Bread and Games (Lenz)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bread and Games is a 1959 novel by Siegfried Lenz .

action

The aging 10,000-meter runner Bert Buchner competed for the European championship one last time and has no chance against a highly superior competition. In the stands, a newspaper reporter, the narrator as Bert's former best friend, follows the run and memories of Bert Buchner's career, his rise and fall and their former friendship come up, which are told in flashbacks.

Their first encounter took place in English captivity, but they were separated when Bert escaped. Years later, Bert's talent is discovered in a poor port sports club. After winning the first race and the associated social advancement, Bert gives up the plan to study and devotes himself entirely to sport.

He soon leaves his new found environment, the port sports club, to join a richer club, where he finds his way into the upper classes of society and is appointed manager of the club's own sporting goods store. He achieved international fame through a competition trip to the USA. However, Bert also causes unrest in the association by provoking a dispute with the board and with members who are even more respected in the association. Accounting inaccuracies appear in the shop run by Bert and Bert is dismissed as managing director. The narrator is also concerned when he finds out that Bert squandered a lot of money in casinos and embezzled money to pay gambling debts.

The club is planning to fire Bert because of this, but Bert is an absolute favorite for the next Olympic Games, so Bert can stay. Bert injured himself shortly before the Olympics and cannot participate. He's devastated. Dohrn, his club colleague, takes over from Bert, who runs much worse than Bert, but is still celebrated like a hero in the club. Bert is completely ignored and he is bitter about it. When he can finally take part in a run again, he kicks Dohrn in the heel with his spikes on his shoes out of envy, so that he can never run again. The narrator is the only one who realizes that this was not an accident and ends the friendship with Bert. So Bert is completely without real friends. Bert wants to change clubs, but the club members in his club intrigue against him, so that Bert ends up without a club and completely without friends.

In his last run, which the narrator observed from the stands years later, Bert ran from the beginning, contrary to all reason, to the top, maintained the lead until the last lap and finally broke ahead a few meters from the finish line Exhaustion together.

Linguistic particularities

The writing style is remarkable, because Siegfried Lenz writes over a hundred pages in a single section without a paragraph. He also uses a very associative language, he suddenly switches back and forth between the description of the run and flashbacks from the past and often only writes in key words and ellipses . In this way, he illustrates the tension that prevails throughout the entire framework, the 10,000 meter race, and creates a close thematic connection between the still open present and the past, which has already happened, but also only in the course of the book, in parallel is revealed to the present.

interpretation

A great thematic aspect of this work is the absolute failure of a person. Bert Buchner puts everything on one card by devoting himself completely to competitive sport and in the end loses both his friends and the prospect of a professional future because he did not take the opportunity to study.

In the GDR in particular , the novel was often interpreted as a parable of the inhumanity of modern society in the post-war period, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany .

literature

  • Rolf Geßmann: Sport as a motive in literature. Comments on the design and symbolism of the novel Bread and Games by Siegfried Lenz . In: Literature in Science and Education. Vol. 6, H. 3, 1973, pp. 143-155.
  • Bread and games . In: Die Zeit , No. 41/1959

Web links