SOURCE: "How It Seems and How It Is: Marriage in Three Stories by Siegfried Lenz," in Orbis Litterarum, Vol. XXIX, No. 2, 1974, pp. 170-79.

In this essay, Elstun analyzes the discrepancy between appearance and reality in three Lenz stories: "Ein Haus aus lauter Liebe, " "Der längere Arm, " and "Der sechste Geburtstag."

In the afterword to Siegfried Lenz's Gesammelte Erzählungen Colin Russ speaks of a "moment of truth" in these stories, "den Augenblick, in dem ein Mensch preisgegeben und auf die Probe gestellt wird." A reading of the Erzählungen confirms his observation and reveals this additional fact: in a striking number of the stories the "moment of truth" concerns the deterioration of a male-female relationship, and the woman's role is a decisive one. My purpose here is to analyze three of these "moments of truth"—in "Ein Haus aus lauter Liebe" (1952), "Der längere Arm" (1959) and "Der...