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The German Lesson

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Original title
  
Deutschstunde

Language
  
German

Media type
  
Print

Author
  
Siegfried Lenz

Translator
  
Ernst Kaiser

4.1/5
Goodreads

Country
  
Germany

Publication date
  
1968

Originally published
  
1968

Genre
  
Novel

The German Lesson t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcR0Gjb2IhLafc5XvD

Pages
  
470 pp (English edition)

Publishers
  
Ganske Publishing Group, New Directions Publishing (English version)

Similar
  
Siegfried Lenz books, Novels

Portr t siegfried lenz teil 3 4


The German Lesson (original title: Deutschstunde) is a novel by the German writer Siegfried Lenz, published in 1968 in Germany. The English edition The German Lesson was published in 1986 by New Directions Publishing, New York City. Deutschstunde was translated into several languages.

Contents

Plot

Siggi Jepsen (the first-person narrator), an inmate of a juvenile detention center, is forced to write an essay with the title "The Joy of Duty." In the essay, Siggi describes his youth in Nazi Germany where his father, the "most northerly police officer in Germany," does his duty, even when he is ordered to debar his old childhood friend, the expressionist painter Max Nansen, from his profession, because the Nazis banned expressionism as "degenerate art" (entartete Kunst).

Siggi, however, is fascinated by Nansen's paintings, "the green faces, the Mongol eyes, these deformed bodies ... " and, without the knowledge of his father, manages to hide some of the confiscated paintings. Following the end of World War II, Jepsen senior is interned for a short time and later reinstalled as a policeman in rural Schleswig-Holstein. When he then obsewssively continues to carry out his former orders, Siggi brings Nansen paintings that he believes to be in danger to safety. His father discovers his doings and dutifully turns him in for art theft.

When forced to write the essay on "The Joy of Duty" during his term in the juvenile detention center near Hamburg, the memories of his childhood come to the surface and he goes far beyond the "duty" of writing his essay by filling several notebooks with caustic recollections of this entire saga.

Characters

  • Siggi Jepsen
  • Jens Ole Jepsen, Siggi's father, a police officer
  • Max Nansen, a painter, pursued by the Nazis, whom Lenz based on the expressionist painter Emil Nolde
  • Gudrun Jepsen, Siggi's mother
  • Klaas, Siggi's brother
  • Hilke, Siggi's sister

    • Adaptations

    In 1971 Peter Beauvais filmed Deutschstunde for the German TV-broadcaster ARD section SFB.

    Releases details

  • German: Deutschstunde (1968). Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, OCLC 17466388 (First edition)
  • German: Deutschstunde (2006). Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, ISBN 978-3-455-04211-5 (20th ed., hardcover)
  • German: Deutschstunde (2006). Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, ISBN 978-3-423-13411-8 (37th ed., paperback)
  • Chinese: De yu ke. (2008) Taibei Shi: Yuan liu chu ban shi ye gu fen you xian gong si, ISBN 978-957-32-6000-4
  • French: La leçon d'allemand (2001). Paris: R. Laffont, ISBN 978-2-221-09460-0
  • Korean: Togirŏ sigan (2000). Sŏul Tʻŭkpyŏlsi : Minŭmsa, ISBN 978-89-374-6040-1
  • Danish: Tysktime (1996). København: Gyldendal, ISBN 978-87-00-25506-7
  • Portuguese: A lição de alemão (1991) Lisboa: Publ. Dom Quixote, ISBN 978-972-20-0841-9
  • Spanish: Lección de alemán (1990) Madrid: Debate, ISBN 978-84-7444-362-2
  • Finnish: Saksantunti (1974). Helsinki: Uusi kirjakerho, ISBN 978-951-638-044-8
  • Russian: Урок немецкого (1970). Москва: Прогресс, OCLC 312415290
  • Slovak: Hodina nemčiny (1972). Bratislava: Slovenský Spisovatel', OCLC 72404937
  • Czech: Hodina němčiny (1974). Praha: Odeon, OCLC 42102701

    • References

    The German Lesson Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA