EMOTION AND EMOTIONAL MANAGEMENT IN GÜNTER GRASS’ NOVELLA IM KREBSGANG (CRABWALK) AND IN THE CONTEXT OF ITS RECEPTION

Abstract

With the topic of the flight and expulsion of the Germans from the eastern territories of Germany as a result of World War II, the publication of the novella Im Krebsgang (ingl. Crabwalk) by Günter Grass in 2002 set a new focus in the not only literary revision of National Socialism and its consequences. The fact that Grass here expressly concedes the right to remembrance to the suffering of Germans as a consequence of the war, which was excluded during the past decades from official memory as politically incorrect, led to an exceptionally sharp public debate between advocates and opponents of the attitude of the author. Grass was even accused of encouraging the self-victimization of the Germans pretending a historical transcoding of the perpetrators into victims. Due to the strong emotional connotations of the topic, the reception of the novella when it was published was, of course, also strongly influenced by emotions. For this reason, the writer's narrative strategy is analyzed following a close reading of the text, the result of which makes clear that Grass is not defending revanchist exculpation tendencies, but explicitly rejects a possible request by Germans to stylize themselves as victims. Reflections based on theories about literary reception and emotion lead to the conclusion that only an inaccurate reading of the text, which is largely shaped by preconceived emotional pre-expectations of the text, allows for a misinterpretation which believes to see in Grass's novella the defense of an attempt of German self-victimization.