The simple life

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The simple life is a novel by Ernst Wiechert , which was published in 1939 by Langen & Müller in Munich.

Wiechert wrote this book immediately after his imprisonment in Buchenwald concentration camp in the summer of 1938 in order to "roll off the soul" from the suffering he had suffered. ... With him I washed from my soul what had soiled, stained, humiliated, degraded and tormented to death. With him I rebuilt a world after the earthly one had collapsed or was terribly distorted. ”Only after writing this book was Wiechert mentally able to write down his report on the sufferings in the concentration camp,“ The Forest of the Dead ”. For Wiechert, The Simple Life meant psychological recovery and at the same time a way of showing readers the way to inner emigration after the experiences they had made .

The protagonist is the captain and war veteran Thomas von Orla, who turns his back on civilization and overcomes his life crisis with the trauma of the First World War in a near-natural, renunciation-rich life in the Masurian Lake District in East Prussia .

action

Corvette Captain Thomas von Orla is one of the officers of the Imperial Navy who fought against the British Royal Navy in the 1916 naval battle off the Skagerrak . A good two years later , the sailors on Thomas von Orla's ship revolt, but at the crucial moment the corvette captain does not shoot the subordinate who is bringing down the flag, but lets the sailors throw him into the sea. Thomas survived the fall and was pulled out of the water by his senior seaman Friedrich Wilhelm Bildermann.

Five years after the end of the war, Thomas is still busy processing the events of the war. In this situation he had a key experience when he internalized Psalm 90 of “Refuge in our transience”: we pass our years like chatter . The 45-year-old officer then decides to turn his back on the lively city and his family, crosses Poland and goes to East Prussia . “On the path of work as the only human salvation”, Thomas begins a year-long search for the meaning of his life . In doing so, he happens to find himself in a seemingly ideal Prussian world that has retained its old character during the Weimar Republic . Thomas established the most important relationships with the gruff General von Platen, his granddaughter Marianne, the forester Gruber and his neighbor Count Natango Pernein, a young, reclusive aesthetician and lover of scientific experiments. The rural population, on the other hand, remains largely contourless.

In the general, a "militarist and reactionary", the captain who is not on duty finds a patron who gives him a free hand on the fishing island for years. The careful, hardworking Thomas never disappoints his grumpy but not unfriendly employer. Of course, the officer has a great deal of help in the technically skilled picture man, whom Thomas soon followed to the island. The two live together in the cottage on the small island in the immediate vicinity of the old general. Thomas uses the long winter evenings to write two books about morality at sea and in combat . The two works “Ethik des Seemannsleben” and “Der Schlachtengott” are published, but met with opposition from those readers who no longer want to see Germany as a loser in the war, such as the Stahlhelm active in East Prussia . Although Thomas accepts the invitation to his war games, he keeps his distance.

When Count Natango falls victim to an uprising by the rural population, Thomas surprisingly inherits most of his property. Thomas, who had lived as a fisherman on the islet for years under his patron, General von Platen, found himself in possession of a count's castle with a picture gallery, a well-stocked library and a well-equipped scientific laboratory overnight. From death wish fulfilled, he seeks some folios out stacks them on the bedside table, researches and reads. His conclusion is: "What we saw [...] was greater than what was thought".

style

Wiechert's language is selectively virtuoso. Details from the life story of Thomas von Orlas are told very hesitantly and indirectly, objective facts are largely avoided. The text reflects the character of Thomas von Orlas: The protagonist appears reserved, tolerant, serious, elegant, art-minded, thoughtful, close to nature, frugal, hardworking and by no means haughty.

The style element of repetition is used artfully. There are two protests against the authorities: once Thomas is thrown by Orla into the Baltic Sea and gets away with his life, another time Count Natango puts himself in danger and dies in it. Both times, gentlemen face the angry crowd in isolation and must be defeated.

subjects

Humility and humility

The corvette captain withholds his title of nobility and appears in East Prussia as the helmsman Thomas Orla. His son Joachim reveals the secret during one of his regular vacation visits. The modesty of his father is alien to the ambitious boy. He wants to go higher than this and be squadron commander . He rejects the ethical pillars that the father established in his two books for naval officers. Joachim does not come to his mother Gloria's funeral because he is looking after his career.

Marriage and love

However, the years at sea have also alienated the corvette captain from his wife and son. Gloria does not want to change her way of life after the war and Thomas von Orla disgusts the lavish parties after his key experience. He leaves his wife and gives his son to his sister. Only when Gloria comes to him, terminally ill, he takes care of her for twelve days until she ends.

It is agreed that Joachim will marry Marianne von Platen, who is of the same age. But she finds the father more attractive than the son. Although Thomas von Orla always addresses Marianne, who is thirteen at the beginning, as the “child” and treats her as his child even in adulthood, the text leaves open whether the two are more than comradeship until Marianne Thomas unites at the end of the story long kiss on the mouth. The novel ends with the renunciation of love for the girl.

“ The last thing you can gain in life is not wanting anything. ... also in love. "

God, war and death

The dominant theme is the millions of murders during the First World War and its consequences. This theme is carried out through several individual fates, for example through the wife of the forester Gruber, whose son Valentin perished on the battle cruiser Seydlitz . The woman goes mad at the painful loss. Even the moralist and naval warfare -Ethiker Thomas Orla quarrels with his God and the silence of the Lord can not comprehend.

“ Skirmish and battle, death and destruction, that couldn't be all. Somewhere the torn reins of this wagon dragged across the earth, and you had to walk until they swept over you and you could try to grab a piece. One had to try to find the meaning; not the whole, the solution, the last, but a bit of meaning, the glimmer of a plan, and then in God's name one wanted to start all over again. "

East Prussia
In Masuria

The novel pays homage to the author's homeland and the austere beauty of the Masurian landscape.

reception

Before 1945

In the year of publication 1939, Wiechert had been imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp only a few months ago. The two responsible Nazi agencies judged the book contrary. While the " Rosenberg Office " was positive about the work, it was rejected by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels . This is how the printing approval came about “by mistake”. After Annette Schmollinger, four German magazines reviewed the novel in 1939. The magazine "Die Frau" criticized the work as "selfish". In the novel, "a rejection of the idea of ​​community and the commitment to conscious isolation" was seen.

After 1945

Schmollinger sums up that the book represents “no democratic image of society as an ideal”. Günter Scholdt points out to those who do not want to attribute Wiechert to “ inner emigration ” that at the time of publication “the withdrawal from the public represented an important political act, a reaction to the total politicization of life in the Third Reich, a signal from Resistance to the complete appropriation of the author ”.

The history of literature accuses the author of escapism . According to Schmollinger, however, this is unjustified, because Thomas von Orla is not fleeing from his life, but is reorienting himself. With this reflection and concentration on the individual, he strengthens his self and sets himself apart from the crowd. Heinz Stolte criticizes the “nature cult” in the novel, and Frank-Lothar Kroll cannot spare the author the serious accusation that problems and events can be guessed from the title. Kroll also remarks that Wiechert works with parables. The rotating globe symbolizes the return, Thomas from Orla's island the self-chosen Robinson solitude and the hut on the island is Noah's ark . Thomas von Orla on his island distinguishes himself as a seeker of God. We are looking for Perkunos , Buddha and the gods of Easter Island . Thomas accompanies Marianne on her way to becoming a wife, more or less as her father. Marianne keep the child role and embody the new generation.

For Herbert Wehner , The Simple Life was the book that left a lasting mark on him during his emigration years. Helmut Schmidt and his wife felt the simple life during the terror of the last years of the war as an "ideal" and explained that many people at that time would have felt like them.

Ernst Wiechert himself called The Simple Life "his" book, "perhaps the only one of my books that was entirely mine" and considered it natural that the German criticism turned against the book with bitterness. But none of his books, according to Wiechert, caused as much consolation as this one, "for no other book do I have so many and so moving testimonies of gratitude."

literature

source
First edition
  • Ernst Wiechert: The simple life. Novel. Verlag Albert Langen and Georg Müller, Munich 1939. 389 pages
Secondary literature
  • Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.): Word and poetry as a place of refuge in difficult times . Berlin 1996. pp. 107-109. ISBN 3-7861-1816-7
  • Annette Schmollinger: “Intra muros et extra”. German literature in exile and in internal emigration. An exemplary comparison. Dissertation Heidelberg 1998, published in Heidelberg 1999 (contributions to recent literary history; volume 3, vol. 161). Pp. 187-193. ISBN 3-8253-0954-1
  • German literary history. Volume 10. Paul Riegel and Wolfgang van Rinsum: Third Reich and Exile 1933–1945 . Munich 2004. pp. 166-170. ISBN 3-423-03350-9
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A-Z . Stuttgart 2004. p. 669. ISBN 3-520-83704-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: Years and Times. Memories. Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich 1951, p. 345 f.
  2. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: Years and Times. Memories. Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich 1951, p. 354.
  3. ↑ The Bible, OT, The Psalter, Psalm 90: 9 .
  4. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: The simple life . Munich 2002, p. 332.
  5. ↑ According to an old Prussian - Baltic legend, Natango was the son of King Widowuto from Prussia .
  6. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: The simple life . Munich 2002, p. 160.
  7. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: The simple life . Munich 2002, p. 333.
  8. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: The simple life. Albert Langen / Georg Müller, Munich 1939, p. 115.
  9. ^ Ernst Wiechert: The simple life , Verlag Kurt Desch, Munich 1945, p. 18.
  10. ↑ bars and van Rinsum, S. 169th
  11. ^ Schmollinger, p. 191.
  12. ↑ Quoted in Schmollinger p. 191, as well as in Hildegard Châtellier, “Ernst Wiechert in the judgment of the German magazine press 1933–1945. A contribution to National Socialist literature and press policy ”, in: Recherches Germaniques 3 (1973), p. 182.
  13. ↑ Quoted in Schmollinger, p. 191, and Châtellier, p. 183.
  14. ^ Schmollinger, p. 192.
  15. ↑ Günter Scholdt : “'The emigrants on the outside correspond to the emigrants on the inside'. Kasack's dictum and the criticism of a term ”, in: Helmut John and Lonny Neumann (eds.): Hermann Kasack - life and work. Symposium 1993 in Potsdam , Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 107, quoted in Schmollinger, p. 192.
  16. ↑ bolts and van Rinsum, p 166, 170th
  17. ↑ a b Schmollinger, p. 190.
  18. ↑ Quoted in Riegel and van Rinsum, p. 170.
  19. ^ Kroll, p. 107.
  20. ↑ a b Kroll, p. 108.
  21. ^ Kroll, p. 109
  22. ↑ The uncle. Herbert Wehner in talks and interviews. Hoffmann & Campe, 1986.
  23. ↑ A minimum of ambition is necessary. Günter Gaus in conversation with Helmut Schmidt. Broadcast on February 8, 1966
  24. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: Years and Times. Memories. Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich 1951, p. 346
  25. ↑ Ernst Wiechert: Years and Times. Memories. Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich 1951, p. 347