Ein Literaturskandal, wie er im Buche steht: zu Vorgeschichte, Missverständnissen und medialem Antisemitismusdiskurs rund um Martin Walsers Roman "Tod eines Kritikers"

Traces the media debate sourrounding the publication of Walser's "Tod eines Kritikers" in 2002. The novel's merciless mockery of a literary critic, easily recognizable as German Jewish critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, gave rise to accusations that Walser had written an antisemitic book, or at least a book open to antisemitic interpretation. Examines these accusations against the backdrop of earlier suspicions of antisemitism, mainly in 1998, in connection with the Walser-Bubis affair. Hofer defends Walser and, tracing the German-Jewish theme in his works, argues that although they mostly present the point of view of the German perpetrators, they do not shake or inverse the "victim-perpetrator asymmetry". Contends that Walser has never questioned German responsibility for the Holocaust and, although some of his Jewish characters express resentment against Germans because of the Holocaust, he does not present the Germans only as victims. Rather, he wishes to show that the Holocaust also had German victims, and that innocent German children of a later generation, to which he belongs, suffer from the persistent assignation of guilt to them. Walser wants to embrace a German identity despite Hitler's crimes, and defends the right of all Germans to express national self-awareness without being suspected of antisemitism.