Germany

In Jean-Paul Sartre’s discussion of The Condemned of Altona (or Loser Wins), Germany is the homeland Franz Gerlach imagines as having gone to ruin. It is not presented as a verified account of the country’s condition; its significance lies in how Franz’s imagined Germany anchors a world he deliberately maintains while remaining aware that it is imaginary.

Germany in Franz Gerlach’s Imaginary World

Franz has shut himself in the attic of his father’s house for thirteen years, ever since fighting for the Nazis on the Russian front. From that confinement, he imagines his beloved Germany as having gone to rack and ruin. The country thus enters the account through Franz’s vision of it, rather than through an independent description of events there.

The World Built Around the Homeland

Franz records speeches intended to justify humanity before a future courtroom of crustaceans. He reinforces this imaginary world with his old uniform, decorated with chocolate medals, and refuses to let time-pieces or newspapers into the attic. He also consumes large amounts of champagne and amphetamines. These details show how the imagined fate of Germany is embedded in a wider, carefully sustained setting, insulated from ordinary checks on time and current events.

Significance in Sartre’s Account

Sartre uses Franz to distinguish an imaginary attitude from confusing an imagined scene with a perceptual one. Franz can slip in and out of his role, even as he goes to great lengths to preserve the world in which Germany has collapsed. In Sartre’s interpretation, this attitude lets Franz deceive himself about the world around him and present himself to himself as historically significant. Germany matters here both as the object of that imagined history and as the focus of a make-believe that Franz sustains without simply mistaking it for perception.