Sastanak u Telgteu

The Meeting at Telgte (Das Treffen in Telgte, originally published in 1979) is one of Günter Grass’s most refined and linguistically rich works. The story is set in 1647—near the very end of the devastating Thirty Years' War—in the small town of Telgte, near Münster. There, at the initiative of the poet Simon Dach, a group of leading German Baroque writers and intellectuals (such as Gryphius, Rist, and Schütz) gather. The purpose of their secret meeting at an inn is to read their own verses, preserve the purity of the German language, and draft a joint appeal for peace addressed to the warring rulers. Behind the historical Baroque backdrop, Grass constructs a powerful allegory for the modern era and pays tribute to Gruppe 47 (Group 47)—an influential post-war association of German writers founded by Hans Werner Richter, which played a pivotal role in the revival of German cultural life after World War II. Grass draws a direct parallel between the devastation of the 17th century and the spiritual and material ruin of Germany in 1947. Through the spirited political and aesthetic debates of his characters, Grass examines the role of intellectuals in times of crisis, the limits of artistic power, and the impotence of poetry in the face of the brutality of war and ideology. The 1981 edition represents an important part of the Croatian translation of this outstanding German literary classic.