Jean Améry and Primo Levi
The relationship between Jean Améry and Primo Levi, whose account of survival Ist das ein Mensch?(Engl. Survival in Auschwitz; also If This Is a Man) appeared in Germany in 1961, five years before Améry’s Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne (Engl. At the Mind’s Limits), was a tense one. This is attributable not least to Levi’s belief, according to Améry’s biographer Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, that Améry to some extent had “stolen the show” from Levi. In private correspondence, Améry called Levi “the forgiver” and accused him of being conciliatory, whereas Levi criticized Améry’s implacable position and dismissed the first piece in Améry’s At the Mind’s Limits as a “bitter, gelid essay.”[1] He accused him of a lack of delight in life. Améry und Levi corresponded from time to time as fellow writers, but never saw each other again after their time in the camp.
While Levi’s account of his time in the Buna/Monowitz concentration camp adheres to a clear chronology that makes reference to Dante’s journey through the depths of hell, Améry decisively rejects any attempt at stringent narration, reduces documentary descriptions to a bare minimum, and is implacable in his tone.[2] W. G. Sebald thought the two men’s differences resulted from the differences between their experiences: “The notion that Améry fell victim to the implacability of his own thinking is not convincing, primarily because it relativizes the heavy burden of experience, surely not with intent, but out of a defensive posture.”[3] On two points, the experiences Améry was forced to undergo were more extreme than Levi’s: Améry was subjected to torture, and the torturers were his own countrymen; for him, there was no going back home. In his thinking and existence, Améry was more “uncompromising” than Levi.
Striking is the sharp decrease in Améry’s acceptance in the context of Holocaust research from the 1990s to the present day. Admittedly, Klett-Cotta has been publishing an edition of his works since 2002, but what Heidelberger-Leonard says about his reception still holds true: that “Primo Levi even today supplements the discourse on Auschwitz, while Améry’s works, which made this discourse possible in the first place, have been so thoroughly integrated into it (even though there is a breaking away from them) that people no longer see a need to refer to him by name. The roles have been switched to a certain extent: While Améry, in the Germany of 1965, was able to claim an aesthetic added value in matters of Auschwitz by virtue of his very far-reaching predictions (Bitburg, the historians’ quarrel, the Wehrmacht exhibition, the Walser-Bubis debate), the present-day Holocaust culture has lost him again.”[4]
Améry saw himself confronted with a trend increasingly manifest in society: to reach an understanding with the past, to just “come to terms” with it. Jan Philipp Reemtsma blames precisely this social reality for Améry’s suicide.
(GB; transl. KL)