Heimatmuseum

The best of Lenz, a book that will stand the test of generations. Welt am Sonntag

Siegfried Lenz's most extensive and ambitious novel, conceived in the early 1960s and interrupted for the sake of "Deutschstunde," was published in 1978 and immediately became a success. The dramatic and episodic story of a local museum in Masuria becomes the focal point of significant political developments from the turn of the century to the post-war period: local knowledge as world knowledge.

Amid political appropriation and self-assertion, the friendship between the narrator Zygmunt and his counterpart Conny develops: one becomes a target of hatred for the right with his resistance against nationalist localism; the other strives to maintain the independence of his museum—until war, displacement, and the establishment of a new existence in the West reverse their roles, leaving Zygmunt with no choice but to destroy his museum. In its place emerges a skeptical, reflective narration: the novel itself.

Lenz's novel paints a colorful, expansive panorama of Masuria as an exemplary European borderland. The narrative intention is to illustrate the antagonism between local attachment and tragic cosmopolitanism through vivid life. After accompanying Willy Brandt to Warsaw in 1970, he also conceives "Heimatmuseum" as a political positioning: When I think about it, this novel, when understood correctly, becomes a contribution to Eastern policy that makes some speeches unnecessary. While superficially told in a traditional manner, "Heimatmuseum" proves to be a fascinating experiment with history and memory, myth and modernity.