Heinrich Böll wrote Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral, Anecdote on Lowering the Work Ethic, for a radio broadcast on Labor Day, 1 May 1963. A tourist wakes a fisherman dozing in his boat. He cannot understand why the fisherman does not go out again and build up his business. The fisherman answers that he can already rest in the harbor. In the 1970s and 1980s, the story was compulsory reading at many West German schools.
literature
The Age of One-Sidedness
In Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, completed in 1829, Wilhelm talks with the character Montan. Wilhelm objects that a many-sided education has been held to be useful and necessary. Montan replies: Ja, es ist jetzo die Zeit der Einseitigkeiten; wohl dem, der es begreift, für sich und andere in diesem Sinne wirkt. Yes, now is the age of one-sidedness. Happy is he who understands it and works in this spirit for himself and for others. A little later he says: Sich auf ein Handwerk zu beschränken, ist das Beste. To restrict oneself to one craft is the best. At the end of The Protestant Ethic, Max Weber referred to the Wanderjahre. Restriction to specialized work, he wrote, is in today’s world the condition of any valuable action.
Man as a Fragment
In 1795, Friedrich Schiller published his letters Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen, On the Aesthetic Education of Man. In the sixth letter, he described what the division of work does to a person: Ewig nur an ein einzelnes kleines Bruchstück des Ganzen gefesselt, bildet sich der Mensch selbst nur als Bruchstück aus. Forever chained to a single small fragment of the whole, man forms himself only as a fragment. Instead of expressing humanity in his nature, Schiller wrote, he becomes merely an imprint of his occupation, of his science. Schiller’s complaint takes for granted that a person’s occupation shapes the whole person.
Early Practice for a Master
Früh übt sich, was ein Meister werden will. Whoever wants to become a master starts practicing early. Tell says it in Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, while his children practice with a crossbow. The play opened at the court theater in Weimar on 17 March 1804. After the Second World War, it was considered the most important play in German lessons at the Gymnasium. The line is a common saying.
The Sunday Society
On 3 December 1827, a literary society was founded in Berlin under the name Sonntags-Verein zu Berlin, the Sunday Society. It became known as the Tunnel über der Spree. At its regular Sunday sessions, members presented literary works, which had to be unpublished. Each new member chose a Tunnel name. Theodor Fontane’s was Lafontaine. The verdicts on a text knew only four grades: sehr gut, gut, schlecht and verfehlt, very good, good, bad and missed. The last record of a session is dated 30 October 1898.
Weigh the Votes
Man soll die Stimmen wägen und nicht zählen. Votes should be weighed, not counted. The line comes from Schiller’s unfinished drama Demetrius, in the scene of the Polish parliament in Cracow. Prince Sapieha speaks it against the assembly: Was ist die Mehrheit? Mehrheit ist der Unsinn, Verstand ist stets bei wen’gen nur gewesen. What is the majority? The majority is nonsense. Understanding has always been with the few only.
In the play, the line argues against majority rule. As a saying, it is used to judge a contribution by its weight.
Faust to Wagner
In the scene Nacht in Goethe’s Faust I, published in 1808, Faust’s assistant Wagner says: Allein der Vortrag macht des Redners Glück, delivery alone makes the speaker’s fortune. Faust answers: Es trägt Verstand und rechter Sinn / Mit wenig Kunst sich selber vor! / Und wenn’s euch Ernst ist, was zu sagen, / Ist’s nötig, Worten nachzujagen? Understanding and true sense present themselves with little art. And if you are serious about having something to say, do you need to chase after words?
The Electric Chair
From 1947 to 1967, the writer Hans Werner Richter invited authors to the meetings of the Gruppe 47. Authors read unpublished texts aloud, and the others criticized them on the spot. The reader sat on the free chair next to Richter, which was jokingly called the elektrischer Stuhl, the electric chair. Zur wichtigen Maxime wurde, dass der Vortragende sich nicht verteidigen durfte, sowie dass die Kritik der konkreten Texte im Mittelpunkt stand. It became an important rule that the reader was not allowed to defend himself, and that the criticism focused on the actual texts. In 1958 Günter Grass read the first chapter of his still unpublished novel Die Blechtrommel at a meeting in the Allgäu and won the group’s prize.
The Effort to Find the Truth
In 1778 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was in a public dispute with Johann Melchior Goeze, the chief pastor of Hamburg. That year Lessing published 15 polemical writings against him. The duke then withdrew Lessing’s exemption from censorship and banned him from publishing on religion. In the same controversy, in Eine Duplik, a reply to the theologian Johann Heinrich Reß, Lessing wrote: Nicht die Wahrheit, in deren Besitz irgendein Mensch ist oder zu sein vermeinet, sondern die aufrichtige Mühe, die er angewandt hat, hinter die Wahrheit zu kommen, macht den Wert des Menschen. Not the truth that a person possesses, or believes he possesses, but the honest effort he has made to get to the truth makes the worth of a person.
The Critic Who Left
From 1988 to 2001, ZDF’s Das Literarische Quartett showed critics arguing about new books, dominated by Marcel Reich-Ranicki and known for his devastating verdicts. In June 2000 the critics discussed Haruki Murakami’s novel Gefährliche Geliebte. Reich-Ranicki accused the critic Sigrid Löffler of always complaining about novels about love, and said she regarded love as something anstößig Unanständiges, offensively indecent. On air, Löffler rejected this as a persönliche Unterstellung, a personal insinuation. After the episode she announced that she would leave the program.