A Small Town in Germany

A Small Town in Germany is a 1968 espionage novel by British author John le Carré. It is set in Bonn, the "small town" of the title, against a background of concern that former Nazis were returning to positions of power in West Germany.[1][2] It is notable for being le Carré's first novel not to feature his recurring protagonist George Smiley or "The Circus," le Carré's fictionalised version of MI6.

A Small Town in Germany
First edition cover
AuthorJohn le Carré
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
GenreThriller
PublisherWilliam Heinemann
Publication date
October 1968
Media typePrint (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages304 pp
ISBN0-434-10930-4
OCLC887880
823/.9/14
LC ClassPZ4.L4526 Sm PR6062.E33
Preceded byThe Looking-Glass War 
Followed byThe Naïve and Sentimental Lover 

Setting

Bonn, the eponymous small town, was chosen as West Germany's capital after World War II mainly due to the advocacy of Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of West Germany after World War II.

Plot summary

A Small Town in Germany is set in the late 1960s, in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. From London, Alan Turner, of the British Foreign Office, arrives to investigate the disappearance of Leo Harting, a minor British Embassy officer; moreover, secret files have disappeared with him. The embassy's head of Chancery, Rawley Bradfield, is hostile to Turner's investigation. Despite that, he is dinner party host to Turner and Ludwig Siebkron, head of the German Interior Ministry; the latter is close to industrialist Klaus Karfeld, who is successfully building a new political party.

Initially, Turner suspects Harting is a spy, but comes to understand that Harting was secretly investigating Karfeld's Nazi career as the war-time administrator of a laboratory that poisoned 31 half-Jews. In fact, Harting is hiding from Siebkron, and might assassinate Karfeld. To Turner's chagrin, Bradfield is unsympathetic to Harting's circumstances and uninterested in protecting him because he considers him a criminal and a political embarrassment.

Major characters
  • Rawley Bradfield - Head of Chancery at the British Embassy in Bonn
  • Leo Harting – long-term temporary employee at the British Embassy
  • Alan Turner – British Foreign Office official
  • Ludwig Siebkron – German Interior Ministry official
  • Klaus Karfeld – German industrialist and politician with a hidden Nazi past

History of creation

As the author said in his 1991 preface to the new edition the novel "is printed with aversion in my memory".[3] The part of Alan Turner was secretly allocated to him. Also he wrote there that "the novel is not the eyesore I always imagine it to be". John le Carré said that his invention was "to write something close to a black comedy about British political manners, and yet the result was widely perceived to be ferociously anti-German". He said that he wanted to write "an informed nightmare, not an accurate prophecy. My aim was to tell what I might best call a political ghost story". Leo Harting is the ghost, Alan Turner is his exorcist and Bradfield is the owner of the haunted house. Three characters are imagined. Writer used the real person Herr Junger, the Embassy fixer, as Leo's prototype.

First drafts of the book he created in Vienna, where Simon Wiesenthal helped him with Karfeld's background.

Allusions/references to actual events
  • David Cornwell (John le Carré) worked as an intelligence officer for MI6 under diplomatic cover as the 'Second Secretary' of the British embassy in Bonn, during the period depicted in this novel.
  • At the time of publication there were worries that the extreme right was rebuilding in West Germany, particularly with the success of the far-right National Democratic Party in various state and municipal elections after its founding. However, these fears later proved to be unfounded.
  • West German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, was, like Karfeld, a former Nazi, who had joined the Nazi Party in 1933. Although Kiesinger was cleared of war crimes by the denazification courts, radical groups such as the Red Army Faction argued that an informal but powerful network of ex-Nazis, including Kiesinger, controlled the country.
  • Real locations in Bonn such as the British Embassy feature prominently.

Trivia
  • The Economics Minister at the Bonn embassy was James Marjoribanks. One of the characters in Le Carré's book is also called Marjoribanks.

Release details
  • 1968, UK, William Heinemann, ISBN 0-434-10930-4, October 1968, Hardback
  • 1970, UK, Pan, ISBN 0-330-02306-3, 3 July 1970, Paperback

Dramatisation
  • Serialised in seven episodes for BBC Radio 4, broadcast in Summer 1982.
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References
  1. "A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré". Goodreads. goodreads.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  2. BOSTON, RICHARD (October 27, 1968). "What Became Of Harting?". The New York Times. nytimes.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  3. Carré, John le (2013-03-05). A Small Town in Germany. Penguin. ISBN 9781101603048.
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