German Prisoners of Fear

...German Prisoners of Fear The Safety Net By Heinnch Boll Translated by Leila Vennewitz Knopf 314 pp $13 95 Reviewed by Lothar Kahn Author, "Insight and Action The Life and Work of Lion Feuchtwanger ' TO SPEAK OF a writer's formula is in some way to diminish his work Recurring features inevitably emerge, though, when someone has written as many novels as Heinnch Boll, Nobel Laureate and winner of the Buchner Prize A Boll plot is often thin The setting is Cologne, or at least his native Rhine-land The action has an almost classical unity of time—completed in one day, sometimes four or five And he usually weaves political and religious elements into the fabric of his story skillfully, instead of imposing them in the form of essays, a la Thomas Mann Most of Boll's novels have a definite focus the war in his early fiction, Germany's past in Billiards at Half Past Nine, the Roman Catholic Church in The Clown, a pitiless, immoral press in The Lost Honor of Katharma Blum, justice in Group Portrait with Lady But his overall intention is to gently satirize contemporary German life His outstanding villains are exaggerated eroticism on the one hand and prudery on the other, fads of all sorts, a flagging church and clergy, aggressive, hypocritical businessmen, and the loss of self in a rankly materialistic nation that worships success The Safety Net is no exception to Boll's preoccupations Advance notices claimed the book would be an examination of terrorism It barely touches on any acts of physical violence Rather, it deals with the impact of the fear of terrorism on potential targets The safety net protects its wealthy prisoners at the cost of their privacy, affording the author a magnificent opportunity to penetrate their facades Fritz Tolm has just been elected head of the Society of chief German industrialists because it was felt that his impeccable past, his background in the arts and his almost accidental rise to the top of a newspaper empire made him an ideal figurehead for the organization in difficult times A vague, essentially decent sort who disapproves of what little he knows about the newspaper business, Tolm is an unlikely captain of industry In his new position, he and his family are more trapped in the safety net than ever Every conversation is overheard, every move is accompanied by a policeman and the most private acts are monitored Thus the police and Tolm's competitors in the Society learn before he does that his Catholic daughter, Sabine, is again pregnant—and not by her phony, know-it-all businessman husband, the one wholly unpleasant character in Boll's 70-odd member cast (listed, as in a play, at the outset) What initially puzzles the police and others is how Sabine was impregnated without being detected by the constant surveillance, but her furtive lover turns out to be one of the men guarding her Tolm readily condones Sabine's affair, especially since he thoroughly dislikes her husband He is more ambivalent about his sons, however The eldest, Rolf, is a former terrorist whose first wife has run off with the ideologue now most feared by the police, and whose second wife is a revolutionary as well He has had a boy by each and has named both Holger, in memory of a comrade killed in a terrorist action in 1974 Rolfs dreams of a better society have not altered, only his expectations The prison term he served tamed him somewhat The second son of Fritz and sturdy Kathe, the near perfect wife save for her always messy hair, is Herbert He also has had recourse to brute force His cause is the environment, and to him no measure seems too drastic in its behalf Tolm's selection and resignation, in a single day, tie the story together Hardly a hero, in between he must grapple with members of the society, with their takeover bids, power manias, dirty rivalries, and strange sexual compulsions On the other side are lecherous clergymen and his sons' unsavory companions Fritz views the two groups with detached incomprehension He learns something occasionally, wonders, is dismayed, and yet is almost beyond being surprised In fact, Tolm's self-conscious passivity is a part of the problem with The Safety Net For despite the breathless-ness of the prose, there is little forward movement Not even the chief terrorist manages to do more than blow himself up Practically everything else occurs in the minds of Tolm and others, making matters a bit too genteel In addition, it is doubtful that those depicted in this work can serve as valid metaphors for contemporary Germany With the possibilities for a regenerated Church vanishing and secular humanism dwindling into either unbridled sensuality or radical extremism, Boll fears for the futureof his economically successful, morally hobbling country This unease is at the center of the Leftist sympathies evident in Tolm's strange and unmotivated remarks to Kathe "You know I have always loved you And there's something else you must know some form of socialism must come, must prevail " Perhaps it must Unfortunately, Boll does not disclose what leads his protagonist to think so Given Boll's rejection of a callous capitalism and his repudiation of terrorism on a variety of grounds, he could have provided a meaningful basis for Tolm's assertion Whatever his intention, merely stating the conclusion does not bolster the narrative In general, although it incorporates some interesting subplots, and although Boll's strong women continue to be more attractive than his men, the sum of The Safety Net's parts does not amount to an impressive whole...