Opposition or Opportunism?: Günter Eich’s Status as Inner Emigrant

When I first approached the topic of Günter Eich’s life and work two decades ago, my intention was to reconcile the “anarchistic nonconformist” image Eich had cultivated in the last decades of his life with the circumstances of his professional activity under National Socialism. After all, this was the author who had received a devotional letter from Gudrun Ensslin in 1963 (Herbst, A330), and whose last wish had been to have his ashes deposited in Switzerland next to those of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.¹ Would we find evidence of the Eich ofDreams(Träume) andMoles(Maulwürfe) in the pernicious