Essay from the year 2001 in the subject German Studies - Comparative Literature, grade: A, University of London (Faculty of German Literature), course: German Narrative Fiction: Text and Film, language: English, abstract: ‘The key to understanding The Tin Drum lies in understanding the mind of its remarkable first-person narrator, Oskar Matzerath, that brilliantly conceived fictional eyewitness and personification of the Third Reich, its prehistory, and its aftermath.’1 This quote stresses the importance of the narrator in Günter Grass’ novel. In this essay, I should like to compare the narrative structure in the novel with the film adaptation. As my aim is to find out how the film version works, I would like to put forward the proposition that not only the understanding of the narrator’s mind is crucial for the understanding of the novel, but also the understanding of the narrative structure itself within Die Blechtrommel. Therefore, I will have a closer look at the novel first and then proceeding to the film, in order to examine the changes Volker Schlöndorff made and what effect they may have on the understanding of the film. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a famous German poet and critic, described Günter Grass’ novel as a ‘Brocken, an dem Rezensenten und Philologen mindestens ein Jahrzehnt lang zu würgen haben, bis es [sic] reif zur Kanonisierung oder zur Aufbewahrung im Schauhaus der Literaturgeschichte ist.’2 This prophecy of 1959 came true and it was not until twenty years later that Volker Schlöndorff tried the first film adaptation of this complex work of literature. Nevertheless, the novel was a tremendous success, not only in post-war Germany. In the following paragraph, I will start with an explanation of the elements, which make the novel’s narrative structure so complicated and multilayered. 1 Keele, Alan Frank. Understanding Günter Grass, page 11 2 Richter, Frank. Die zerschlagene Wirklichkeit. Überlegungen zur Form der Danzig-Triologie von Günter Grass, page 7

Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptation, Politics and the “Movie-Appropriate”examines the work of major postwar Germandirector Volker Schlöndorff in historical, economic, and artistic contexts. . In spite of Schlöndorff’s successes with films like The Lost Honor ofKatharina Blum and The Tin Drum, as well as his acclaimed work in the U.S. with Death of a Salesman, Gathering of Old Men and The Handmaid’s Tale, this is the first in-depthcritical study of the filmmaker’s career.

Acclaimed as the greatest German novel written since the end of World War II , The Tin Drum is the autobiography of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Willfully stunting his growth at three feet for many years, wielding his tin drum and piercing scream as anarchistic weapons, he provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world.

Volker Schlöndorff’s Cinema: Adaptation, Politics and the “Movie-Appropriate”examines the work of major postwar Germandirector Volker Schlöndorff in historical, economic, and artistic contexts. . In spite of Schlöndorff’s successes with films like The Lost Honor ofKatharina Blum and The Tin Drum, as well as his acclaimed work in the U.S. with Death of a Salesman, Gathering of Old Men and The Handmaid’s Tale, this is the first in-depthcritical study of the filmmaker’s career.

The essays collected in this book focus on the multi-faceted relationship between German/Austrian literature and the cinema screen. Scholars from Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Portugal, USA and Canada present critical readings of a wide range of transpositions of German-language texts to film, while also considering the impact of cinema on German literature, exploring intertextualities as well as intermedialities. The forum of discussion thus created encompasses cinematic narratives based on Goethe’s Faust, Kleist’s Marquise of O..., Kubrick’s film version of Schnitzler’s Dream Story and Caroline Link’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Stefanie Zweig’s novel Nowhere in Africa. The wide-ranging analyses of the complex interaction between literature and film presented here focus on literary works by Anna Seghers, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, Nicola Rhon, Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Elfriede Jelinek, Rolf Dieter Brinkmann, Erich Hackl, Thomas Brussig, Sven Regener, Frank Goosen and Robert Schneider, as well as on adaptations by filmmakers such as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Max Mack, Josef von Sternberg, Max W. Kimmich, Fred Zinnemann, Paul Wegener, Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Hansjürgen Pohland, Hendrik Handloegten, Michael Haneke, Christoph Stark, Karin Brandauer, Joseph Vilsmaier, Leander Haußmann and Doris Dörrie.

Get the lowdown on the best fiction ever written. Over 230 of the world’s greatest novels are covered, from Quixote (1614) to Orhan Pamuk’s Snow (2002), with fascinating information about their plots and their authors – and suggestions for what to read next. The guide comes complete with recommendations of the best editions and translations for every genre from the most enticing crime and punishment to love, sex, heroes and anti-heroes, not to mention all the classics of comedy and satire, horror and mystery and many other literary genres. With feature boxes on experimental novels, female novelists, short reviews of interesting film and TV adaptations, and information on how the novel began, this guide will point you to all the classic literature you’ll ever need.

A comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the controversial German author's works. When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum. SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible, blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press (and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception of Grass's works. Siegfried Mews is Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.