Siegfried Lenz – författare

I En tyst minut får vi möta Christian och Stella en varm sommar på en badort vid kusten. Christian arbetar för sin far i hamnen och stöter av en slump ihop med sin lärarinna. De dansar på strandfesten i Hirtshafen, gör utflykter till Fågelön och läser William Faulkner under tallarna nere vid stranden. I En tyst minut är det Christian som berättar om deras sommar tillsammans. Den sommar som skulle bli Stellas sista. En tyst minut handlar om Christians och Stellas ömsesidiga kärlek som skildras av Siegfried Lenz lika träffsäkert och ömsint som alltid med det enkla och eleganta språk som har blivit hans kännetecken. En tyst minut kom ut 2010 i Sverige och har hyllats av en närmast enig kritikerkår. Boken har översatts till närmare 25 språk och när boken kom ut i England skrev The Independent: "Lenz's beautiful miniature also stands alone as a masterclass in the grammar of farewell". Siegfried Lenz föddes 1926 i Ostpreussen. Efter studenten 1943 blev han som nästan alla i sin generation soldat. I slutet av kriget deserterade han och hamnade i engelsk krigsfångenskap där han jobbade som tolk. Efter kriget studerade han i Hamburg och arbetade sedan som journalist. Lenz debuterade 1951 och har utöver ett femtontal romaner och nästan lika många novellsamlingar även skrivit dramatik, essäer och en barnbok. I Sverige är Siegfried Lenz kanske allra mest känd för sina episka romaner som Tysktimmen och Förhistorien i fin översättning av Brita Edfelt. [B]erättelsen har goda utsikter att bli en framtida klassiker bland litterära kärleksskildr­ingar, Martin Lagerholm i Svenska Dagbladet "I En tyst minut har Lenz på bara ca 100 sidor skapat en stor berättelse.", Björn Waller på dagensbok.com "Romanen framstår som en ljusbländande impressionistisk målning, doftande av hav, pulserande av den första förälskelsens känslokast", Ann Lingebrandt i Helsingborgs Dagblad

In writing this novel, one of the major works of German fiction to appear since the Second World War, Siegfried Lenz has written, 'I was trying to find out where the joys of duty could lead a people.' His exploration is a disturbing triumph. Siggi Jepsen, the protagonist, is embroiled in the conflict between the totalitarian Nazi government and a creative artist. As a young boy he watched his father, constable of the northernmost police station in Germany, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist, their neighbour, from painting and to seize all his 'degenerate' work. Soon Siggi is hiding the paintings to keep them safe from his father. Against the great brooding landscape of the Danish borderland, Siggi recounts the clash of father and son, of duty and personal loyalty in wartime Germany.'The German Lesson has the virtue of being a novel about the War and about persecution which deliberately avoids violence and obvious horrors. To this . . . are added the . . . merits of lucidity, elegance, a brilliant organizing skill.' The Sunday Times 'Visually the wary folk and bitter landscape of the Danish borderland comes over as potently as Grass's East Prussia.' The Guardian'The timeless conflict . . . ''duty'' versus individual conscience and morality is given bizarre, complex form in Lenz's powerful tale. . . Mordantly witty, despairing, impassioned, this is one of the most deeply imagined and thought-provoking novels from Germany in years.' Library Journal'The German Lesson marks a double triumph - a book of rare depth and brilliance, to begin with, presented in an English version that succeeds against improbable odds in conveying the full power of the original.' Ernst Pawel, The New York Times Book Review'The German Lesson is, quite simply, the book I have been waiting ever since the end of World War 11 for a German to write. 'Kaye Boyle'A remarkable, earnest and important novel. Lenz moves toward realizing new dimensions and perspectives on the German sensibility that must contribute to our eventual understanding of the madness of the times.' Robert K. Morris, The Nation'If ever the Third Reich was pictured in microcosm, with its prejudices against people not rooted in the land, and its tiny spasms of nationalistic fervour that added up to an irrational howl in final sum, then Lenz has done it . . . has surpassed it.' Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times

It is the last watch of the lightship that stands at anchor in the Baltic Sea, near the port of Kiel; it is nine years since the end of World War II and the mines she warned the shipping of have been removed. But on her last watch, her peace is interrupted: her captain, Freytag, takes in three men whose boat has broken down, and with them, their illegal cargo of guns. Held hostage on the ship by the three criminals, headed by the sinister Dr Caspary, the tensions between captain and crew become apparent. Freytag still hopes for a peaceful end to the watch; but his son, Fred, and his resourceful but outgunned crew cannot forget Freytag's dishonour in the war. As a stalemate develops, Freytag finds he must make a final choice - one that must redeem him in the eyes of his men.

In The Heritage, first published in German in 1978, Zygmunt Rogalla, an elderly Masurian rug-maker from Lucknow - which was once part of East Prussia, now part of Poland - tells his story from a hospital bed. The curator of the Masurian museum, where objects were collected as a symbol of the culture that had been lost in the second world war and after, he is also its destroyer, his injuries self-inflicted. Through the remembrance of his sufferings, he explains why the museum was so important to him, and to his fellow exiles, and what terrible discovery led him to destroy not only his life's greatest work, but the objects salvaged from his people's lost past.

In this quiet and devastating novel about the rise of fascism, Siggi Jepsen, incarcerated as a juvenile delinquent, is assigned to write a routine German lesson on the “The Joys of Duty.” Overfamiliar with these joys, Siggi sets down his life since 1943, a decade earlier, when as a boy he watched his father, a constable, doggedly carry out orders from Berlin to stop a well-known Expressionist artist from painting and to seize all his “degenerate” work. Soon Siggi is stealing the paintings to keep them safe from his father. “I was trying to find out,” Lenz says, “where the joys of duty could lead a people.”Translated from the German by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins