The Tin Drum

When Umberto Eco was asked which woman from art history he would like to spend an evening with, he chose Uta of Naumburg. Nobel laureate Günter Grass, the storyteller of this tale, agreed with him. On a writers’ tour in the GDR in the late 1980s, he saw her among the twelve figures of donors in Naumburg Cathedral. Since in literature anything is possible, he decides to invite all those whom the artist based his realistic sculptures of the 13th century upon—inviting them to his garden for dinner. Soon Grass begins to notice Uta’s presence in modern life—in the streets of Cologne, Milan, and Frankfurt. He starts following her, hoping to meet her. What will she look like to him today? What will they talk about? This story, conceived as part of the book “The Onion of Memory,” was recently discovered in Grass’s archive by his assistant Hilke Osdeling. After the author’s death, the novella was published.