The castle of the blue birds (novel)
The castle of the blue birds , with the subtitle "A brain surgeon tries fate", is a mixture of thriller and doctor novel by Heinz G. Konsalik from 1968.
content
Blurb
“ A brain surgeon tries fate. The family of the successful chemist Gerd Sassner was a family like any other. A happy family - until one day Sassner brings an old shoe home from fishing and introduces him as his old war comrade. Luise Sassner, who loves her husband more than anything, is desperate. The family doctor suggests clinic treatment - gentle, elegant, just not a “nut mill”. So Gerd Sassner comes to Hohenschwandt. There, the chief physician, the world-famous brain surgeon Professor Dorian, is obsessed with a daring idea: He wants to prove that in previously incurable cases of mental illness, certain centers of the brain can be surgically coupled differently, ganglia switched differently, i.e. completely new people in terms of nature and thinking can create. "
action
Gerd Sassner comes back from a fishing trip in the Black Forest and shows his family an old shoe that he found in the brook as his war comrade Benno Berneck. At first his wife Luise thinks the strange behavior of her husband is a joke, but then she recognizes the signs of a deepening mental illness. Sassner takes the whole thing to extremes by planning to take the shoe with him to a business lunch with foreign investors and introducing him as his old friend. That would make it unsustainable in management. Luise is desperate and alerts Dr. Hannsmann, the family doctor. This ensures that Sassner is interned in a private clinic without causing a stir. The former manor house Hohenschwandt is located in a remote valley of the Allgäu Alps and is managed by the international brain specialist Prof. Dr. Dorian, who is regarded as a luminary in his specialist field of neurology and neurosurgery . The Hohenschwandt Clinic consists of 40 luxuriously furnished patient rooms, two operating theaters in which, among other things, leukotomies are performed, a doctor's house and a nurses' house. In House IV, a converted horse stable, animal experiments are apes , dogs , cats and laboratory rats performed. Dorian is supported by his medical team: the first senior physician Dr. Franz Kamphusen, who is devoted to him, and Dr. Bernd Keller, who is engaged to his daughter Angela Dorian. Kamphusen and Keller are rivals. Dorian succeeds in a manipulative brain operation on a gorilla , which is then able to process acoustic music signals anew and to sing. Professor Dorian treats Sassner, who suffers from delusions, puts him under hypnosis and can thus clarify the circumstances under which his comrade Berneck perished at the time. Lieutenant Berneck was buried together with Gerd Sassner in his dugout in 1945 during a Soviet offensive on Greifenberg in Pomerania. The oxygen supply was insufficient for both men. So Berneck shot himself to save his friend Sassner. The mentally ill chemist wakes up from hypnosis and in the following days his mental state deteriorates increasingly. Dorian suspects that Sassner suffered from a head injury, possibly a blood clot , during the war and that despite the long period of time, he is still changing his personality due to the shock neurosis. Then he makes the decision to perform a completely new type of brain operation on the patient, who has been put into a healing sleep for weeks by coupling cerebral functions differently. The operation is a complete success and Sassner is making a full recovery.
Gerd and Luise Sassner are overjoyed and are celebrating their second honeymoon in the Black Forest . One night Sassner disappears. His belongings are found at a lake, so that the responsible police in Freudenstadt assume that he either had an accident or committed suicide. However, no official declaration of death can be issued without a corpse.
A number of strange incidents are piling up in the Hohenschwandt Clinic. At night there is a doctor who calls himself Dr. Keller spends and gives injections. Angela, the daughter of the professor, has to fight back stalking in the forest and almost was raped by her father's patients. On a rainy summer night, Ilse Trapp, wife of an inn owner, takes a hitchhiker with her, whom she hopelessly falls for. Ilse leads a desolate life in a lonely area and improves her meager livelihood by letting truck drivers pay her for sexual services. The mysterious hitchhiker is Gerd Sassner, who has adopted a different identity and whose personality has now completely changed. He makes Ilse submissive and transforms her into a willless slave. Among other things, he demands of her that she addresses him as “big boss” and, in future, as “sister devil” only with a serving apron and a serving cap, but otherwise being naked. Her husband, who is twenty years older than him, is first drugged with schnapps so that he does not notice the changes in the inn. Sassner settles in the tower room of the inn, calls it the "Castle of the Blue Birds" and plans to set up a new clinic there to "drive out stupidity from humanity".
At the Hohenschwandt clinic there is a serious difference of opinion between Dorian and Keller. Keller received an offer from Zurich and would like to leave Hohenschwandt. Angela Dorian is forced to choose between her fiancé or her father. From Switzerland there is a letter from an unknown doctor:
" Dear colleague, stupidity, as my detailed investigations have shown, is a gas that slowly but inexorably destroys the human organism. In politics, economy and culture there are increasing signs that humanity is heading towards a catastrophe. Earlier living beings, such as the dinosaurs, perished due to a lack of food ... our humanity will annihilate itself through its own stupidity. I discovered that a small valve has become leaky in the human brain, through which gases escape that cloud reason and logic. All that is needed to save humanity is a small intervention in the open brain, a closure of the defect, and man learns to recognize how to create paradises. I will begin performing these operations shortly. Allow me, dear colleague, to keep you informed. I greet you with the new world slogan: stupidity - ex! "
Egon Trapps disrupts the preparations for the design of the “Castle of the Blue Birds” and has to be removed. Gerd and Ilse give him large amounts of alcohol and ensure that he is run over on the autobahn. His body cannot be identified later because several vehicles drove over his head, rendering him unrecognizable. Magda Hendle becomes the first involuntary patient of the two. Ilse is jealous of the attractive woman and stuns her with a hammer. Magda's skull is opened, the brain is removed, and the upper cerebrum is rinsed with dishwashing detergent, then the heart is removed. Magda is followed by murders of Markus Peltzer, Julius Hombatz and Agathe Vierholz, from which organs or body parts are also removed. In Hohenschwandt, Dorian experiments with injections from ground monkey brain , which is injected into the animals and is supposed to increase their intelligence.
In the meantime, Keller has decided to stay with Dorian and thus causes a conflict with his fiancée Angela. Keller suspects that the weird doctor colleagues are Sassner, who was believed to be dead. They want to use Sassner's wife Luise as a decoy to lure the diabolical doctor out of his hiding place. Dr. Kamphusen has meanwhile overwhelmed the nurse Leopold "Poldi" Wachsner, who at night as a false Dr. Keller makes injections that increase libido and aggression and acts on behalf of the anonymous doctor. Luise carries out her assignment and is picked up by Ilse Trapps at night on a motorway parking lot and taken to the “Castle of the Blue Birds”, where Sassner wants to turn people into birds.
At the same time, the situation in Hohenschwandt came to a head. Patients are in an uproar and have taken Angela Dorian hostage. They threaten to rape her from everyone. Dr. Keller uses the nerve gas HLN101, can free Angela and incapacitate the madmen. Sassner wants to surgically transform his wife into a bird, although she begs him to come to and recognize her as his wife. Then there is a scuffle between her and Ilse. In the meantime, Ilse is strapped to the operating table, but Sassner can convince them to let go of her. Sister "devil" fled to Hamburg , denounced the whereabouts Sass agent to the police by an anonymous phone call, but then later by a pimp who claims to be the noble man about William of drivers for a Beischlafdiebstahl in a flophouse in St. Pauli with strangled her own pearl stockings. The murder of a prostitute is never cleared up and Use's body is used by pathology students as a template for dissecting.
The police do not dare to storm the "Castle of the Blue Birds" by force of arms because they suspect that there is full occupancy by patients. Sassner, who now lives in a fantasy world with delusions, calls out to them that a new human race is emerging here. With the help of a trick, Sassner is overwhelmed. According to the Chief Public Prosecutor , Sassner is not responsible for his actions under the Criminal Code . He is seriously insane and therefore not at fault. Dorian asks to subject the "monster" Sassner to another brain operation, a topectomy, in order to change his being in a positive direction. The operation takes place with great public interest. 25 grams of brain mass are excised . Gerd Sassner has returned to the real world, but still no longer recognizes his wife and children. Dorian promises Luise Sassner in a kind of prophecy:
“ Everything is in flux, the last secrets of humanity are being unveiled. In a year, two or three years, I'll give your husband maybe ten injections and you can take him with you as the best Gerd Sassner ever. "
people
- Gerd Sassner: main character of the story. Born on August 19, 1923 in Krefeld , war participant, chemist and owner of a chemical factory. Sassner suffers from delusions.
- Luise Sassner: Gerd's wife. She fights for him and for her old life.
- Lieutenant Benno Berneck: his former comrade in the war, who fell as a platoon leader on the Eastern Front and whose fictional character is the trigger for Sassner's delusions
- Professor Dorian: Head of the Hohenschwandt Private Clinic. Dorian has daring visions in the field of brain surgery
- Dr. Franz Kamphusen: Dorian's assistant doctor
- Dr. Bernd Keller: Dorian's assistant doctor
- Ilse Trapps / "Sister Teufelchen": wife of an inn owner. The red-haired Ilse is portrayed as a nymphomaniac antagonist and playmate of Sassner.
- Egon Trapps: Ilse's husband, disrupts his wife and Sassner's plans and is therefore moved out of the way
Subject
The main theme of "The Castle of the Blue Birds" is the Mad Scientist aspect of the horror genre. As a “demigod in white” or “personification of the devil”, a doctor tries to change the consciousness and personality of his patients sustainably through manipulative brain operations. Gerd Sassner sees it as his mission to improve humanity and create a new, more intelligent type.
symbolism
“ There are only crows here!” Said Ilse Trapp breathlessly. She looked into his eyes and was fascinated by the shimmer that was in them. "Blue birds!" His grip on Use's shoulders tightened. “When they fly into the sky in summer, they dissolve, they are so blue. The divine soaks up the living ... no one sees these miracles. Only I can see them. Just me! And here is the home of miracles. The castle of the blue birds… ”“ What? ”Asked Ilse, trembling. She groaned. The man's fingers clutched her upper arm. "This is my lock!" He leaned over her. His voice became mysterious. “You lived like swine. You made a bar out of a castle full of miracles. A sticky beer counter! A smoky Stampe! What a shame on the wonders that soar over you! But now that's changing. I've come. The miracles will become visible! The blue birds will bring them, like carrier pigeons their message. Let's go. "
"The Castle of the Blue Birds" is the former inn "Zur Eiche", where the insane Gerd Sassner wants to make his visions of a new clinic for the change of humanity that he has planned come true.
Reception and criticism
Compared to the usual Konsalik novels, the material is perceived by many as unusual or even disturbing (“madness”, “as if written in a drug intoxication”). The plot, which has a classic arc of suspense, is described as implausible.
filming
Without relying on the content of the novel, the Giallo thriller La bestia cccide a sangue freddo was made into a film in 1971 by the Italian director Fernando Di Leo under the German distribution title "The Castle of the Blue Birds". Except for a few place and person names such as “Dr. Bernd Keller ”(played by Klaus Kinski ),“ Professor Dorian ”or“ Luise Sassner ”, the film has little in common with the novel.
Book editions
- The castle of the blue birds . Novel. Lichtenberg, Munich 1968.
- The castle of the blue birds . Novel. Goldmann, Munich 1972; 12 A. 1981, ISBN 3-442-03511-2 .
- The castle of the blue birds . Novel. Hestia, Bayreuth 1979, ISBN 3-7770-0185-6 .
- The castle of the blue birds . Novel. Editionnova, Rudersberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-941329-35-5 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: The castle of the blue birds , Hestia-Verlag, Bayreuth, 1977, ISBN 3-442-03511-2
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: The castle of the blue birds , Hestia-Verlag, Bayreuth, 1977, ISBN 3-442-03511-2 , pp. 131-132
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: The castle of the blue birds , Hestia-Verlag, Bayreuth, 1977, ISBN 3-442-03511-2 , pp. 342-343
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: The castle of the blue birds , Hestia-Verlag, Bayreuth, 1977, ISBN 3-442-03511-2 , p. 113f
- ↑ Reader's comments Konsalik: The Castle of Blue Birds