Marriages in Philippsburg

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Marriage in Philippsburg is Martin Walser's first novel . In 1957, the year of publication, the author received the Hermann Hesse Prize for this .

Walser wrote the novel between October 9, 1954 and August 27, 1956.

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The novel is set in a city known as Philippsburg in the 1950s and gives a satirical portrait of West German post-war society during the economic miracle . The story takes place in middle-class circles, it is about career, power, prosperity and infidelities. On the other hand, the protagonists lose true love and passion, morality seems alien to them. As clean as the world that has just emerged seems, it is fragile without these pillars.

The four chapters are devoted to four different people, with the initially penniless journalist Hans Beumann, who comes from the provinces, reappearing at the end to complete the story. The other three people come from his (in-) direct environment: the gynecologist Dr. Benrath, the lawyer Dr. Alwin and the unsuccessful writer Berthold Klaff.

Walser emphasizes the emotions and thoughts of the respective protagonist, the literal speech often comes along in the flow of thoughts . The delicacy of what is perceived appears strange and bizarre. But the story doesn't fall apart, it presents the reader with an oppressively restricted view of the world, according to which every man is only measured by success and his lover. The wives have become homely, silent hosts. Criticism of the lack of morality appears in the records of the failed.

2007 Martin Walser has much of his manuscripts as a premature legacy to the German Literature Archive in Marbach given. Parts of it can be seen in the permanent exhibition in the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, including the manuscripts of marriages in Philippsburg , Das Einhorn and Ein jumpingenden Brunnen .

References to real people and places

Behind Philippsburg Walser is hidden by a statement in an interview with Florian Illies made, Stuttgart . The model of Traubergstrasse, where Hans Beumann rents a room from the Färber family, was Reitzensteinstrasse in Stuttgart, where the Walser family lived from 1951 to 1953. Because this street was once a brothel street, he invented the figure of the prostitute Johanna. As a real role model for the artistic director Dr. ten mountains served Fritz Eberhard ; Eduard Rhein's habit of kneading his glasses he adopted for the character of Harry Büsgen. The whole atmosphere that surrounds Büsgen can also be seen as an authentic experience with the Rhine, explained Walser. Berthold Klaff, the unemployed writer who lives in the room above Beumann and demands that he find a way to earn a living on the radio, has the writer Arno Schmidt as his archetype. Michael Pflegehar and his environment inspired him when he described the Philippsburg villa owners' association. In Walser's diary, an abortion attempt is described on November 8, 1955, which was adopted in the novel almost unchanged.

reception

Florian Illies described marriages in Philippsburg as the best book in the young Federal Republic, but complained at the same time that the work was quickly and thoroughly forgotten: “Walser's own copy is in Marbach, in the German Literature Archive. There is no more symbolic way of describing the attitude of Germany, its readers, its critics and its literary studies to marriages in Philippsburg: They put it in the archive. Under 'early work, important', yes. But Germany forgot to read it too. It is perhaps Martin Walser's strongest book. ”Illies sees one of the reasons for the rather cautious reception of the novel and its allegedly quick forgetting that Günter Grass ' Tin Drum was published shortly after Walser's debut novel . This book caused a sensation not only because of its literary quality, but also because it addressed the German past, the Third Reich . According to Illies, “Walser was accused of not having the German past in his novel - but it is precisely in this that the novelist proves himself to be a diagnosis of the times. Because it demonstrates how loud the conscious silence about the past can be, how self-forgotten and self-destructive the insistence on a past without history. "

stage

In 2017, the director Stefan Kimmig and the dramaturge Jan Hein performed a heavily abridged stage version at the Schauspiel Stuttgart , the Stuttgart critic Adrienne Braun was not convinced.

See also

Adultery in Literature

expenditure

literature

  • Heike Doane: The image of society in Martin Walser's novel "Marriage in Philippsburg". Diss. Phil. McGill University , Chair Armin Arnold, 1969 proof

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Florian Illies: The Forgotten Great Novel , in: ZEITmagazin LEBEN, April 10, 2008, No. 16 ( online )
  2. ↑ The reference to the city of Philippsburg in Baden-Württemberg, which is too small for the plot, would be clear - especially for the various newspapers from Philippsburg. References can be found in the novel that the city must be beyond Hamburg, Stuttgart, Berlin, Bad Homburg and Travemünde. Cf. Walser, Martin: Marriages in Philippsburg. Sixth through eighth thousand. Frankfurt a. M .: Suhrkamp, ​​1958. p. 249; P. 312; P. 325.
  3. ↑ In ZEITmagazin LEBEN, April 10, 2008 No. 16, Walser refers to the city of Stuttgart as the place of action: Quote: "But I couldn't call the novel 'Stuttgart' either".
  4. ↑ Press report on the press portal.
  5. ↑ Article in the FAZ.
  6. ^ Adrienne Braun: Breathlessly upwards . Theater criticism, Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 15, 2017, p. 10