SOURCE: "The Macabre Festival: A Consideration of Six Stories by Siegfried Lenz," in Deutung und Bedeutung: Studies in German and Comparative Literature, Mouton, 1973, pp. 275-93.

In the following essay, Russ discusses thematic similarities between six stories that are set during festivals or holidays.

Siegfried Lenz's fiction discloses a continual preoccupation with a limited number of central, interrelated themes, which are yet varied in very interesting ways. In particular, the complex of motifs embracing the sudden reversal of fortune, the loss of authority or status, and the revelation of vulnerability, has proved a rewarding field for this writer's searching and prolific imagination. In his Autobiographische Skizze he explains how he was led to this area by a fact of contemporary history, the fall of the National Socialists:

Dann wurden die Mächtigen machtlos, die Meister der Gewalt büßten ihre Herrschaft ein, und seit damals hat mich dieser Augenblick...