4 - Örtlich betäubt: Student Protest and Pedagogical Dialogue

Summary

GRASS ORIGINALLY ENVISIONED a play entitled “Verlorene Schlachten” (Lost Battles) before choosing the prose form and developing the middle section into the play Davor (Max: A Play). These shifts in genre help to explain why örtlich betäubt (1969) contains a significant amount of direct conversation and dramatic dialogues in which characters test their political positions. The novel reveals Grass's nascent interest in acts of communication as part of the public democratic sphere. Örtlich betäubt is marked by the student movement, which fueled impassioned protest and resulted in a culture of critical debate. In this new phase in writing, Grass probes the ways in which dialogue can successfully address the past, looking for ways to counteract the violence that threatened to erupt as the student generation flirted with dramatic action rather than engaging in peaceful reform.

The title refers to the numbing effect of a traumatic past—described by the Mitscherlichs as “the inability to mourn”—and to the extensive dental work that Eberhard Starusch, a forty-year-old teacher in West Berlin, undergoes to correct an underbite. In the spring of 1967, he witnesses the stirrings of the student unrest. Grass critically viewed the 1960s rebellion as having justified violent activism in order to counter state oppression: “The student protest was not a peace movement. The German students ran through the streets, and most of them were against the war in Vietnam; but some were for Ho Chi Minh.” In principle, Grass welcomed the opening up of a dialogue regarding the Nazi past but remained a staunch supporter of reform rather than revolution (a position that aligns him with Habermas). Yet he did take issue with the conservative media and spearheaded a protest against the Springer publishing group because of its vilification of the student movement. In his January 1968 Die Zeit article “Vietnam geht auch uns an,” Grass criticized the German government for neglecting to address the Vietnam War, attributing its attitude of “der servilen Sprachlosigkeit” (servile silence) to the unwillingness to criticize the United States; the “sachliche Debatte” (objective discussion) that Grass demands in this article is then attempted in his novel.

Grass called örtlich betäubt “ein unentschiedenes Buch” (an undecided book) based on its presentation of open-ended debates.