Pony christmas

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pony Christmas is the title of a children's book by Erwin Strittmatter .

Strittmatter wrote Pony Christmas around Christmas 1966, when he was bedridden with a broken ankle, and also read the text for the radio. The tale first appeared in 1974 with other Strittmatters stories in the volume Back then on the Farm: and Other Stories in the Reclams Universal Library . Pony Christmas with illustrations by Gerhard Lahr was published as an independent book in 1984 by Kinderbuchverlag Berlin .

From 2005 it was published by Aufbau-Verlag , illustrated by Klaus Ensikat . The edition published in 2005 consists equally of text and page-filling illustrations. The edge of the book is covered with dark red fabric, the title and author are embossed with gold letters.

The book is listed by Antolin as a reading recommendation for children from the 3rd grade.

action

The story is about the disappearance of six Shetland ponies from a small rural farm at Christmas time. In the past, the story is set in the GDR . The first-person narrator frees the animals from any suspicion of cuteness in the first sentence: "Kai, the Shetland chestnut stallion with the light mane, and Silva the chestnut pinto are our team." Their tasks include transporting firewood, coal and pulling the Plow. Sometimes Master Emil hitched the ponies in front of the carriage and drives "to the small neighboring town". “Nowhere do the Shetlanders run as fast as in the small town. The delicacies beckon ”. Then the traffic “slows down”, the ponies are greeted in a friendly manner by the People's Police , the shop assistants and the spa guests with delicacies and saved coffee sugar, the farmers tease Master Emil about the tiny size of the ponies, and the children who are allowed to get on the carriage, feed the animals with their breakfast sandwiches.

Shetland pony

On the “rural rest yard”, the ponies are on the pasture during the day even in winter, eating the grazed remains of grass, thistles and nettles. They only get “hay for dessert” in the barn in the evening. In December, food is becoming increasingly scarce, "there had already been three frosts across the country, the grass tasted bitter, and the ponies wandered about in search of the meadows." On Christmas Eve the ponies suddenly disappeared, the children wait for the presents while her father rides across the country for hours in vain in search of the ponies. Even after the presents have been given, he worriedly searches the yard, garden and edge of the forest. The next lunchtime, a motorcyclist comes through the snow to the farm and tells us where they are for a finder's fee for the work he had with the ponies.

The disappearance of the ponies is described from the narrative perspective of an authorial narrator . In search of frost-free grass, they wandered around "until Kai and Silva, the wagon horses, switched on their feeding memory" and trotted into the small town in the vain hope of goodies, as all residents celebrated inside. On the way back they took the route they knew, along the country road until they got to the construction workers canteen of VEB Straßen- und Tiefbau Neubrandenburg, where the night watchman noticed the pounding of hooves. After the initial shock, he lured the "toy stallion" into the canteen with Christmas stollen, and during the night also the rest of the ponies. The hungry animals ate the "remains of the socialist company Christmas party", including the pine branch decorations and the Christmas tree with the stearin candles . The rest of the night the guard wiped and swept up the remains of the ponies, because “after all, the guard could suddenly appear, who knows the whims of superiors?” The morning changing of the guard knew where the ponies belonged, and the night guard set off on his motorcycle there on the way.

As at the beginning of the story, the first-person narrator reports again how he and two of his sons set off on the seven-kilometer journey, being greeted by the ponies in the canteen with “cheers like cheers” and the night watchman's reward for the new ones Animal legacies increased, even if the ponies had found their way home if he had not stopped them. They move home with the ponies and are now “really celebrating Christmas”.

review

The literary scholar Karin Richter and Christine Jeske from Main-Post emphasize the artistic design of the 2005 edition: Ensikat illustrated the pony Christmas and another Christmas fairy tale by Strittmatter, "which look like bibliophile treasures through illustration and decoration." "They are drawn stories [ …] And, despite the literary source, completely independent visual artistic works. ”Thus“ Klaus Ensikat has filled narrative texts with his illustrations that were written by well-known authors in the GDR children's literature scene such as […] Erwin Strittmatter with new life and made them attractive Rereading encouraged ”.

The reviews in Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung by Felicitas von Lovenberg refer to the detailed, historically coherent and sometimes ironic elements of the drawings. Ensikat, “which, despite the stork's nest, old kitchen wall clock and Christmas tree, is not an idyll, but rather underlines the story with the fine irony of the caricaturist”, illustrated Pony Christmas “with loving meticulousness in wintry matt colors”, and “leads us through the meticulous drawing of his pictures cloudy, but equally comical world before your eyes. [...] Some pictures resemble finely chiseled display boards on which we can study a bygone culture. ”“ Above all, the cheeky four-legged friends succeeded brilliantly, their movements, the shaggy, thick winter fur, the way they weather the cookies with bared teeth record, tape."

Von Lovenberg and Siggi Seuß from the Süddeutsche Zeitung see a lifelike, unexplained representation in the text and drawings. “In this unwilling Christmas story by Erwin Strittmatter from the very early seventies”, a bygone era is depicted in detailed images “from this forgotten time in this forgotten land of crumbling facades and crooked wooden fences”: “when people were still firing with charcoal, sugar cubes represented a little treasure and the sight of chimney sweeps and people's policeman in the street was as calming as it was natural. A shop sign with 'Berliner Chic' reveals that Neubrandenburg's longings in GDR times were not allowed to go any further. ”“ Strittmatter and Ensikat narrate life-like. ”“ They are not glorified images, just as Strittmatter's story is not nostalgic ”, because“ Adventures told by Strittmatter cautiously, without further ado ”,“ a small, wonderfully real Christmas story settled in the banal everyday life. ”“ Life in the Brandenburg countryside may have been so unspectacular back then , in the middle years of the GDR. ”

expenditure

  • Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . In: Back then on the farm: and other stories . Reclams Universal Library Volume 583, Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig, p. 82 ff, 1st edition 1974, 2nd edition 1977, 3rd edition 1980, 4th edition 1984
  • Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . Kinderbuchverlag Berlin, illustrations by Gerhard Lahr , ISBN 978-3-358-00515-6 , 1st edition 1984, 2nd edition 1986, 3rd edition 1987, 4th edition 1990
  • Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . Kinderbuchverlag Berlin, illustrations by Gerhard Lahr , ISBN 978-3-358-00515-6 , 1996 reprint from 1984
  • Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . Aufbau-Verlag Berlin, illustrations by Klaus Ensikat , ISBN 978-3-351-04055-0 , 1st edition 2004, 2nd edition 2005

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: 1967. December 6, 1966 to March 15, 1967 . In: News from my life: From the diaries 1954-1973 . Almut Giesecke (Ed.), Structure Digital, 2014, ISBN 978-3-841-20817-0
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Siggi Seuß: Erwin Strittmatter's story "Pony Christmas" . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of December 2, 2005. Accessed December 22, 2019
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Felicitas von Lovenberg: Steaming horse droppings for the festival: A happy "Pony Christmas" . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 24, 2005, No. 300, p. 34
  4. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, p. 5
  5. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, pp. 6, 8, 11
  6. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, pp. 12, 13
  7. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, p. 14
  8. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, pp. 16, 19
  9. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, p. 20
  10. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, pp. 22, 24, 25
  11. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, pp. 26, 27
  12. ↑ Erwin Strittmatter: Pony Christmas . 2006, pp. 28, 31
  13. ^ Karin Richter: Klaus Ensikat . Booklet for the exhibition of the German Academy for Children's and Youth Literature 2019, p. 10
  14. ↑ Christine Jeske: Sneaky beautiful pictures by Klaus Ensikat . In: Mainpost of May 2, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2019
  15. ^ Karin Richter: Klaus Ensikat . Booklet for the exhibition of the German Academy for Children's and Young People's Literature 2019, p. 3
  16. ^ The time of December 15, 2005. Retrieved January 2, 2020

Web links