The oil shale skeleton

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The oil shale skeleton. A journey through time is a science fiction novel by the German writer Bernhard Kegel published by Ammann Verlag in 1996 . In the novel, the different storylines of which play on several time levels, Kegel uses the science fiction genre of time travel to depict geological and evolutionary relationships and human intervention in them.

The skeleton of a modern human being, embedded in oil shale , was found by chance in the Messel mine near the Hessian city ​​of Darmstadt . Due to the circumstances of the find, it can clearly be dated to the Eocene period , i.e. to an age of around 50 million years, while the anatomy of the skeleton and, for example, a wristwatch still on the arm bone clearly indicate a Homo sapiens of modern times. The discovery is kept secret and a scientist from the Messel Pit Research Station begins research that ultimately brings him back to prehistoric times , where he meets other people with very different motivations. In the course of the story, the reader learns how the find came about.

action

Employees of the branch office of the Senckenberg Natural History Museum of the city of Frankfurt am Main Discover looking for fossils in the Messel pit near Darmstadt signs of a promising discovery property. The paleontologist Dr. Helmut Axt, her superior and at the same time head of the branch, has the fossil still hidden in the oil shale brought to the basement of the facility for closer examination. When he alone the discovery block in the laboratory at the weekend x-rays , he recognizes a modern man, together with gold on the radiograph, the fossilized skeleton of dental crowns and modern wristwatch. This discovery burdens Axt very heavily, since he cannot explain it with his rational and scientifically trained mind. He keeps the find a secret for the time being, but then confides in his mentor and superior at the Senckenberg Nature Museum, Professor Gernot Schmäler. He suggests carrying out an age determination on a scientist friend, which, according to Schmäler, will certainly date the skeleton to the modern age and resolve the anachronism. Both scientists decide to keep silent about the find until then.

At the same time, the student Michael Hofmeister meets an old childhood friend, Tobias Haubold, in Berlin. Michael is meanwhile studying biology at the Free University of Berlin , where he specializes in entomology and especially beetle science . Tobias is studying geology at the same university . As teenagers, both were fascinated by scientific discoveries and adventurous expeditions. She was particularly impressed by the film Journey into Primeval Times , which she watched together at her school .

When Tobias Michael sent a jewel beetle cast in resin as well as a herbarized leaf , both souvenirs from his vacation in the High Tatras , he discovered after some research that both pieces could not be clearly identified scientifically and the stated origin was doubtful.

Shortly afterwards, at the request of his superior Schmäler, Axt gave a lecture on paleontology and evolution for him at the Institute for General Zoology at the Free University of Berlin, presenting the Messel mine and its fossil discoveries. Michael and Tobias are also in the audience, and Michael recognizes a slide from a 50 million year old fossilized jewel beetle that is very similar to his specimen. Axt meets Professor Alois Sonnenberg after the lecture. Sonnenberg is the head of the Institute for Paleontology and is meanwhile almost unknown in the professional world; he is largely avoided by his colleagues. He invites Axt to an interview at his institute. There, Sonnenberg reveals himself to be a critic of the accepted Darwinian idea of ​​evolution. In the course of the conversation, Ax noticed a jewel beetle also embedded in resin, which looks amazingly similar to its fossils, but according to Sonnenberg comes from Southeast Asia . The conversation between the two is interrupted by the visit of a student to Professor Sonnenberg's, who is Tobias.

Michael finds out that both the jewel beetle and the deciduous leaf must come from the Eocene for genera that no longer exist. Just like Axt, the illogic of this conclusion affects him very psychologically and he finally confronts Tobias. He confirms the temporal classification and admits that he knows a cave in Slovakia that leads into prehistoric times, more precisely into the Eocene and thus also to the Messel Pit. After Michael worries the story more and more psychologically, he decides to solve the problem by exposing Tobias' story on site as a lie. He and Tobias set off on a trip to Slovakia, where they meet Michael's fellow student and more or less steadfast friend Claudia and her dachshund Pencil. Claudia, a budding botanist , was asked by Michael for help in identifying the herbarized leaf and followed her friend.

Using a boat they drive into the cave on a river and actually get into the Eocene through a kind of time jump. They continue for several days on the river that brings them to the area of ​​what will later become the Messel Pit. During the trip, they quickly realize that there have been visitors here before them. It turns out that Ellen Hartmann, a PhD student known to Tobias and assistant to Professor Sonnenberg, visited the Messel Pit and carried out evolutionary experiments there. By deliberately killing animals such as bats, she wants to influence evolution itself and determine the consequences of her actions after 50 million years of evolution in the present based on verifiable facts such as fossils. A first success of their influence with insecticides and dynamite can be seen in the sudden disappearance of bat fossils from the Messel pit. Since she killed and expelled the animals at this later site in the Eocene, they are now inexplicably disappearing from museum showcases or from the preparation laboratories of the Messel Pit, as they could in fact never arise. The first visitor to the Eocene, however, was Alois Sonnenberg himself, who had made the first trip to the Eocene 20 years before them. His assistant Ellen also had the knowledge of the portal from him, but found this out herself without Sonnenberg's knowledge and by spying on his documents.

Sonnenberg is now old and frail and, after getting to know the Eocene with its flora and fauna himself, no longer has any great interest in the often wrong paleontology. That is why he persuaded Tobias to make new journeys to the Eocene in order to benefit himself from their research results and objects that they had brought with them, such as the jewel beetles that were later enclosed in resin. With this he wants to start again after 20 years to research and publish. Another person in the Eocene is Ernst Herzog, a paleontologist and famous dinosaur expert. As a friend of Sonnenberg he was one of the few confidants of his and knew about the entrance to the Eocene. After the death of his wife, ten years before the current plot of the novel, he disappeared and has lived in the Eocene ever since.

In the meantime, Schmäler Axt informs about the result of the age determination of the find. This results in the usual dating for fossils from the Messel mine to 48 to 50 million years before our era, and according to this report, Ax is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When he left his office shortly afterwards and went down to the pit, he suddenly stood on a lakeshore and saw the Messel pit as it looked in the Eocene. After a short time he wakes up in the present on the ground in the pit, where he has apparently collapsed. At the end of his nerves, he called in sick, later saw the Czech children's film “ Journey to the Prehistoric Times” at home while consuming a lot of whiskey, and collapsed completely drunk. He finally tells the whole story to his wife, who finds him in this condition.

Tobias, Michael and Claudia advance on land and water and now meet typical representatives of the Eocene such as Deinotherium , Brontotherium , Hyracotherium and Gastornis . Tobias injured himself critically if he fell from a rock. Michael and Claudia can keep Tobias alive for a while, but his condition is still serious. Only after Ernst Herzog, who had been watching her for a while, revealed himself to the group and took care of them, Tobias receives medical help in Herzog's cave.

Meanwhile, while researching the skeleton, Axt establishes a connection between the jewel beetle from the Eocene and Michael, whom he met at the colloquium in Berlin. He now suspects a journey through time as the cause of the modern skeleton in the oil shale and confronts Alois Sonnenberg with this find. Based on a diamond inserted into a tooth on the skeleton, it is immediately clear to Sonnenberg that this is his student Tobias, who must have perished in the Eocene. He finally reveals the location of the cave to Axt in Slovakia and he decides to take the same trip to save Tobias if possible. Ellen, who overhears the conversation, also decides to travel to the Eocene through a second and closer entrance known only to her. She wants to cover up her now morally questionable evolutionary biological research methods and protect her documents there. When Sonnenberg is alone in his office again, he commits suicide with a pistol out of desperation over the fate of his student Tobias.

Axt has found the group of Herzog, Tobias, Michael and Claudia in the Eocene. Tobias and Michael are at odds because Michael and Claudia want to return to the present, but Tobias is against it. Axt tells the group the whole story up to his presence in the Eocene, but withholds the discovery of Tobias' skeleton in the pit. Herzog, who already has an inkling of Ellen's machinations and wants to prevent them, now understands the connections and leads the group directly to the lake that will later become the Messel Pit.

At the showdown at the end of the novel, there is a scramble on the lake shore between Tobias and Ellen, who is also there. In the course of this, both plunge from the steep bank into a deep layer of mud and Tobias sinks in front of Duke and Michael's eyes, only to reappear as an oil slate skeleton 50 million years later. Since Ellen also sinks into the mud, it can be assumed that there is another, this time female, oil slate skeleton to be found in the Messel pit.

Herzog, Axt, Michael and Claudia return to the present. Ax still keeps the secret of Tobias' skeleton in the oil shale to himself. Together with Herzog he returns again and destroys the remains of Ellen's research as well as the two entrances to the caves known to them. Finally, Axt destroys Tobias' oil slate skeleton in order to destroy the last reference to this incident.

Narrative structure

The book begins with two storylines that run parallel and separate chapter by chapter. The protagonist of the first storyline is Dr. Helmut ax. The plot of the strand consists of finding the skeleton and later reinforced in a description of Ax's helplessness and helplessness as well as the increasing psychological tension in view of the scientific inexplicability of his find. The second plot focuses on the two students Michael and Tobias and begins with their meeting and a look back at their childhood together.

reception

In its review, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung criticizes the disharmony between the actual content of the novel and the scientific-factual aspect of the book, which would damage both of them equally: The volume "Das Ölschieferskelett" is one of the inexpensive books. For the price of one, you get two - an off-the-peg novel, which Stiftung Warentest would perhaps even award the quality rating "good", and a non-fiction book, which, however, requires comment. It is a pity that the novel is hopelessly dismembered by the excursions into science and that the non-fiction book suffers from the impossible plot of the novel.

The Berliner Zeitung has a more positive view of the work and compares it to today's scientific business: it is easy to draw parallels with irresponsible researchers these days : Bernhard Kegel's second novel encourages reflection not only about the theory of evolution, but also about how research is dealt with today. And that must not only be of interest to paleontologically trained natural scientists.

Trivia

Bernhard Kegel himself studied chemistry and biology at the Free University of Berlin in the 1970s, where he obtained the academic degree of biologist. His description of the lecture by Dr. Ax and there in particular the premises, the slightly bizarre academic rituals and the scientific personalities at the institute reflect our own observations from this time. The Berliner Zeitung writes in its review: Kegel describes the rituals of university operations with loving irony - the author himself holds a doctorate in biology. Those in the know recognize the zoologists' lecture hall at the Berlin University with its entrances for the footmen and the scientists.

The novel addresses the intention of the Hessian state government to turn the Messel pit into a landfill , despite its special status with regard to the fossils that have been preserved . It was not until the late 1980s that this was finally prevented by a court. When the novel was published in 1996, the mine had been a UNESCO World Heritage Site for two years and the fight against landfill plans was won eight years ago.

Awards

In 1996, the novel was awarded the City of Wetzlar's Fantastic Prize. In 1997 the novel reached third place at the Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis .

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhardt Wandtner: Coke cans in the Tertiary. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 1, 1996, No. 52 / page 36
  2. ↑ Andreauppe: "The oil slate skeleton": Bernhard Kegel presents the theory of evolution in a different way. A trip to the tertiary. Berliner Zeitung of August 10, 1996