Crossing (Anna Seghers)

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Überfahrt is a short story from Anna Seghers' older work , which - envisaged around 1965 - was published in Berlin in 1971. In the same year the author received the national 1st class prize for the text .

During the journey on a Polish freighter from Bahia to Rostock , the tropical medicine specialist Dr. med. Ernst Triebel in the internal narrative from a stranger - tells the engineer Franz Hammer the story of his unhappy love for the Thuringian- born Brazilian Maria Luísa Wiegand.

Kurt Batt takes the story as a piece of the author's autobiography, in which she addresses her “return home from emigration”. Batt writes, Anna Seghers “uses the image of an Atlantic crossing to shape the human question of the transition into a new world”.

overview

The Erfurt Ernst Triebel has three voyages from Germany to Brazil and taken back. On the first, he fled Germany with his parents as a schoolboy after the Kristallnacht . His mother is Jewish . The second trip takes him to Brazil as a Portuguese interpreter for a professor who has fled the republic . And on the third trip, as a budding tropical doctor, he accepted the invitation of a Brazilian colleague.

In the framework narration , the GDR foreign fitter Franz Hammer reproduces the above-mentioned story from the mouth of Triebel. While the narrative time of the framing is strictly limited to the three-week crossing, the internal story spans decades - the time from 1938.

In 1961 Anna Seghers traveled to Brazil on a Polish ship at the invitation of her friend Jorge Amado . In 1963 she made her second trip there.

The text refers to contemporary history; contains several pointers to the Holocaust . Anna Seghers, for example, lets Triebel tell: "It was around the time the Soviets discovered the first extermination camps ."

Written at the time of the Cold War , a number of ideologically riddled passages irritate today's reader if he knows little about the divided Germany. Examples are the FDJ group at Triebel's University or Seghers' polemics in connection with the "flight from the republic" of the GDR intelligentsia - at times in large droves via West Berlin .

Goethe is searched for and found on the Ilmenau Gickelhahn , García Lorca is carried out and Machado , who died in 1939 on the run from General Franco , is honored. The friendship with the German neighbor Poland is evoked. Anna Seghers succeeds in doing this in her last, far-reaching story with a hymn of praise to the two Polish writers Norwid and Joseph Conrad . Heinz Neugebauer comments: "She [Anna Seghers] ascribes the power to art to change and connect people."

content

Frame narration

The external plot is presented as a travel report by the first-person narrator Franz Hammer. The engineer met Ernst Triebel in Brazil while embarking on the Norwid . Hammer had flown to Rio Grande do Sul and repaired GDR agricultural machinery there. Now he wants to go back to the GDR with his wife and two young daughters. The Polish coffee freighter has a couple of passenger cabins.

Internal narration
Ernst Triebel's first trip

Maria Luísa - an orphan who lives with her aunt Elfriede - helps the schoolboy Ernst Triebel learn the Portuguese language from 1939. By the way, the two talk about everything, including about Familial - why Elfriede Altmeier thrown her maid Odilia and the girl Emma, a German, has set or via Abseitigeres - like Vargas to Hitler , the wife of the Prestes delivered. Maria Luísa and Ernst Triebel pass their school leaving exams. Triebel begins studying medicine. Aunt Elfriede would like to employ Maria Luísa in her business and get married soon. Triebel is not a man for the niece - so the aunt. Maria Luísa and Triebel take a bus trip to Congonhas together and are enthusiastic about Aleijadinho's sculptures and reliefs . The friendship of the two becomes love.

After the end of the war , the anti-fascist father Triebels was called "by his old professional friend" to the eastern zone . The father, a doctor, has the prospect of a professorship in Greifswald and is driving. Ernst Triebel has to come along. The son does not understand the father. How can he go back to such a rotten country?

From 1946 in the Eastern Zone

Terrible things happened in Ernst Triebel's new living environment during the famine. A grandfather - who was caught stealing his mouth - stabs his own grandson with a bread knife. Disturbing news comes from Nuremberg . An assistant doctor stays away from the court. He shoots himself. In the concentration camp he had injected death to prisoners. The returnees wrote a diary-like report of such incidents to Maria Luísa. The addressee replies that this life is unbearable. In addition to studying, Triebel translated Azevedo's “The Mulatto” from Portuguese into German for an East German publisher . The fee should enable the beloved Maria Luísa to travel to the Eastern Zone. The girl, deterred by her lover's reports, married a school friend in Brazil around 1949 - the wealthy businessman Rodolfo.

Ernst Triebel's second trip

After the summer of 1951, Triebel traveled as Portuguese-speaking assistant to Professor Adalbert Dahlke from Leipzig - formerly a German officer - via Gdynia with the glass woman in her luggage to an exhibition in São Paulo . The former housemaid Emma contacts Triebel there. He asks her about Maria Luísa. Emma replies that Maria Luísa had always loved him after he left, but that she drowned while bathing. She implies that it was a suicide. Triebel also meets his former school friend, Eliza, who completely rules out suicide because Maria Luisa was very happy.

Dahlke moves to the States via Montevideo . The republic refugee wanted to take the glass woman with him to Uruguay , but Triebel had already had the valuable exhibit brought to the ship. At home he has to justify himself for not having recognized Dahlke's intentions to flee in advance.

In the DDR

Triebel is doing a successful doctorate and is constantly training as a tropical medicine specialist. Because Maria Luísa comes from Ilmenau, Triebel goes to a hospital there as an assistant doctor. In the cemetery he visits the grave of an unknown woman Wiegand. In the house of his Ilmenau boss he met the young Herta Gehring. Before Triebel answers a call to a tropical medicine conference in Bahia, Herta gives him wild flowers. For this he kisses her and gives her a ring.

Ernst Triebel's third trip

Triebel attends a medical congress in Bahia . The ship then sails to Santos . There Triebel stays in the Excelsior . Rodolfo - he has hardly changed - introduces him to his wife at the gaming table. Maria Luísa stands in front of Triebel. There is no recognition on your part. The lady turns away and continues her game of chance. Triebel thinks: “It was her - it wasn't her.” An ultimately unanswerable question remains: Has Maria Luísa completely changed?

On the subsequent crossing to Rostock, the first-person narrator Franz Hammer asks himself: "How can we overcome grief like Triebel's?"

Anna Seghers promises something like a happy ending. Triebel says: "It is even possible, Hammer, that Herta will pick me up in Rostock." The story breaks off at the Rostock harbor entrance.

Self-testimony

Using the figure of the doctor Triebel, Anna Seghers illustrated her view of "communicating and clarifying" storytelling - "stirring visualization and relaxed distancing in one".

filming

reception

Contemporaries
  • January 3, 1972, Der Spiegel : Stille Herta
  • 1973, Kurt Batt: In the absence of the article in the title, Überfahrt symbolically refers to “passage, overcoming, transformation, change”. To be more precise, crossing is also to be understood as “passage into a new world ”. Triebel says goodbye to his Maria Luísa by telling Franz Hammer about her for three weeks. The narrator will only have arrived home after saying goodbye to the beloved. This process is not completed shortly before the end of the trip.
  • 1977, Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers´ composition and execution are reminiscent of Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1899). Triebel's stays in Brazil were between 1938 and around 1954. Triebel included Franz Hammer in his research into Maria Luísa's fate: Was it “suicide, accident, complete change”? In any case, despite her love for Triebel, Maria Luísa could not decide to travel to shattered Germany and evades into marriage with Rodolfo.
Recent comments
  • 1984, Elke Mehnert : Anna Seghers´ "Überfahrt" Weimarer Contributions 4 (1984), pp. 629–642
  • 1985, Sigrid Bock: “To think about the power of love. Anna Seghers´ crossing . "
  • 1992, Ute Brandes writes about the frame story: "The vastness of the sea and the small human ship give the narrative space a timeless symbolic depth."
  • 1993, Andreas Schrade: The author set “this serious silence” on the ship against “senselessly wild profiteering” on the continents. With the two narrators carefully commenting on each other, Anna Seghers duly pushes back the dominant emotionality of the love story.
  • 2000, Sonja Hilzinger interprets the disappointment of the extinct love, articulated in Triebel's saying “what shone like that cannot suddenly be extinguished” as Anna Seghers' premonition of the failure of socialism .
  • 2000, Sonja Hilzinger: “Memory of losses. To Anna Seghers´ story Überfahrt . "

literature

First editions

  • Anna Seghers: Crossing. A Lovestory. Construction Verlag, Berlin 1971, 175 pages
  • Anna Seghers: Crossing. A Lovestory. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1971, 175 pages

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
  • Kurt Batt: Anna Seghers. Trial over development and works. With illustrations. 283 pages. Reclam, Leipzig 1973 (2nd edition 1980). Licensor: Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main (Röderberg-Taschenbuch vol. 15), ISBN 3-87682-470-2
  • Ute Brandes: Anna Seghers . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1992. Volume 117 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”, ISBN 3-7678-0803-X
  • Andreas Schrade: Anna Seghers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9

Remarks

  1. ↑ Brazil is teeming with Germans. A Bavarian monk asks Maria Luísa and Ernst Triebel in Belo Horizonte about their origins and the answer is: “I from Ilmenau. - I from Erfurt ”(edition used, p. 317 middle). Anna Seghers reveals only sixty pages later, Triebel comes from Erfurt (edition used, p. 376, 2nd Zvu).
  2. ↑ A foreign fitter was a privileged person in GDR times who was allowed to carry out assembly and repair work on machines exported from the GDR production in the so-called NSW .
  3. ↑ In the slightly nested story, Anna Seghers provides the background to Maria Luísa. After the death of the girl's mother, the father, who came to the country as a buyer for a German company, went into business for himself in Brazil and had his child follow suit with his sister-in-law Elfriede. He later died in Brazil after a severe fever (edition used, p. 377 above).
  4. ^ The transmission by Alfred Antkowiak was published by Volk und Welt in Berlin in 1964 .
  5. ↑ Schrade (p. 138, 8. Zvu) assumes Triebel's third return trip around 1965.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schrade, p. 138, 8. Zvu
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 657 last entry
  3. ^ Batt, p. 270, last entry; Neugebauer, p. 221, 3rd entry vu; Brandes, p. 92, entry 1971; Hilzinger, p. 198, entry 1971
  4. ^ Batt, p. 245, 1. Zvo
  5. ^ Batt, p. 248, 17. Zvo
  6. ↑ Schrade, p. 138, 4th Zvu
  7. ^ Batt, p. 270, entries 1961 and 1963; Schrade, p. 157 below and p. 158 above
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 312, 19. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p.
  10. ↑ see for example the side story of Heinz Schulz and his professor Oehmke, edition used, p. 350, 14. Zvo and p. 376, 7. Zvo
  11. ↑ Brandes, p. 83, 9. Zvo
  12. ^ Batt, p. 247 below
  13. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 196, 14. Zvu, see also Brandes, p. 85 above
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 324, 2nd vu
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 400, 8th Zvu
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 410, 13. Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 411, 17. Zvo
  18. ↑ Brandes, p. 83.
  19. ^ Batt, p. 248, 5th Zvu
  20. ↑ Crossing in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  21. ^ Batt, p. 241, 21. Zvo
  22. ^ Batt, p. 244, 18. Zvo
  23. ↑ Batt, p. 245, 16. Zvu
  24. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 194, 6. Zvo
  25. ^ Neugebauer, p. 194, 14. Zvo
  26. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 194, 3rd Zvu
  27. ^ Neugebauer, p. 195, 8th Zvu
  28. ↑ quoted in Schrade, p. 164, last entry
  29. ↑ quoted in Hilzinger, p. 215, 4th entry
  30. ↑ Brandes, p. 84, 2nd Zvu
  31. ^ Schrade, p. 138, 16. Zvo
  32. ^ Schrade, p. 140, 10. Zvo
  33. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 142, 5. Zvo
  34. ↑ quoted in Hilzinger, p. 219, 7th entry