view he has always enjoyed, always just below

the surface throughout the novel: “Richard really has to guard against going mad. Maybe he’ll

feel better once the dead man is finally found” (17)19 or “He has a view of the lake from his desk.

The lake is beautiful, as in all other summers, but that’s not the final word this summer. So long

as the dead man isn’t found and taken away, the lake will belong to him” (17-18).20 Like a bad

memory it can be sparked into consciousness by the most innocent moments of everyday life.

Richard comes upon a bin of goggles while shopping (31); the swimmer had been wearing

19 “Richard muss wirklich aufpassen, dass er nicht irre wird. Vielleicht wird es ihm besser gehen, wenn der Tote endlich gefunden ist.“ (17)20 „Er kann von seinem Schreibtisch aus auf den See sehen. Schön sit der See, so wie in den anderen Sommern, aber damit ist es in diesem Sommer nicht nicht getan. Der See gehört, solange der Tote nicht gefunden und weggebracht ist, diesem Toten.“ (17-18)

20

goggles (17). Or it can reappear prompted by nothing at all. While Richard notes what days the

migrants will come to his home that week, memory of the dead man suddenly interrupts his

thoughts: “The dead man is still in the lake, if he is not fully decomposed by now” (174).

The circumstances of the drowning induce its translation into a metaphor for the lingering effects

of traumatic rise of Nazism in Germany’s political past: others, in boats nearby, not

understanding the gravity of the situation or perhaps not wanting to be pulled under too, simply

watched and did nothing to prevent the drowning, and in the investigation afterward did not

come forward, remain unidentified onlookers (12).21 Additionally, one can sense a hint of

Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” in Richard’s criticism of the head of the local angler’s club

constantly referring to the fact that the drowned man was wearing goggles. “Googles! As if this

detail was the hardest thing to comprehend about the drowning” (17).22

To explore this metaphor further let me refer to David Kim’s thesis in a new book

manuscript, Parables for World Citizenship, which argues that several contemporary German

novels, namely Hans Christoph Buch’s Rede des toten Kolumbus am Tag des Jüngsten

Gerichts, Michael Krüger’s Himmelfarb, and W.G. Sebald’s Die Ringe des Saturn, have

explored a path to world citizenship for post-unification Germans through the commonality of

trauma, both personal and historical-cultural, that they share with others who have undergone

loss and suffering. Kim shows that the melancholy experienced by characters in the aftermath

of loss in these novels, however, does not, as in Freud’s definition of the pathology, prevent

them from interacting creatively with their contemporary surroundings. On the contrary, the

experience of personal and cultural loss and trauma enables a creative turn to empathy with the

commonalities among humans, regardless of cultural background, and to a sense of world

citizenship. Gehen, ging, gegangen can be added to Kim’s list of exemplary novels, with one 21 the reaction of the boaters, at once not seeing the extremity of the drowning man and then not wanting to be seen themselves, not wanting to be involved with the trauma, parallels Richard’s initial role in the other major visibility image in the novel: he fails to see the hunger strikers on the Alexanderplatz and later flees the migrant meeting in the Kreuzberg schoolhouse for fear of having to give his name.22 „Mit einer Taucherbrille! Als sei gerade dieses Detail das am schwesten zu ertragende an dem Sterben des Schwimmers . . . .“ (17)

21

caveat. Where Kim’s analysis deals with a propositional path to world citizenship and German

solidarity with suffering and oppressed peoples, one that is imagined through historical memory

and fantasy between the covers of early 90’s novels, Erpenbeck’s Tatsachenroman written

twenty years later deals with current events. The immediacy in time and place means that

European readers can act on their responses to a work where a heightened sense of trauma in

their own cultural history can lead to a commitment to world citizenship through a commonality

and empathy with migrants suffering loss and trauma, people living in their own backyard.23

Specifically, Kim writes of the historical traumas of Colonialism, Nazism, and Soviet

Communism, each the result of hyper-rationalism and a centralizing power to control and

eliminate foreign and related threats to the existence and health of the in-group: the Eurocentric

righteousness of Colonialism and the subjugation of indigenous peoples for its own benefit and

the legalization of atrocity and mass incarceration and killings under Hitler and Stalin. That the

Colonial, the National Socialist, and the Communist are determinant in Gehen, ging, gegangen

and form a historical continuum can be seen in the mention of an architectural palimpsest,

where, in considering that the Oranienplatz, the site of the migrant camp, was constructed

during colonial times, the narrator notes that on many old GDR buildings one can see faded

inscribed lettering indicating that here “colonial wares” were sold above a cardboard sign in a

window indicating a “Fruit, Vegetables and Potatoes” shop, a state-run chain during GDR times,

all pockmarked up and down with shrapnel damage from WWII (49).

Erpenbeck’s main character, as the author herself, grew up in East Germany and thus

the places, objects and people he encounters only 25 years after unification regularly elicit

memories of a former, lost life: shelter furniture salvaged from GDR schools, “OK” signaling the

same access as Wsjo w porjadkje had done when he showed his papers at Russian control

points in the past (58), buying his groceries at what he knew to be a “self-service mart” instead

23 As Nussbaum points out, the ability to feel compassion throughout the whole of Western humanistic tradition includes “the sense of one’s own vulnerability to misfortune. . . . Compassion, so understood, promotes an accurate awareness of our common vulnerability” (91).

22

of a “supermarket,” living on a street once named after the communist martyr to National

Socialism, Ernst Thälmann, but now cleansed of that past. These GDR memories, however,

are related without romanticism - no “Ostalgie” here – and without condemnation – no Stasi, no

shortage of consumer goods. Thus, the memory of a lost life in the GDR resembles the

melancholy of indefinite, unfocused loss that Kim speaks of, without a clear sense of trauma. In

many respects, what Erpenbeck relates in her ARD interview regarding the lesson of social

change can be applied to her use of all the references to the GDR in her novel, a simple

transition from one historical period to the next: “Perhaps we are entering a completely new

historical period. We never think about that happening, that history can change. We always

think it remains the same.” That the people, values, and traditions that hold sway over a certain

piece of geographical space are never fixed characteristics and change with time, and are most

clearly reflected in alterations and repurposing of the built environment of their civilization is the

core idea of her 2007 novel Heimsuchung.

The traumatic elements of the other two historical German epochs, however, are

presented more explicitly. Especially in the first sections of the novel one finds information

about the German colonies (a recitation of facts not uncommon in this Tatsachenroman) and

how Richard experienced their legacy. As part of his desire to understand the situation of the

African migrants, Richard picks up a reference book in his personal library and reads how Adolf

Lüderitz signed an agreement with a local chieftain in the 1880’s, exchanging guns for land, and

how German political posturing against England led Bismarck to protect Lüderitz’s private

interest there and establish a colony (53). Of significance for the value added by the aesthetic

here are several narrative comments on Richard’s reading. First, at the same time he learns

about Lüderitz, the connection is made to the present: the Berlin Senate is signing an

agreement with the African migrants to vacate the Oranienplatz and move them to designated

winter shelters elsewhere in the city. Second, he shakes his head in dismay at the colonial

23

mentality of amassing capital gain at the expense of the locals and remembers from his

classical education Walther von der Vogelweide’s Reichsspruch I, where head in hand, the poet

similarly laments that honorable action, wealth, and God’s blessing can never occupy the same

space at one time. And finally, he asks himself what good is head-shaking disapproval in the

solitude of his study? He can no longer even communicate the lessons he is learning to

students. The questionable value of obtaining knowledge, understanding it, relating it to one’s

life, and choosing an appropriate response is beautifully depicted in a few images on one page

of the novel. How to reestablish that value, of course, prompts a new response from Richard:

his active intervention in the plight of the migrants.24

The legacy of Colonialism is apparent in Richard’s memories of his childhood in the

GDR and in some of the language used to refer to the Africans: a book in his library from his

student years Negro Literature (33-35), a memory of Hatschi Bratschi’s Hot-air Balloon being

read to him as a child with its images of cannibals with bones in their hair, a reference to an

African at the community-migrant meeting as a “poor black devil” (“armen schwarzen Teufel”

39), and another at the shelter to the “blackies“ (“Schwarzi” 121). When Karon tells him the

Ghanaian king must first approve Richard’s purchase of a farm there for his family, Richard

imagines him to be “a chieftain with a spear in his hand and clanging ankle bracelets” (278).

But while remnants of colonialism are still with him, as they are on the fading paint of “Colonial

Wares” on the side of the building, Richard has learned to be critical: to shake his head on

reading about Lüderitz, to know that “Negro Literature” is no longer PC, to note that new

editions of Hatschi Batschi no longer contain references to cannibals, to think that Karon’s king

must really be wearing the soccer jersey of Barcelona if he has any real power, and, most

clearly, to link contemporary German bureaucracy with colonial bureaucracy as a tool of

oppression: “A few days ago he had seen the term ‘bureaucratic geometry’ used in the book of 24 Richard’s commitment to making his knowledge relevant, that is acting on his knowledge and insights, adds a motivational role to the significance Nussbaum assigns to Classical knowledge and the subsequent understanding that the arts in general provide. See p. 85ff.

24

a historian about the effects of colonialization. The colonized peoples were choked to death on

bureaucracy. Not the most unrefined strategy to prevent them from taking political action”

(64).25 Thus, like the dead man in the lake, present but below the surface, colonial remnants are

still there but buried and obscure. As Richard seeks them out and uncovers them, he is able to

deal with them critically and incorporate a newly won understanding of the exploitation and

prejudice into his views of the African migrants.

Gehen, ging, gegangen as a Lehrstück can also be seen in Richard’s discussion about

the legacy of colonialism on a walk with his friends: “And as they stroll past pine trees and

oaks . . . Richard tells to his friends Detlef and Sylvia, who probably don’t even know where

Niger is, about the French company Areva, that has the [uranium] mining monopoly and dumps

its waste where the Tuareg [the aboriginal nomads in the region] used the graze their camels”

(181-82).26 Readers, as Detlef and Sylvia, learn in a few pages about the continuing

exploitation of the region, about the Tuareg insurgency against the French puppet government,

about the subsequent massacre, and how the nuclear plants generating electric power for

France and Germany are dependent on these very exports from Areva. German readers are

also reminded that an innocuous but significant part of their culture is related to this discussion,

however hidden and vague: FC Nürnberg wears jerseys bearing the logo of its sponsor, Areva

(183).

The legacy of the Nazi dictatorship also lies below the surface in the novel, becoming visible

occasionally in narrative allusions or Richard’s thoughts. The trauma and loss of the millions

murdered are still present in Richard’s everyday life, for he sees them and their lost progeny

25 „Bürokratische Geometrie, diesen Begriff hat er vor einigen Tagen in dem Buch eines Historikers über die Auswirkungen des Kolonialismus gelesen. Die Kolonisierten wurden durch Bürokratie erstickt. Gar nicht der ungeschickteste Weg, sie am politischen Handeln zu hindern.“ (64)26 “Und während sie an Kiefern und Eichen vorbeigehen, . . . erzählt Richard seinen Freunden Detlef und Sylvia, die wahrscheinlich nicht einmal wissen, wo genau Niger liegt, vom französischen Staatskonzern Areva, der das Monopol für die Minen hält und seine Müll dorthin kippt, wo die Tuareg bisher ihre Kamleweiden hatten.“ (181-82)

25

haunting the streets and cafes around him: “All those Germans murdered during the so-called

Third Reich still inhabit Germany as ghosts, they and their unborn children and grandchildren all

absent, but still walking the streets beside him on their way to work or friends, sitting invisible in

cafes, taking walks, shopping, visiting parks and theaters. Gehen, ging, gegangen” (274).27

Ostensibly, the distractions of history, ones that eventually lead to buried memories of Nazi

barbarism, comprise the reason why at the first pivotal juncture of the novel Richard does not

see the migrant hunger strike on the Alexanderplatz. As he unknowingly walks past the

migrants, he is thinking about his archeologist friend Peter’s dig nearby and the subterranean

markets that once flourished under the Rotes Rathaus. His mind then jumps to Rzeszów,

Poland, a place he visited as a GDR tourist. Underground passageways there similarly housed

an underground market, which, he then recalls, were also used as a hiding place by Jews

during the Nazi occupation, after which, he recalls, the Nazis found and killed them, just like, he

then recalls, refocusing on his current surroundings, the Nazis did by flooding subway tunnels

near the Alexanderplatz to punish certain Berliners who were fleeing rather than fighting the

Soviet Army to the last man, woman, and child. Later, on his way home, he is distracted by the

TV tower and the Jupiter Fountain, places from his childhood, days full of the promise of

socialism, a communal or communist culture now lost. History is connecting with history upon

history and with reflections of personal loss, all conspiring to prevent Richard from seeing the

hunger strikers or their sign, “We become visible” (19-22). Peter, who has spent a career

unearthing things from the past, later tells Richard about finding a statue from the Degenerate

Art Exhibit in 1937 at the medieval dig on the Alexanderplatz - things occasionally get lumped

together. Richard muses silently that “the earth is rather like a garbage dump, different epochs

fall on top of one another in the dark, . . . and progress occurs only when those walking on the

27 “ . . . „dass all diejenigen Deutschen, die während des sogenannten Dritten Reiches umgebracht wurden, Deutschland als Geister immer bewohnen, all die Fehlenden und auch deren ungeborene Kinder und Kindeskinder gehen, . . . neben ihm auf der Strasse, sind unterwegs zur Arbeit oder zu Freunden, sitzen unsichtbar in den Cafés, spazieren, kaufen ein, besuchen Parks und Theater. Gegen ging, gegangen.“ (274)

26

earth know absolutely nothing about it” (30).28 This assessment also reflects his fear about the

dead body suddenly resurfacing behind his home. Better that the event and its effects remain

invisible, be kept secret so he and others can enjoy themselves “Richard hasn’t ever told an

innocent tourist anything about the accident, why do it, why ruin someone’s day, when all they

want to do is enjoy it” (11).29 This sentiment loops into the narrative again when Richard

mentions Hitler to Osarobo:

“He killed people?”

“Yes, he killed people – but only a few,” Richard adds quickly, for he is already sorry that

he almost got carried away and told this young man, who had just fled the slaughter in

Libya, about the slaughter here. No, Richard will never tell this young man that almost

exactly a generation ago now the mass murder of people was invented in Germany. He

is suddenly so ashamed of this, as if something that everyone in Europe is aware of is

his own personal secret, and not to be shared with anyone else in the world. And then

quickly followed by his own hope, no less powerful, by virtue of the innocence of this

young man, to be transported to a Germany before all that, a Germany already and

forever lost at the time he was born. (149-50)30

But Richard’s desire to learn as much as possible about African history, the nature of his own

scholarly career, and the use he makes of history to understand the present belie his view here 28 „die Erde [ist] eher wie eine Müllhalde, die verschiedenen Zeiten fallen im Dunkeln . . . übereinander her . . . und der Fortschritt besteht immer wieder nur darin, dass die, die auf dieser Erde herumgehen, von alldem nichts wissen.“ (30)29 „Richard hat noch nie so einem Ahnungslosen etwas von dem Unglück gesagt, warum auch, warum jemandem, der nur einen schönen Tag haben will, den Tag verdereben?“ (11)30 „He killed people? Ja, er hat Menschen getötet – aber nur ein paar, sagt Richard schnell, denn schon tut es ihm leid,dieses Jungen selbst noch einmal in ein Deutschland dass er sich beinahe dazu hätte hinreißen lassen, diesem Jungen, der gerade vor dem Schlachten in Libyen gefolhen ist, von Schlachten hier zu erzählen. Nein, Richard wird diesem Jungen nie davon erzählen, dass in Deutschland, gerade mal ein Lebensalter entfernt, das fabrikmäßige Ermorden von Menschen erfunden wurde. Er schämt sich dafür plötzluich so sehr, als sei das, was jeder hier in Europa weiß, sein gnaz persönliches, niemandem auf der Welt zumutbares Geheimnis. Und gleich darauf, um nichts weniger heftig, trifft ihn seine eigene Hoffnung, durch die Ahnungslosigkeit vor alldem versetzt zu werden, das schon, und auf immer, verloren war zur Zeit seiner Geburt.“ (149-50)

27

and it ignores the fact that the decomposing corpse and the eventuality of it resurfacing so

obsesses him that he cannot move forward.

As the novel unfolds, we see that relating the Nazi past to the migrant situation is

precisely what allows him and others to progress toward a cosmopolitan ethic. When the police

remove the Africans from the shelter by force, Richard muses that they will be required to pay

the cost of their own arrest, as was the case in former times when Germany was carting another

group away – an implicit condemnation of such a practice (258-59). When Richard and his

friends provide rooms for the migrants after their petitions for asylum are denied, Marion

reminds her husband that at one time you would be sentenced to death for hiding people like

this (333). Marion’s comments persuade her husband to provide space for “Hermes” (333).

Richard finds a place for Ali, a student in Richard’s advanced German class, in his friend Anne’s

home to help with the care of her aging mother, who, after he arrives, is terribly afraid of him.

Anne agrees with Richard that it is due to her Nazi upbringing (229). While the racial inferiority

of Africans, fueled by social Darwinism in the Third Reich and elsewhere, gave way to solidarity

and exchange with politically sympathetic Angola and Mozambique in GDR times, Germans of

an earlier generation perpetuate National Socialist prejudice and fear.

Erpenbeck’s main character views his affiliation with European cultural history in

complex ways but ones which, in the end, reveal connections with the African migrants and their

own cultural histories of trauma and loss. By examining the legacy of his history, he is able to

move toward an empathic cosmopolitan ethic, best represented perhaps by his action at the

very end of the novel to take twelve migrants into his home, merging their daily routines and

lives with his own. He has also arranged for the same to happen with his close friends. Richard

explicitly points to the relationship between confronting and coming to terms with one’s cultural

past and the development of such an ethic, that is, the successful integration of the African

migrants into German society, in his claim (through the narrator) that: “the Africans certainly had

28

no idea who Hitler was, but nevertheless: only if they survive Germany today, will Hitler have

truly lost the war” (64).31 This integrative result will be achieved far more through this

cosmopolitan consciousness and less through matters of fairness and a resolution of the

migrants’ legal status in Germany: Richard, the Classical scholar and former GDR citizen, notes

that “[t]he transition from before to after follows quite different rules than does reward and

punishment” (119).32 As I mentioned earlier in Erpenbeck’s application of the lake metaphor

(340), these memories of loss and past trauma are not dispelled by their critical dissolution.

Rather, the acknowledgement of their continued presence leads to the possibly of a state of

cultural and historical peace and a creative future.

The critical understanding of instances of one’s own historical cultural trauma, “seeing

them,” enables an empathetic understanding of personal trauma of others, a result that should

not to be viewed in chronological or sequential terms, but rather conceptually. Richard moves

beyond the simple recording of the trauma and loss the migrants experienced in their

homelands and on their journey across the Mediterranean and beyond their loss of dignity he

witnesses in the shelter, to take positive action on this information and actively intervene and

assist them in their lives. In a compelling turn at the end of the novel, there emerges a mutuality

in this understanding and empathy when Richard and his German friends reveal to the migrants

they have taken into their homes, personal traumas of their own: the death of Richard’s wife to

alcoholism, their decision to have an abortion while in college and then never being able to have

children afterward, Detlef’s revelation of the terminal illness of his wife, things previously hidden.

“’Understand,’ Zair says. ‘Understand’” (347). Khahil then relates to these disclosures of things

previously unknown to them via the actual and metaphorical “like on the high seas” (348).33

The novel concludes quickly with a narrative confirmation: “Yes, in principle, exactly like on the

31 „Die Afrikaner wussten bestimmt überhaupt nicht, wer Hitler war, aber dennoch: Nur wenn sie Deutschland jetzt überlebten, hatte Hitler den Krieg wirklich verloren.“ (64)32 „die Aufeinanderfolge von Vorher und Nachher [folgt] oft ganz anderen Gesetzen als denen von Belohnung oder Strafe.“ (119)33 „So, wie auf dem Meer?“ (348)

29

high seas” (348).34 This mutuality is significant in that it further dissolves any sense of European

cultural or personal hegemony over less advantaged, oppressed peoples of the former colonial

world.

The Aesthetics of Ambiguity

I’d like to conclude with the observation that Erpenbeck’s aesthetics motivates readers,

but not necessarily to a particular viewpoint. Her choice of facts and examples in the

Tatsachenroman tend to elicit reader sympathy with the migrants, but they do not push readers

to take on their cause as her main character does. Erpenbeck seeks rather to free her readers

to decide matters for themselves. As with Schiller, the aesthetic functions as a pathway to

freedom. Likewise, Hartsock argues that the subversive nature of narrative literary journalism

lies in the ambiguity that its aesthetic presents regarding cultural norms (5). Erpenbeck

achieves this by a) structural arrangements of narrative elements that reveal ambiguity and

paradox and b) depicting characters who are complex and not exclusively sympathetic. As

mentioned above, Richard can have antiquated views of the Africans, associated with colonial

and Nazi stereotypes. His first reaction to realizing his wallet is missing at the grocery store is

to wonder if Rufu, the migrant behind him in line, has taken it (161). Many of Richard’s

everyday concerns and those of his friends - the pedestrian details of Richard’s routines (e.g. an

egg with breakfast only on Sundays, 32) or perhaps most crassly revealed in the disconnected

snippets of banality in conversations fleetingly overheard at a New Year’s or birthday party of

Richard’s friends (255-56, 339-48) – come across as pathetically trivial, structurally juxtaposed

as they are with the traumas of disorder, violence, chaos, and death experienced by the

migrants.

Although readers who share Richard’s archetypical European perspectives reaching

back to origins of their culture in antiquity may at first believe that Erpenbeck is presenting them

34 „Ja, im Prinzip genauso wie auf dem Meer.“ (348)

30

with a model main character with whom they can identify, Richard’s application of European

humanistic ideals, his desire to be hospitable (as in Kant’s prescriptive), leads by no means to

unambiguously positive decisions or appropriate action on his part. He regularly offers the

migrant interviewees unfamiliar food and drink that they invariably decline. Or at the end of what

he believes to be a failed interview, Richard sees a hopeful sign in Osarobo’s answer to what he

hopes for: he dreams of playing the piano. Inviting him home to play, he learns that Osarobo

has never seen a piano before, but only after he has offered him sheet music of Beethoven and

Bach. Or with Rufu, a migrant who happens to speak Italian, Richard believes he can relate to

him and make his life better by inviting him home where he can read Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Or when Karon tells him of how his family in Ghana could make ends meet if they could only

buy a small plot of land for farming Richard gives him the €3,000 purchase price (275ff), but is

shocked that Karon gets no a proper receipt for the transfer, that property ownership is validated

by oral oaths based on oral tradition passed down through generations, that the king must first

approve the purchase. Richard’s concept of ownership has ruled Germany since the adoption

of Roman law in the late Middle Ages, something totally foreign in Ghana. But the purchase

goes smoothly, despite Richard’s reservations about its pre-modern character. In fact, Richard

is amazed and pleased. From the moment he decided to give Karon the money for the farm

until the moment it belonged to him only 14 hours have elapsed (282), a far cry from the weeks

it took him and his wife to purchase a small plot after unification: the clearance in property

ownership in record books from 1945, the money transfers through banks and escrow, the

various documents and signatures required of him (277).

Richard is not only beginning to see the validity and effectiveness of non-European

traditions but is also accepting their perspectives as his own. A highly instructive use of the

trope of visibility illustrates this very mixing of traditions that fundamentally disrupts the primacy

of Western culture in which he is rooted. As the African migrants become an ever-greater

31

presence in his routine, the interconnections between African and Western cultures become

ever more apparent to him. Surprisingly, they appear in an area most familiar to him: Greek

mythology. Re-reading Herodotus, Richard recognizes, for the first time, the presence of the

nomadic Berber culture in the Greek pantheon. “Much of this . . . he had known virtually his

whole life but not until today are things getting combined in new and different ways. Truly, how

often must one re-learn things one once learned, discover them again and again, how many

layers must one remove until one really understands things to their core?” (177).35 While his

studies had rooted him firmly in a Western cultural tradition, one he had originally superimposed

on the migrants in order to relate to them at all, this knowledge was also infused with

unrecognized realities that opened the possibility and then the discovery and confirmation of a

cosmopolitan connectedness to other peoples and cultures.

The migrants, too, display behaviors not immediately sympathetic, however

understandable. Richard’s first interviews take place in shelter rooms at midday where the

majority of roommates are still asleep on their palettes, an idleness due to unemployment

imposed by immigration authorities. They show little enthusiasm for their German classes,

unmotivated due to an uncertain future in the country and preoccupied as they are with recent

traumas and concern for families left behind. Rashid, the “Hurler of Thunderbolts” is impatient

and tempestuous in his frustration with German bureaucracy. Osarobo forgets about going to

Richard’s to play piano and is still asleep in his room when Richard arrives (145). Later it is

unclear whether Osarobo repays Richard’s kindness by ransacking his home while he is away

at a conference (315ff).

This uncertainty, despite several attempts to ascertain Osarobo’s culpability

surreptitiously, flows into Richard reflecting on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and

35 “Vieles . . . hat er beinahe sein ganzes Leben über gewusst, aber erst heute . . . mischt sich wieder alles anders und neu. Wie oft wohl muss einer das, was er weiß, noch einmal lernen, wieder und wieder entdecken, wie viele Verkleidungen abreißen, bis er die Dinge wirklich versteht bis auf die Knochen?“

32

Schrödinger’s cat (318). Imbedded in this image from quantum physics that in its day

fundamentally challenged the rational, ordered world proposed by the European Enlightenment

science is also the challenge posed by this novel to its readers, wonderfully aesthetically

presented by the writer: in the instability and uncertainty of a culture in flux, infused with new

perspectives, values, and customs, reader/citizens may determine whether that new cultural life

flourishes or whether it is rejected in favor of a wishful return to the traditional, whose conditions

may no longer exist. Can Schrödinger’s cat be suspended between life and death forever?

Not once it becomes visible. It is the choice of the reader/citizens to determine how and when

they decide to see.

In sum, we first met Richard at his home, newly retired and deciding how to relocate and

organize all his office books in bookshelves at home, including the Merseburger Zaubersprüche:

“Bone to bone, blood to blood, so may they be mended,” as he recalls (15), the final verses of a

charm to heal an injury, employing the magical nature of Germanic alliteration and material

affinities, similarly found in Neoplatonic natural magic. In order to heal and make a broken

world whole again one must join together things that are alike. As the novel begins, Richard

arranges his bookshelves exactly so, books side-by-side assembled by literary epochs. This is

not a dialectic view of the world and, on the face of it, a view inimical to the integration of

difference, of the African refugees, into German society and culture: bone to bone, blood to

blood. It also brings to mind another blood image, Jus sanguinis (right of blood), a principle of

nationality law by which citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both

parents who are citizens of that state. Paradoxically, however, Richard’s humanistic training

provides him with an initial point of connection with the lives and stories of the migrants,

ultimately resulting at the end of this Tatsachenroman in the possibility of a healing community

of difference where Tristan, Apollo, the Hurler of Thunderbolts and 9 others occupy the same

33

space with Richard in his home. This possibility is conveyed through the complexities of a

literary aesthetic whereby readers can response but are free to choose how they do so.

The novel ends with the beginning of an experiment, which its readers may choose to

pursue or set aside. Whereas an understanding of commonality in difference has led Richard to

actively embrace certain responsibilities of world citizenship, the aesthetics of the novel have

inscribed a path to that end that is not unambiguous, leaving readers with many ethical issues

unresolved. While “Bone to bone, blood to blood” may no longer serve as the formula to move

forward, Erpenbeck encourages and allows her readers to compose new language most

appropriate for their own individual understandings. Walking to the migrant center earlier in the

novel, Richard is reminded how along the way things have changed in his lifetime, how he must

deal with an altered environment: a grocery store in GDR times is now a branch bank, a

dilapidated house is now a sandlot, and he asks himself what would he be thinking in the future

about the large brick building across the way: “The Africans were once housed here once.

Would he occupy a place in their stories? Perhaps. And would it matter?” (189). An open

question that is posed to the readers as well as to himself.

WORKS CITED (so far)

Apel, Friedmar. „Wir wurden, werden, sind sichtbar.“ Review of Gehen, ging, gegangen by

Jenny Erpenbeck. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 16 Sept. 2015. Web. 6 Apr. 2016.

<http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/buecher/rezensionen/belletristik/gehen-ging-

gegangen-von-jenny-erpenbeck-13770081.html?printPagedArticle=true#pageIndex_2>.

Erpenbeck, Jenny. Gehen, ging, gegangen. München: Knaus, 2015.

34

---. Video interview with Denis Scheck. ARD series: „druckfrisch: neue Bücher mit Denis

Scheck.“ 4 Oct. 2015; available until 03.10.2020. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

<http://www.daserste.de/information/wissen-kultur/druckfrisch/videos/jenny-erpenbeck-

gehen-ging-gegangen-100.html>.

Kermani, Navid. Einbruch der Wirklichkeit: Auf dem Flüchtlingstreck durch Europa. Mit dem

Magnum-Photographen Moises Saman. München: C. H. Beck, 2016.

Hartsock, John C. Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience. Amherst/Boston: U

Massachusetts Press, 2016.

Leddy, Tom. “The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics.” In The Aesthetics of Everyday Life. Ed.

Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith. New York, Columbia U Press, 2005): xx-xx.

Nussbaum, Martha. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard U Press, 1997.

Olk, Claudia. Virginia Woolf and the Aesthetics of Vision. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2014. web

Runciter, Glen. „Keine Literatur.” Customer review of Gehen, ging, gegangen by Jenny

Erpenbeck. Amazon.de. 13 Nov. 2015. Web. 5 Apr. 2016.

<

http://www.amazon.de/gp/customer-reviews/R36OPWUTGY678U/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw

_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=3813503704>.

35

EXTRA STUFF

Narration: Actually the narration is complicated.  Much of the time Richard, the main character,

engages in free indirect speech.so although it looks like an independent narrator is telling the

story or what's in his head, etc. it's really just Richard himself speaking or thinking - just without

the quotation marks.  Problem is that sometimes you don't know when that stops and an

independent narrator steps in, although it's occasionally clear when the narrator describes

things that Richard himself is not experiencing.  So why does and author do that?  Good

question.  If you are always in free indirect speech the reader is then trapped in the

consciousness of the character and can't get out, so you understand that a totally myopic view

of the world is being presented.  Kafka, for example, uses this technique often and so cleverly

that you think that a real narrator is also present.  With Erpenbeck, there is a real narrator, but

one who simply reports events and situations without taking a stand on them.  BUT, just by

narrating something there may be implied criticism, at least irony.  For example, Richard is

sitting with a migrant in a cafe and the migrant is having great difficulty talking about all the

trauma he has experienced in getting to Germany from Ghana.  The narrator interrupts their

discussion to note that a customer comes in and orders a cappuccino and a piece of cake, as

she usually does every day at 4 pm.  So an implied criticism of German routines contrasted with

the realities faced by the migrants.  But why the split narrative style?  Not sure, but in his free

indirect speech we see that Richard practices everyday routines just like the woman getting the

cappuccino and that that gets in the way of him relating to the migrants on their terms.  But that i

simply a reality and not something that the narrator (or the author) is suggesting must be

changed.  Anyway, I have to think about all this.

Do something with the distinction on p 64 Volk der Dichter and Volk der Mörder!

36

The second, functions similarly in the novel. The trauma involves not something out of

Germany’s past that current Germans must deal with but current events where again they are

asked to deal with a situation they may have had no direct hand in creating, but with which they

culturally are found complicit (although Erpenbeck never makes this connection explicit, that is:

selling arms, economic subjugation, ignoring ethically abhorrent events. It also appears as a

metaphor when Awad’s memory of his grandmother surfaces briefly and then disappears, other

parts of her fully lost (75). The visibility trope is thus multi-faceted, involving German identity,

both cultural and individual, and the identity of individual migrants. Erpenbeck’s novel is didactic

in that the trope of visibility exposes both the positive and negative personal and negative

abstract legal consequences of individuation regarding a resolution of the current migration

crisis. On the other hand, it shows how quickly the strictures of a Rechtsstaat, even within the

idealism of Europe as Enlightenment project, can act against its own cosmopolitan values of

human rights and human empathy.

as being part of an Enlightenment Germany that spawned a modern society and culture. Not

only is this humanistic tradition and Richard’s professorial role in this land of poets and

philosophers and his home now in the Federal Republic a land of law and order (Rechtsstaat)

inaccessible to the wave of immigrants in the country,

but also the dark sides of modernism, rationality, and Eurocentrism with its albeit late

colonialism, Nazism, and communism, but also the academic conference in particular, since,

after traveling to Frankfurt from Berlin to give his paper, Richard returns to his home to find it

had been broken into and some things stolen, perhaps by the very African migrant who he had

been assisting. But I am getting ahead of myself. Suffice it to say, that our endeavor here at

the GSA comes under scrutiny in the novel as on the one hand hindering and on the other

perhaps also enabling an opening to a cosmopolitan sensibility that points to a resolution of the

migrant crisis the novel illustrates in detail.

37

Enlightenment has two positive legacies that open Richard to these African asylum-seekers: the

focus on the individual so that the individuation allows him to empathize with each as an

individual with a name and personal history. Second is , however, also a commonality in our

humanity that all share, something that allows his interest in getting to know them in the first

place. However, its Eurocentric sides and hyper-rationalism not only create hindrances through

vast cultural differences that exist and lingering discrimination managed by the a hyper-rational

Rechtsstaat (with few exceptions), but also produced a subjugating culture resulting in

colonialism, Nazism and to a degree communism whose memory and legacy of guilt must be

confronted and resolved before empathy can emerge.