Farewell to Sidonie

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diogenes edition from 1989

Farewell to Sidonie is a documentary story by the Austrian author Erich Hackl (* 1954) about the fate of the Roma girl Sidonie Adlersburg, who was given to an Austrian foster family as an infant in 1933 and died in Auschwitz in 1943 . The story is from 1989. Farewell to Sidonie was Hackl's second published story after Aurora's occasion .

History of origin

Hackl was made aware of Sidonie Adlersburg's fate by Franz Draber in 1987 . As a result, there was intensive contact with the Breirather family, who had taken care of the girl. As a result of his eyewitness conversations and extensive archive research, Erich Hackl first wrote two shorter texts about Sidonie Adlersburg and a script called Sidonie , which won 1st prize in the European Screenwriting Competition in 1988 and was made into a film in 1990 under the direction of Karin Brandauer .

The story Farewell to Sidonie came into being after these texts. It differs in parts because Hackl met Joschi Adlersburg, a biological brother of Sidonia and an eyewitness to her death, in 1988 and received further information from him about their last days. Joschi Adlersburg explained that his sister did not die of typhus or gas, as was common in the past, but of "insults". After separating from her foster family, she no longer ate and slept until she died.

Farewell to Sidonie soon became school reading; In addition to the narrative and the film, which is offered in a DVD edition, a volume of materials ( materials for “Abschied von Sidonie” , Diogenes Verlag , Zurich 2000) has also been published.

content

Hackl sees himself as a chronicler of the historical case and describes in laconic language the short life of the foundling Sidonie , who is cared for by a politically committed working-class family and is viewed like its own daughter, until finally the local welfare authorities according to the Nazi ideology the “alien "child against massive resistance of the foster parents out his biological mother to it with a large-scale transport of Austrian Roma and Sinti in the so-called Gypsy camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau to deport. According to her brother, Sidonie dies there because, highly traumatized by the loss of her caregivers, she renounces eating and sleeping.

The narrative, which is part of the literary tradition of Heinrich von Kleist's novellas , combines original texts from documents with fictional dialogues that are always based on witness reports. The author almost always refrains from commenting.

On August 18, 1933, the hospital gatekeeper in Steyr found an infant with a note attached: “My name is Sidonie Adlersburg and I was born on the road to Altheim . Asking for parents. ”The highly vicious girl is being cared for in the hospital while the authorities are looking for her mother. After a few weeks of unsuccessful search, the youth welfare office offers the child for care. In view of the poor economic conditions in and around Steyr, the attempt is made to place the baby in a family with a secure income. But the first foster mother, a locksmith's wife in Steyr, brings Sidonie back to the hospital after a few days. Her husband has threatened to break up with her if she insists on keeping the dark-skinned child with her.

Then the baby is offered to Josefa Breirather, who lives in a large apartment building in Letten. Ms. Breirather, mother of a biological son named Manfred, who would have liked to have more children, immediately opts for Sidonie. Together with her politically active husband Hans Breirather, who was socially democratic and politically active - Letten was generally considered to be “red” at the time - she raised Sidonie like a daughter. Later, Hilde, at the same age as Sidonie, was taken in as a foster child. The family suffered a lot from hostility in the interwar period because of Hans Breirather's incorruptibility and his rejection of political temptations - neither by the National Socialists nor by Christian Socialists . Hans is arrested after the February fighting and witnessed the execution of Josef Ahrer in the Steyr police prison . Hans is sentenced to an 18-month prison term, which is shortened to one year because of the forced subsequent church wedding. The “red” gradually becomes a “brown” Latvian. Right from the start, the Breirathers and their dark-skinned foster child also encounter racist prejudice; For example, the family doctor refuses to do anything for the sick baby, which can only be cured of its overlegs and purulent rashes with the help of an old herbalist , and Sidonia is often referred to as a negro child or something similar. On the other hand, the girl also receives attention from many people; For example, a friend of the Breirather family made sure that she was confirmed in 1942, gave her a beautiful doll on the occasion and celebrated the event with a trip to the Pöstlingberg . But there, too, other visitors become aware of the dark-skinned girl and Ms. Hinteregger and Sidonie quickly withdraw: “Other visitors became aware of them. An older man began to lecture: We don't have negroes. Thanks to our guide […] Perhaps she is a gypsy girl […] Now he wanted to take a closer look at the girl. But the place where he had just seen her was empty. "

The situation worsened in March 1938 when the German Wehrmacht marched into Austria. Since then, the inhuman Nazi regime has been enforced with great severity. Denunciation is the order of the day and underground political activity is life-threatening. "Volksgenossen" from the Sudetenland now also live in the apartment building and express disparaging views of Sidonia. The socialist military gymnasts join the SA as a whole in order to be able to train again in their old hall. A labor camp is set up in the neighborhood of the house. The old arms factory resumes operations. Hans Breirather, still a staunch socialist, is warned by colleagues that he is constantly being spied on. Nevertheless, he begins to become active in the resistance.

Sidonie and Hilde start school in 1939. Sidonie is a poor student, but feels very comfortable in school. With her indefatigability and her cheerful nature, she is initially well integrated and shows the teacher how much she likes her. She often defends herself against disrespectful statements about her dark skin by claiming that she was only burned by the sun. She is very afraid of gypsies , who often camp near their place of residence in their first years of life.

As a foster child, she is regularly visited by the caregiver Cäcilia Grimm, who regularly confirms in her reports that the child is in good health, thrives normally and is well looked after by the Breirather family.

In the late autumn of 1942 a gendarme appeared in the Breirathers' apartment, asking whether they had received an official letter from Linz or Steyr. Josefa Breirather truthfully denies this, but has been alarmed since this visit and asks her husband to stop his activity in the resistance against the National Socialists at least for the time being. The next time the caregiver visits, she reacts in panic. In retrospect she will find that during this visit on Epiphany in 1943, Cäcilia Grimm steered the conversation towards Sidonie's lack of school success and her habit of flattering the foster parents, which, according to Hackl, should be fatal for the child. Because on March 9, 1943, the Breirather family received a letter from the head of the Steyr-Land youth welfare office, Käthe Korn, stating that Sidonie should be returned to her birth mother. The authorities now believe that it is a woman Christine Berger who is moving around with a horse dealer named Roman Plach.

Hans and Josefa Breirather fight for the child that has become like their own, humiliate themselves in front of the welfare worker and the mayor, want to forego the care allowance, even offer to have Sidonie sterilized, and try to organize a hiding place for Sidonie. But this fails.

Miss Grimm, who, after the last visit to the Breirathers, wrote a requested report on Sidonie and faithfully listed the points of criticism that came up, as did the mayor, taking the standpoint of obedience and the fulfillment of duties, not without taking part , like the mayor especially, to make false promises. They do not want to admit what they ought to know: that the ten-year-old “Sidi” is to be brought to her birth mother, but only so that all the “Gypsies” can be transported together eastwards. Not least because of their written assessments and concerns, the mayor, Miss Grimm and the headmaster deliver the girl to death. With her willingness to bring Sidonie to the meeting point in Hopfgarten, the welfare worker makes herself the henchman of the criminal Nazi system.

In the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, Sidonie died - according to her biological brother Joschi Adlersburg - not of typhus , as reported immediately after the war, but of "mortification". She did not get over the separation from her foster parents and her siblings and died of this trauma.

Immediately after the end of the war, Hans Breirather, who was appointed mayor at short notice, tried to find out something about Sidonie's whereabouts and heard that she was taken to Auschwitz on the last train. Hans Breirather tried to break the silence for years afterwards, but nobody wanted to deal with this part of their own history until the 1990s.

When Breirather died in 1980, the family had the following engraved on the tombstone in the urn cemetery at Tabor in Steyr: "Sidonie Adlersburg 1933–1943 died in Auschwitz" and Manfred took over the legacy to keep the memory of his sister alive. Alongside his mother Josefa, he is the main reporter of the events.

At the end of the book, Hackl points out the very different fate of the Roma girl Margit, who also lived in a foster family in Austria, but because of the mayor's moral courage and the positive reports that those responsible have written about this child, the deportation order escaped and survived the war.

Language and form

In a collage-like manner, the author interweaves original quotes from archive documents with witness reports and inserted short dialogues, which, however, are particularly impressive in their sobriety and so fit into the narrative style of a chronicler.

Historical and political contexts are mentioned succinctly, but sufficient for understanding; the legibility of the narrative as a poetic text is not affected.

Example of a change of perspective:

“Then Manfred tried to break the silence around the girl. […] One day he felt the urge to pour out his heart to someone. He went to see the chaplain from Sierninghofen, began to tell, the other stared at him as if disturbed, like a ghost, so I left it right away. He didn't say anything, just looked at me like that. "

- Page 118,119 (Diogenes paperback, 1991)

reception

Erich Hackl's work was received positively by the critics and was soon translated into many languages. “Farewell to Sidonie” is, according to an article in the book show on the occasion of his 60th birthday, “the precise and empathic literary treatment of an unheard-of case that has been concealed for decades”. The work is “not only depressing”, but also “required reading for readers interested in history”. Hackl succeeded "in bridging the gap between well-researched facts and a story that is touching in its simple and clear language and existential inexorability and tells of the brutality and cowardice of the people".

Book edition

Translations

aftermath

Political-social

In 1988 a memorial plaque was placed at the youth center in Sierning -Letten, commemorating Sidonie Adlersburg and the genocide. In 2000 the newly inaugurated community kindergarten was finally named after her. A memorial that was erected in front of the kindergarten shows a mother bending over her child to protect her.

Artistic

  • Erich Hackl: Farewell to Sidonie. Screenplay for the film. Directed by Karin Brandauer . With Arghavan Sadeghi-Seragi, Kitty Speiser , Georg Marin. Germany 1990.
  • Play Sidonie , dramatization and direction: Christian Martin Fuchs , with Christina Blumencron, Ursula Elzenbaumer, Ogün Derendeli u. a., joint production of the Bruneck City Theater and the UFO Youth and Culture Center 2005.
  • Elisa Treml: Encounter with Sidonie. Digital printing on textile. Permanent installation in the auditorium of the University of Applied Sciences for Social Affairs in Linz.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erich Hackl: Made seeing. A balance sheet. In: Ursula Baumhauer (Hrsg.): Materials on Farewell to Sidonie by Erich Hackl. Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-257-23027-3 , pp. 7-24, here p. 7 f.
  2. ↑ Hoanzl-DVD, Vienna 2011 (= The Austrian Film. Edition Der Standard 181)
  3. ^ Farewell to Sidonie. Diogenes Taschenbuch, 1989, p. 79.
  4. ↑ Heim Mürzl: reporter and encourager . In: Book Show. 2, 2014, No. 2, p. 15 ff., Here p. 18 ( online at www.buecherschau.at )
  5. ↑ Catalog page for the filming ( Memento from September 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) at Diogenes Verlag. Retrieved February 1, 2011.
  6. ^ Archive page of the Bruneck City Theater
  7. ^ Matthias Osiecki: Portrait of the artist and description of the work. In the “Talent Exchange Art” at Ö1 on June 27, 2006, accessed on February 1, 2011.