Translated from German by Ross Benjamin
Published by riverrun, 2023, 333 pages. Original version published in 2023.
The book begins with Franzl Wilzek, an old man with dementia, being taken to a television studio, where he is interviewed by Heinz Conrad, a well-known host. He is confused about why he is there and unsure of what is expected of him. Wilzek was a film director and once the assistant of the famous director, G.W. Pabst. But when the conversation moves to Pabst and his film The Molander Case, it goes downhill. Wilzek insists the film was never made, and accuses the host of not doing his research properly.
The novel is bookended by chapters with Wilzek as an old man narrating, but the story Daniel Kehlmann tells is about Pabst, an Austrian director who returns to Austria during the Nazi regime and winds up making films for them.
The first time we meet Pabst, he is in Hollywood, clearly out of place. They won’t let him make the movies he wants to make, and he feels he does not get the respect he is entitled to. Then he gets a telegram from his mother, who is still in Austria, saying that he needs to return at once. So, against the wishes of his wife Trude, who is afraid of what would happen if they went back, he books tickets for them and their son Jakob, and returns to Austria.
His mother Erika lives in their house with the caretaker Karl Jerzabek and his wife Liesl and daughters Gerti and Mitzi. Kehlmann makes it clear that they do not behave as caretakers should but bully Erika and live upstairs, which is the better part of the house, ostensibly because Erika cannot take the stairs. The telegram was sent by Jerzabek, not Erika. He has joined the Nazi party, and resents Pabst being abroad. The girls are sheer terrors.
Pabst’s plan is to make sure his mother is okay and then to return to the US. But that is not what happens. War is declared, and the borders are closed.
Pabst is summoned by Joseph Goebbels himself, meeting him in a huge office where the visitor has a long walk to get to his desk. Goebbels will not take no for an answer: “Consider what I can offer you…for example, a concentration camp. At any time. No problem. But that’s not what I mean at all. I mean, consider what else I can offer you, namely: anything you want. Any budget, any actor. Any film you want to make, you can make.” Pabst tries to resist but, in the end, gives in.
Bit by bit, you see his attitude shift—not a complete change, he is never a true supporter of the regime, but a slow acceptance of things that once shocked him—the start of a kind of corruption. Trude’s attitude, however, does not change. She does not fit in but is persuaded by Pabst to join a ladies’ reading club, where they are reading the books of a much-admired writer that Trude finds shallow. To say so would be dangerous, so she must pretend to admire his writing. She is unhappy and turns to drink as a way of coping. Meanwhile, Jakob is in school, where he becomes part of the Nazi Youth, believing the propaganda that he and his classmates are being fed. Pabst is horrified by this change in his son, and tries gently to steer him away. But he cannot be explicit about it in case Jakob turns against him and denounces him to the authorities.
Kehlmann tells the story from different points of view, which fleshes out all the major characters. One of the rather surprising narrators—I really was not expecting him—was P.G. Wodehouse, who was captured by the Germans and coerced into making radio broadcasts about life in Berlin. I think he comes off better here than in some of the accounts by UK writers that I have read about his war years. There is a note from the author saying that the chapter on Wodehouse was substantially revised for this translation: I would love to see what the original was like.
Pabst did actually exist, but this is not a biography. Kehlmann sticks to the broad outlines of Pabst’s life but changes some facts to fit the story and imagines others. He writes in some detail about a lost film of Pabst’s called The Molander Case, which did exist, but there is no information where it is or on the circumstances it was filmed in.
What Kehlmann has done here—and which explains why Wodehouse is in the novel—is tell the story of what happens when an artist is co-opted into working for a regime that they essentially oppose, how the rot slowly seeps in.
Kehlmann raises the issue of an artist’s responsibility: is it simply to continue working, using whatever means are available, or is it to bear witness and tell the truth? This question reminded me of Karl Mann’s Mephisto, which is also about an artist working within the Nazi regime, although the two men are quite different. Mephisto’s Hendrik Höfgen is much more cynical and self-serving than Pabst, but they both put aside any qualms they may have to be able to continue working.
This is a chilling story about how moral corruption can taint even those who consider themselves to be above it.
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