VICTOR KLEMPERER – THE GREATEST DIARIST EVER?
By Duncan R. Shaw
Madrid, 27 August 2022
Who has been the greatest diarist of all time?
Anne Frank, Samuel Pepys, Alan Bennett, James Boswell, Virginia Woolf, Edward Ellis – even Robert Shields?
But how about considering Victor Klemperer as the best ever?
Never heard of him? Well, please give me ten minutes to explain why he’s so important – and why you might want to consider reading his diaries…
It is thanks to Klemperer that we know all about the daily miseries and humiliations imposed on the Jews in Nazi Germany. Over 12 depressing years he slowly, piece by piece (“death by a thousand cuts”) lost everything that was important to him: his professorship in Romance Literature at the University of Dresden, his house, his car, his typewriter, his cat…
What saved him from certain death was that his Aryan wife Eva bravely stood (pictured above, in 1933 – at the start of the Nazi nightmare) by him, despite the massive pressure applied to Aryan spouses to divorce their Jewish husbands and wives.
I first came across the Klemperer diaries, in their original German, as an exchange student in Koblenz in 1982 (I was a Germanist, before becoming an Hispanist). A German friend told me that I would “simply not believe Klemperer’s story if it was written as novel”.
Indeed. In 1933 Klemperer – the son of an Orthodox rabbi, and cousin of world-renown conductor Otto Klemperer – enjoyed a comfortable life in Dresden (“this beautiful little Rococo box”). He was a typical assimilated Jewish intellectual with optimistic liberal views, decorated for his service on the Westerm Front in World War One.
Like most liberal intellectuals, Klemperer laughed at “that cheap clown Hitler” and never imagined such a civilized country would vote for the Nazis.
Klemperer’s slow, inexorable descent into hell began with the Nazi takeover of power in January 1933 – something that he had never imagined to be possible.
Needless to say: the Klemperer diaries are a wonderful resource for teaching Nazi Germany. I fondly remember getting several American undergraduates to read them (no easy task); none of them were disappointed…
The first volume of his diaries (I Shall Bear Witness) chronicles, in depressing daily detail, how the Jews were gradually stripped of their professions, humanity, dignity, houses – even their pets.
Even so, he is reluctant to give up his German identity (“German and liberal, for ever”), and reluctant to collectively blame the Germans for the “Nazi lunacy”.
In the second volume (To The Bitter End) Klemperer and Eva are struggling to get by in a crowded ‘Jews’ House’, subject to brutal Gestapo searches and an appalling diet of rotting potatoes and stale bread (“All I want is to eat and drink well, and give the occasional lecture”).
He continues to keep his diary, despite a certain concentration camp death if it were found by the Gestapo. Klemperer has to wear the Jewish star and is regularly abused on the street by aggressive Hitler Youth adolescents. However, he is given hope by the kindness of many ordinary Germans.
While most of his friends are shipped off to the death camps, Klemperer is temporarily spared by his ‘protected marriage’ to the loyal, long-suffering Eva (a richly talented musician).
In February 1945 Klemperer is finally included on the list for transportation to the death camps, after two years of dismal forced labour in Dresden. Then comes the dreadful firebombing of Dresden (so well described by the great Kurt Vonnegut in the clever Slaughterhouse-Five), during which Klemperer…well, I won’t spoil the story for you.
In the third volume of his diaries (The Lesser Evil) Klemperer enjoys an astonishing transformation, in his seventies, from a shuffling, underfed Jewish forced labourer, abused in the street by the Hitler Youth, to celebrated intellectual star in East Germany – and pampered member of parliament.
He was one of the few German intellectuals to prefer East Germany to West, partly because of the privileges the Ulbricht regime (keen to keep well-known academics in the East) gave him. Klemperer rubbed shoulders in parliament and at cocktail parties with the likes of Arnold Zweig, Johannes Becher and Bertolt Brecht.
To make his final reincarnation even more astonishing: after the death of his beloved Eva, Klemperer (guiltily) marrries one of his graduate students – more than fifty years younger than him.
I have read each blessed volume of the Klemperer diaries at least twenty times in the last forty years – whenever I don’t have anything better to read (which is quite frequently; I am very demanding in my reading).
Why do I keep coming back to Klemperer – and why might you want to give him a try?
Humanity, honesty, erudition, forbearance, persistence, scepticism, stoicism, candour, irony – like all of us: he was just trying to live decently, in a clearly indecent world…
Like all of Duncan Shaw's pieces, this one is great. In a few quick strokes, he reveals a Klemperer with whom most of us, at least, can identify. One is left hoping that one of the volumes will eventually stray into one's path....
Thanks Professor....another interesting article . I'd not heard of Klemperer before but will look out for him now.
I had never heard about Klemperer before but after reading your interesting article I'll have a look to some of his diaries.
I'm sure these diaries really make a good reading.
To be honest, never heard of Klemperer, but I'll keep him in mind for my next reading.
This is a reminder to us all to seek out new reads. Klemperer’s testimony also prompts us to recognise that we need history to help us to avoid repeating missteps from the past.
More please!
Many thanks, I too now want to read these diaries.
Fascinating insight into a diarist I’d not come across. How has he been missed?
Thanks for my autumn reading!
Certainly the bravest diarist - I have only read extracts that were published in Sunday Times some years ago. This makes me want to explore further.