Eight Days of Gdansk, November 5: Meet the Kashubians.

Let's return for a moment to The Tin Drum, the famous novel by Günter Grass, set in Danzig (now Gdansk). The protagonist is Oskar, who frequently references his Kashubian blood.

... Oskar represents Danzig, which is and is not a German city, just as Oskar is and is not German. Anna Koljaiczek, his Kashubian grandmother, puts this into perspective, as she proclaims in East Prussian German vernacular: "and when someone is a Kashubian, then that's not sufficient, neither for the Germans nor for the Polacks. They always want it just so" (547). Oskar, who is either half or fully Kashubian, is nevertheless considered German since both his official father and stepmother are German. Emotionally, however, Oskar is more Kashubian than German. His narration is replete with nostalgic references for his Kashubian grandparents, mother, and uncle/potential father. Although the Kashubes are ethnically and linguistically closely related to the Poles, they had lived under German/Prussian rule for centuries which caused many of them to become substantially Germanized. Oskar, just like Danzig, is a product of the very diverse and even tumultuous ethnic influences and often violent history of the southeastern coast of the Baltic Sea.

Here's a bit of background.

The Kashubians are a true ethnic minority, distinct from the Poles in both language and culture. Originally western Slavs with ethnic links to the Poles, the Kashubians are believed to have settled in the area around 1,500 years ago, although the first records date from the 13th century when the Pomeranian Dukes included ‘Duke of Kashubia’ among their illustrious titles. Estimates as to just how many Kashubians and people of Kashubian descent live in Poland today vary wildly. In Poland’s 2011 census 232,547 people declared themselves to be Kashubian but just 16,377 declared Kashubian to be their sole nationality. Similarly while 108,100 people said they spoke Kashubian at home, only 13,800 declared Kashubian to be their native tongue. In both cases of language and nationality, Kashubians would also consider themselves Polish and speak Polish.

But more importantly, there is Kashubian cuisine.

Kashubian cuisine is relatively simple but makes great use of a wealth of natural ingredients all found within the Kashubian region, which is blessed with a sea coastline and a plethora of lakes, rivers, forests, meadows and orchards. Food has traditionally been prepared to make use of whatever is in season and its simplicity reflects the need for tasty, healthy, filling dishes of a hard-working people ...

... The ingredients used are all found locally and it’s still typical, though less so than 10 or 20 years ago, to find cellars and garages filled with jars of pickles, marinades, compots and even nalewki which make use of fruit and vegetables grown throughout the year. Unsurprisingly, fish is a staple part of the typical Kashubian dish with such a variety available from the Baltic Sea, the Bay of Gdansk and the rivers and lakes of this picturesque region. A wide selection of fish is prepared in a variety of ways – cooked fresh using a variety of methods; salted in barrels and or pickled with oil or vinegar. You can find wonderful fish soups; pickled herring, whitebait covered in breadcrumbs and pan fried, smoked trout and lots of salmon among the many fish dishes available. Fish is not the only thing to be made into soup and other common soups include zurek, a sour rye soup, cabbage soup and even soup made from or containing fruit.

In a region divided by numerous working farms, farmyard animals also feature heavily. Pork, veal, chicken, duck and goose are common main components of a Kashubian dish, served with a wide choice of vegetables.

The potato (bùlwa in the Kashubian language as opposed to ziemniak in Polish) is a staple and still regularly referred to as kartoffel reflecting the German influence in the region. In fact, as noted elsewhere, the Kashubian people have been influenced by both Poles and Germans over the centuries, but have nonetheless maintained their own identity. That is true also of the cuisine, which is often similar to traditional cuisine but with a local twist. It is not unusual to find slices of sweet fruit used as decoration on an otherwise staple dish of meat, potatoes, vegetables and sauce. A quintessential Kashubian dish is potatoes covered in buttermilk and a sprinkle of sugar.

The Kashubians leave nothing to waste and use a variety of methods to cook or preserve the food at their disposal. Pigs are turned into joints and cutlets, sausages and offal. Meat and fish are both smoked to give wonderful tasting versions of common foods. Smalec or lard is another common sight and served with hunks of fresh, home-baked bread.

A final staple component of Kashubian cuisine are cereals – barley, rye, buckwheat and of course wheat are added to soups, pigs blood, sausages or boiled and served as an accompaniment.

Eight Days of Gdansk, October 31: Gdansk, Danzig, The Tin Drum and Günter Grass.

The Tin Drum is a novel about one man's choice of fishing lures.

Well, not really, although reading Günter Grass's masterpiece might well reshape an omnivore's list of dining preferences. Food aside, for some observers The Tin Drum represents a post-war literary peak.

The Tin Drum by Günter Grass – the greatest novel of the 20th century, by Eileen Battersby (The Irish Times)

The Tin Drum combines history, horror story, burlesque cartoon and satiric fable with vibrant, subversive imagery. Stylistically it is light years removed from the stately narratives of Thomas Mann

Sanctuary, at least for some people, may best be found in an insane asylum. From his white-enamelled metal hospital bed, under the watchful, if bewildered eye of Bruno, his nurse, Oskar Matzerath sets out with the help of a family photograph album to tell not only his story but also that of his country.

Oskar, very much his own man despite his chosen lack of growth, elects to move between the first-person and third-person voice. Drumming is his way of detaching from his family and the events unfolding around him. He pulverises each new drum, replacements lasting mere days; such is the frenzy of the story unfolding; so oppressive is the reality he is intent on escaping.

When he says in the opening pages of this angry, swaggering and earthy tour de force: “I’d like to have the bed rails raised even higher to keep anyone from coming too close,” it is not that unexpected. Here is a postwar novel born of that war’s legacy. The Tin Drum broke all the rules and invented a few more. The polemic is there but, considering the boisterousness of the narrative, at times it is not that obvious. But not always; Oskar and his father stand outside the burning synagogue: “….civilians and men in uniforms were piling up books, sacral objects, and strange pieces of cloth”.

And ...

The Tin Drum summarised the 20th century in three words, Darragh McManus (The Guardian)

Fifty years on, Günter Grass's seminal work remains the defining novel of the 20th century, wrenching art and hope from ugliness and horror

Whether it's the greatest is open to debate, but one could argue that Günter Grass's The Tin Drum is the great novel of the 20th century. By that I mean it most completely defines the era in all its glories and catastrophes – the moods, atmospheres, manias, streams, currents, histories and under-histories.

First published 50 years ago this week (on 6 October 1959), it is, technically, an incredible piece of art, a melange of bildungsroman, memoir, allegory, grotesquerie and pure reverie. On a superficial level it tells the story of Oskar Matzerath: incarcerated maniac, self-created dwarf, paranoiac, possessor of supernatural gifts, vindictive genius, fallen angel, miniature/a> tyrant, obsessive beater of the titular drum. Oskar is all of these things and none of them; the ultimate unreliable narrator.

The book charts his progress, and that of the independent port city of Danzig/Gdansk, and greater Germany, and the world as a whole. It is odd, profound, sprawling, poetic, often unnerving. But more than this, never have I read something that so exquisitely and lucidly captures the dazed, eerie strangeness of our misfortunate times ...

Given the Eurocentric nature of my interests, it's mystifying to me that I hadn't read the novel previously. My friend Jon suggested it as an appropriate segue to visiting Gdansk, given that the former Danzig is the foundation for a trilogy of novels written by Grass -- beginning with The Tin Drum.

As usual, Jon was right. The novel is unsettling and completely necessary. The author's life is instructive, too. Grass died just three years ago, and he left behind a powerful and also cluttered legacy, primarily because he omitted an important thing or two from his personal narrative. The corrections began in 2007.

Gunter Grass admitted that in 1944 he had been drafted into the 10th SS tank division Frundsberg and that the aircraft auxiliary episode was one that had lasted only while he was a schoolboy. Naturally his involvement in an organisation infamous for its associations with deaths heads and murder caused a bit of a rumpus in Poland, a country regarded as the primary killing field of the Nazi machine. Local hero, Lech Wałęsa, called on Grass to surrender his honorary citizenship of Gdańsk, while some accused him of trying to hype up the publication of his autobiography, Peeling the Onion. While the belated revelation drew widespread shock and accusations of hypocrisy, following many years where he had criticised Germans for not taking full responsibility for their war-time actions, many high profile names such as the local Archbishop Michalik and novelist John Irving, sprang to his defence. Speaking of the guilt he had carried all his life, Grass claimed to never have fired a shot, adding that once he saw the brutality of war he even tried to infect himself with jaundice in an attempt to escape his military duty. He went as far as to write an open letter of explanation to the people of Gdansk and this appeared to have done the trick with the local mayor Pawel Adamowicz refusing to rescind Grass’ honorary citizenship while even the normally stubborn Wałęsa applauded Grass for coming clean and withdrew his previous objections.

Grass's explanation in his own words is worth reading.

How I Spent the War, by Gunter Grass (The New Yorker)

In 1943, when I was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in Danzig, I volunteered for active duty. When? Why? Since I do not know the exact date and cannot recall the by then unstable climate of the war, or list its hot spots from the Arctic to the Caucasus, all I can do for now is string together the circumstances that probably triggered and nourished my decision to enlist. No mitigating epithets allowed. What I did cannot be put down to youthful folly. No pressure from above. Nor did I feel the need to assuage a sense of guilt, at, say, doubting the Führer’s infallibility, with my zeal to volunteer.

Günter Grass was born into a stateless "free city" of Danzig stemming from the post-WWI reordering of maps, witnessed the rise of Nazism, participated in WWII, saw rise and fall of communism in Poland, and died only six months shy of Polish parliamentary elections in 2015 which brought the populist Law and Justice party to power.

His novel is incredible, my reading of it lamentably belated, and I'll leave it at that.