A pig is sighted running amok through the streets of Brussels. A shot goes off in the 
nearby Hotel Atlas. So begins die Hauptstadt, the brilliant novel by Robert Menasse, which won the German Book Prize in 2017 and will be published in February this year, 2019, in translation by Jamie Bulloch. Through a range of characters who find themselves in Brussels- some working for the European Commission, some there on other business, Menasse explores the idea of Europe with wit and humour, but with the dark shadow of Ausschwitz ever present in the background.
The pig is seen from a restaurant window by Fenia Xenopoulou, amongst others, while waiting for a lunch date. She is in charge of the Culture Directorate and has been tasked with organising a special event to mark the Jubilee Celebrations of the European Commission. She’s aware, as are others, that the popularity of the Commission is precarious, so they have to come up with something really special to maintain their reputation. Her colleague, Martin Süssman, travels to Ausschwitz shortly afterwards to take part in the annual ceremony to mark the liberation of the camp on January 27th. This gives him the idea of basing the Jubilee Celebrations on the theme of Nie wieder Ausschwitz! Ausschwitz- never again! in order to showcase the Commission’s efforts to break down the sort of nationalism which led to fascism and, eventually, the murders of millions of Jews and others in the camps.
The shooting at the Hotel Atlas obviously commands the presence of the police and Kommissar Emile Brunhaut in particular. He is surprised to be told by his superiors shortly after he starts his investigation that no murder has taken place and to find that all record of the murder has been wiped from his computer. The grandson of Belgian Résistants, he’s not one to let go of a challenge, and with the help of his friend Philippe, he continues his private investigations into the murder and the cover up which take him into unexpected territory.
Now these are just two strands of the narrative and they interweave with others and the large cast of characters to show us the day to day workings of the European Commission. We see the formidable hierarchies as countries and personalities jostle and vie for jobs and the favoured Directorates: Fenia has been given the despised Culture brief because she’s Greek and they’re bottom of the pile after the Greek crisis, George Morland has it in for Mrs. Atkinson, whom he claims got the job over him because she’s a woman. Indeed much of their work and activity is satirised as being largely about justifying their present and future existence. There is much humour, too, in the account of the problems with European pork, including a detailed exposition of the issues around European and international trading, which provide instruction for all us British readers trying to understand European and international trade rules prior to Brexit.
One of the things I most enjoyed were the characters’ back stories, slipped in at appropriate moments to help us understand motivation and the force of history, yet also containing some fascinating detail. I liked the story of Alois Erhart’s attempts to conform to the sporty expectations of his sport shop owning father and the strong local identity of the football teams in the suburbs of Vienna. I liked the account of Florian Süssman, that brashly successful pig farmer and lobbyist, as a boy reading a picture book with his younger bookish brother, Martin. However more brutal experiences emerge too: David de Vriend’s escape from a train to Ausschwitz as a boy and the memory which haunts him, of his parents and brother staying on that train- he never saw them again. So for many of the characters, now in middle age, the war and post war experiences of their parents and grandparents forever marked them and inevitably shaped the vision of Europe which evolved in the post war period.
Still, the Europe of the novel is nothing if not contemporary. Martin’s flight to Krakow is held up by demonstrators at the airport protesting against the illegal deportation of a Chechen man to Russia. Every kind of tat can be found in the tourist shops of Krakow. Even Ausschwitz is now fitted out with a cafe and a drinks vending machine. And, as the narrative progresses into spring, the temperature warms up unseasonably, reminding us of further global challenges.
Yet perhaps the most chilling contemporary note is the creeping threat of nationalism. At the beginning of the book the trade wars around pork pit national economic interests against those of the European Union in a way not unfamiliar to anyone conversant with business and the economy over the last few decades. Yet the aggressive nationalism and anti- European feelings expressed by Bohumil’s Czech brother- in- law, and his family’s acceptance of those views, seem new. Or are they perhaps a reawakening of an earlier nationalism and fascism which was not dealt with robustly enough in the post war period? Kassándra, in her search for a list of Ausschwitz survivors, comes across the Museum at Dossin- Kaserne, which was once a transit camp in Belgium for prisoners then deported on to Ausschwitz. The museum curator sits at a desk once owned by Eggert Reeder, the head of military administration under the Nazi Occupation. He signed the deportation lists for 30,000 Jews, for which he was condemned to 12 years in prison. However according to Menasse, he was pardoned by Adenauer and got a civil service pension from the BRD! I’m reminded of those former Nazi judges in Ursula Krechel’s Landgericht, who were back in the judicial saddle after only very short periods and minimal sanctions.
The visit to the Dossin- Kaserne is only a brief episode in a very big and complex book. Though there are sections of personal history, witty dialogue and repartee, there are also long discursive sections on abstract philosophical ideas, the Catholic church, and EU customs and regulations, so the pace varies considerably. Sometimes I found the ideas hard going and a list of dramatis personae at the front of the book would have been helpful. But the plot and structure are brilliantly handled so that the ending is a shock and had me looking back to the beginning for clues.
The novel flags up the precariousness of the European Commission and the fragility of the broader idea of European consensus and cooperation it represents when a nastier sort of nationalism is growling in the wings. Yet through its characterisation it communicates this bleak message with humour and humanity. It is such a gift to be given this situation from a European standpoint in the midst of the UK’s spectacularly messed up attempts to leave the EU and the inevitable one sided view of Europe this has entailed. Thanks to Robert Menasse for this masterful and thought provoking novel and to Jamie Bulloch for his eagerly awaited translation.
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