Bronze eagle

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The Bronze Eagle ( Russian Бронзовая птица / Bronsowaja ptiza ) is a Russian youth novel by Anatoli Rybakow from 1956. It was published in German in 1959 by Verlag Neues Leben in Berlin in the series " Excitingly told " with illustrations by Erhard Schreier.

The book was also published under the name "The Bronze Bird", which corresponds to the literal translation.

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At the beginning of the twenties, a Komsomol group set up a summer camp in a village near Moscow in order to set up an independent pioneer organization in the village, which is still determined by tradition, and to give lessons to the village children. Their tents are on the property of a dilapidated manor whose owners fled the revolution. The house is only inhabited by a gloomy woman who is known as a countess. She guards the house and evicts everyone with a certificate stating that the house is a listed building. She would also like to have the children off the property.

The novel begins with Genka and Slawa, who are waiting for their camp manager opposite the boat station in the village, because they have to confess to him that two boys ran away from the camp while he was away. But instead of the camp manager, only her friend Mischa comes, who has been provisionally appointed as the new manager. Misha sees this unpleasant beginning of his leadership role as a bad omen. Since he is the same age as his friends, he is afraid that they will not respect him.

The children go to look for the runaways again, when they learn that a raft has gone missing, and therefore believe that Igor and Sewa sailed down the river. Before they can follow them, they are murdered on the Chalsan meadow near the village of Kuzmin. The accused are Nikolai, a young communist who has often helped the children. You can't believe Nikolai really committed the murder. His younger brother Hopfenstange is also one of the children's friends. Since they need someone who knows the area well to pursue the runaways, they persuade Hopfenstange to accompany them, as they would also pass the Chalsan meadow and perhaps find a trace of the real murderers.

When they want to set off in a rented boat very early the next morning, they see that strange things are going on at the boat station. The kulak Yerofeyev, his son and the countess have united to give the boatswain Dmitri Petrovich mysterious sacks, which he takes away with his boat. The children are now in pursuit. The boatswain stops at a forest near the Chalsan meadow, and after a signal, two men appear from the forest to take the sacks. The boatswain now rows back and meets the children who pretend they haven't seen anything. Nevertheless, he tries to stop them, but is overwhelmed by the children.

It is clear to the children that the men in the forest have something to do with the murder, but they must first recapture their runaways. You can find the raft, but Igor and Sewa obviously went on in a boat. In a town they finally find the two, but they discover that they have been arrested because their boat was that of the murdered Kuzmin. They had found the boat on one of the banks and simply took it without knowing what it was.

When everyone has returned to the camp, they decide to go secretly into the forest to look for the men there. To do this, they need the hop pole again, who knows the area very well, because to keep it really secret, they want to leave in the middle of the night. But Hopfenstange refuses, because he is superstitious and in the forest there is a place on the moor, the Golyginsk Knüppeldamm, which is supposed to be haunted. An old count appeared on the embankment at night, who was beheaded and buried at this point.

After all, the children managed to convince Hopfenstange and they set off despite all the fear. Once in the forest, it really seems as if it was haunted, because you hear strange noises that seem to come out of the earth. But finally they realize that these noises come from the mysterious men. They dig deep holes in the forest in search of something.

It's clear it's about a treasure. The key point is the museum in the nearby district town, where the interior of the manor house is now on display. There is a bronze eagle, which the boys find out, serves as a secret hiding place for messages from the countess to a stranger.

There is just such a bronze eagle on the facade of the manor house. Why can't there be a secret hiding place there too? The children want to find out, and when the countess drove back to town, they actually discover a sketch in the bronze eagle with the hiding place of the treasure.

But before they start looking, they have to find out that this is no longer a secret, but that the whole village knows this sketch. The whole "secret" spot on the edge of the forest has been dug up several times. The men in the forest seem to be the last ones who still haven't given up. So obviously the sketch is wrong. But then the children find the key to the solution, but isn't it already too late? Because even the mysterious stranger from the district town has gone to the village.

The novel is carried by the enthusiasm of the early Soviet years of construction. Despite the impoverishment, the children believe in the communist future and want to help build it. However, the fact that the problems are not kept secret and that corrupt functionaries are denounced, for example, makes the novel worth reading and not quite as one-sided as other Soviet novels from the period.

people

  • Genka - mostly cheeky and know-it-all
  • Slava - calm and thoughtful
  • Misha Polyakov - is appointed warehouse manager
  • Sina Kruglowa - a group leader in the camp
  • Igor - one of the outliers
  • Sewa - the second outlier
  • Borka Baranow (Bjaschka) - the truth lover
  • Filja Kitow (Kit) - always thinks about food
  • Nadia Nekrasov
  • Vera Nekrasov
  • Jurka Palitsyn
  • Saschka Guban
  • Natasha Boizowa
  • Lara
  • Waska Rybalin (hop stick) - although from the village it has close ties to the Komsomol
  • Nikolai Rybalin - Hopfenstange's brother who is charged with murder
  • Kuzmin - a former forest official, is murdered
  • Fly - village boy
  • Senka Erofejew - Kulak's son
  • Akimka - Senka's friend
  • Maria Ivanovna - mother of Nikolai and hop pole
  • Kondrati Stepanovich - anarchist artist
  • Sofia Pavlovna - known as the Countess - takes care of the manor house
  • Erofeev - largest kulak in the village, father of Senka
  • Dmitri Petrovich - boatswain
  • Ivan Vasilyevich (Wanyushka) - chairman of the village council
  • Korovin - boy from children's home in Moscow
  • Boris Sergeevich - head of the children's home
  • Serov - official