The Goose Fritz
When a deranged sergeant brutally kills a goose he mistakes for a German soldier, Kirill, a young intellectual with a Soviet childhood, begins to question the visits his grandmother pays to Moscow’s German cemetery. As he for the first time pays attention to the names on the gravestones, Kirill investigates the stories associated with the “Schwerdt” and “Schmitt” families. In the process, he discovers he is descended from a German line, whose memory has been obliterated due to the anti-German feeling prevalent in Russia during much of its recent history. The presence of Kirill’s ancestors in Russia begins in the reign of Catherine the Great, whose call to scientists, artisans, and merchants inspires Balthasar Schwerdt, an idealistic surgeon, to make his way east in 1830. But before he can join her court, a Russian prince takes Balthasar captive, torturing and enslaving him for a period of seven years. Balthasar’s plight anticipates what will happen to his heirs. Although they assume Russian citizenship and distinguish themselves as soldiers, doctors, and captains of industry, the onset of World War I, at the latest, prompts their fellow Russians to remember that they were once German, leading to their vilification, dispossession, persecution, and murder.
The Goose Fritz is a fascinating variation of the ‘scapegoat’ narrative that according to Rene Girard underlies society’s organization around a sacrificial victim, upon which its evils can be projected. As Kirill finds out that the history of his family is punctured with moments of crisis when they are asked to take the blame for historical developments over which they exert no control, he has to make up his mind whether he will become the hunted or the hunter. Can Kirill—can any man or woman—escape the destiny of being stereotyped, based on his or her ethnic or national identity? It is a pertinent question to ask even in our so-called, modern times.
