Settlement
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Well Read
A refugee rides the wave of history REVIEW BY ROBERT WEIBEZAHL Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize jury, recently raised transatlantic hackles when he accused the United States of being too isolated and insular in its literary output and tastes. Forgetting the more extreme balderdash of Engdahl's incendiary remarks, it might be conceded that we Americans read very few contemporary translations from abroad and, as a result, miss out on a host of world-class writing. Case in point: Christoph Hein, widely considered to be the most important German writer after Günter Grass and a major figure in European literary circles, who is virtually unknown in this country. Hein's 2004 novel, Settlement, has been adeptly rendered into clean, unfussy English by Philip Boehm, and this very readable and arresting book encapsulates the 50-year history of the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) through the life of one ordinary man. The story of a war refugee who rises above prejudice and distrust to become a wealthy and prominent leader in a small town is told, in a Rashomon-like manner, from the varying perspectives of five people—a schoolmate, his first girlfriend, a cohort in crime, his sister-in-law and a fellow town burgher. Four years after the Second World War, Bernhard Haber and his family arrive in the town of Guldenberg, near Leipzig. With the redrawn borders of central Europe, the Habers, who are ethnic Germans, have been displaced from their home in a territory reclaimed by Poland. They are part of a flood of faceless refugees resettled in East Germany, and as such, are despised, or at best resented, by many in the town. Bernhard's father, a carpenter who lost an arm in a Soviet POW camp, has trouble getting enough work to sustain the family. At school, Bernhard, who is a few years behind others his age and not the greatest student, remains aloof from his classmates. As the years go by, Bernhard's life takes interesting turns, each reflecting the social and political changes in the German socialist state. Though apolitical, Bernhard becomes part of a group of thug-like persuaders who strong-arm reluctant farmers into giving up their land and joining the collective. For a boy whose father has died under suspicious circumstances, it seems a fitting form of revenge against those who long mistreated his family. Later, he works for the other side, helping smuggle defectors into West. Again, his motives are not political; this time he has much to gain financially from the risky work. In what is perhaps the ultimate act of revenge, he beats the town at its own game by entering a conventional marriage, opening his own carpentry shop and succeeding beyond anyone's imaginings. He becomes one of the most respected members of the town, hiding his resentments, though never pushing them completely beneath the surface of his ambition. The interesting narrative structure of Settlement allows readers to make their own assessment of Bernhard. Although the facts in each story don't deviate greatly, there are subtle differences in the way that Bernhard's obstacles and actions are perceived. We never hear from Bernhard himself, and the individual narratives often reveal as much about the teller as about the subject. Using irony and humor—often unconscious on the part of the narrator—Hein does an exemplary job delineating each voice. The novel ends not long after the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. We know that Bernhard, ever opportunistic, will benefit from the coming changes. But the story leaves us not so much with hope as with a sense of inevitability, with the suggestion that the grand tidal shifts of history occur despite anything we individually might do or not do, and that riding the wave of that history is the best anyone can hope for. An absorbing novel about displacement and identity, Settlement is at its core a universal story of alienation, one that could just as easily take place in a small American town during a similar period of cultural division and suspicion. All right, Mr. Engdahl, we agree—writers like Christoph Hein do deserve a wider readership in the U.S. Publishers, the ball is in your court. Robert Weibezahl is author of the novel The Wicked and the Dead.
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