The Brass Age

Croatian writer Slabodon Snajder may be best known in his home country for his plays, but his novel, The Brass Age, was immediately recognised as a major work on its publication in 2015 and has been gradually appearing in various European languages until, at last, thanks to Celia Hawkesworth and Mountain Leopard Press, it can be read in English. It is an impressive volume at over six hundred pages, beginning with the departure of Georg Kempf from Germany in 1769, lured by the promise of land and a better life to settle in the “frontier lands” of Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresa, and ending with the funeral of his descendant, also George Kempf, in post-war Yugoslavia. For the most part however, the novel focuses on Kempf’s experiences during the Second World War, conscripted into the German army as Volksdeutsche and later deserting to join the Polish resistance. It is a novel which is both epic in scale and human in detail.

Snajder uses the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin throughout the novel to highlight the movement of peoples from one territory to another, which becomes ironic in an age so focused on national purity. When the original Georg Kempf is offered the opportunity to leave an impoverished Germany for new lands, one suspicious villager comments:

“We know that in Hamelin, near Hannover, a travelling charlatan promised to rid them of rats and then he lured their children away with his playing and they were never heard of again.”

Later, especially in the final reflections of his descendant and namesake, it is used to demonstrate the compulsion to follow:

“It seems that everything depends on the pied piper of Hamelin whom the young follow, for good or ill… The young follow their shepherd, the pipe of a piper in a colourful uniform, and the difference between Good and Evil is so indecently fine that anything is possible.”

Kempf himself is neither a follower nor a leader. When others with German ancestry enlist, he is “impervious to all their coaxing to join them” and when a Jewish friend is attacked he is sympathetic but helpless:

“To be simply a person had become impossible.”

Eventually he is conscripted to join the SS. Before he goes, he visits the graveyard where his ancestors are buried – graveyards will populate the novel representing, as they do, not only death but family ties to place. “I don’t know where I’m going now,” he says aloud, “or whether I’ll regret it.” He is sent to Poland and proves himself to be an adequate soldier, until he ordered to be part of a firing squad and eats raw potatoes to in order to escape the duty through sickness.

Though Kempf’s story forms the major part of the narrative, it is at times accompanied by the voice of his unborn child. This voice appears (boxed) alongside the main narrative providing a commentary (omniscient – for example, knowing that the friend Kempf is writing to is dead) and speculating on the chances of being born. Kempf’s story is also interspersed with the story of the child’s mother, Vera, who, at the time, is in a camp as a political prisoner:

“She quickly realised that the camp was merely a temporary stopping place and that all those herded into the Tower, a menacing brick building from the days of Turkish rule in Slavonia, were liquidated within twenty-four hours… As a Croat, Vera dared hope she would not be killed at once, that she might even survive…”

Though they will not meet for many months, the novel charts their path towards each other, which perhaps could be said to begin when Kempf deserts to join the Polish resistance. Unfortunately, the group he is meant to join is … in an attack and he ends up seeking refuge with Polish peasants: “You can stay,” as one puts it, “but it would be better for you to go.” Time and again he must pull down his trousers to prove he is not Jewish. When Germany retreats, he will eventually join up with the Russians. Kempf’s trajectory shows how fleeting and spurious national identity is (as well as making for an exciting story of survival) Even his name changes as he moves from group to group – Jurek to the Polish nurse who is his resistance contact; Yuri to the Russians. One story he hears in Poland symbolises how little divides the warring soldiers – the corpses of a German and a Russian frozen together:

“…we could only have parted them with axes or a saw, but even that was debatable. So we buried them together, in that embrace…”

Vera will later tell him that, had she met him when he was in the SS, she would have shot him.

The Brass Age is an astonishing novel – not only an important account of the Second World War from the point of view of central Europe, but one which encompasses a wider examination of the forces of history by prefacing its main story with 18^th century emigration and following it with the creation of Yugoslavia and the resultant political tensions between Tito and the Soviet Union. All of this is seen through the experience of one family – in fact, a few individuals – without ever seeming to limit our perspective. It is undoubtedly one of the most significant translations of the year.

Tags: Slobodan Snajder, the brass age