Summary of The German Lesson
âThe German Lessonâ centres on young Siggi Jepsen, who is instructed to write an essay on âthe joy of dutyâ but instead recounts his childhood and his relationship with his father, a police officer during the Second World War. During the war, his father enforced a ban on the âdegenerateâ art of his friend, the expressionist painter Max Nansen. Siggi, however, is of a different temperament. He admires Nansenâs paintings and secretly saves some of them. This leads to his father accusing him of art theft and Siggiâs confinement in a juvenile detention centre.
Reasons to read The German LessonÂ
âThe German Lessonâ is a novel about friendship, duty, generational conflict, and the power of art, set against the backdrop of a small rural village in northern Germany during the Second World War. A classic of post-war German literature, the novel stands as a critique of those who failed to question authority during the Nazi era. Siegfried Lenz was one of the leading German authors of the second half of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1988, the Goethe Prize of the city of Frankfurt in 2000 and the Italian International Nonino Prize in 2010. âThe German Lessonâ is one of his most acclaimed works.
Setting: Germany
Book set in Germany: The detention centre is located on an island near Hamburg (likely Hahnöfersand), while the main events unfold in the fictional village of RugbĂŒll in Schleswig-Holstein – a setting likely inspired by the life of the expressionist painter Emil Nolde, who lived in SeebĂŒll, in the far north of Schleswig-Holstein.
Original title: Deutschstunde
Year of publication: 1968
Nr of pages: 480
