Stefan Heym: 5 Days in June. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1978. 352 pp.
Part One: Themes, Characters and Publication
Witte and Individual Responsibility
Imagine a novel that describes a revolt against a communist regime, written from the point of view of a supporter of that regime. The author writes in the conviction that his candid assessment will help the authorities change course and correct their mistakes. His book proves so honest in its analysis, though, that the state ends up suppressing it, and the book can only get published by his ideological opponents.
That scenario describes Stefan Heym’s 5 Days in June, a novel that deals with men and women caught up in the bloody demonstrations of June 1953 in East Berlin. Heym creates a spectrum of characters, including some who have lingering illusions regarding socialism – and others who have lost them. Between them stands Martin Witte, a conscientious, honest, upstanding believer in communism-with-a-human-face, a party member who finds himself more and more out of place in an organization increasingly dominated by hardliners, whose East German representatives are typically more Stalinist than the Russians.
As a union official at the VEB Merkur factory, Witte knows that the party’s decision to raise the work norms without also raising wages will lead to unrest. He doggedly insists on thinking for himself instead of just carrying out instructions from above. Ideally, he would like to promote a genuine dialogue between the workers and the party leadership, so that there can be socialism without the need for coercion. His best efforts, however, fall short, primarily because the SED (Socialist Unity Party) remains deaf.
When the crisis develops and the workers of his plant decide to take to the streets, Witte does what he can to intervene, even though he has received no instructions to do so. This touches on a central theme: the question of individual responsibility in a society that is organized hierarchically, from the top down. Hardliners in the plant come to distrust him precisely for his willingness to act on his own.
A truly Stalinist response to people like Witte would have been to stage a show trial. While no such trial is presented here, the possibility does hover in the background. Take for example the interrogation scene (Chapter 19). There, Witte undergoes an examination at the hands of two party officials, Dreesen and Banggartz. When Witte brings up possible alternatives to turning to “our Soviet friends” for help, we get this reaction: “Dreesen was thinking: Alternatives. That means the decision is up to each one of us. But how many are there who have the guts for that?” (pg. 134) In the eyes of Banggartz, Witte is suspect in that he “seemed to be hankering for responsibility.” (pg. 167) For Banggartz, the whole concept of “responsibility” exists primarily in the context of the party holding people responsible for their mistakes. The very idea is bound up with the idea of discipline and punishment. Taking responsibility means sticking your neck out, something which was never rewarded behind the Iron Curtain – even if it meant doing the right thing, even if it averted disaster. And this is precisely what happens with Witte.
The further one reads, the more prominent this topic becomes. In Chapter 36, another doctrinaire functionary thinks to himself, “I was taught that an opinion is correct when it’s been approved by party decision.” To which, a bit later in their conversation, Witte retorts: “There’s no party rule that forbids you to think.” And he insists: “People will have to start thinking for themselves, and those who don’t can no longer be counted as Communists.” (pg. 214) At the climax, just as the pivotal events begin to unfold, Witte tells another SED member that something new is now required, “drawing your own conclusions, and acting on them.” To which the functionary replies, “And who will bear the responsibility?” (pg. 256)
In the end, while he prevents things from being even worse, Witte’s efforts to mediate are unsuccessful. Seeing no way forward, he wants to resign and go back to being a simple worker again. Recognizing that his efforts were ultimately beneficial, though, the party offers him a year of “re-education” at one of their schools of indoctrination, an offer he accepts without enthusiasm, since he knows that afterwards he will not be allowed to return to the plant.
All in all, this represents a rather soft landing. One consolation: He does win Anna, the woman he loves, and becomes a father. And his punishment could have been much worse – he could have been thrown out of the party, convicted and sentenced to prison.
But the bitterness remains, and one thinks of Brecht, who wrote sarcastically about the same events of June 1953: If the government has lost confidence in the people, why doesn’t it dissolve them and chose another? After this uprising, the party would change its tactics, and even rewrite its statutes, but the general direction remained the same. This failure to adapt led to the building of the Wall less than a decade later, but even that could not prevent the eventual collapse of the GDR.
Goodie Cass, the Flawed Good Girl
One strand of the story follows Gudrun Kasichke alias Goodie Cass, a stripper with a good heart. She feels at least partly responsible for the death of Ruth, Witte’s first wife. Evidently when Goodie was a child she somehow prevented the ailing woman from taking her scarce medicine, though the exact details are not spelled out. It seems she was the unwitting instrument of a plot instigated by her father and other farmers, who resent Witte, whose job it then was to make them turn over their crops to the state. (In translation, her father is called “the kulak Kasischke” though in German he is simply called a “Bauer” or peasant. [pg. 132; S. 100] This is an example of spelling out in English what is only implied in the original. For more on such issues, see the second part of this essay.)
For her role in this death she feels some guilt, which she wishes to expiate by confessing to Witte. This urge sets in motion much of the private plot, the part that is subordinate to the overarching political events. The main reason she sets out to track down Witte, though, is to warn him of the danger he faces from her boyfriend Fred Gadebusch, who fears Witte enjoys enough standing among the workers in VEB Merkur that he might rally them to remain loyal to the state. Gadebusch is prepared to eliminate Witte to prevent this from happening. (BTW, this figure is based a foreman [“Polier”] that Heym got to know when he settled in Grünau, outside Berlin, in 1953; see Stefan Heym: Nachruf, 602).
So she sets out to warn Witte of the danger he faces. When she fails to find him at the plant, she turns to his superiors there. Preoccupied as they are with the rising discontent in the workplace, they instantly suspect that Goodie – who does not look like someone Witte would normally know – may have been sent by his handlers in West Berlin to deliver a conspiratorial message. She tries to explain herself, but they refuse to believe her. In their eyes, the true story she tells them looks like a rather pathetic attempt at a cover up.
Eventually she does meet up with Witte, and though with all the unrest going on she does not quite have time to confess, she goes away feeling absolved. Their meeting is just one of many that occur by chance out on the streets during the high point of the uprising. In this novel, it seems almost like Berlin is one big village, where if you don’t find someone at home or at work, you can always count on running into them sooner or later just by walking around town, even though the city is in uproar.
The Man from Karl-Marx-Stadt
Goodie, as noted, is the girlfriend of Gadebusch, who helps instigate the uprising in the Merkur factory on behalf of his Western paymasters. When he becomes abusive, she runs away, but does not get very far because he has taken almost all her money. Eventually she ends up sitting alone in a café at Friedrichstrasse train station. There a man named Benno Siebendraht makes her acquaintance. He explains that he is on a business trip to the capital and is waiting for the train to take him back to his home town of Karl-Marx-Stadt, in Saxony. Formerly called Chemnitz, the GDR authorities had renamed the city, even though Marx had no particular connections to it.
We get an idea of his personality – the chivalrous accountant type – when he confides in her that he has calculated “how much it costs to rename a city like Chemnitz Karl-Marx-Stadt, including the changes on signposts, letterheads, official forms, rubber stamps; you wouldn’t believe how much it adds up to…” (pg. 220) Drawn to the attractive woman in obvious distress, he gallantly offers her his protection. This encounter presents Goodie her best chance at – if not redemption, then at least escape from her abusive boyfriend. But the opportunity goes for naught, as the most unpleasant character in the novel, Heinz Hofer, appears and soon instigates a scandalous scene. Siebendraht, his dream of playing the hero thus rudely shattered, disappears, never to resurface in the novel. Since he only makes a cameo appearance, this explains why he usually gets overlooked in plot summaries.
I highlight him because it happens that back in the spring of 1994 I attended a reading Stefan Heym gave at a bookstore in the Knaakstrasse in Prenzlauer Berg, in the eastern part of Berlin. Afterwards, there was a Q & A session, and a young lady asked him where he felt most at home. In his expansive response, Heym recalled serving in the US Army during WWII; once while on leave he happened to be in Chicago’s Grant Park, where he looked up at the big blue sky and felt a moment of inner peacefulness – a moment he had never forgotten. Even though he was not from Chicago, it was a place where he felt at home, at least on that day. Heym, who left the US and moved to East Berlin in 1953, went on to talk about the place he was born, Chemnitz. With a shake of his head, he reminded his listeners that “Karl-Marx-Stadt” was not the original name of his home town, but no longer was there a place called Chemnitz. He wrapped up his answer by saying, “So maybe my home is part Chicago, part Karl-Chemnitz-Stadt.”
It may be pure coincidence that Siebendrath and Heym should share a home town. I wonder, though, if Heym isn’t perhaps offering a slightly mocking portrait of himself as a would-be knight in shining armor who arrives from the provinces intending to do good in the big city, or at least hoping to have some fun there, only to have his hopes dashed.
What Are the Lessons?
The party’s inclination to attribute subversive motives to innocent behavior is a recurring motif. Heym shows how individuals are too ready to construct a narrative that fits with their pre-conceived notions. Various actions of Witte are perfectly innocuous, for example, but when looked at by the Stasi (always hovering in the background), they appear suspicious, perhaps elements of a conspiracy. Heym carefully constructs the story so that we, the readers, know the true course of events from the beginning, events which – just like real life – involve a great deal of coincidence and happenstance, thus leading us to shake our heads over the paranoid types who are ready to sniff out plots everywhere.
In the end, Witte is caught between cynical, opportunistic capitalists, dissatisfied workers, and ideologically rigid communists. He tries to find a middle way (the word-association works better in German: “Witte/Mitte”), but his efforts ultimately prove as futile as those of Allende, Dubcek, and Gorbachev, all of whom searched in vain for such a path.
To explain his failure, Heym certainly spreads the blame around. First, party leaders were so isolated from reality that they believed their own propaganda, and since they faced no real opposition, they had nothing to fear from elections. As a result, the SED created a situation in which the party was so out of touch that the populace could only vent its dissatisfaction through strikes and demonstrations. Real existing communism stifled individual responsibility. The GDR would eventually be undone, to no little degree by its own Stalinist rigidity, which, as we have seen, punished individual initiative and rewarded those who waited for orders.
Next, the West Germans made their contribution too, as they cynically exploited the unrest to their own political advantage, while mouthing high-minded phrases about human rights and democracy. In earlier drafts of the novel, Heym laid greater emphasis on this element, less so in the final versions. (I will discuss this more in the following discussion of translation issues.)
While Heym does not spell it out in so many words, the Soviets also were implicitly responsible for having created a socialist German state while keeping ultimate power in their own hands, reducing the SED leaders to little more than puppets. This could be called the original sin of the GDR. Before 1933, German communists had been too weak to come to power legitimately (in part because of their infighting with the socialists), and had no opportunity to overthrow Hitler after that. Socialism came to the Soviet zone of occupation only thanks to the victory of the Red Army. “Introducing democracy from above” was to prove problematic, as one of the Russian officials puts it, though he might better have said: “… from abroad.” (pg. 139) The communists in the eastern zone of occupation were acutely aware of their debt to the USSR, who in 1949 presented them a country (or part of one) that they themselves had not liberated. And now just four years later they have made such a mess of things they require the assistance of their former liberators to restore order. It leaves the Russian officers in the novel shaking their heads at the incompetence of their pupils. By the way, the novel’s generally positive image of these officers helped Heym in his fight for the novel to appear in the GDR, though ultimately even that did not prove enough.
Against such larger forces, individuals like Witte remain isolated and powerless. What lessons has he learned by the end? One would seem to be that the idea of a third, middle way between communism and capitalism is a pipe dream. But Witte cannot bring himself to admit this. About the best idea that occurs to him in the final pages is: Perhaps one should add an article to the party statutes that prohibits presenting things in a falsely optimistic light, forbids “all gilding of the truth and all public adulation of leading comrades…” (pg. 345) And in fact that is precisely what occurred, as we read on the novel’s very first page, which quotes from the revised Constitution of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany: “It is the duty of the member of the party… to struggle against gilding the truth and against the tendency of getting intoxicated with success, and to fight all attempts to suppress criticism or to gloss over criticism by apologies or false praise…” Sorry, but fiddling with the party statutes failed to ensure the survival of an independent, socialist German state.
Publication History
Originally entitled “Der Tag X,” Heym’s first version tended to interpret the events of the 17th of June as a plot by Western intelligence agencies to put an end to East Germany as a separate, socialist state. Though their effort ultimately failed, the West did achieve some success because the East was in fact guilty of some errors – chiefly demanding greater productivity from the workers without raising their wages.
Heym backed up this interpretation with excerpts from documents which he collected during his extensive research. He quoted not just from printed proclamations but also from radio broadcast transcripts. He interviewed many participants, both from the regime and its opponents, eventually accumulating over three thousand pages of material, from which he selected the most interesting for inclusion. All this served to lend the work an air of authenticity. Witte’s predicament is not just personal, it is presented against the backdrop of these archived records – some of which, by the way, underscore the point that outsiders were more deeply involved in promoting the uprising than is generally acknowledged in Western accounts.
There, the events of that June are usually treated as a spontaneous uprising on the part of the East Berlin workers. Heym points out the uncomfortable evidence that Western agencies were not just passive observers during those days of unrest – they contributed to it, in part by sending over agitators, in part through their radio broadcasts. Now that the regime has fallen and can never be resurrected, admission of this clandestine activity has emerged. “… American intelligence during the Cold War found it useful to encourage similar unrest among the workers at an arms plant in a Soviet-occupied country by circulating well-forged, ostensibly confidential official documents calling for an increase in labor quotas and a decrease in food rations.” (Antonio J. Mendez, with Malcolm McConnell: The Master of Disguise. My Secret Life in the CIA. [NY: William Morrow, 1999], pg. 43)
Heym composed this first version, A Day Marked X, in English, which he then spent half a year translating into German (Nachruf, 727, 729). His interpretation should have pleased the Politburo, Heym thought. After all, even they at first conceded that mistakes had been made. Nonetheless the novel was forbidden. This was because as early as August 1953, the officially sanctioned version of events had been formulated by hardliners. Now the disturbances were blamed on an attempted “fascist putsch,” later toned down to “counterrevolutionary putsch.” No longer was there any open mention of the party’s mistakes. When the SED commissioned a formal but secret investigation into what led to the demonstrations, the analysis proved remarkably honest when it came to their own shortcomings. In the event, though, only four copies of this report were ever printed, and Walter Ulbricht kept three of them for himself.
Heym kept plugging away, trying to get the work published in the East, but all his efforts to negotiate with the censors proved fruitless. In 1960, he went so far as to have fifty copies printed privately – not an easy task in the days before the photocopier. These he sent to Ulbricht, Grotewohl and other decision makers and influential people. His thinking was that if they read what he actually wrote, they would see that the book was not in fact anti-socialist, and so should be approved. But this too led to nothing.
The censors wanted him to revise the novel in such a way that, as Heym put it, no one would be able to figure out why the workers had wanted to strike. Instead, he re-wrote it in the opposite direction, doing away with some of his earlier clichés and sharpening his critique of the regime for its policy of stifling initiative. The result was a more honest book, but one that was even less likely to receive official imprimatur. Finally the stand-by excuse was trotted out, alleging that now was not the right time, given the current political situation, for such a book to appear.[1]
Eventually, 5 Days in June was first published in West Germany some thirteen years after the events it describes, and shortly thereafter in English. One doubts the British publisher made much on this title after the initial flurry of interest, since it is so closely tied to historical events most people in the UK and America know little about. How many visitors to Berlin have wandered onto the “Street of the 17th of June” and asked themselves: What happened on that day?
The novel could only appear in the GDR much later (November 1989), just as that state was starting to collapse. The authorities belatedly decided that the right time for publication had arrived, after it no longer could do them any good. 5 Days in June became one of the final books ever published in that country. By preventing its earlier appearance, the authorities missed an opportunity to engage in an open discussion with a loyal critic. As Heym said later, the end of the GDR began in 1953. And he was left to wonder what might have been – if permission had been granted earlier, perhaps that might have led to a frank discussion of critical matters, and made building the Wall unnecessary.
Summary
Heym is at heart a journalist with a novelist’s flair and a researcher’s perseverance. For him, literature is fundamentally nothing other than an artistic reshaping of historical events, or of the author’s own life and times. As Fritz J. Raddatz said in his review, 5 Days in June is not really a novel about the 17th of June, but a study of conflicts in socialism disguised as one. The work is indeed more successful as an interpretation of historical events viewed through the prism of typical personalities than as a tale that grips the reader. Viewed primarily as a work of fiction, while not exactly spellbinding, if you keep with it, the story builds in intensity as it mixes imagined characters with the real events of the uprising.
Part Two: Translation and Stereoscopic Distinctness
Comparing a novel and its translation side by side lends a certain three-dimensionality to the reading experience. In this parallax view, as it were, details that seem unremarkable in one language can stand out in stronger relief in a different one. In the present case, the changes are not great. Having spent years in America and served in the US Army, Heym felt at home in both languages. This put him in the unusual position of being his own translator. (Other examples that come to mind include Nabokov and Josef Brodsky.) Naturally, self-translation has the advantage that there is never any misunderstanding of the author’s intent. In his years in America, Heym wrote his novels (such as The Crusaders) in English, later translating them into German.
On the one hand, Heym claims that this pattern continued after he decided to take up residence in the German Democratic Republic in 1953. In Nachruf he says began his career as a novelist writing in English. He continued to write in this language when he arrived in the GDR, and planned to continue doing so. He would get his works translated into German or do so himself – this, at least, was his plan. (Nachruf, 611) On the other, he also says that during the Biermann affair – late 1976 – when he was working on the first version of Collin, he arrived at a point where he felt blocked: the role of Pollock was unclear, Christine’s character lacked color, and the sex scenes were embarrassing; in this situation, it was a relief to be able turn to turn to the translation of 5 Days in June, “wer sonst soll es tun.” (Nachruf, 912). This indicates that the novel was written in German originally.
So it comes as little surprise that Heym opted for a more literal version than someone else might have done. Generally he manages this without sounding unduly artificial, though his factory workers always use “whom” correctly where most people wouldn’t bother. Where it strikes him as appropriate, he adds or subtracts adjectives, phrases, sometimes whole clauses. His purpose in doing so is to lay out details that a German audience would understand intuitively, but an English-speaking one might not. The English often states what the German merely implies.
In what follows, I do not discuss every last difference between the two versions (though it may seem that way). I have in fact left out many examples – especially when it comes to expansion or reduction – that seem to me hardly worth discussing, since in the end they don’t really amount to much. Instead, I concentrate on those passages that seem most illustrative. References to the German edition are taken from: 5 Tage im Juni (Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1977) and pages there are indicated with “S.” References to the American version are taken from: 5 Days in June (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1978), with page references indicated by “pg.” I have highlighted some of the key differences in italics. My own suggested versions are in single quotation marks: ‘…’, while the published ones are in double quotes: “…”
Title
The first title Heym thought of was Der Tag X, or A Day Marked X. On reflection, though, he decided his provisional title lacked rhythm, and simply was not very idiomatic in English. An alternative would have been D-Day, but of course such a title would have been completely misleading. Then it occurred to him that the events in question lasted five days, which gave him the idea for the eventual title, one which had a certain ring to it. (Incidentally, the appropriateness of this title is confirmed by the fact that it has been imitated; the 1964 political thriller directed by John Frankenheimer was called “Seven Days in May.” And in 2001 John Lukacs would write the bestseller Five Days in London. May 1940.) Moreover, by giving the work a new title, Heym hoped to create an exit ramp for those in the GDR who had rejected the original version of the novel; instead of conceding they had been wrong before, they could now claim the book they were approving was completely different. In the end, this proved a vain hope (Heym: Nachruf, 879).
Aspects of East German Life
A typical change touching on everyday reality comes in Chapter 4. “Man sprach wieder vom Alltäglichem.” This could be given as: ‘They were talking of everyday matters again.’ But Heym opts for something more robust: “They were talking of the daily annoyances again.” (pg. 42; S. 29) Indeed, the everyday life of people in the GDR was an ongoing series of petty annoyances and inconveniences, including the never-ending quest for good shoes, fresh fruit, and decent toilet paper. These were not matters that needed to be underlined to a German-speaking audience.
Late in the novel, mention is made of some factories whose workers are on strike: “EAW Stalin”, “KWO” and “LEW Beimler.” It is doubtful whether these abbreviations would be easily decipherable for anyone outside of East Berlin. In English, Heym spells them out: the Stalin Electrical Apparatus Works, the Oberspree Cable Works, and the Beimler Locomotive Works. (pg. 272; S. 203)
In spelling them out, Heym continues a practice that can also be seen in the very first chapter. During a Sunday outing with employees of the plant, Banggartz, the hardliner, looks around and considers which group or individual he should go over and join. First his eyes fall on the directors of the firm, then on Witte, whom he mistrusts. Turning away, ‘He found refuge with the youths wearing blue shirts.’ (“… nahm Zuflucht bei der Jugend… im Blauhemd….”) For a German audience, there was no need to spell out who these young people were; for an English-speaking one, there is: “[He] found refuge with the plant’s Free German Youth group which, wearing their blue shirts etc.” (pg. 29; S. 20)
By the way, members of the FDJ or Freie Deutsche Jugend were required to wear distinctive blue shirts as part of their uniform, which made them easily identifiable. It was not only the color which made these shirts recognizable from a distance – they also had insignia showing a rising sun.
It just so happened that in 1973, when I went over to East Berlin to watch the May Day parade, I innocently selected my favorite shirt, which turned out to be of almost exactly the same hue, though naturally without the arm patches. By crossing the checkpoint early, I managed to find a decent observation post on one of the bridges over the Spree. When the parade was finished, I ducked into the Rotes Rathaus on Alexanderplatz hoping for a bite to eat, and was shown to the last free place at the last free table. Being seated there that day would change my life, in ways not relevant to go into here. Suffice it to say that the East Berliners already sitting there gave me a long look, and from then on said very little. I too ate in silence, since I had no wish to advertise the fact that I was a foreigner. Only later did I learn that, based on the color of my shirt, they had automatically assumed I must be a member of the FDJ, but had torn off the emblem in a courageous – and dangerous – act of defiance.
Anna, Heinz and Greta
Anna, the main female character, is unhappily married to Heinz Hofer, a lout who returns to his mother’s East Berlin apartment early in the novel, having spent the previous months making money in various illegal ways in the West. Housing being in short supply, one room of their apartment is rented out to Witte, for whom Anna begins to develop a strong attachment. Late one evening, Anna and her husband happen to meet Witte in the hallway, where they have a brief conversation. Afterwards, while her snoring husband lies in bed next to her, she thinks to herself: “Daß das hatte sein müssen, diese Begegnung an der Wohnungstür, die Besitzergeste, die ganze plumpe Schau….” This could be translated as: ‘Why did this have to happen, the encounter at the entrance door, the gesture of ownership, the whole crude show…’ But Heym expresses the same thought a bit more colorfully: “… the encounter at the entrance door and Heinz putting on his awkward lovey-dovey act….” (pg. 57; S. 42)
Her husband, Heinz, proves to be the novel’s most repulsive character, especially in the way he mistreats Anna, forcing her to submit to him that night against her wishes. Both of them are aware that Witte, lying in his bed in the next room, must be able to hear everything. In English, Heym renders the husband’s speech even more brutal than in German: “And don’t act […] as though you were still a bloody virgin…” No equivalent word for “bloody” is found in the German. Heinz continues: “You won’t ever be able to get away from me, Anna, and you know that damn well, Anna, because I fuck you properly, Anna, and there isn’t a woman who forgets a good fuck, Anna, and I still have got there for you, Anna, ah, at last, feel how good that is, Anna.” The “damn” and “fuck” are only in English, and the whole passage is much tamer in German. “Von mir kommst du nicht los, Anna, das weißt du auch selber, Anna, weil ich dir’s richtig besorg, Anna, so was vergißt sich nicht, und ist alles noch da für dich Anna, na endlich, siehst du, wie gut das ist, Anna….” Or: ‘… because I do it right for you, Anna, and there are some things you don’t forget, Anna, and everything is still there for you, Anna, at last…” (pg. 58f; S. 43) Perhaps Heym was concerned about what the GDR censors would approve – though in fact the considerations that delayed publication there for so long proved to be chiefly political in nature.
Another example of drastic language. Late in the novel, Heinz Hofer reproaches his mother for having borrowed a bottle of schnapps from their neighbors; since they know that she doesn’t drink, they may deduce from her request that her son has returned, something he wants to keep secret. They could then start asking awkward questions, like: “For whom is she wanting to borrow that schnapps, the old bitch – huh?” In German, she is simply referred to as “die Alte” or ‘the old woman.’ (pg. 340; S. 255) So again, the English version spells out rather colorfully what is only implied in the German.
Witte has a former girlfriend, Greta, who is still in love with him, though before the novel starts he has already distanced himself from her – a task made more difficult by the circumstance that they work together in the same plant. When they run into each other there early one morning, he cuts short the conversation by saying: ” ‘You’re a smart girl, Greta,’ he complimented her. ‘If anything else turns up, you know where to find me.’ And he left abruptly, more than ever intent on his purpose: a quick check on [t]he mood of the men in the light of what he had learned since last night.” Among other changes, this omits a few lines present in the original: ‘… And he left, both to avoid having the conversation turn to more personal matters, and to avoid any further delay in his intention to spend the coming hours in intensive conversations with as many colleagues as possible in the workplace.‘ (“Und trennte sich von ihr, sowohl um zu vermeiden, daß die Unterhaltung sich persönlicheren Dingen zuwende, als auch um seinen Vorsatz, die nächsten Stunden in intensivem Gespräch mit möglichst vielen Kollegen in den Werkhallen zu verbringen, nicht länger aufschieben zu müssen.” [pg. 69; S. 52]) In English, Heym opts to eliminate the personal motivation, keeping only Witte’s concern for duty. The German version also leaves out how uncomfortable he feels during this conversation.
Things become even more awkward later, when Witte arranges for Greta, his former girlfriend, to provide his future wife, Anna, with a place where she will be safe from her husband. Greta, a good soldier, agrees to this unusual arrangement, and in the process sizes up her guest. A literal translation would read, ‘She [Anna] probably resembles the wife who died on him and who worked as a teacher in the time before Hitler; she’s got something of the intellectual about her, to say nothing of other matters.’ (“Sie wird wohl der Frau ähneln, die ihm gestorben ist und die Lehrerin war in der Zeit vor Hitler; sie hat auch so etwas Intellektuelles an sich, von anderen Sachen nicht zu reden…”) Heym’s actual version spells out what is merely implied in the original: “She probably resembles the wife who died on him and who worked as a teacher in the time before Hitler; she’s got more than good tits, she’s got something of the intellectual about her.” (pg. 250; S. 190)
Chapter 22 begins as follows: “Witte, returning from the toilet, encountered Heinz Hofer in the hallway of the Widow Hofer’s flat.” The corresponding German sentence adds a suggestive detail: ‘… as though he had been waiting for him.’ (“… als hätte er auf ihn gewartet.” [pg. 141; S. 107]) Heinz then invites him in for a nightcap, which Witte accepts. He soon comes to regret his decision, however, as he sits there listening to Heinz make insinuations about him and Anna, culminating in the suggestion that he and Witte are practically in-laws. Witte thinks to himself: “Fine in-laws they were, he and this man Hofer…” In German, this entire thought is encapsulated in the single word “Verschwägert…” (‘in-laws…’). (pg. 142; S. 108) And the chapter’s final sentence reads: “Back in his room, though, it took him a long time to fall asleep.” The German version is expanded: “Doch schlief er lange nicht ein, trotz seiner Müdigkeit und trotz des großen Glases Kognak, das er getrunken hatte.” ‘It took him a long time to fall asleep, though, despite the large glass of cognac he had drunk.’ (pg. 143; S. 109)
Gadebusch, Kallmann and Quelle
When we are formally introduced to Fred Gadebusch, one of the first things we learn about him is that he lives with his girlfriend in a weekend house in the East Berlin suburbs. German readers would have a good idea of what that entailed. For the English-speaking audience, Heym adds detail: “… an East Berlin suburban Gartenlaube which he was gradually remodeling into a neat little house.” (pg. 45; S. 31) It is mildly surprising that the German word Gartenlaube or summer house, something like a dacha, is used only in the English, not the German.
Sometimes the version for English-speakers is more pointed, sharpening what is merely implied in German. For example, the German reader gets no hint at this point that Gadebusch is one of the villains: “Natürlich hatte Gadebusch recht, wie meistens, wenn man sich mit ihm unterhielt.” It would look fairly innocuous in a literal rendition: ‘Of course Gadebusch was right, he mostly was when one talked with him.’ Here is Heym’s actual version, which emphasizes this character’s arrogance: “Of course Gadebusch was right, he mostly was when he deigned to say something.” (pg. 41; S. 28)
Another of the Merkur factory workers, August Kallmann, represents a completely different type: the simple German worker who just wants to be treated decently and be paid for an honest day’s work. Like one of the horses in Animal Farm, he is strong, honest, and blessed with a good heart. Not being much of a thinker, he is easily manipulated.
Witte sizes him up: “Sitting before him, sound and strong and capable, was the species that actually had worked under the Kaiser, under the Republic, and under Hitler – instead of disposing of the social order represented by all three of them.” “Was da vor ihm saß, gesund, kräftig, mit fähiger Hand, das hatte tatsächlich unter dem Kaiser gearbeitet, unter der Republik, und unter Hitler – statt die Gesellschaftsordnung zu beseitigen, deren Ausdruck alle drei gewesen waren.” A literal translation would have: ‘Sitting before him […] was that which actually had worked under etc.’ (pg. 53; S. 39) Heym’s use of “the species” instead of “that which” results in a sentence which of course sounds more idiomatic in English, but also suggests that Witte (presumably like the author) views him less as a unique individual than as a type. And a case can be made that Heym does regard lesser characters like Kallmann much the way a naturalist would view an insect.
Since Kallmann suspects the East German government is cheating him, he proves susceptible to the blandishments of the West German anti-communists, who pretend to have his real interests at heart but in reality simply want to manipulate him to stoke unrest. In Chapter 18, he is brought to a night club in West Berlin to meet Herr Quelle, who wants to recruit him to take a leading role in the coming uprising. Quelle addresses the worker with the familiar “Du” from the beginning of their conversation, and eventually Kallmann comes around to replying with the same pronoun. Since there is little point in explaining this nuance to an English-speaking audience, Heym is content to simply paraphrase, “Kallmann waxed confidential”. (pg. 124; S. 93)
“Quelle” also happens to be the German word for “source.” Shortly before the strike breaks out, a protest note is posted on the bulletin board of the canteen of the Merkur plant. The neatly printed sheet urges the workers to demand their rights. Among those who gather round to read it is Kallmann, who “… wondered if any of them had tacked up the notice…” Without being literal, this gets across the meaning: “Möglich, dachte Kallmann, daß der Anschlag aus wieder anderer Quelle stammte….” (pg. 81; S. 62) More literally: ‘Kallmann wondered if the notice might not stem from another source…’ To put things crudely, the insinuation is that the other source (Quelle) of this call to action might be Herr Quelle, the western agitator. Since no English sentence could suggest this link, Heym simply opts for an idiomatic translation.
When the uprising begins in earnest, the protestors initially carry their own hand-made signs demanding a reduction in work norms. Kallmann witnesses a riotous disturbance that breaks out in a grocery store (the same one where Anna, Witte’s girlfriend, happens to work). Afterwards he picks up a picture of Karl Marx which has been knocked to the floor, and ends up carrying it through the streets of East Berlin at the height of the uprising – among the most grotesquely comical scenes in the book. Along the way he has conversations with various people, such as the Russian tank officer who asks him if he is tired of living, and a middle-class lady from West Berlin who doesn’t recognize the portrait and assumes Kallmann must be an art lover.
A bit earlier, Witte notices the demonstrators are now carrying new signs which sport political slogans. In English (but not in German), these look “more professional.” (pg. 198; S. 152) Now we can better understand why the point had been made that the protest note on the bulletin board was so neatly printed. The implication being that all these notices had been prepared in advance by Quelle’s West German backers and transported across the divided city to stir up wider trouble. This is underlined in a sentence which states that some people demonstrating out on the streets had obviously come from “West Berlin across the border.” The italicized words are not in the German, since the implication is obvious for a German audience.
Documentary Interludes
Between some chapters, as noted above, Heym quotes from a variety of documents. In these sections, German is the original language and English the translation. Generally speaking, the official pronouncements from the GDR tended to be written in a kind of turgid bureaucratese – something that Heym loved to mock in his other works, for example The King David Report. For 5 Days in June, however, he is at some pains to render the party jargon almost normal and reasonable. Perhaps he felt these passages were too important to make fun of, or did not wish readers to skip over them.
For the documents from West Germany, Heym benefited from an unusual circumstance. When he wrote his first draft of the novel, he invented the talking points he imagined had been drawn up by the Berlin crisis staff. Then someone (Heym does not reveal the person’s identity) passed him the actual report made by RIAS to their American superiors. Heym characterizes this as “Psychological Warfare pur,” and much more effective than the version he had dreamed up himself (Nachruf, 878).
One document in which there is a notable difference in translation involves a statement made by a top West Berlin trade union official just as the demonstrations are beginning to break out; the previous day a smaller demonstration had taken place at a major intersection called Strausberger Platz. Addressing the workers in the Eastern sector by radio, the official says, “All of you are therefore called on to join the movement of the East Berlin construction, transit, and railway workers and to gather everywhere, each man at his predetermined Strausbergerplatz.” (“… sucht Eure Strausberger Plätze überall auf.”) Literally, ‘let each of you find his own Strausberger Platz wherever it may be.’ In other words, the West Berlin labor leader was calling on workers in the East to gather spontaneously; in Heym’s translation, it sounds like he is calling on them to meet at pre-arranged locations. This particular choice lends strength to the view (promoted by the SED) that the demonstrations in the East were remotely controlled from the West. (pg. 266; S. 199)
Nuances
Some details in German Heym evidently considered superfluous in translation. Seeking advice, Witte goes to consult his old friend Solovyov, an editor who also served as a colonel in the Soviet armed forces. The Russian is described as wearing a civilian jacket that hangs “just as loosely from his gaunt, rounded shoulders as had his colonel’s tunic when Witte last saw him.” Heym adds a phrase in German: ‘his colonel’s tunic, which he only wore when it couldn’t be avoided.‘ (pg. 95; S. 72) The German reader gets a clearer idea that the Russian officer evidently prefers to think of himself as a civilian.
Usually, though, Heym provides explanations in English that a German reader would not need. In Chapter 21, two Russian officials are talking about the growing crisis. One of them refers to Beria’s proposed solution in which the USSR would give up the GDR in exchange for a unified but neutral Germany: “in short, a deal whereby we give away the revolution between the Oder and Elbe rivers and in turn receive accommodation.” “… kurz, die Revolution gegen die Akkomodation.” Heym felt the words in italics were unnecessary for his German audience. (pg. 139; S. 105)
For some passages, no obvious explanation comes to mind why Heym would have made changes. Thus when Goodie tries to see Witte at his workplace only to find he is out, she is shown into a room with Banggartz, who proceeds to if not interrogate her, then ask a series of pointed questions. She responds by asking about Witte, and here some sentences are omitted from their conversation. She asks:
“He’ll be here tomorrow, maybe?”
“How did you know exactly, Miss, that your friend could be found here in the plant?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Just the way things happen. A letter from an acquaintance, he was mentioned in it. How about the day after tomorrow?”
The italicized sentences are neither more nor less important for a German than an English-speaking reader. Possibly they were dropped in error. (pg. 101; S. 77)
Sometimes the German expands on the English, at other times reduces it. When Goodie finally does catch up with Witte, he suddenly realizes that it was her unexpected visit to the plant that caused Banggartz and the others to suspect him. They figured she must be his contact with West German agitators trying to stir up discontent. Here is his reaction the moment this all becomes clear to him, in literal translation: ‘Fate, he thought. And for this the suspicions; Banggartz, Sonneberg’s bother and excitement, the interrogation by Ewers…’ (“Schicksal, dachte er. Und darum die Verdächtigungen; Banggartz, Sonneberg in Aufruhr; das Verhör mit Ewers…”) In his translation, Heym fills in more details: “Fate, he thought. And for this stupid girl’s stupid whim all Banggartz’s suspicions, all the bother and excitement, Dreesen’s worry about him and the hours of interrogation by Ewers…” (pg. 310; S. 233) One can well imagine that German readers would be interested to know that Witte thought of Goodie as a stupid girl acting on a stupid whim.
Goodie Cass’ Language
English-speakers may find it annoying the way her speech – or rather her thoughts – are presented as a continual stream of consciousness without punctuation, but the effect is to give a good picture of her mental processes. From personal experience I can say that there are women in Berlin, especially in the East, who talk (and presumably think) exactly like this. Reading her jumble of words in German, one instantly recognizes the type – one that really has no equivalent in the English-speaking universe (Molly Bloom may be a distant cousin). So Heym is left with little choice except to transcribe her torrent of words as accurately as possible; he cannot hope thereby to create the same impression in the mind of the Anglo-American reader.
Most of her thoughts are presented with minimal punctuation, unlike that of any other character. Let’s look at some examples. When she is vainly trying to find Witte at his plant, she runs into Kallmann, to whom she had been introduced after her striptease performance during Kallmann’s recruitment by Herr Quelle in West Berlin. In reproducing the voice in her head as she later runs over this encounter, we read her thinking of “dieser, dieser Kallmann,” literally ‘this, this Kallmann,’ which in English may sound like she is struggling to remember his name. Instead, he opted for a more colorful variant, one which more clearly gets across the contempt she feels: “this ape Kallmann.” (pg. 143; S. 109) By the way, whenever she thinks of him, she repeats exactly the same expression.
Her boyfriend Gadebusch is extremely annoyed with her for trying to contact Witte, since that might tip him off to the danger he is in. Before he drives her back to their weekend bungalow where he intends to teach her a lesson, she looks at him and thinks “he keeps gripping me pushing me into this car expensive job to use for transporting prisoners” – the italicized words are not in the German. (pg. 143; S. 109) By the way, the car in question is indeed expensive: for this evening, Quelle had put at his disposal a chauffeur-driven Mercedes – not something most East German factory workers rode around in.
When she escapes from the bungalow after Fred has given her a black eye, she reflects that now she has been reduced to the very situation she was in before meeting him: “… so I’m once more down to practically nothing just as I was when I skipped from home.” “… da steh ich nun wieder mit nichts da wie damals.” Literally: ‘So there I stand with nothing again just like before.’ The English adds a useful detail: The reader is left to infer that one reason she may have run away from home was the guilt she felt over her role (and that of her father) in the death of Witte’s ailing wife. (pg. 189; S. 144)
In any case, Goodie is my favorite character in the novel, because she speaks like a real East Berliner. Heym got her intonation and speech pattern right, without being patronizing or mocking about it. Knowing women who express themselves exactly like her, I felt a twinge of regret when she exited the novel. The narrator eventually reveals that he too has a soft spot for her: “despite her country background and her strictly body business she was quite a sensitive creature.” The italicized words are included for the benefit of English-speaking readers. (pg. 295; S. 222)
Witte has no soft spot for his enemies, including her boyfriend. We overhear him thinking about his potential murderers (added words are italicized): “Eliminate, thought Witte, they’d have to eliminate him they had said, unless Mosigkeit had dreamed it up, eliminator Gadebusch, eliminator Pietrzuch, and God knows what other eliminators…” “Ausschalten, dachte Witte, ausschalten war das Wort, wenn Mosigkeit richtig gehört hatte, ausschalten, mich: der Gadebusch, der Pietrzuch….” (pg. 276; S. 207)
Cultural Reference Points
When it comes to highly idiomatic German expressions, Heym typically finds or adapts a rough English equivalent. If there is no such equivalent, he simply omits it. Goethe once famously said, “Es ist dafür gesorgt worden, daß die Bäume nicht in den Himmel wachsen.” Literally: ‘It has been taken care of that trees don’t grow into the heavens.’ (Believe me, in German it sounds both more profound and more natural.) When a character quotes this famous saying, Heym renders it as follows: “There’s someone who sees to it that people don’t grow too big for their boots…” (pg. 31; S. 23)
Later another character quotes the German saying, “Alte Freundschaft rostet nicht,” literally ‘Old friendship doesn’t rust.’ Since English does not have an equivalent proverb, Heym invents one: “To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, an old Englishman once said, is certainly not wise.” (pg. 75; S. 58) When it comes to such expressions, Heym was clearly thinking in German, not English.
Shortly before the street demonstrations break out, we see Anna working behind the counter in a state-run food store, standing in for the manager, Frau Wenzel “whom evil-meaning persons referred to as Madame Toady.” Leaving aside the consideration that “evil-meaning persons” sounds very much like a translation (‘envious’ or ‘resentful people’ would be more natural), “Madame Toady” is the English equivalent for “die Scharwenzel.” (pg. 87; S. 67) In this instance, Heym made the obviously correct choice to emphasize the meaning (toady) over the wordplay (Wenzel/Scharwenzel), since he could not have both.
As the workers grow more inclined to strike, they recite (and later sing) a proletarian marching song: “All the wheels be standing still / By your power and your will.” “Alle Räder stehen still, / Wenn dein starker Hand es will.” Heym adds the useful comment that these are “the words of the old fighting song of the working class” – an explanation not needed in the German original. (pg. 159; S. 118) The verses are indeed from a 19th century anthem written by Georg Herwegh (1817-1875), who wrote songs for the Social Democratic Worker’s Party. There seems to be no easily accessible English translation, and the version offered here is probably Heym’s own.
Later we hear snatches of another song. As a meeting of party members breaks up after a discussion of what to do in face of the impending protest, Witte is pressed against a wall by the departing crowd. As he stands there he thinks to himself:
“The old verse
… our own right hand the chains must shiver,
the chains of hatred, greed, and fear…
passed through his mind.” (pg. 236; S. 181)
In neither the German nor the English is the song identified by name; this is somewhat surprising when it comes to the English, at least from today’s perspective. Possibly when the novel was written, more people would have recognized the verses as originating in stanza three of “The Internationale” in the traditional British translation.
And at the end of Chapter 56, a worker expounds his own home-spun philosophy: “ein Schöpfer hat uns alle geschaffen; nur ist der Mensch sein eigner schlimmster Feind.” This could be rendered as, ‘One creator made us all, but man is man’s worst enemy.’ Heym kept the second half of this pronouncement, but changed the beginning: “A man is a man, and man is man’s worst enemy…” Note that the points de suspension have been added in English – a rare change in punctuation. (pg. 316; S. 238)
References to the Nazi Past
Early on we read a passage which explains why Witte walks with a limp: “Er sah den Karren vor sich, mit Steinen beladen, der sich den ausgemergelten Händen entriß und auf ihn zugerollt kam, im Lager Mauthausen.” A literal rendition might read: ‘He saw the lorry in front of him, piles of rock on it, saw it slip from the thin hands and roll towards him in Mauthausen concentration camp.’ And here is Heym’s actual translation: “In his mind’s eye he saw the lorry being dragged uphill by his fellow prisoners in Mauthausen concentration camp, saw the piles of rock on it, saw it slip from their thin hands and roll towards him.” (pg. 23; S. 15) As Mauthausen is not one of the more familiar camps, Heym apparently felt some additional detail was required.
In the Merkur canteen, things come to a preliminary head during a confrontation between workers and a manager. “Kallmann was reminded of the early ‘thirties, of the tension in the meeting halls just before the armed sections of the political parties went into action, Brown against Red, and the first beer mugs came flying through the air.” “Es erinnerte Kallmann an die Saalschlachten Anfang der dreißiger Jahre, hie Braun, hie Rot, an die Minuten der Spannung, bevor es losging.” The italicized words, being superfluous for a German audience, are only to be found in English. (pg. 82; S. 63)
After Heinz Hofer returns, his mother begins to reminisce with her daughter-in-law about how once this particular date used to be something special: “Such a holiday as you never saw, Anna, you were too young at the time. One huge revelry. Glasses smashing. Skulls being shaved. Ah, those people looked funny.” The mention of skulls being shaved gives a good hint as to what day she has in mind, but the historical allusion is even clearer in German. “So einen Feiertag hast du noch nicht miterlebt, Anna, du warst zu jung damals. Ein ungeheurer Polterabend. Kristallnacht. Rasierte Schädel. Was sahen die Leute komisch aus.” Instead of the rather innocuous “glasses smashing,” Widow Hofer uses the expression “Kristallnacht” or the Night of Broken Glass, the first large-scale pogrom in Nazi Germany. In this instance, the English provides rather less context than it could have. (pg. 178f.; S. 136)
Near the end of the novel Csisek, an enemy of Witte and one of the lesser characters, utters the expression, “Wo gehobelt wird, fallen Späne”, which is usually rendered as “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” (In a later novel, Heym would translate the same phrase as, “where there’s chipping there’s bound to be chips” Collin [Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1980], pg. 88.) In context, this character, probably a Wehrmacht veteran of the Eastern Front, is describing the Russian approach to waging war. In translation, Heym decides to sacrifice the familiar saying in order to have him state what he really means: ” ‘The Russians,’ remarked Csisek, ‘weren’t so finicky either.’ ” Heym also omits the parenthetical remark that he is ‘quoting a slogan from his good old days’ (“… einen Ausspruch aus seiner großen Zeit”). In this instance, Heym does more in German than in English to underline Csisek’s cynicism. (pg. 302; S. 228)
All in all, the point of this extended discussion has been to show that even when an author translates his own words, the choices he makes can be illustrative of what issues he personally considers important, as well as the dilemmas that any translator faces.
Related: See my review of Stefan Heym: Collin (including two unpublished photos of Heym), and Robert Darnton: Censors at Work, elsewhere at this site.
If you refer to this blog in a publication, please let me know – my school likes to keep track.
[1] See Herbert Krämer: Ein dreißigjähriger Krieg gegen ein Buch. Zur Publikations- und Rezeptionsgeschichte von Stefan Heyms Roman über den 17. Juni 1953 (Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 1999), passim.
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