The triumvirate
The Triumvirate is a 1987 collection of short stories by the German writer Gisbert Haefs .
action
At the center of the plot are three older men, the retired Colonel Albrecht , Pastor Bargmann and the doctor Korff , who meet every week for Skat . Again and again they come up with strange events in their hometown, mostly murder cases, which they solve through mutual deliberation. What is particularly interesting is the verbal exchange of blows between the three men, who seem to have nothing in common apart from the Skat round. Albrecht is an avowed atheist and militarist and therefore repeatedly comes into conflict with the Catholic Bargmann . This denotes the colonel a. D. as "Heiden", "Landsknecht" or with similar names. Korff, on the other hand, is teased because of his meticulous, often pedantically rational approach. Although some of the comments are well below the belt, the dialogues are on a high linguistic level and often even require knowledge of Greek mythology. Names like “papist shaman ” ( Bargmann ), “medicine man” ( Korff ) or “sergeant” ( Albrecht ) keep recurring. Although Bargmann , Korff and Albrecht seem to have known each other for years and live in a rather insignificant, nameless small town ("... an hour's drive from Düsseldorf airport ..."), where everyone knows everyone, they address each other by surname and sunk (with one exception). Their first names, as well as the name of the city, are not mentioned; in some cases, people in the respective criminal cases are only named with professional titles (such as the composer ).
Motifs
The cases dealt with by the triumvirate are usually solved according to the same motive. One of the three men brings up an interesting criminal case, whereupon the game of Skat is interrupted and everyone starts speculating about it. Usually this is where the first controversy begins, as one of the gentlemen, mostly Bargmann , would rather continue playing than puzzling around. In the course of the deliberations, however, everyone contributes something to come closer to the solution of the "case". Since all three operate in high circles and maintain various contacts, they can often come up with information that a simple fellow citizen could not get. Albrecht keeps talking about having various informants, Bargmann interacts well with his community members, and Korff , as a doctor, often experiences more than others. The ways of looking at things are also different: Albrecht sees everything from a more popular perspective and tends to polemicize, Bargmann always has the spiritual component in mind and Korff comes up with meticulous pedantry and medical expertise. The speculations of the gray hobby investigators initially come to nothing, so that the case seems unsolvable, but in the end one of the three always presents the result. It is interesting that the solution always appears logical, but its correctness is never proven. The triumvirate could therefore err well. On their part, they always refrain from informing the security authorities, often because the evidence is simply missing.
Another figure is the landlord, who, since the action usually takes place entirely in his pub, is omnipresent in conversation. However, he never has a say. Most of the time his choice of music, which is quite dependent on his mood, is criticized by the triumvirate . Again and again, the music leads on to the right track, so that the host becomes an important figure, albeit a passive one.
Radio plays
In 1984, 1985, 1996 and 2007 Westdeutsche Rundfunk produced four radio plays about the triumvirate , all of which were broadcast on WDR 5 . The first two appeared before the book and are titled The Triumvirate and The Triumvirate Thinks . Haefs himself wrote the script. The roles are spoken in both radio plays by Hans Korte ( Colonel Albrecht ), Peter Pasetti ( Pastor Bargmann ) and Heinz Trixner ( Dr. Korff ). Directed by Heinz Dieter Köhler . The Triumvirate is spinning appeared in 1996, directed by Klaus Dieter Pittrich . The speakers stayed, only the role of pastor had to be taken over by Harald Leipnitz , since Pasetti had died. The fourth radio play was broadcast live in front of an audience in 2007 and was entitled Das Triumvirat Hext . The speakers were Dietmar Mues ( Pastor Bargmann ), Peter Fricke ( Dr. Korff ) and Gert Haucke ( Colonel Albrecht ), and the director was Christoph Pragua .