Helmut’s patriotism is born not out of conv iction, but as a desire to affirm an identity he cannot fully claim. However, his failure to understand and judge what is taking place suggests that his obsession with photo quality and with becoming really successful at something is, firstly, a compensation mechanism to fit within German society and please other people (his neighbors, the school, his parents, Gladigau…), and, secondly, a screen that hides a trauma ultimately caused by an ideology that makes him feel “unworthy”. It is this fanaticism that makes his non-severe disability traumatizing: it renders him unable both to serve his homeland and please his parents, a fact he tries to cope with by taking photographs of wartime Berlin after he starts working for the photographer Gladigau. His Hitlerian fanaticism, then, only enhances his blindness. This disability makes him “unfit”, as he is well below the standards of Aryan perfection and close to some of the targets of Hitler’s regime.

His parents join the Nazi Party but, as Helmut was born with a birth defec t in his arm, he cannot enroll in the ar my, which deeply disappoints him and embarrasses his father. Helmut’s connection to perpetration lies in his loyal support of the Führer and the practices of the German military. The protagonist of “Helmut” stands for those in the first generation of Germans who staunchly defended and fought for the Nazi ideology until the very end of the war. The Dark Room HELMUT The first story in The Dark Room takes place between 1921 (the main character’s year of birth) and 1945, but is especially focused on wartime Berlin.

The Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert