Back then with us at home
Back then with us at home. Experienced, experienced and invented is the title of a book with autobiographical childhood memories by the German writer Hans Fallada (1893–1947, bourgeois Rudolf Wilhelm Friedrich Ditzen ), which was first published in 1941.
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Fallada mainly wrote socially critical time novels in the style of New Objectivity , but in between there were also entertaining contemporary novels. The mentally unstable, alcohol and morphine dependent author was a social democrat , but was able to continue publishing after the National Socialist seizure of power despite some hostility. In 1933 he retired to a Mecklenburg village, where he wrote, among other things, the critical time novels about the Weimar Republic Wolf under Wolves (1937) and Der iron Gustav (1938), as well as books such as the entertainment novel Kleiner Mann - Großer Mann, alles reversed ( 1939) and the marriage novel The Unloved Man (1940).
In 1941 Fallada published his childhood memories from the years 1905 to 1914 under the title Back then with us at home . For the most part, he stuck to real experiences, but admitted in the preface that he had changed or invented some details. The tone of the book is thoroughly cheerful and humorous, even if the difficult reality of his childhood shimmers through again and again: Rudolf was always a clumsy eccentric who often had mishaps and who did not have many friends. He was prone to depression and fatalism , which resulted in a suicide attempt at the age of 18. But that is no longer the subject of the book.
Fallada describes the everyday life of children in a middle-class household in Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century. The peculiarities and characteristics of the parents and siblings, but also other relatives and domestic workers are lovingly described. The social constraints of Wilhelmine Germany , which were no longer imaginable at the time the book was written , are also discussed. Even if Fallada admits that he has forgotten a lot, he gives a child's emotional world and perception in a concise and clear manner. Even sad experiences or mishaps, transfigured over the years, are told in a humorous way.
The parents' household consisted of the father, a judge who was a judge , and his much younger wife and four children. Flashbacks also show episodes from the lives of parents in earlier years or uncles and aunts. Vacation trips, school stories, children's pranks and again and again the boy's numerous accidents and mishaps make up the content of the book. His attempt to join the still new youth movement of the wandering bird also ended in failure. At the end of the book, when the family had already moved from Berlin to Leipzig , he passed an exam for early admission to a school there and was given an expensive bicycle by his father, his fortune seemed to be changing. But the accident happened the first time he went out on his bike: he suffered a serious, life-threatening accident, passed the test for nothing and his bike was broken. With equanimity he surrendered to his fate, which always seemed to hold back setbacks for him. Looking back, the author sums up that he was also very lucky in all misfortunes, because some things could have turned out much worse. At the very end of the memories, the author describes the first awakening of sexual interest, which culminates in a first experience with a housemaid. His childhood years were over and the path into an unknown future began.
Fallada had this book followed in 1943 with the volume Today at Our House .
Back then at home it was a great success with the public and has been present on the West German book market from 1955 until today, and from the mid-1970s also in the GDR. Translations into all Scandinavian languages shortly after the publication of the first edition followed from the 1960s onwards into Russian and the Baltic languages. The book and the author thus proved lasting success across the most diverse political regimes and times.
expenditure
- Back then with us at home . Rowohlt, Stuttgart 1941
- Back then with us at home . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1955 (paperback edition)
- Back then with us at home . Blüchert, Hamburg 1956
- Back then with us at home . Gütersloh, Bertelsmann-Lesering 1956 (book club edition)
- Back then with us at home . Noordhoff, Groningen 1957 (abridged edition for school use)
- Back then with us at home . Bonnier, Stockholm 1960
- Back then with us at home . Engel-Verlag, Munich 1975
- Back then with us at home . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar 1977 (GDR edition)
- Back then with us at home . Richarz, Sankt Augustin 1978 (large print edition)
- Back then with us at home . Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1992 (book club edition)
- Back then with us at home . Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin, 2001
Translations
Belarusian
- Danym-dano nas doma . Junactva, Minsk 1981 (translation: Vasil 'Semucha )
Danish
- Hos os derhjemme . Jespersen og Pio, Copenhagen 1942 (translation: Clara Hammerich)
Estonian
- Tookord meil isakodus . AS "Kupar", Tallinn 1995 (translation: Katrin Kaugver)
Finnish
- Lapsuudenkodissa . Söderström, Porvoo 1944 (translation: Lauri Hiorvensalo)
Latvian
- Tolaik mūsu mājās . Izdevniecība Liesma, Riga 1979 (translation: Erika Lūse)
Lithuanian
- Anuomet mūsų namuose . Žaltvykslė, Vilnius 2008 (translation: Eugenija Vengrienė)
Norwegian
- Hjemme hos oss . Aschehoug, Oslo 1943 (translation: Hans Heiburg)
Russian
- W dalekie detskie gody . Prosveščenie, Moscow 1965 (translation: NV Spižarskoj)
- U nas doma w dalekie wremena . Chudožestvennaja Literatura, Moscow 1975 (translation: N. Bunina)
- U nas doma w dalekie wremena . BSG-Press, Moscow, 2005 (Translation: N. Bunina)
Swedish
- Hunting the ljuva tiden . Hökerberg, Stockholm 1942 (translation: Birger Thorén)
literature
- Werner Liersch : Hans Fallada - back then at home . Berlin 1994
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany . Europa Verlag, Hamburg, 2000. There it says on page 154: “But Fallada, who joined the SPD in 1928, did not succeed before the repression of the Nazi regime.”