Frankfurter Rundschau, 18.08.2006

Author John Irving, having initially refused to take a public position on the Günter Grass debate, has now written a letter to the FR. "My friend and one-time mentor Kurt Vonnegut would have called the nationalistic babble in the German press a 'shit storm'. What I read from all the lead editorials, the lofty comments of my colleagues, the critics and journalists from all political camps is the following: all this is a predictable, hypocritical stripping down of Grass' life and work, carried out from the oh so cowardly standpoint of hindsight. It is from this standpoint that many of the so-called intellectuals set their sights on their goal. Grass remains for me a hero - as a writer and a moral compass."


Die Welt, 18.08.2006

Tilman Krause has now peeled the onion and is particularly interested in Grass the teenager. "It was definitely logically consistent – and that is the thorn in his side that explains the long silence, more than anything written - it was logically consistent that this young man landed in the Waffen SS. It was created for people like him, full of sexual frustration, social envy, resentment and emotional blocks. The Taliban commandos probably drew from the same ranks. And we're not going to want to deny Grass respect for having presented everything so unadorned. Whether we admire the probing honesty of his unsparing peeling of the onion or denounce it as a lapse that we would have preferred not to know about, will depend on how we feel about the author, whether we wish him well or not."


Süddeutsche Zeitung, 18.08.2006

Writer Ivan Nagel, who had to hide as a Jewish child in Hungary while Grass, his contemporary, was in the Waffen SS, expresses empathy for the belatedness the author's confession: "I myself had no reason to feel shame - after all, I was one of the persecuted - and nevertheless for 55 years I could not speak about it. I understand Günter Grass, who only now is able to talk about his shame, his disgrace. Life is not a reference book that you can flip through at will; it is no finished manuscript that you can publish at any time."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18.08.2006

Swiss author Adolf Muschg has peeled Grass' onion "as a modern-day non-German, with the feeling of really being drawn into it," and concludes: "The shame of survivors is not uniquely German; and because it is accompanied by certain taboos, even respectable ones, I think I can understand why half a century can pass before one can speak with relief about having gotten out alive from the Führer's war... Only as representative of another Germany could the old man take the chance of returning to the simplicity of his name, which he had allowed to be stuffed into the calfskin of an SS uniform half century ago. The book is much more and much less than a confession. It has a lot to say."


Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 18.08.2006

There is no room in the Middle East conflict for morality or old European notions of conventional strategies, sociologist Natan Sznaider admonishes his readers from Old Europe. "It would behoove Europe to consider the point. It is not enough to believe in peace just because one is sure that it will come, that it simply must come - because it is reasonable and makes sense, because - of course - life wins out over death. It is not enough to believe in the rationality of history and then ultimately only listen to one's own lectures. Self-destructive barbarity and a murderous identity struggle are not part of a bygone world. The international troops in Lebanon will find out fast."


Die Tageszeitung, 18.08.2006

Mark Terkessides describes the current relationship between pornography and art with the aid of such relevant expressions as "mutual penetration," and this brings him to discuss "gonzo-pornography," in which bodily fluids play a large role. The usual suspect is to blame: "In these kinds of films, the female lead becomes the embodiment of capitalism today - a capitalism that no longer refers to exploitation of the body, but rather, one in which people sell their 'souls' and go to the limit for jobs and corporate profits."