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Townsfolk's Tales Bring East Germany To Life

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By ROGER K. MILLER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 25, 2009

"Settlement," by Christoph Hein; translated by Philip Boehm (Metropolitan, $26)

If modern European fiction is in general a terra incognita to American readers, then a novel about the German Democratic Republic, the former East Germany, must be a trip to the far side of the moon. Christoph Hein's "Settlement" is your ticket to a mundanely alien, oddly familiar other world.

Hein has long been a highly respected novelist in Germany. Born in 1944 in the German region of Silesia (now part of Poland), he began writing in his native East Germany, and his reputation continued to grow after unification, particularly as a chronicler of his native region.

Bernhard Haber, the central character of "Settlement," comes as a boy to the fictitious East German town of Guldenberg with his family five years after the end of World War II. Driven out of the former Silesia, the Habers and other refugees, though in fact Germans, receive no welcome at all from the Guldenbergers because, as one says, "They came from a Germany that wasn't our Germany."

From his first day in school, Bernhard is humiliated, for being not just a refugee supposedly living off the town but also the son of an absurd figure, a one-armed carpenter. Bernhard bows to his teachers' authority but defies them at the same time.

That first day is a pattern for his future behavior. He obeys the demands of relationships without really acknowledging them. He is stubborn, incommunicative, morose, a brown figure in a gray world. Throughout he remains enigmatic, a closed and largely friendless figure.

Hein is a composed, cool, meticulous storyteller. The story is told by five townspeople giving different viewpoints on 50-plus years of everyday history. Despite living in a communist state, they are all petty bourgeois suffocating in an oppressive, stuffy-musty atmosphere. More than once it is noted that they are not interested in politics.

All the big events of the country's history, such as the 1953 general uprising and the building and tearing down of the Berlin Wall, occur in the distant background, barely affecting Guldenberg's daily routine. Like people in the West, they simply want to get on in life, which is perhaps the main point of "Settlement."

The novel, ultimately, is somewhat less than a sum of its five parts. It begins and ends with a scene set in a present-day Mardi Gras festival. When Thomas Nicholas, Bernhard's former schoolmate, returns to his native town after many decades' absence, Bernhard, the former refugee, fails to recognize him. The stranger is a native, the native is a stranger. Who is alien here, who is at home?

It closes by coming full circle, with the next generation - represented by Bernhard's son - harassing the "slant-eyes," a new generation of refugees.

Roger K. Miller is a novelist and freelance writer, reviewer and editor.

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