lilburne's Full Review: Denise Giardina - Saints and Villains: A Novel
Denise Giardina is a professor at West Virginia state college who has written several novels. Some of these novels are about her state’s turbulent history. She has also run for Governor of West Virginia on an environmentalist platform. For those of you with a nodding acquaintance with West Virginia, it should be unnecessary to add that she lost.
Giardina has had success with her novels, however. *Saints and Villains* got the Fisk Fiction Prize in 1999 from the *Boston Book Review.* This novel is a fictionalization of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran cleric in Germany who was involved in anti-Nazi activities which led to his execution by the German government near the end of World War II. Bonhoeffer also wrote works of theology. He has a good reputation in certain circles.
The novel is based, of course, on a real person and real events. It was realistic enough that Giardina was able to give talks about the novel at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, which she probably wouldn’t have been able to do if they thought the novel was just a cheap thriller (see press release at http://www.ltsp.edu/news_events/giardina.htm).
Some of the characters in the novel are made up. Bonhoeffer’s Jewish girlfriend, for example. Frankly, I wish Giardina hadn’t come up with this character. The historical Bonhoeffer took some risks on behalf of the Jews, and he should be given credit for this. Giving the fictional Bonhoeffer a Jewish girlfriend tends to Hollywoodize a complicated historical reality by giving him a purely personal reason to stand up for the Jews.
Also fictional is the SS officer whose life keeps intersecting with Bonhoeffer’s. This guy is a hideous person who hangs out with Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann a very non-fictional character who orchestrated much of the administrative detail of the Final Solution. When he isn’t swilling beer with his buddy Eichmann, the SS officer obsessively tries to obtain an original Mozart score. This Mozart score is part of a mass Mozart wrote, and which is central to the novel in some symbolic way. I’m not very good with this symbolic stuff.
The real-life Bonhoeffer had a (gentile) fiancée. This woman is also a character in the novel. To that extent, the novel is historically accurate. However, there is no evidence that I know of to verify the scene in the novel where Bonhoeffer fails to pay attention at a meeting of the German resistance because he is too busy fantasizing about his fiancée and trying to suppress an erection. It might have happened, but then again it might not have happened. In any case, how on earth does this contribute to the development of the plot? Or fit in with the serious themes of the novel?
There are some “composite” characters who represent several individuals involved in the story of the historical Bonhoeffer. This sounds fine to me, since readers of novels should not be inundated with a whole bunch of characters, especially characters with German names.
Of course, many of the characters and events in the novel are very real. Bonhoeffer’s life seems designed for the pen of a novelist. Speaking about her book in 2001, Giardina said that “[a] story like this should be interesting enough so that if you read it by a campfire the hair on your neck will stand up.” The novel is almost as good as Giardina suggests. When she isn’t discussing clerical erections, Giardina is able to make the dramatic events of Bonhoeffer’s life become real for the reader.
Let us briefly follow Bonhoeffer’s career. For this summary, I will rely on *Saints and Villains* for the biographical details, and I will rely on my general knowledge to fill in the background information which puts Bonhoeffer’s life in context.
Bonhoeffer was the son of a famous German shrink, portrayed by Giardina as a stereotypical Teutonic authoritarian with a heart of gold. He went into religious studies, going to New York to study at Union theological seminary. He was a student of Reinhold (“won’t you be my”) Neibuhr, a famous theologian. Other people studying at the same time as Bonhoeffer included Myles Horton, a white civil-rights supporter who later ran the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Another fellow-student was Adam Clayton Powell, later to be the most flamboyant black congressman of the day. Giardina can’t pass up the opportunity to put Bonhoeffer, Powell and Horton together in some scenes which, although they probably didn’t happen, certainly should have. Giardina does not neglect her native state, sending Bonhoeffer on a fascinating adventure in West Virginia to fight corporate exploiters.
When Bonhoeffer returned to Germany (and the novel returned to the real world), he taught theology to university students. This was the early 1930s, and the Nazi students were trying to take over academia even before the Nazis seized power in the real world. Soon after Hitler’s accession to power, Bonhoeffer went to England to preach to German expatriates. Then he returned to Germany
During this time, Bonhoeffer was active in the movement known as the Confessing Church. To understand the Confessing Church, it is necessary to review the religious policy of the Nazis. Hitler and his people were not Christians. To the extent that the top Nazis had religious feelings at all, they were believers in a strange brew of life-force worship, and pagan German nature-worship. The people the Nazis ruled, however, had more conventional religious beliefs. The aim of the Nazis was to make sure the religious beliefs of the people were shaped so as to put God on the side of Hitler.
Most Germans professed the Christian religion. A majority of German Christians were Protestants-Lutherans, to be exact. A minority of Germans were Catholics. A political party, the Center Party, had been organized by Catholic lay people to resist the Protestantization of Germany under Bismarck, and the Center Party was active in the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic.
To neutralize the powerful Center Party, and the Catholic Church in general, Hitler made a Concordat (church-state agreement) with the Pope. The Concordat provided, in effect, that the Catholic Church would not get involved in German politics, and in exchange the German government would not get involved in internal church matters. The Catholics kept their end of the bargain, closing down the Center Party and abstaining from political involvement. Hitler, however, didn’t keep his part of the Concordat (Hitler violating treaties? Who would have thunk it?). Hitler’s regime tried to Nazify the Catholics as much as possible. A few brave Catholic clergy managed to protest some of Hitler’s measures (especially the euthanasia program) but young German Catholics enthusiastically went off to fight in the army and take part in German atrocities.
As far as the Protestants were concerned, Hitler was able to Nazify most of them. The Lutheran Protestants of Germany had traditionally supported the government. The Lutheran clergy, in general, saw no reason to stop supporting the government just because the Nazis had taken over. Hitler organized most Protestant clergy as “German Christians” who put swastikas in their churches, downplayed the Old Testament-because of its Jewish origins-and purged the pastorate of Jews, all in accordance with the government’s plan to turn the churches into branches of the Nazi propaganda apparatus.
A minority of Protestants objected to being taken over by the Nazis. They formed the Confessing Church as an organization independent of the government. This does not mean that the clergy and laypeople in the Confessing Church opposed everything about the Nazis. What they objected to was the total takeover of German Protestantism. As part of its resistance, the Confessing Church insisted on the right to select Jewish people as pastors, although in practice this didn’t mean much, since most German Jews weren’t Lutherans. The Confessing Church people also objected to the Nazis’ all-out attack on the Old Testament.
At the same time, many people in the Confessing Church were quite willing to be loyal to Hitler on issues apart from internal church government. These collaborators didn’t want to fight the persecution of non-Christian Jews, or support peace, or do anything controversial like that. They simply wanted organizational autonomy for their own outfit. This is the meaning of the famous quote by Confessing Church leader Martin Niemoller. You know, first they came for the Communists but I didn’t speak up, etc. etc. This quote is not in the novel, but Niemoller himself puts in an appearance.
Bonhoeffer seems to have been more radical than this. He objected to virtually everything about the Hitler regime. At first, he opposed the Nazification of the churches, pointing out correctly that the pro-Nazi clergy were basically idolaters, clerical Lewinskys sucking up to Hitler and betraying Christ. These protests didn’t do much good, since most clergymen (like clergymen in all countries at all times) would happily commit the most revolting blasphemies if the government told them to do so.
Bonhoeffer started associating himself with the anti-Nazi opposition in Germany. Of course, this opposition was secretive and conspiratorial. How could it be otherwise? After World War Two began, Bonhoeffer, while not a leader of the German Resistance, was actively involved in its activities. Bonhoeffer thought that Nazism was the antithesis of Christianity, and he was willing to put his money where his mouth was.
Bonhoeffer was involved in the plot which culminated in the 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler. The plotters intended to use a bomb to turn Hitler into Fuhrer McNuggets. The bomb was put in a briefcase, and one of the plotters put the briefcase under a table in a conference room where Hitler was conferring with some of his associates. The plotter who planted the briefcase then left the room (where are the suicide bombers when you *really* need them?). Someone who thought the briefcase was in the way moved it, placing it further away from Hitler, as a result of which the bomb didn’t kill Hitler when it went off, although several other people were killed.
After the failure of the assassination attempt, the Nazis executed most of the Resistance leaders. Bonhoeffer was in prison at the time of the bomb, but he had been involved in the plotting leading up to the bomb. He was killed shortly before Germany’s defeat.
Naturally, Giardina sees lessons for today in her story about Bonhoeffer. Speaking about her novel in a 2001 talk at the Bonhoeffer Center, Giardina said that Bonhoeffer was “a kind of everyman.” Sure, Bonhoeffer was just like anyone else, risking his life in defense of his religion and in opposition to a dictatorial regime. Just like millions of other Germans. Or thousands. Or maybe hundreds. Or tens, anyway. Hmmm...maybe not such an everyman after all. Bonhoeffer’s non-ordinary traits are apparent from the novel, even if Giardina played down those traits in her speech.
Giardina was more correct when she said: “We may use a story like this to ask questions about human beings of that time and what they mean to us today. What does moral courage demand of us?” In the novel, “patriotic” Germans try to shame Bonhoeffer by comparing his “easy” life to the lives of the brave soldiers who were fighting on the Russian front blah blah blah. Actually, Bonhoeffer, as Giardina points out, had a higher order of courage than the imbeciles who were herded into uniform and sent to the front to kill and be killed. To have the “courage” of a soldier means that you are more afraid of the ill-opinion of your family, your companions in battle, and your officers than you are of the enemy. There’s nothing special about such “courage.” Bonhoeffer’s courage is the courage of a man who defied his own government for the sake of Christ.
This is not to say that Bonhoeffer did nothing wrong. In the novel, Giardina had Bonhoeffer concede that it is sinful for him to try to blow up Hitler. This makes sense to me. Like many people, I oppose the death penalty. Assassination is simply a form of death penalty, and as such I oppose it. It is immoral and un-Christian. Bonhoeffer thinks that the “sin” of assassination will bring about good results. This is the familiar heresy about doing evil that good may come. As a matter of fact, the bomb didn’t bring about a better world or kill Hitler. It simply killed some people who were in the same room as Hitler. So Bonhoeffer did evil and did not achieve any compensating good. This is, of course, a frequent occurrence.
In her 2001 speech, Giardina, an active Episcopalian who has a divinity degree, said that “[t]he research and work on [this] book really reinvigorated my faith.” It should reinvigorate everyone’s Christian faith. Without endorsing Bonhoeffer’s behavior as described in the novel, we can say that he was willing to take risks in order to take a stand for the Lord. I can dig it.
A sweeping novel of a true-life hero--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and Nazi resister--in the tradition of Schindler s List .More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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