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'THE JEWISH CANDIDATE'

NAZIS

‘Germany is indifferent to neo-Nazi violence’

It's an intriguing premise: Are Germans ready to elect a Jewish politician chancellor? British journalist David Crossland has written a novel exploring themes of racism and neo-Nazi violence in Germany. The Local has excerpts.

Published: 24 May 2013 12:00 CEST
'Germany is indifferent to neo-Nazi violence'
Photo: David Crossland

David Crossland was born in 1967 in Bonn, then the capital of West Germany, where his father was a foreign correspondent. He was educated at German schools until he was 16, and then attended a school in Bristol before studying politics and economics at Exeter University.

He has been a journalist for over 20 years, working for Reuters from 1994 until 2004, first in Frankfurt where he covered financial and economic affairs including the wrangling that preceded the launch of the euro, and then in Berlin as chief political correspondent, in charge of covering news from Germany. He has worked for Spiegel Online International since 2005 and also freelances for other publications.

He has written extensively about the growing threat posed by neo-Nazis in the former communist east, and has tracked the country’s probing search for a new, bolder role in the world as new generations throw off the chains of guilt. “The Jewish Candidate” is his first foray into fiction.

The Local: Why did you write a book on this theme?

David Crossland: In the many years I have been reporting about Germany I have been struck by how indifferent the authorities are to the problem of neo-Nazi violence against immigrants. Experts have been warning for years that the extreme right is being underestimated. The NSU case has proven them right. The combination of well-armed racists, official inaction and the backdrop of Germany striving to be a normal country again and put the Holocaust behind it, struck me as potent material for a political thriller.

TL: Do you think Germany is ready for a Jewish chancellor?

DC: In theory, yes. But I think he or she would have to be an extremely gifted politician to stand a chance. He would have to suppress his Jewish identity to overcome public doubts about his loyalties. And he would get a lot of hate mail. But given the dearth of Jews in German politics at the moment, I think it’s unlikely anytime soon. The rebirth of Jewish life in Germany is much-hyped, but I don’t see much real evidence of it.

TL: To what extent is the far a threat in Germany?

DC: This country is too enlightened to vote them back into power again. I think the NPD and their ilk will remain negligible as a nationwide political force. The threat is to people on the street, in trains, on buses, getting harassed and beaten up or worse. And the threat is to Germany’s reputation as a civilized nation, which will suffer unless it gets tougher on far-right thugs and tackles blatant institutional racism in its police — as Britain has tried to do.

TL: You grew up in Germany. What’s your view on it?

DC: I hope my affection for Germany and the Rhineland in particular, and for its beer, comes through in the book. It has so much going for it. But I’m disappointed at how immigrants are still viewed as foreigners even after decades living here, and at the general complacency about neo-Nazism. You get racists and far-right whackos everywhere. But Germany, which perpetrated the Holocaust, should have a zero tolerance policy here.

Click here for the prologue.

Click here for the first chapter.

“The Jewish Candidate” is available as an e-book at Amazon.co.uk here and at Amazon.com here.

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HISTORY

‘Lost’ manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

A book by one of France's most celebrated and controversial literary figures arrives in bookstores this week, 78 years after the manuscript disappeared

Published: 4 May 2022 11:42 CEST
'Lost' manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

It is a rare thing when the story of a book’s publication is even more mysterious than the plot of the novel itself.

But that might be said of Guerre (War) by one of France’s most celebrated and controversial literary figures, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, which arrives in bookstores on Thursday, some 78 years after its manuscript disappeared.

Celine’s reputation has somehow survived the fact that he was one of France’s most eager collaborators with the Nazis.

Already a superstar thanks to his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Celine became one of the most ardent anti-Semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer abandoned a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine feared rough treatment from authorities in liberated France, having spent the war carousing with the Gestapo, and giving up Jews and foreigners to the Nazi regime and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he accused resistance fighters of burning them. But at some point in the 2000s, they ended up with retired journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, who passed them – completely out of the blue – to Celine’s heirs last summer.

‘A miracle’
Despite the author’s history, reviews of the 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, have been unanimous in their praise.

“The end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text,” writes Le Point; a “miracle,” says Le Monde; “breathtaking,” gushes Journal du Dimanche.

Gallimard has yet to say whether the novel will be translated.

Like much of Celine’s work, Guerre is deeply autobiographical, recounting his experiences during World War I.

It opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

His time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres (London), to be published this autumn.

If French reviewers seem reluctant to focus on Celine’s rampant World War II anti-Semitism, it is partly because his early writings (Guerre is thought to date from 1934) show little sign of it.

Journey to the End of the Night was a hit among progressives for its anti-war message, as well as a raw, slang-filled style that stuck two fingers up at bourgeois sensibilities.

Celine’s attitude to the Jews only revealed itself in 1937 with the publication of a pamphlet, Trifles for a Massacre, which set him on a new path of racial hatred and conspiracy-mongering.

He never back-tracked. After the war, he launched a campaign of Holocaust-denial and sought to muddy the waters around his own war-time exploits – allowing him to worm his way back into France without repercussions.

‘Divine surprise’
Many in the French literary scene seem keen to separate early and late Celine.

“These manuscripts come at the right time – they are a divine surprise – for Celine to become a writer again: the one who matters, from 1932 to 1936,” literary historian Philippe Roussin told AFP.

Other critics say the early Celine was just hiding his true feelings.

They highlight a quote that may explain the gap between his progressive novels and reactionary feelings: “Knowing what the reader wants, following fashions like a shopgirl, is the job of any writer who is very financially constrained,” Celine wrote to a friend.

Despite his descent into Nazism, he was one of the great chroniclers of the trauma of World War I and the malaise of the inter-war years.

An exhibition about the discovery of the manuscripts opens on Thursday at the Gallimard Gallery and includes the original, hand-written sheets of Guerre.

They end with a line that is typical of Celine: “I caught the war in my head. It is locked in my head.”

In the final years before his death in 1961, Celine endlessly bemoaned the loss of his manuscripts.

The exhibition has a quote from him on the wall: “They burned them, almost three manuscripts, the pest-purging vigilantes!”

This was one occasion – not the only one – where he was proved wrong.

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