Report on Bruno

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Report on Bruno is a novel by the writer Joseph Breitbach , which was published by Insel-Verlag in 1962 and was also published in French in 1964 in Breitbach's own translation (Rapport sur Bruno) . It was reissued in 2009 by Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen. Breitbachs dedicated the novel to his "two fathers", his biological fathers, Jean Breitbach, and his fatherly friend, Jean Schlumberger .

action

The novel is the report of an industrialist and liberal politician about his grandson Bruno Collignon. In his hostility to his grandfather, he succeeded in bringing about his abdication as Minister of the Interior. On this occasion, the report on the growth and development of Bruno Collignon was created. The result of the marriage of the daughter of the fictional author, the grandchild is taken in by the grandparents at Belvedere Palace after the marriage fails and in connection with the mother's drug addiction. The castle is owned by the chemical company headed by the grandfather. It was the ancestral seat of the noble family, whose offspring is the entrepreneur (baron). In addition to his work as an entrepreneur and chemist, the baron is a politician of national importance, he was a member of various governments.

According to the grandfather's report, Bruno is a boy who is highly intelligent, headstrong and calculating. The relationship between grandfather and grandson is hypothermic, but dominated by the mutual desire for affection and recognition. Bruno's relationship with his parents is also difficult. If Bruno believes that his grandfather will not allow him to visit his mother, she tries to evade her obligation. Father Collignon lives in Paris and at times lets his son bear him. This person, who does not have pocket money, sells objects from the castle for this purpose. During a visit to Bruno's imprisoned father in Paris, he fell out with him.

A turning point in the grandson’s moral development, described by the grandfather as not very hopeful, emerges when a new educator is hired, Rysselgeert. He quickly wins Bruno's (limited) trust. Rysselgeert's Sundays, spent in an unknown place, sow doubts in Bruno about the integrity of his affection. Breitbach leaves the reader in the dark for a long time about Rysselgeert's secret, behind which lies a love affair with a man, Max Jans, son of a union leader. It is similar with the relationship of the grandfather, who has been widowed for years, with a woman who is only known through indiscretion.

Another dimension of the novel arises from the theme of the Cold War on the occasion of the Queen Mother's intention to visit the Soviet Union. The rapporteur, as chairman of the Liberals, mediates between the socialist foreign minister, one of his friends, and the Queen Mother. At the same time, it becomes clear how much the socialist politician detests the communist system of the Soviet Union. Here and in other passages of his novel, Breitbach leaves no doubt about his negative attitude towards the Bolshevik regime.

This attitude becomes particularly clear when the entrepreneur, who has since returned to the government as Minister of the Interior, is asked to organize a hunt for the new Soviet ambassador. The government sees the trade agreement with the Soviet Union in danger. The rather opaque ambassador, however, has neither hunting luck nor political success. When a spy network controlled from the embassy is exposed, he is relieved of his post.

After completing his military service, Bruno becomes his grandfather's political opponent. The coalition of socialists and liberals wants to fundamentally reform the country's conservative moral laws. The national tabloid, so far good for revelations, takes the side of the Catholic Church and wages a bitter campaign against reform intentions. Here the novel accelerates noticeably and develops a tension corresponding to a detective novel.

In view of the media campaign, which unearths many violations of the rulers against existing moral laws, Rysselgeert (meanwhile State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry) and Jans (Head of the Interior Minister's Cabinet) take their own lives. Finally, the reform project fails because of dissenters in parliament, the interior minister (grandfather) resigns at the end of a fiery four-hour speech in which he makes public every immoral behavior of all members of parliament voting against the reform. Soon afterwards, Bruno Collignon successfully ran for a parliamentary seat and fought for the abolition of the monarchy. His grandfather, who continues to represent the Liberals as a member of parliament, fears that his grandson will question the democratic constitution and draws a cautious comparison with the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany. A reason for the grandfather's politician and industrial manager to write the “Report on Bruno”.

interpretation

The novel is both a psychological development novel and a penetrating depiction of political and social life in the first two post-war decades. On the one hand, the personal disputes between the power-conscious grandfather and the vulnerable, relentlessly truth-seeking grandson turn into political controversies, and the tensions between generations turn into a public struggle. On the other hand, the novel takes on a political dimension against the backdrop of a homosexual partnership and the relationship of the entrepreneur-politician that is not legitimized by marriage , which refers to the moral and legal situation on questions of sexuality that prevailed well beyond the early 1960s. It thus becomes a decisive polemic against the double standards of the time and the sexual self-determination limited by law ( Section 175 StGB, which made sexual acts between men generally punishable, was restricted to sexual acts with male minors in 1969 and was repealed entirely in 1994).

In 1962, the author anticipated the reform of the morality law, which was thematized in the novel - in real politics it only became an issue after “1968”. The topics of espionage, the relationship between communism and capitalism and the development of communist parties in Western Europe only became an urgent reality after 1962. In his report on Bruno , Breitbach proves to be a far-sighted warner who urges not to ignore unfortunate circumstances but to reform them. He also makes the inseparability of the private and the public clear and illustrates that political processes are not controlled by invisible powers of fate, but are made by flawed people.

As Breitbach himself stated, he wrote the report on Bruno for a “politically savvy or at least interested audience”. The main theme of the writer was to reveal the hidden motives of the trade of political protagonists. The style of the report - large passages of the book are contained in the indirect speech - enabled Breitbach, as the author, to take the most objective of all possible positions and to present the story to the reader without comment, who can then make his own judgment. On the inside, the style also makes it possible to do justice to the perspective of the grandfather, which is only accountable to himself, and thus of an actor “at the top”. Breitbach himself said in 1977: “A writer can only have a mind-enhancing effect. In politics, I hardly ever believe in an ideal. I do believe, however, that an ideal was always in the beginning and was perverted by the exercise of power. Every power needs a corrective. This corrective is the opposition. "

The fictional land of the action lies between Germany and the sea, and almost all persons named have Dutch-speaking names. Of Belgium recalls in particular that the Queen Mother of the Romans against the will of the government visited the Soviet Union - what the then Belgian Queen Mother Elizabeth in 1958, 1961 and 1962 did and which earned her both the rejection of the government and a lot of bad press criticism. Also speak for Belgium because of the behavior of Leopold III. weakened position of the monarchy, the party structure with a strong liberal party, the strong influence of the Catholic Church, the proximity to France and finally the criticism of the behavior of the little before independent states of Africa (Belgium had a big one with the Belgian Congo and Rwanda-Urundi African colonial empire). The country of the novel is not to be equated with Belgium, however, as it has several islands and the monarchy also shakes again during the action period around 1960.

Origin and literary classification

At first Breitbach only wanted to describe the hunting episode in which the grandfather lies to his grandson, although they had previously agreed never to tell each other the untruth. The experience of "grandfather" that he had while writing prompted him to expand the narrative of the novel in just six months. Several people in the novel presumably have real role models, especially since Breitbach was in close contact with numerous personalities from politics, literature, diplomacy, industry, journalism and science. Role models of the "grandfather" were probably Robert Bosch , Walther Rathenau and Emile Mayrisch , whereby Breitbach himself once said that the "grandfather" was himself in many respects ("in this respect this book is very autobiographical, but not in the external biography") - In his youth Breitbach himself had a difficult relationship with his father and grandfather. The model for the Soviet ambassador was the diplomat Vinogradov, as the author himself admitted. The character and actions of the “Queen Mother” are modeled on the widow of King Albert I , Elisabeth in Bavaria , down to the last detail, although Breitbach never knew her personally.

The novel is more in the French than in the German tradition. The political element is much more pronounced in French literature; in France, Breitbach's report on Bruno is succeeded by Honoré de Balzac , Stendhal , Gustave Flaubert and André Gide . The German criticism found it difficult both with the level of power (not a criticism of power from a petty-bourgeois perspective, as is common in Germany, but at eye level with the powerful) and with the strict style of the language. The French criticism, however, was consistently positive for Rapport sur Bruno , and Breitbach received the Prix ​​Combat for it in 1965 .

expenditure

  • Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Insel, Frankfurt / Main 1962 (first edition).
  • Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. With an afterword by Alexandra Countess Plettenberg. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-14318-7 .
  • Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 3-8353-0494-1 .

literature

  • Report on Bruno. In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , Volume 4, p. 1461.
  • Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Epilogue. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, pp. 297-308.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Fuchs (Ed.): Criminal Code for the German Empire of May 15, 1871 . Historical-synoptic edition 1871–2011. 8th edition. lexetius.com, Mannheim 2011 (delegibus.com/2010,1.pdf [PDF; accessed on February 3, 2012]).
  2. ↑ Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Afterword. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 308.
  3. ↑ Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Afterword. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 298 f.
  4. ↑ Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Afterword. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 300.
  5. ↑ Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Afterword. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 297.
  6. ↑ The following after Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Epilogue. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, pp. 302-307.
  7. ↑ Alexandra Countess Plettenberg: Afterword. In: Joseph Breitbach: Report on Bruno. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 298.