Abstract

Martin Walser's reflections on German self-identity have made him a controversial author: whereas critics have raised charges of,,literary anti-Semitism", his defenders consider him – as a writer who since the early 1960s has shown a preoccupation with his country's Nazi past – immune to such criticism. Taking both arguments seriously, Matthias N. Lorenz has reviewed Walser's allegedly untenable positions on the Holocaust in his book,,Auschwitz drängt uns auf einen Fleck": Judendarstellung und Auschwitzdiskurs bei Martin Walser. In this essay the author concisely presents the main theses and thoughts of Lorenz's widely discussed Ph.D. dissertation.