Baltic Writers

Günter_Grass_(1986)_by_Erling_Mandelmann

I finished reading Günther Grass’s 2002 novel, Crabwalk, this week.  It’s translated from the German, Im Krebsgang,by Krishna Winston. Now, I might have a masters’ in 20^thcentury German lit, but must admit, I’d never read any of his work. I was probably too obsessed with Heinrich Böll, one of my all-time favourite writers. What drew me to Grass now is Ruta Sepetys’s 2016 YA novel, From Salt to Sea. She includes a wonderful list of resource material at the end of her novel. 

Both books concern the sinking of the ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff. Both books cover territory that my own WIP touches on. Because the German title has the word Krebs in it, which means cancer, I'd missed the war connection. But the title refers to the wobbly, unsteady way a crab walks. And so it is, with the plot. 

I recommend reading both novels, end to end.  What makes Grass’s book so compelling is his ability to connect the dots, and then transfer the issues that led to the 1945 tragedy into a modern and relevant internet-based story. While Sepetys’s book zooms in on the tragedy of specific victims, Grass focuses on the bigger picture. He seems especially drawn to the man for whom the German luxury ship—used for German vacationers through the Kraft durch Freude —(or Strength through Joy program) was named. The man, Wilhelm Gustloff, was a prominent Nazi, who was shot in Davos, Switzerland by David Frankfurter, a Jew in 1936. Gustloff’s birthday was January 30, (1895) —fifty years to the day that the ship went down (in 1945), the same day the main character, Paul, was born, and the same date (in 1933) that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, twelve years earlier.

Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. Another Baltic-based writer, Thomas Mann, received the same recognition back in 1929. Grass’s birth town was Danzig (now at #13 Lelewela in Gdansk) Poland while Thomas Mann had a summer home in Nida, Lithuania. More places to add to my Baltic itinerary.  Hope to share photos here on this blog.

Marinesko's Legacy

I’m re-reading Ruta Sepetys’s novel, Salt to the Sea, not only because it’s a really good book but also because it’s set near the Baltic—January, 1945. The story centers on the greatest maritime disaster, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, when more than nine thousand people (many women and children) drowned in the icy Baltic after three Soviet torpedo strikes.

Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H27992,_Lazarettschiff_"Wilhelm_Gustloff"_in_Danzig.jpg ‎

I’ll be biking through most of the places Sepetys's that characters travel, but Gdynia, Poland (called Gotenhafen during the Nazi years)—the goal of Sepetys’s four main characters—is not on the itinerary. However, since Gdynia’s only about twenty kilometers further down the coast from Gdansk, perhaps I'll be able to fit in a day trip. Its maritime museums should be interesting.  

Originally part of Poland, Gdynia was once the busiest port on the Baltic. In September 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, they renamed it Gotenhafen, (meaning harbor of the gods) and used it as a port for their Kriegsmarine. Crushing attacks in the final months of the war—by both the fleeing Nazis and the offensive Soviets—destroyed most of the city. 

There's a 1960 movie called Darkness fell on Gotenhafen. (Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen) which I will try and hunt down. 

When in Kaliningrad, I’ll be hunting down the bronze sculpture dedicated to the Soviet commander who fired the three fatal S13 torpedoes. Alex Marinesko later ended up in the gulag system because of bad behaviour due to his heavy drinking.  He died in 1963. Decades later, in 1990, he was proclaimed a Hero of the Soviet Union by Gorbachev.

Marinesko is an important character in Günter Grass’s 2002, award-winning novel Crabwalk and over in St. Petersburg, the Submarine Museum is named after him.