Literature | Maxim Biller tells of how beautiful everything is

For a moment, it was like it used to be. At the end of June, Maxim Biller had said in a column for "Die Zeit" what no one wanted to hear. This time, he said that, in his opinion, Israel had no other choice in the war against Hamas and that playing the bogeyman was preferable to a military defeat. Naturally, everyone howled. But the most clumsy behavior came from the editorial staff of "Die Zeit"; first, the column appeared in the print version of "Die Zeit" and then disappeared from "Die Zeit" online.

But it quickly became clear that "everyone" no longer exists. Over the course of 40 years, Maxim Biller has amassed a following that is enthusiastic about more than just his polemics. His novels and short stories have become part of the canon of contemporary literature. And what better way to document this than for the literary magazine "Text+Kritik" to dedicate issue 248 to him?

Maxim Biller’s novella “The Immortal Weil” is not designed to send teenagers into ecstasy.

It was a long road to get there. Those who write about him leave no doubt about that. Claudius Seidl, former arts editor of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung," recalls the fury with which Maxim Biller's first novel, "Wenn ich einmal reich und tot bin," was attacked in the early 1990s. He recognizes in it "the astonishing continuity of a literary anti-Semitism and lack of humor" that Heinrich Heine had already experienced in the 19th century.

And in her essay "Essay on the Disturber of the Peace, or Why Maxim Biller Must Not Be a German Critic," Mara Delius poses the rhetorical question: "Is the reason for this because Biller is Jewish? (...) A Jewish writer who doesn't let Germans be German in peace and is always read by them only in terms of identity, as a Jewish writer?" It's certainly worth putting this to the test. For the focus of his current novella is once again a Jew, the Czech writer Jiří Weil.

"Novella"? That rings a bell! It's curious which school maxims have made their way into long-term memory: "The novella is about an unheard-of event." The only explanation I can think of for how this sentence has stuck in my mind is that in German class, I didn't find the events described as unheard-of at all, but rather incredibly boring. The teacher who succeeds in inspiring students with 19th-century novellas has yet to be invented.

Maxim Biller's novella "The Immortal Weil" isn't exactly the kind to send teenagers into a frenzy. Its nearly 60 pages are about someone (take a deep breath) making their way home after work. The "unheard of" isn't the places the stroller or bus rider passes, but the memories they evoke.

Once again, Maxim Biller's work is about that bestial 20th century that gave rise to the contemptuous ideologies of fascism and Stalinism. What these worldviews—despite all their differences—have in common is that the individual counts for nothing; they are merely disposable assets that can be sacrificed with a clear conscience for "the greater cause."

The writer Jiří Weil (1900–1959), who goes by the nickname "Jirka" in the book, obviously has a bad hand. As a Jew, he is automatically on the Nazi death list. But he is also a thorn in the side of the Stalinists because his novel "Moscow – the Border" is not suitable as revolutionary propaganda, but rather exposes him as a "bourgeois," a "reactionary," and a "parasite" who is "the weeds that must be pulled out on the rocky road to a better future." To make matters worse, he is also suspected of complicity in the murder of the Leningrad party secretary Sergei Mironovich Kirov—a guilty verdict would have meant certain death. Jiří Weil, however, survives. Nevertheless, he is not fit to be a triumphant figure. Firstly, because on that April day in 1956 when Maxim Biller peers into his head, he already knows that he is terminally ill. Secondly, because the temporary victories over death are accompanied by painful defeats in life. He suffers from the fact that he "has been wiped out as a writer twice and is therefore only allowed to rummage through the dust-covered shelves and storage rooms of the Jewish Museum like a half-blind mealworm."

The very first paragraph of the book makes it clear that we are not dealing with a lucky child here: "Who was the man with the drooping hedgehog face (...) who, for many years, left the office of the Jewish Museum (...) every day around four in the afternoon and shortly thereafter walked slowly up Paris Street to the Vltava? And why did everyone who saw him immediately become sad?"

Weil, resurrected by Biller, gives the answer just two pages later: "I was always rightly punished for not being as confident as the others." The others, for example, are the writer Julius Fučík, murdered by the Nazis, who "spoke and wrote for millions, not like me, the self-absorbed, lonely petty bourgeois." The convinced Stalinist Fučík accuses Weil of having "betrayed our cause" with his "spiteful Moscow reportage."

But there's also the Czechoslovak Minister of Culture, Ladislav Štoll, who is introduced as a "friend" before the image of "the sweet, weak, and dishonest Ladislav" noticeably darkens. "The uneducated son of an innkeeper," a "fat pub kid," reveals himself to be a careerist and opportunist who betrays Weil at a meeting of the Writers' Association and later justifies himself with the words: "Don't be angry with me, Jirka, I had to sacrifice someone before they realized that I, too, no longer believe a single word they say."

And suddenly you understand why real socialism collapsed like a soufflé in 1989. There were too many Ladislavs, too many followers who would have found their way to the top in any other political system. But you understand even more, and that has nothing to do with the fascism and Stalinism of the 20th century. This world has always been shaped by people of conviction like Julius Fučík and opportunists like Ladislav Štoll, in other words, by people who are "confident" and would never consider questioning their thoughts and actions. Some of them are later encountered as statues, because: "Only those who have power over others turn to stone."

For a skeptic and procrastinator like Jiří Weil, however, only writing remains: "I'm a writer, it's quite simple. It's like being right-handed or left-handed, nothing more. (...) Anyone who says you can change the world with words doesn't understand words. You can only talk about how beautiful everything is, even when it's terrible."

At this point, at the very latest, you understand why Maxim Biller can empathize so well with the anti-hero of his novella. After all, since his "Hundred Lines of Hate" columns in the magazine "Tempo," Biller has been doing nothing other than Weil: He describes a world in urgent need of change. It may be that, as a Jew who experienced anti-Semitism as a child ("I experienced a great deal of silent racism in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s"), he has a more refined sense of this than the descendants of the "master race." Nevertheless, he doesn't fit the mold of a "Jewish writer." The fact that his novels and short stories have now been translated into 19 different languages demonstrates that Maxim Biller describes universal human experiences. Did someone shout "world literature"?

Maxim Biller: The Immortal Weil. Edition 5PLUS, 72 pp., €18. Available exclusively at 5plus bookstores ( 5plus.org ). Text+Kritik, Issue 248 – Maxim Biller. ‎edition text + kritik, 102 pp., €28.