ANZ LitLovers LitBlog

I owe my discovery of this short novel ideal for the 1937 Club — hosted at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings and Stuck in a Book…
…to Dorian from Eiger Mönch & Jungfrau when he wrote an enticing review for German Lit Week back in 2016.

But I am very late to the party… I bought the book there and then,  but it was very nearly a casualty of the Kindle where so many good books are forgotten because they have no presence on the shelves. It was just luck that it turned up among other books from 1937 for the club week…

This is the book description for After Midnight, by Irmgard Keun (1905-1982), translated by Anthea Bell:

Sanna and her ravishing friend Gerti would rather speak of love than politics, but in 1930s Frankfurt, politics cannot be escaped–even in the lady’s bathroom. Crossing town one evening to meet up with Gerti’s Jewish lover, a blockade cuts off the girls’ path–it is the Führer in a motorcade procession, and the crowd goes mad striving to catch a glimpse of Hitler’s raised “empty hand.” Then the parade is over, and in the long hours after midnight Sanna and Gerti will face betrayal, death, and the heartbreaking reality of being young in an era devoid of innocence or romance.

The narrative voice is very convincing.  Sanna is not as naïve or artless as she seems at first.  She sounds a bit like the stereotypical ‘ditzy’ young woman, but it’s cover for her discerning observations, sometimes delivered with droll sarcasm.  At one stage when she’s in a bar with her friend, she starts up a prattling conversation in an effort to distract attention from Gerti’s imprudent opinions that could get them both into trouble among the people wearing party badges. She’d seen for herself how eager some were to inform on others when she was in Cologne.  So the reader is made aware that even at this stage of the Nazi regime, it’s not just the obvious signs of authority such as the Blackshirts that are to be feared… there are also people among her social crowd who would report any signs of dissent.

We are living in the time of the greatest German denunciation movement ever, you see. Everyone has to keep an eye on everyone else. Everyone’s got power over everyone else. Everyone can get everyone else locked up. There aren’t many can withstand the temptation to make use of that kind of power. (p.100)

And when she reports on the enthusiasm for Hitler’s visit to her city, her thoughts show that she sees through the empty spectacle.  She’s very much the outsider, the one who is observing, not joining in, not unless it’s necessary to avoid attracting attention.  So when the Nazi anthem is sung to the accompaniment of the compulsory Nazi salute, she does it too, to avoid the wrath of the crowd.  The implication is obvious: how many others were paying lip service too?

Authoritarianism is everywhere: from Gerti’s friend Kurt in his SA uniform, making her sit down almost forcibly so that everyone would think she was his property.  But Gerti’s in love with Dieter, who’s a Jew, which brings forth Sanna’s private refusal to engage with labels such a person of mixed race, first class or maybe third class — though she’s not naïve about what Dieter really wants from Gerti even if he is polite, and nice, and young, with soft, brown, round, velvety eyes.

Dieter is what they call a person of mixed race, first class or maybe third class—I can never get the hang of these labels. But anyway, Gerti’s not supposed to have anything to do with him because of the race laws. If all Gerti does is simply sit in the corner of a café with Dieter, holding hands, they can get punished severely for offending against national feeling. Still, what does a girl care about the law when she wants a man? And if a man wants a girl, it’s all the same to him if the executioner’s standing right behind him with his axe, so long as he gets one thing. Once he’s had it, of course, it is not all the same to him any more. (p.17)

It’s painful to read about Dieter’s father’s quarrels with Algin (another young friend) who objects to the Nazis.  Dieter’s father — who is exempt from the restrictions on Jewish business because he runs an export company — thinks that they’ve put the German mentality in order and saved him from the communists. In 1937 Irmgard Keun could not have known what this man’s fate was to be.

But it’s also painful to realise that while Sanna thinks she’s very clever at seeing through propaganda which seduces others like her Aunt Adelheid, subverting the regime on the sly so that only those who agree with her know about it, achieves nothing.  It turns out that her boyfriend Franz has been in Gestapo custody and the novel ends with the pair in flight because he has murdered the informer.  Her abrupt coming-of-age and loss of innocence ends as it did for so many with escape rather than resistance — and, as foreshadowed early in the book, what else could we expect under the circumstances?

My heart always stands still when I hear those speeches, because how do I know I’m not one of the sort who are going to be smashed? And the worst of it is that I just don’t understand what’s really going on. I’m only gradually getting the hang of the things you must be careful not to do.

[…] I was scared stiff someone might notice I didn’t understand a word of it. Göring and the other ministers often shout over the radio, very loud and clear and angry. “There are still some who have not understood what it is all about, but we shall know how to deal with them.” I hate hearing that kind of thing, it’s creepy, because I still don’t know what it is all about, or what they mean. And it’s far too dangerous to ask anyone. Judging by things I’ve picked up from what I’ve heard and read, I could be either criminal or of chronically unsound mind. Neither of which must come out or I’ll be done for. If I’m criminal I’ll go to prison, and if I’m of chronically unsound mind they’ll operate on me so that I can’t get married and have children. (p.63)

Mixing with people who speak out is risky:

Manderscheid gets terrified when Heini talks like this. He would like to go, and then again he’d like to stay. He stays because he’s tired. He is afraid of Heini, he is afraid of the government, which can take his job away. He wants to live. His wife wants to live. His children want to live. (p.86)

And every writer faces a dilemma:

Algin has joined us.  He is sitting there, pale and gloomy, his eyes dark caverns, his pale hands lying on the table. He has had another letter from the Reich Chamber of Literature. There’s going to be another purge of writers, and Algin will probably get eliminated. He might yet save himself by writing a long poem about the Führer, something he has been most reluctant to do so far. But even that might be dangerous. Because National Socialist writers might take exception to his daring to write about the Führer without being an old campaigner for the cause. Similarly, he daren’t write a Nazi novel, because it wouldn’t be fitting. However, if he doesn’t write a Nazi novel that makes him undesirable. People still like reading his books, people still want to print them, and that’s not right either.  (p. 97).

After Midnight read in the present day is a poignant reminder that awareness of a morally bankrupt regime doesn’t necessarily equip anyone to resist it in an effective way.

About the author, from Goodreads:
Irmgard Keun (1905 – 1982) was a German novelist. She is noted for her portrayals of the life of women in the Weimar Republic as well as the early years of the Nazi Germany era. She was born into an affluent family and was given the autonomy to explore her passions. After her attempts at acting ended at the age of 16, Keun began working as a writer after years of working in Hamburg and Greifswald. Her books were eventually banned by Nazi authorities but gained recognition during the final years of her life.

See also the review at Jaqui Wine’s Journal.

Author: Irmgard Keun
Title: After Midnight (Nach Mitternacht)
Translated from the German by Anthea Bell
Afterword by Geoff Wilkes
Cover design: not acknowledged
Publisher: Melville House, 2011, first published 1937
ASIN: ‎ B004J4WKAQ, eBook, 170 pages
Source: Purchased from the Kindle from You Know Who, $14.83