Aerial Warfare in German Literature and the Case of Gert Ledig’s Vergeltung

Abstract

In 1997, W. G. Sebald presented two conferences at the University of Zurich, in which he defended the thesis that the aerial attacks suffered in Germany did have almost no echo in the literary representations produced in the country. With the exception of one narrative written by Hans Erich Nossack, the few fictional descriptions available were brief, highly ornamented, unable to offer an approximate image of the horror brought by the bombings. His assertions had great repercussion, and were a fertile impulse to the discussion of the subject. In this context, Gert Ledig’s Vergeltung (Retaliation) (1956) became Volker Hage’s main example to asseverate that German literature did indeed produce relevant works about the theme, but that trauma did not allow a positive reception by readers in general, which was the reason why this book and others were forgotten. This paper presents the discussion involving Sebald’s thesis and some of the characteristics that might have caused a greater resistance to Vergeltung at the time of its publication: the crude explicit brutality of the physical and psychic destruction that goes through the whole book and the way that the author exposes the question of the bombings as a retaliation.