FREE ESSAY ON ANALYSES OF WILLIAM KOEPPEN'S DEATH IN ROME

ANALYSES OF WILLIAM KOEPPEN'S DEATH IN ROME

Wolfgang Koeppen's novel, Death in Rome, deals with an important
issue, and one that faces every society. The issue is what is to be done
with warriors after a war? In any society that has ever been at war there
have been trained warriors. They predate weapons, and in some
societies even agriculture. Trained and skilled warriors are as much of a
necessity to us as running water, but, unlike water, we only need the
warriors occasionally. When they are not being frequently used we run
into the problem of what to do with them. They are most commonly left
alone in a peacetime society where they suffer feelings of alienation, and
sometimes even betrayal. They feel that the countries that created them
should help them to adjust, and indeed this is the case. We have seen this
recently, in such campaigns as Viet-Nam, for the US, and the Falklands
War, for the UK. Koeppen's novel deals with a German soldier alienated
from society after W.W.II.
Judejahn's case is unique. Unlike British veterans of the Falkland's
war, Judejahn is a veteran of the losing team. After the end of the war
the German National Socialists were persecuted more heavily than any
other people has been after a war. To this day there are still factions
attempting to track down old, grey, bent, and aging men because they
were German officers during the war, and are now considered 'war
criminals.' This term is one that has always been reserved for the victor of
any conflict to use, and in the author's opinion, is a rather ridiculous
concept. Men fight to kill when they are in a war, there are no winners
and there are no losers. 
Judejahn is considered a war criminal. He is one of those men that 
fought for his country, devoted his life to the service of his country, and is
repaid by becoming a wayward war hero that is forced into hiding. He
has his own society to thank for giving life to him, as a soldier, in the first
place. "It was they who had made it possible for him to go so far. They
had underwritten his wanderings with their lives. They had invoked blood,
they had summoned him, exhorted him . . . they had given him his first
uniform, and had cowered before the new uniform he had made for
himself . . . they had summoned the 'Reich' into being..."1 These were the
feelings that he had, this was his existence and his reason for being. It was
only natural for him to feel betrayed when, after the war, these people
simply turned their backs to him. The case of the displaced National
Socialists was a more extreme version of displacement due to the
amazing levels of devotion and loyalty that these soldiers demonstrated. 
These levels bordered on fanaticism. These men did not half-heartedly
give their service to their country, they were very sincere, as were their
wives. This is evident in the character known as Eva.
These displaced soldiers needed to have something in their lives;
they needed a purpose. Unfortunately such a thing was never easy to
come by. Judejahn was lucky to be able to use his talents and skills in the
employ of 'the Arabs.' He was able to go to a people that, after courting
such heroes as Rommel, had learned to respect and admire the talents of
the German National Socialists. We see this type of transmogrification of
military personnel happening within the currently existing governments of
our society much more frequently in out time. Today, with the breakup of
the USSR, there are many displaced cold war veterans. Men with elite
training in areas of knowledge such as the construction of nuclear,
chemical, and biological weaponry. Like Judejahn their services are no
longer needed by their homeland, so they take their talent elsewhere
because there is always a nation willing to exploit such talents. It seems
that one of the curses of peace time is that a free market is created for
military talent and, unfortunately, sometimes weapons. 
It is usually the rich, the affluent, the ruling class that makes these
decisions about the usefulness of another man's life. In Judejahn's case it
was the rich, whom he despised, that were blamed for his coming into
existence. "Judejahn liked their life-style, but not their lives. He had tried
to do better. The rich were stupid," he believed, "They had thought of
Judejahn as a lackey who would do their work for them."2 These people
were the very ones that he had to blame for his aimlessness and his
persecution. These were the people that had imprisoned little Gottlieb
behind the fleshy walls of a cold steely eyed killer known as Judejahn. 
These were the men who had killed his childhood; the men who had
taken away his first life and left him with the one he had now. Like a
guard dog he was used and thrown aside. Judejahn despised the rich for
their freedom, for the fact that they could simply turn their backs and
ignore all that had happened and get back to just making money. These
power-brokers saw no reason to help veterans, indeed, they felt no
remorse whatsoever. 
In the end Judejahn, to some degree, did the same thing that was
being done by the rich that he despised ever so much. The rich went
back to their professions, and so did Judejahn. He was, after all, a highly
skilled and trained soldier. He had lived his life giving orders and following
orders, filing reports and ordering reports to be filed. Without this his life
was dull, empty, and meaningless. After meeting with some former
soldiers, whom he decided to be of a lower rank than he, he mused
about asking them to file a report. It was a natural reaction, and yet the
mere thought of such a thing made him question his very existence. It
was a harsh reminder to him that things had changed to a point beyond
recognition. Nothing would ever go back to the way that it once had
been and he was left with deciding whether he would continue life as
Judejahn, try to revive the long imprisoned Gottlieb, or make a real man
out of both. 
Gottlieb was another problem that Judejahn faced. He was, in fact 
still a young boy outside of the military. He was a young boy when his
training began, and as he slowly evolved into a soldier that young boy
was forced into a mental prison to make way for the new man. He
started a new life, became a new man, Hitler's man. Yet all of the time
there was still that young boy, Little Gottlieb, lurking inside of him, just
beneath the surface. That boy had never had a chance to grow, or to
become a man on his own. Koeppen uses a unique technique in this
book to convey the two sides of Judejahn. He is a man that is literally split
in two. Each part of him has a different reaction to circumstances that
arise, this is identified by the switching of the narration from describing
Judejahn to describing Little Gottlieb. 
In the end, though, it matters little whether or not he will ever
separate the two personalities. It seems that he is damaged irreparably. 
He is still a killer, and he still enjoys to kill. For him to give up his killing and
hunting talents would be as absurd as a tiger forgetting how to hunt, or
an owl forgetting how to spot prey on the ground in the middle of the
night. He would not be a man without that which has made him a man. 
The novel is called Death in Rome. Well, there is definitely a lot of that. 
Judejahn is the very personification of death in some respects, while in
others it is death that he reports to and looks up to for guidance. 
Judejahn also brings death with him when he comes to Rome. He is a
merchant of death, training soldiers and such, but he is also a killer. He
hunts and kills, he happily takes the life of a Jewess whom he feels has
escaped him in the past. He sees to it that there is 'death in Rome.' He is
a dieing species, a ghost of the past, and in this way he is living death. 
And, in his final act, he dies. He dies in Rome. Death has many faces in
this book, he manifests himself in many guises, but it is Judejahn that he
revolves around in this novel.