A. N. Herbst on the "love story" of Weissmann and Gottfried

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

Herbst here says, in rather clumsy German, that (1) he considers the fatal relation of Weissmann and Gottfried to be an actual "love story", that (2) he'll never forget how Pynchon's narrates this, and that (3) the story might have been told by a German author yet would in this case certainly never have been published; Herbst adds that (4) nearly nobody has read Pynchon's narration anyway; (the Goethe quote in the beginning says that light-heartedness is always to be found on dark ground).

Despite the character of the SS-general Judejahn in Wolfgang Koeppen's novel Der Tod in Rom (1954), Herbst seems to have a point with (3): It's still hard to imagine - Herbst's remark is from the year 2000 - a German author publishing a "love story" - but is it one? -  à la Weissmann and Gottfried, where Gnosis and Fascist nihilism become hard to distinguish. And of course (4) is basically true too.

"Heiterkeit findet sich immer auf dunklem Grunde, sagt Goethe: Eine Liebesgeschichte wie Weißmanns, des Nazi-Schergen, und Gottfrieds, des masochistischen Knaben - ich sage "Liebesgeschichte" sehr bewußt und werde Pynchons Erzählung nie mehr vergessen - eine solche Liebesgeschichte hätte von deutschen Autoren vielleicht erzählt werden können, wäre aber ganz gewiß nicht veröffentlicht worden (allerdings hat sie auch so beinahe niemand gelesen)."

http://www.die-dschungel.de/ANH/txt/pdf/petersdorff_laudatio.pdf (pp. 1-2)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alban_Nikolai_Herbst

Herbst wrote and directed a radioplay on Pynchon (which I don't know):

Slothrop’s Verschwinden oder Das war Thomas Pynchon. Eine Collage, 2002, Deutschlandfunk Köln/Bayerischer Rundfunk/Süddeutscher Rundfunk.


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