Abstract
By working out what makes the Wallenberg narrative so suitable to be told as a hero’s tale, I simultaneously outline the story’s many dimensions, providing the general background for an understanding of the Wallenberg monuments. By doing so, the potential of Wallenberg’s story will become clear and explain why his narrative was and continues to be told and retold with variations, depending on which aspects of the hero story is relevant to the storyteller’s audience. In the process, I refer to scholars from various disciplines such as mythology, history, psychoanalysis, literature, social theory, and philosophy.
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Notes
Otto Rank, Der Mythus von der Geburt des Helden (Leipzig, 1909), remains the classic Freudian analysis of the hero’s origin, which has inspired many scholars, such as Joseph Campbell, to whom I frequently refer. However, to use Rank’s terminology when describing Wallenberg’s origin would only lead to over-analysis, and it would not help in understanding the monuments any better.
See, for example, Leni Yahil, “Raoul Wallenberg—His Mission and His Activities in Hungary,” in Livia Rothkirchen, Yad Vashem Studies, vol. xv (Jerusalem 1983), 7–53, here 24.
However, during recent years some scholars have shed new light on Wallenberg family affairs that seem to revise the former picture, at least about Jacob Wallenberg. As it seems, Jacob supported resistance fighters both in Norway and in Germany. See Anders Johansson, “Jacob hemlig agent för Hjemmefronten?,” in SvD (January 5, 2007). See also the second part of the documentary series by Gregor Nowinski on the Wallenberg family, broadcast on Swedish television in January 2007, and Håkan Lindgren, Jacob Wallenberg 1892–1980 (Stockholm 2007).
Filadelfo Linares, Der Held: Versuch einer Wesensbestimmung (Bonn, 1967), 15–17.
See Lars G. Berg, The Book that Disappeared: What Happened in Budapest (New York, 1990), 13–16. Historian David Cesarani refers twice to Wallenberg in his book on Eichmann. However, he only mentions that Eichmann “commenced a bitter duel with Raoul Wallenberg and other diplomats” in Budapest; see idem, Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (London, 2004), 13 and 192.
See Ulf Zander, “I våldets virvelvind. Representationer av Adolf Eichmann i förintelsens historiekulturer,” in Våld: Representation och verklighet (Lund, 2006), 303–22.
Sol King, “In Tribute to Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg,” in Sir Nikolaus Pevsner: Architecture as a Humane Art (Ann Arbor, 1973), 5–12, here 6.
However, returning from Budapest would not necessarily guarantee that the rescuer’s deeds were appreciated, as the example of Carl Lutz, Swiss Consul in Budapest, 1942–5, demonstrates. Lutz’s humanitarian efforts were for a long time unacknowledged by his government. See Theo Tschuy, Dangerous Diplomacy: The Story of Carl Lutz, Rescuer of 62,000 Hungarian Jews (Grand Rapids, 2000). In fact, many rescuers’ efforts during World War II were not praised until late in life or after their deaths.
See Lévai, Raoul Wallenberg, (Melbourne, 1989), 230ff, or Anger, Med Wallenberg i Budapest, 86–8,
and Fredrik von Dardel, Raoul Wallenberg: Fakta kring ett öde. En sammanfattning (Stockholm, 1970), 28.
Kirsten Ortwed, quoted in Merete Pryds Helle and Morten Søndergaard, “Shaping Chance: A Portrait Interview with Kirsten Ortwed,” in Kirsten Ortwed: The Sculptor’s Palette (Horsen, 2000), 23–50, here 31.
See Ulf Zander, “To Rescue or be Rescued: The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen and the White Busses in British and Swedish Historical Cultures,” in Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (eds), The Holocaust—Post-War Battlefields: Genocide as Historical Culture (Malmö, 2006), 343–83, especially 346–8. Zander briefly reflects about what was known about the atrocities and hearsay, and how stories of the Germans killing millions of people were regarded as war-propaganda and impossible in reality.
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© 2009 Tanja Schult
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Schult, T. (2009). Raoul Wallenberg—A Hero’s Tale. In: A Hero’s Many Faces. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236998_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236998_5
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