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“It’s history that got us here today. If it wasn’t for history, none of us would be sitting around this table now. We’d be safely back at our table in our house in Berlin. We are correcting history here.”
Father addresses these words to Bruno during the dinner scene in Chapter 13. Bruno had just been complaining about his tutor, Herr Liszt, who refused to let him study art and literature and instead forced him to learn about history and geography. Bruno especially detested the history lessons. He had no interest in dry accounts that focused on politics rather than stories of courageous explorers or adventurous knights-errant. Bruno’s announcement that he hated history sparked Father’s annoyance. But when he asked Bruno what he disliked about the subject and his son replied that history was boring, Father became outright angry. Like Herr Liszt, Father believed that no subject was more important than history, and in the quote above, he attempted to convince Bruno of this opinion. On the surface, Father’s words echo the well-known argument that history teaches us about the present by showing us how we got here. His general opinion reflects the widespread belief that, “It’s history that got us here today.”
Yet a deeper meaning lies hidden beneath Father’s comment. Although the point he makes certainly applies to history in general, it also points specifically to the history of Germany, which he claims led directly to the family sitting around their dinner table at Out-With. The reader has already encountered relevant references to Germany history in previous chapters. In Chapter 7, for example, Mother reflected on the suffering of many young German men who fought in the trenches in World War I and returned home profoundly traumatized by the experience. In Chapter 9, Herr Liszt expanded on Mother’s reflection by indicating that other European powers had committed “great wrongs” against Germany both during and after World War I. These prior references to history provide the necessary context for understanding Father’s deeper point about German history and how it has led to the present moment. If, as Mother and Herr Liszt have already suggested, great wrongs have been committed against Germany, then those wrongs needed to be addressed. When Father declared, “We are correcting history here,” he meant that his work at Out-With sought to “correct” the great wrongs of history and hence ensure justice for Germany.
