Samuel Beckett's travels around Nazi Germany

War was not yet imminent when Samuel Beckett travelled to Hamburg, Germany, in October 1936. However, after observing how Adolf Hitler’s loud speeches affected ordinary Germans, the Irish playwright was convinced that peace could not last. He wrote in his diary on 6 October, “They’ll need to fight soon (or burst).”

Beckett kept six notebooks during his six-month journey across Germany from late September 1936 to April 1937. These notebooks are now published for the first time by the German publisher Suhrkamp on 20 August. They challenge the common idea that the author of Waiting for Godot was only interested in despair and stillness, not real-life politics.

Previously, critics thought, based on letters and diary extracts, that Beckett, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969, travelled through Germany absorbed in himself and paid little attention to the rise of totalitarianism. However, the complete notebooks reveal that Beckett was closely studying the resentment caused by National Socialism.

He noticed changes in clothing, like the commonness of the “Hitler coat.” He also collected the Nazi movement’s frequent slogans, such as Führer (“leader”), Bewegung (“movement”), Blut und Boden (“blood and soil”), and Freiheit und Ehre (“freedom and honour”). Although these phrases repulsed him, he noted on 1 November 1936, “Her Kraft durch Freude [Strength Through Joy] conversation kills me.”

Beckett, who later joined the French resistance in 1940, mostly kept his disgust private. He found small satisfactions in mocking totalitarian behaviour, for example, by “(sticking) the wrong arm out” when asked to give the Nazi salute.

Mark Nixon, a professor and co-editor of the notebooks, explained that Beckett was aware his diaries could be confiscated. He had to be careful to leave Germany with them. Nixon believes Beckett might have been more open in his writing if he hadn’t faced this danger, but the diaries clearly show his opposition to Nazi ways of thinking.

Beckett’s journey through about 30 German towns and cities, including Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and Munich, was driven by his wish to see artworks and improve his German. His interest in German, his third language after English and French, was likely influenced by his extended visits to his cousin Peggy Sinclair and her family in Kassel between 1928 and 1932.

This interest in German language and culture is similar to that of the American writer Christopher Isherwood. When asked how he documented Germany between 1929 and 1933, Isherwood said, “I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording not thinking.”

Beckett observed the country’s slide into totalitarianism while already in a depressed state. His cousin Peggy had died of tuberculosis in Germany in May 1933, and his father died of a heart attack the following month. The rest of the Sinclair family, who were of Jewish descent, had been forced to flee Germany in 1936.

By the time Beckett travelled to Cuxhaven, he had undergone two years of psychoanalysis. His diaries reflect deep emotional pain, physical complaints, illnesses, bodily functions, money troubles, and anxiety about his writer’s block. At times, it is difficult to distinguish his personal struggles from the worsening political situation around him. On 15 January 1937, he wrote, “Soon I’ll really start to puke. Or I’ll go home.”

Nixon stated that Beckett’s value lies in his direct observations. He added that the diaries are a crucial part of Beckett’s development into the writer he became. In the diaries, Beckett constantly urges himself to be more concise, adopting the minimalist style that characterises his later work, stripping away everything unnecessary.

Nixon suggests that Beckett’s later move to France and his involvement in the French resistance can be understood as a response to his experiences in Nazi Germany. He was a direct witness to totalitarianism, and his literature is clearly shaped by this experience.

The 545 pages of the German diaries, written in small, difficult-to-read handwriting, were discovered in the cellar of Beckett’s Paris apartment after his death in 1989. His nephew Edward Beckett, working with editors Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich, brought the 120,000 words to publication.

Nixon described the diaries as Beckett’s personal witness statement, which he did not intend for publication. Some entries reveal less admirable aspects of the respected modernist writer, including misogynistic comments and accounts of visiting brothels.

Nixon explained that the diaries’ value as a historical record comes largely from the fact that Beckett never edited them. The ethical justification for publishing them is that he did not destroy them, unlike other materials.

While Suhrkamp’s bilingual edition, translated by Gaby Hartel, focuses on political history, an English edition planned for next April will concentrate more on the diaries’ role in Beckett’s literary journey. Publishers in China, France, and Italy, among other countries, have acquired the rights.