AT THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE CRACK (AM ANFANG WAR DER SPRUNG): THE DANZIG TRILOGY

This article focuses on the sentence “Am Anfang war der Sprung” (“At the beginning there was the crack”) that Grass formulated in a 1962 small essay, “Ohrenbeichte. Brief an ein ungeschriebenes Blatt”, which alludes to what the author conceives as his role in depicting the world. After the analysis of the different ways through which this sentence has been interpreted by scholars, the article focuses on the significance it has for each of the novels that constitute the so called “Trilogy of Danzig”, especially for their “heroes” and protagonists, without losing sight of the autobiographical dimension in these works. Special attention is paid to the last novel of the Trilogy, Hundejahre (Dog years), which is maybe the least known of the three.