The spider web

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The Spider Web is an unfinished serial by Joseph Roth , which was preprinted in the Wiener Arbeiter-Zeitung from October 7th to November 6th, 1923 . The first book was published posthumously in 1967 in Cologne and Berlin. The work was filmed in 1989 . The protagonist is Lieutenant Theodor Lohse , who is returning from the First World War . The novel was added to Reclam's Universal Library in 2010 .

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The protagonist of the novel, Lieutenant Theodor Lohse, hates socialists and Jews . After the First World War he began as a law student in Berlin and worked as a tutor at a Jewish jeweler. It is difficult for him to adapt to unfamiliar civil life. He quits the jeweler and becomes a member of the Munich "Organization S II".

Lohse meets the detective Günther Klitsche, who sneaks in under a false name as a spy with socialists in order to subsequently betray them to the police. Theodor kills Klitsche, hushes up the manslaughter and takes his place. Theodor would like to visit Ludendorff, whom he admires, in Munich, but direct contact is prohibited. Theodor is completely unknown in the press landscape. The press writes about Adolf Hitler and National Socialism every day . Lohse finds accommodation with the Reichswehr in the Potsdam garrison. He wins over the subordinates in his company by not punishing but only reprimanding them.

Benjamin Lenz, a Jew from Lodz who was a spy during the war, occasionally works with false material. He not only supplies Theodor with reports, but also the enemy. It turns out that Benjamin knows everything about Lohse, including the murder of Klitsche. Of necessity, Lohse allies himself with Lenz, who denounces him shortly afterwards. Lohse is deployed at Alexanderplatz against a workers' demonstration that leads to a fight.

Lohse marries Fraulein Elsa von Schlieffen, who is also nationally minded and an enemy of Jews. Lenz pays for the wedding party. Theodore is leaving the Reichswehr, but he continues to interrogate the “internal enemies” and torture them for “improper response on the spot”. Theodor catches Benjamin spying on him. He is ultimately powerless because Benjamin knows too much.

Quotes

  • The street smiled.
  • ... his half-hearing ear drank the rustling silence of the dead.
  • Superficial people spoke in parliaments.
  • Workers break carbine above knee.

reception

  • Helmuth Nürnberger praises the “author's insight”. The novel remains "a testimony to a seemingly clairvoyant political intelligence".
  • "The expressionist staccato sentences" with which Joseph Roth made his debut as a novelist caught Hackert's eye.
  • Ulrike Steierwald goes into "the satirical exaggeration in the novel".
  • Under the heading Political Murder in short stories from the years 1923 to 1930, Kiesel identifies Lieutenant Theodor Lohse's brutal career striving and anti-Semitism as motives for the crime. Joseph Roth also showed the reader the “social acceptance” of the perpetrator Lohse in post-war Germany.

filming

See the article The Spider Web (film) .

Bernhard Wicki filmed the novel in 1989 with Ulrich Mühe as Theodor Lohse, Klaus Maria Brandauer as Benjamin Lenz, András Fricsay as Günther Klitsche, Corinna Kirchhoff as Elsa von Schlieffen and Agnes Fink as mother Lohse. In 1990 Wicki received the gold film tape for his work .

Radio play editing

literature

  • Fritz Hackert (Ed.): Joseph Roth. Works. Volume 4: Novels and Stories. 1916-1929. P. 63–146: The spider web. Novel. 1923 . With an afterword by the editor. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7632-2988-4 .
  • Konstanze Fliedl (ed.): The spider web . Reclam, Stuttgart 2010. (Reclam's Universal Library 18684) [Text after the first print in: Arbeiter-Zeitung , October / November 1923] ISBN 978-3-15-018684-8

Secondary literature

  • Helmuth Nürnberger : Joseph Roth. In self-testimonials and picture documents. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-50301-8 ( Rowohlt's Monographs 301).
  • Ulrike Steierwald: Suffering from history. On the modern conception of history in the texts of Joseph Roth. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994, ISBN 3-88479-880-4 ( Epistemata. Series: Literaturwissenschaft 121), (At the same time: Munich, Univ., Diss., 1992).
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A - Z. 4th completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 519.
  • Helmuth Kiesel : History of German-Language Literature 1918 to 1933 . CH Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-70799-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  • Fritz Hackert (Ed.): Joseph Roth. Works. Volume 4: Novels and Stories. 1916-1929. P. 63–146: The spider web. Novel. 1923 . With an afterword by the editor. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7632-2988-4 .
  1. ↑ p. 66
  2. ↑ p. 71
  3. ↑ p. 67
  4. ↑ p. 74
  5. ↑ p. 83
  6. ↑ p. 91
  7. ↑ p. 92
  8. ↑ p. 102f.
  9. ↑ p. 104
  10. ↑ p. 110f.
  11. ↑ p. 113
  12. ↑ p. 114f.
  13. ↑ p. 126
  14. ↑ p. 135
  15. ↑ p. 131
  16. ↑ p. 140
  17. ↑ p. 75
  18. ↑ a b p. 116
  19. ↑ p. 125
  20. ↑ p. 1079
Further individual evidence
  1. ↑ Nürnberger p. 63
  2. ↑ Steierwald pp. 92–93
  3. ↑ Kiesel, pp. 377-379
  4. ↑ Nürnberger p. 152
  5. ^ BR radio play Pool - Roth, Das Spinnennetz