H e is one of Germany's hottest young novelists. And, until last week, few in Germany's literary world doubted that Thor Kunkel's latest novel, Final Stage, was going to be anything but a rip-roaring success. The novel had all the right ingredients - sex, a lot of sex, Nazis, more Nazis, and a spectacular romantic finale. Furthermore, the book was based on original research carried out by Kunkel into one of the Third Reich's best-kept secrets - a series of pornographic films shot by the Nazis in the woods around Hamburg. Last week, however, Kunkel returned from a holiday in Amsterdam to discover that his publishing house had abruptly decided to cancel his novel two months before its scheduled release. Kunkel's publisher, Alexander Fest, said that he had shelved the novel at the last minute because of what he said were "aesthetic" and "content" differences with its feted year-old author. Fest did not elaborate. The affair has dominated the literary pages of Germany's broadsheets for more than a week, with most observers believing that Kunkel's real crime was something else - he had made the characters in the novel, who work for a fictional SS Hygiene Institute in Berlin, appear far too glamorous. And he had downplayed the Holocaust. My novel takes place in when not a single bomb was falling on Germany.
Site Information Navigation
Site Index
Thor Kunkel spent years researching a relatively secret aspect of Nazi history, the production of pornographic films screened at parties for the Nazi elite. He used what he learned to write ''Endstufe'' or ''Final Stage,'' a page historical novel that centers on a biologist at the SS Hygiene Institute in Berlin who oversees production of the films. The story begins in , before any bombs fell on Germany, and portrays the Nazis as a leisure class obsessed with technology and hedonism. Yet Mr. Kunkel, 40, a native of Frankfurt and the winner of the prestigious Ernst-Willner book prize, has found himself in the middle of a literary uproar. Rowohlt Press abruptly yanked ''Endstufe'' from its calendar it was scheduled to be released in March and canceled Mr. Kunkel's contract last month. Kunkel of ''self-indulgent amoralism.
Navigation menu
They are no longer available for a reading today in terms of traditional publication, although the advent of the Internet has allowed for peer-to-peer file sharing. Purported to be translations of English-language books by prisoners in concentration camps , these books were highly pornographic accounts of imprisonment, generally of Allied soldiers, sexual brutalization by female SS guards, and the prisoners' eventual revenge, which usually consisted of the rape and murder of their tormentors. The books emerged from the culture of silence that surrounded the Holocaust , especially in Israel , until the Eichmann trial.
Founded in Skip to content. Quick links. Pornography in Third Reich Discussions on the propaganda, architecture and culture in the Third Reich. The idea was to make ordinary Germans stumble on the frequency and think they were eavesdropping on a genuine booty call between a reichs minister and another reichs minister's secretary or something like that.