The Past of Gunther Grass

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It's in most agencies, but after all, if you want to know about a German, ask a German

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2132108,00.html

So what do you think? To me it looks a little overblown, but it's still sad. I mean, ideals change (especially in something as big as the loss of a world war and all the uncovered stuff), political preferences also do, but it's a little sad that the person who called for everyone to be honest about the truth hid something. Yet... everyone knows that he served as a soldier, after all, it's not as if he pretended to be a resistance fighter or something.

 

I think the way he has acted over the past 50 years is way more significant than the way he may have acted as a 19 year old.

 

It's nothing big, just the usual story of a 16 year old German, who was obliged as a child to joined Hitler's Youth and was brainwashed there and when he became 17 he had to join "voluntarily" the 12th Waffen SS "Hitler Jugend" Division. What I have difficulties to believe is that he hid it because of shame and guilt. Post-war Germany was not a friendly place for SS veterans since every man, who had served in SS, was forced to be in special rehabilitation camps for some time and the new german state didn't give to them the provisions, which were given to the vetarans of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine, such as war pensions, the right to wear their medals, working for the public sector etc. So it seems to me that it was more logical for him to hide it in order to avoid the above consequences rather than because of guilt and shame.

 

Who is better suitable for writing about it than somebody who saw it first hand?

Why are you not allowed to make mistakes, and after all he dind't say it to the public because he was ahamed of his actions. In short people do change especially young people.

 

I'm not so sure that Grass being a first hand witness makes him a reliable source of information abot the Waffen SS. His statements and writings may sound a bit apologetic. After all, he didn't do anything bad as a member of the Waffen SS, didn't he. Should we deduce now that the Waffen SS really wasn't as bad as we had thought for all these years?

I don't hold his past against him, but I don't think that he is someone one should listen to when it comes to politics and moral issues.

 

That seems to have been the most common refrain - Grass was often somewhat moralistic in his many comments on politics. That itself isn't a bad thing, but it ought to go with perfectly clear conscience.