Describes drastic contents of consciousness: Wolfgang Koeppen’s novel “Pigeons in the Grass”
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A fierce debate has broken out over Wolfgang Koeppen’s novel “Pigeons in the Grass”: Is the work from 1951, which also describes racist and sexist content, suitable for school reading?
Kone question, Wolfgang Koeppen’s 1951 published novel “Tauben im Gras” is a drastic work. It describes the content of the consciousness of Germans after 1945 using the means of modern literature, such as the speech that has been experienced. Readers learn what fictional characters think about black soldiers of the American occupying power, about Jews, about the bodies and faces of their contemporaries, about fashion and sex.
Someone wonders, for example, what “Mexicans call the lesbians”, another finds himself in a “flight from images”, while “the therapist wanted to free him from guilt and penance with a soft, soporific voice”. Conversely, almost as a poster for its literary purpose, the novel also shows an American wondering, “The Germans, who were they? What were they thinking? How did they dream and love?”