Grant supports research on German author

Wed, November 5, 2008 |

A Valparaiso University professor has received a $10,000 grant supporting his research on the Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass and Germany's collective memory.

Dr. Timothy Malchow, assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures, is the recipient of this year's Philip and Miriam Kapfer Endowed Faculty Research Award. He was selected for the award by the University's Creative Work and Research Committee.

The Kapfer Award will support Dr. Malchow's research for his book project The Melancholy Monument: German Memory Transmission in 'The Tin Drum,' 'Peeling the Onion' and Other Works of Günter Grass.

Dr. Malchow noted that 2009 will mark the 10th anniversary of Grass winning the Nobel Prize for literature and the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Tin Drum. Grass has enjoyed a reputation as one of Germany's most significant 20th century writers, he said, but that reputation recently has been called into question.

"Memory of growing up under the Nazis is central in his work, and he has become a sort of mouthpiece for the national conscience," Dr. Malchow said. "Much of the tension in his books stems from exploring the interplay between personal memories and history and from trying to keep memory of his nation's past alive in order to affect the present."

With the publication of Grass' autobiography in 2006, however, Dr. Malchow said many people were shocked to learn that Grass had been publicly silent about being drafted into an elite Nazi combat force.

"My book examines the connections between the autobiography and his earlier work and public status, focusing on what happens in the books themselves," he said. "Since memory of his early life informed the writing of The Tin Drum in important ways, that novel is of special importance for my study."

Dr. Malchow will spend the next academic year writing his book and anticipates conducting archival research in Germany next fall, with a focus on discussions of Grass and his work in the German media.

His interest in Grass began when he read an English translation of The Tin Drum during a college English course. Dr. Malchow later read the novel and several of Grass' other works in the original German, and he has been pursuing scholarship on the author for 10 years. He wrote his dissertation on "Narrating Nations: Individual Memory and Collective Identity in the Early Prose of Günter Grass and Thomas Bernhard," has had articles on Grass published in scholarly journals and given numerous presentations on the author's work at professional conferences.

Dr. Malchow's research interests include 20th century and contemporary German literature and film, the representation of memory, psychoanalysis and literature, and German and Austrian nationality and discourse on "Germanness." He joined the German section of Valparaiso's Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures in 2003.

The Kapfer Research Award, funded with an endowment established by the Kapfer family, gives financial assistance to one faculty member annually in the College of Arts and Sciences for research in the faculty member's area of expertise.