Diaries: The diaries Victor Klemperer kept from 1933 to 1945, published (in English) in 1998 and 1999 in two volumes titled I Will Bear Witness, are already established as classics of the literature of humanism, writes Joseph O'Neill.
By virtue of his marriage to a so-called Aryan, Klemperer, a university professor of Romance languages and literature in Dresden, was one of the very few German Jews to live through the Nazi years without ending up in a concentration camp. (When, in February, 1945, he was finally ordered to report for forced labour, he was saved by the Dresden firestorm, which enabled him to rip off his yellow armband and flee, incognito, with his wife through the rubble.) He was therefore extraordinarily exposed to, and remarkably detached from, the awful and mysterious events of the times. This perspective, combined with his longstanding habit of keeping a wonderfully fussy, detailed, and well-written journal (he noted, for example, the arrival of a letter "with the brown and blue zebra stripes of the censors") produced a chronicle of unique moral and historical value.
The Lesser Evil, the third volume of diaries, concerns itself with Klemperer's post-war life. His writing still serves as a small, clear hand-mirror held up to German history, but what's reflected is a place that makes a relatively specialised claim on the curiosity of the contemporary general reader: the dull, steroidal, and doomed DDR, where Klemperer elected to live until his death in 1960. On the face of it, the experience of life behind the Iron Curtain, rich in absurdity and injustice, would find its perfect reporter in such a great detector and despiser of humbug. But Klemperer chose not to occupy a position of dissent in the new society. On the contrary: he joined the Communist party, successfully sought election to the Volkskammer, and enthusiastically embraced the new order. These are therefore the diaries of a victor, not a victim. This change inevitably alters his credibility as a social commentator, but for various reasons, it does not much affect the wider appeal of his writings or the goodwill that one bears him. His journal remains so human and self-revealing that you cannot help but follow his fortunes and, on questions of politics, cut the man some slack.
After over a decade of personal catastrophe and humiliation - the Nazis murdered family and friends, robbed him of his job and his house and his typewriter and even his cat - one cheers as Klemperer and his steadfast wife, Eva, reclaim their home outside Dresden. Symbolically enough, the summer of 1945 is spent eating and distributing the cherries that are plentiful in the garden. Celebrated as a Jewish survivor ("for some people here I am now a bigwig"), Klemperer is swamped by requests for help and cloying gestures of friendship. Although remarkably free of rancour, he is prompted to observe, "This whining after testimonials is disgusting. And at some time or other the Jews will get the bill for it. I see a new Hitlerism coming, I do not feel at all safe".
This fear seems to have played a role in his decision, made in 1945, to join the Communist party: "I believe that we can only get out of the present calamity and prevent its return through a most resolute left-wing movement". But there was also a strong, and completely understandable, element of self-service informing Klemperer's political stance, which he plainly regarded as fateful: "I do not want to take a decision . . . out of pure idealism, but coolly and calculatingly in accordance with what is best for my situation, my freedom, the work I have to do . . . Which is the right horse? Russia? USA? Democracy? Communism?"
As a matter of personal advancement, Klemperer did the right thing. He was granted one professorship after another, became a member of the German Academy of Sciences, enjoyed a Festschrift in his honour, and generally enjoyed "the pleasant feeling of being part of things and being seen". This careerism undoubtedly compromised his ability, or inclination, to see clearly certain realities. The Hungarian uprising in 1956 led him to complain, with batty relativism, "everything \ opaque . . . We always listen to the squeaky Western stations - who stinks, who lies more, who is more cruel?" Klemperer never lost his distaste for the capitalist west, even after 1958, when he declared (aged 77), "I have finally become an anti-Communist". "Germany," he maintained, "is an earthworm cut in two; both parts squirm, both contaminated by the same Fascism, each in its own way."
Shortly before he died, Victor Klemperer thought about publicly recanting his Communism, but glumly recognised that he lacked the necessary fortitude. It's this moral feebleness, perversely, that underpins Klemperer's authority and likeability. Never convinced of his own virtue, comically obsessed with his status as a literary figure (he recognised and hated his "despicable" vanity and ambition), it was only the pressure of external circumstances that prodded him into taking an interest in the public realm. Left to his own devices, Klemperer was as self-absorbed as the next fellow. A pro-German nationalist assimilationist Jew - he even converted to Protestantism as a young man - he had little natural appetite for subversion or difficult moral stands. This diffidence, which operates as a guarantee of such observations that he felt obliged to make about the wider world, is never more clear than in these post-war diaries. In this sense, they enhance Victor Klemperer's rare standing as a truth-teller.
Joseph O'Neill is a novelist and the author, most recently, of the non-fiction book, Blood-Dark Track: A Family History
The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-59 Translated by Martin Chalmers Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 637 pp. £25