Deutschstunde

Deutschstunde, a novel published in 1968 by S. Lenz. It confines itself to the years 1943-5, except for its frame (see Rahmen), which is set a few years later. The main events take place on the North Sea coast close to the Danish frontier. The story begins in the present, and from time to time reverts to it, the large interstices being filled with the narrator's recollections.

The narrator is Siggi Jepsen, a youth lodged in a detention centre (Institut für schwer erziehbare Jünglinge) situated on an island in the Elbe near Hamburg. It is only much later in the novel that we learn that his offence is the compulsive stealing of paintings.

The novel opens with Siggi confined to a cell with paper, pen, and ink, because he has not written a word on the subject set in class (Deutschstunde). This subject is ‘Die Freuden der Pflicht’ and it is one on which Siggi has, not too little, but too much to set down in a short space of time. In the end he writes his ‘Strafarbeit’. Though intended only for an hour or two, it keeps him occupied for months, growing into an autobiography, which includes his experience and his boyhood environment for the years 1943-5. The story itself is partly a conflict between two men and partly a study of a deplorable family situation.

Siggi's father is the village policeman, who is on friendly terms with a well-known painter, M. L. Nansen, living near by. In 1943 the policeman is ordered to hand Nansen an order forbidding him to paint, and is also responsible for the observance of the ban. Although he has been Nansen's friend, the maintenance of the ban becomes an obsession (‘eine Freude der Pflicht’). He spies, makes surprise visits, and tries to enlist Siggi's aid. Nansen goes on painting, and Siggi forms his irresistible habit of ‘rescuing’ paintings. Siggi's father, Jens Jepsen, alienates the boy by the rigidity of his attitude, as he alienates his other children.

After the capitulation the policeman is arrested, but three months later he is back on the beat, more obsessive than ever in his belief that Nansen is still under a ban. Meanwhile the grown-up children have left home for good; yet Constable Jepsen and his wife remain convinced that they have only done their duty, and that their children and their critical neighbours are perverse. That the essay ‘The Pleasures of Duty’ is set in the post-war period is intended to prove that the concept is not dead.

According to Lenz, the painter is modelled on E. Nolde, M. Beckmann, and E. L. Kirchner.