Left-wing literature | Christian Geissler: The Struggle for Life

Christian Geissler (1928–2008) was a radical and headstrong anti-fascist. He wrote novels and poems, radio plays and television dramas. He also appeared as a speaker at demonstrations and with political initiatives. His central theme was the question of the effective consequences of fascism and war, and, related to this, the responsibility of the individual.

In an anti-war speech in 1965, he explained: “Ruling classes can only ever appear to fight war, because the very social system that makes them the ruling class is also the one that creates war.” Or, in retrospect, in a 1998 interview: “If you want to move beyond the moral aspect of anti-fascism to an applicable anti-fascism, you arrive at Marx.” This consistency separates him from Grass, Walser, Enzensberger, and Group 47. “We are only what we do against them,” he wrote in his novel “kamalatta” (1988). For him, it is always about the unity of text and action.

In his debut novel, "Inquiry" (1960), the protagonist Köhler questions "the guilt of silence, the guilt of comfortable helplessness, the guilt of negligence in thought, the guilt of inattention born of fear." The framing narrative depicts a Nazi trial. The judge and prosecutor want acquittal: the defendant is supposed to talk his way out of it. That was the norm at the time. But Köhler confesses his guilt: "I have a son. It's better for a son to have a guilty father who knows his guilt than to have a father who is not of sound mind." Is he insane? No, he is perfectly rational and thus exposes the "normality" of silence and repression depicted in the novel as madness.

The power of this text stems from how closely Geissler tells the story to reality, how he works with the linguistic sediments of Nazi ideology, skewers unquestioned thought patterns, and dismantles them in pointed dialogues: "What must they have looked like?" the secretary asks the protagonist, who is recounting the deportation of a Jewish family. "Like the devil? Do you think so?" Köhler replies. "No, not the Jews—I mean those who did it." Köhler: "That's who I mean!" He takes a photograph from his pocket. "That's what they looked like, those who did it. Like my father, and like yours, if you don't mind." That hits home. That provokes. That demands a stand.

Reality knows no simple truths; it is full of contradictions. This experience shaped Geissler and his writing. His father had been a member of the Nazi Party before 1933, and he describes his mother as "anti-Nazi by both knowledge and instinct." At 16, he was drafted into the war as an anti-aircraft auxiliary. He survived because his officer deserted shortly before the end of the war, abandoning the entire group. Two of his mother's brothers were members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and lived in exile in Moscow. One was shot there in 1937 during the Stalinist purges. The other rose to become a leading cultural official in East Germany. His name: Alfred Kurella.

Geissler's books are about how to arrive at one's own stance in a contradictory reality. He thus challenges the deceptive conventions that allow sentences to trickle into our brains without resistance. "In gratitude to our fallen sons"—this is how fathers mourn after the war. Geissler asks: "Did these people simply fall down here? This is how we lie to ourselves about the truth with our everyday language. No one fell down here. Living human beings were disgraced here amidst screams and stench. [...] What does gratitude mean in this context?"

His first book had barely been published when Geissler was already at the center of political controversies. And so it would remain. He demonstrated against the nuclear armament of the German armed forces, the Vietnam War, and the emergency laws; he spoke at Easter marches, joined the banned Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and—after Prague in 1968—left again. In the 1970s, he campaigned for better prison conditions for Red Army Faction (RAF) prisoners. At the beginning of a political speech, he introduced himself: "I come from a perfectly ordinary, friendly Hamburg family..."—the sentence almost completed itself: a merchant family or a captain's family? Geissler: "I come from a perfectly ordinary, friendly Hamburg Nazi family." Even in 2005, in his late seventies, he was still asking what it meant to be a communist.

His standpoint, to put it pathetically, is that of "life," which should not be exploited, threatened by violence, or subjected to the rationality of exploitation. This sounds abstract, but that's precisely why the story is told. In this way, interests and conflicts, resistance and the "struggle for life" become concrete and tangible—without the promise that the struggles will ever lead to a goal. Geissler has lost his faith.

“We are only what we do to them” – his novels “The Bread with the File” (1973), “It’s About Time We Lived” (1976), and “kamalatta” (1988), described as a trilogy of resistance, tell of the political awakening of the 1960s, the resistance of the early 1930s, and the conflicts of the 1970s leading up to “armed struggle.” This trilogy was the subject of political debate and was perceived as literary avant-garde. It remains relevant because it still poses questions that are valid today.

In "kamalatta," a child is at risk of going blind. The chances of an operation are 50/50: life and the ability to see, or death. What is the boy's life worth if he goes blind? Nazi pronouncements about "life unworthy of life" and the experience of euthanasia hang in the air. But this is the child of a comrade. She wants the boy to become a fighter. She throws herself into political activism. Others care for her son—without the operation.

Also in "kamalatta," an armed group is preparing an attack on a NATO conference. The conference is taking place in a former SS officer training school, again with a connection to fascism. Here, too, lives are at stake. The protagonist seeks proximity to this group. Does he submit to their enforced discipline? Does he assume responsibility in the "struggle for survival" by relinquishing it? The contradictions touch the core of his own existence. Geissler has been unable to resolve them.

With "Wildwechsel mit Gleisanschluss" (1996), Geissler paints a nightmarishly bleak picture of a country he almost considers possible again: borders are closed, everything foreign is fair game, and neoliberal economics leaves a trail of bodies. Images collide, linguistic registers and fragments clash, their origins and speakers only vaguely discernible. This text, too, contains a layer of resistance. Above all, as a statement made articulate against an overwhelming political trend, this text—very quietly—is also an act.

Summary of a lecture given at the conference "Between Text and Action: Literature and Democracy Education" in Heiligenstadt. The author is chairman of the Christian Geissler Society.