Eduard's Homecoming

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Summary: Absolutely unforgettable portrait of Berlin, "post-Wall."
Review: All of us recall the night-time scenes of exuberant, young East Berliners physically destroying the Berlin Wall with everything from hammers to battering rams. Few of us, however, have had any equally memorable images of Berlin in the years immediately after that destruction--until now, with the arrival of Eduard's Homecoming. Here author Peter Schneider presents a compelling story of a young West Berliner who returns from an 8-year fellowship at Stanford to take a position in a research institution in East Berlin after the fall of the Wall. As Eduard resumes his professional research in Berlin, he must also resolve problems in his marriage and a bewildering array of financial and legal difficulties with an inherited apartment building, now full of squatters. Schneider does an absolutely astonishing job here, developing his story on several levels while creating laser-sharp images and incisive cultural commentary. He illuminates the whole city, from its physical appearance to its social interactions, and he describes buildings, roads, cafes, apartments, night life, theatre, and people from all walks of life so vividly you feel, upon completing the book, that you could easily navigate Berlin without a map.

The book is witty, humorous, and filled with a sense of the absurd, as Edward finds himself dealing, often unsuccessfully, with the political, social, and institutional resentments between "wessis" and "ossis." Though they are officially "reunified," they no longer share the same goals, expectations, or even history, obviously paralleling some of the problems in Eduard's marriage. A book which can be read on many levels, from marriage to political science, it is successful on all of them. Best of all, the comments on society and politics are so lucid you will find yourself seeing Berlin--and the U.S.--through new eyes.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting novel...but too many flaws
Review: Having lived in Germany from 86-89 and from 93-97 I have experienced both the pre- and post unification period quite intensely. I was standing just prior to the tearing down of the wall on the East side of it, together with 100.000+ East Germans when President Reagan deliverd his speech on the West side close to the Brandenburger Tor. We could not see him, could not cross the 800 yards which separated us, but we could hear him. The athmosphere of hope and joy is something I will never forget.

After the initial joy of the unification it turned out, of course, that "Ossies" and "Wessies" were quite different in many respects; values, education, and not the least material wealth. It became obvious that it would take a long time to reconcile the two people.

For me personnally, the many tours I took through the united Berlin in the early nineties are unforgettable and I have a deja vu feeling for many of the scenes of Peter Schneider's book.

He has set this book at one of the most interesting cultural and sociological environments in modern history and he does well in capturing the many small moments which make up the big picture. His description in the start of the book of the squatters in his new appartment block are splendid as well as the enfoldment of the exasperating red tape involved in repossessing the property. He even gets a good try at explaining the moral dilemma involved in the acquirement of the building. Why would anybody, who has not the faintest idea that he is, be able to claim ownership after fifty years ( only think of what Marx had to say about ownership and how this would still be engrained in the Eastern mind...), in particular when it possibly was acquired under doubtful circumstances by a Nazi from the Jews in the early thirties.

All ingredients for a great novel by a good writer ( and Mr. Schneider is a perceptive one indeed).

Why then spoil it with this utterly useless sideplot of Edward's marriage to, as other commentators say, the jerk Jenny? It distracts and annoys. In particular his obsession with the erotic parts of the marriage are totally uninteresting and deviates the attention to what really should have been the center of the novel; life in the recently united Berlin.

Given the extreme sensitivity of the issue in Germany this was a good try, but it could have been so much better.

Rating:
Summary: East side, west side, all around Berlin
Review: Some 10 years after the Berlin Wall came down, how's German reunification going? Read Peter Schneider's novel for a sense of how much one must consider to answer that question.

In Berlin, the novel's main setting, it's a cultural war, "a war over Berlin's history and identity, an accumulation of all the touchiness, resentment, and hatred that existed between the inhabitants of East and West." Eduard Hoffmann returns to his native city ill-prepared for this fray by eight years of marriage and child-raising in California. His family is ill-disposed to his venturing off to Berlin to take a genetic-research position while he claims a surprise inheritance - a rundown, graffiti-defaced apartment building - from a grandfather he never knew. But it's a good career move and a chance to make big real-estate money, right? Not so fast. The building is occupied by angry, politicized squatters who are sticking Eduard with the utility bills, and his research colleagues don't care much for the returning expatriate.

Despite some dull stretches, Eduard's Homecoming skillfully brings into play the tensions and conflicts of a divided society, scourged by history, where little is as it seems. Might the squatters have a historically valid claim to the property? Was Eduard's grandfather a Nazi who obtained the building by defrauding its Jewish owner? Or did it just look that way?

Amid threatening violence (the possible genetic basis of which, ironically, is his research field), Eduard labors to pierce the mystery. At the same time he tries to save his faltering marriage to Jenny, with whom in addition to three children he has sexual problems. Alas, though Schneider works hard to make Jenny believable, she comes off as a jerky construct trying too fiercely to punch through the page and impress us.

If Eduard's dual struggles to reclaim his German-ness and his marriage never quite interconnect as Schneider wants them to, in other respects the characters' identity conflicts are wrenching. Former radicals become lawyers or reactionaries; conservatives form expedient alliances with squatters; a playwright obsesses over reports filed by his brother, who spied on him; communist vestiges linger; loose charges of fascism fly.

When society fractures, is reconciliation possible? After the profound evils of a passing generation, who is legitimate heir to what, who owes what to whom? Trying to solve this conundrum at least as it applies to his grandfather, Eduard finds old neighborhood photographs, and as he leafs backward, "the little hammer-and-sickle flags in the window boxes on the crumbling balconies transformed themselves into the homemade lengths of bunting adorned with swastikas that had fluttered from the still intact balconies ... . What of his grandfather ... ? What had his balconies looked like then?"

Indeed, the "forever self-redesigning city" of Berlin booms in a constant uproar of reconstruction. Residents must navigate around and through construction sites. Road rage abounds. Vast holes are dug for new foundations - but for what? "The ubiquitous excavations ... now seemed like recklessly exposed entrances to another city beneath [Berlin]. Disembodied spirits crept forth and clung to the ankles of the living, hampered their progress, befogged their brains."

The novel, translated from German by John Brownjohn, is well worth reading, despite its flaws, as an exploration of cultural and individual identity in changing times. How do we understand ourselves? Like Berlin, our identities are all under construction.