The face given
The face given is a doctor and romance novel by Heinz G. Konsalik from 1962 . It deals with the fate of seriously injured soldiers as returnees and their existential difficulties in surviving in post-war Germany.
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Blurb
“In this novel, Heinz G. Konsalik describes the merciless fate of those men whose faces were wounded during the Second World War. He reports on the doctors who tried self-sacrificingly to heal the wounds with care and infinite patience and to restore the face of the wounded. "
action
In October 1944 Sergeant Erich Schwabe (Kampfgruppe Bauer, 170th Infantry Division ) fought near Suwalki in East Prussia . His home vacation is just over. On October 4th, while on a snowmobile ride, a mine laid by partisans exploded and while trying to save the young soldiers under his command, his face was irreversibly destroyed by the explosion. Schwabe is relocated from the troop formation station in Frankfurt an der Oder to a special clinic at Bernegg Castle. He comes to Block B of the Schloss Bernegg Hospital, where the patients have to undergo extensive and long-term treatment. It is a special hospital for facial injuries. They call it the "House of Lost Faces". The wounded are unloaded discreetly, as Heinrich Himmler decreed that the sight of severely disabled and mutilated people could possibly have a defeatist effect on the civilian population. Senior Physician Dr. Urban greets the wounded in a harsh commissary tone and announces hard times for them, which the humanist-minded senior staff doctor Dr. Rusch, however, does not tolerate it. Nevertheless, room service with gymnastics and ideological lessons by NSFO officers is on the program.
Schwabe writes letters to his mother that he is fine and that he is being treated well. However, he hides the truth about his lost face. He is surprised that the window panes are made of frosted glass and that there are no mirrors. Doctors predict that it will take Schwabe many years and costly operations before he gets back a somewhat human-like face. He may never get his face back either. Erich comes into a room with other facial injuries and a rough camaraderie develops, which is characterized by raw jokes and touching care for one another. Even after five operations, the remains of his former face have not changed for the better at first. Dr. Rusch and Dr. Mainetti don't know how to tell their patient. Ursula has announced in numerous letters that she really wants to visit her husband, but Erich has repeatedly forbidden her. His comrades advise him that his mother should visit him because mothers would love their badly disfigured children too.
During a walk in the park, Erich Schwabe saw his face for the first time on the surface of the castle pond, which looked like a monster. He has a bad nervous breakdown and tries to drown himself. A sister saves him. Between Dr. Mainetti and Dr. Urban has an ugly argument. Although the war is as good as lost for Germany (the Americans are fighting for Aachen and the Red Army in Pomerania ), Dr. Urban continues to uphold the phony ideals of National Socialism at all costs and still leads an unnecessarily strict regime among patients. Dr. Mainetti denied despite begging to be morphine and he blackmails her, because wehrkraftzersetzender to the statements and actions Gestapo deliver. He threatens to write kv to some of the patients out of sheer arbitrariness so that they can fight at the front again. Finally, Dr. Mainetti pursues the blackmail and hands him a certain ration of morphine ampoules that he has to get along with every month.
In the end, mother Hedwig and Ursula arrive for an unannounced visit, although Erich has strictly forbidden them. He wants to cope with his fate alone and not see anyone from his family. There are dramatic scenes. The women promise to be strong, since they have already seen a number of charred corpses due to the bombing war , the sight of Erich will be a great shock for them. While the mother is allowed to see Erich, Ursula has to wait outside and is watched by sexually starved guards. The encounter with a large group of facial injuries takes them seriously. Dr. Mainetti carefully teaches Ursula the truth. Dr. Mainetti tells the mother that first of all she should continue to lie to her son about the condition of his ruined face and secondly that she should take care of her daughter-in-law. Experience has shown that at some point young women would have doubts as to whether they would like to spend their “best and fertile years” with a visually impaired person. Erich has taken courage by visiting his mother and writes to his Ursula that she can see him now. But they postpone this reunion by mutual agreement until Erich's face has been restored even further.
Then a boy from a punishment battalion is brought in. He is sentenced to death for unauthorized removal from the troops . Dr. Mainetti wants to save him and Dr. Urban, who is constantly out to expose simulators, but deliver him to a court martial as quickly as possible. Dr. Fred Urban is deeply vicious and intrigues constantly to expose simulators.
At Christmas 1944, Hedwig Schwabe and Ursula now live together in a ruined apartment in Cologne at 4 Horst-Wessel-Strasse and lead the hard and hard life of the bombed-out civilian population. Hedwig often goes to Bernegg to give her son and his entire room groceries, which she has laboriously procured.
So also at Christmas. Irene Adam visits her husband Fritz for the celebrations on Christmas Eve . The attractive woman immediately caught the attention of Dr. Urban. In his opinion, an invalid war cripple like Adam is far too good for a woman as exciting as Irene. And she actually has doubts as to whether she can still be married to Fritz. After all, she had married him because of his beautiful face and charisma. She asks Dr. Mainetti is about teaching her husband that she can no longer be with him. But the doctor is horrified and would like to hit the woman. Dr. Urban seizes the opportunity and immediately offers Irene his male protection, which the woman gratefully accepts and lets herself be seduced by him. She wants to divorce Fritz as soon as possible so that she can only be there for her Fred.
The NSDAP district leader is supposed to give presents to the war orphans and give a lecture on "Front and Home". However, his appearance is disrupted by the delivery of the seriously wounded Lieutenant Rudolf Fischer. The man hardly has anything human-like about him anymore, only has one eye. Dr. Mainetti shows him the “real face of the war” and what the “heroes from the front” look like. Almost all patients receive visits from their families. Except Fritz Adam. Dr. Mainetti confesses to him that she threw his wife out on edge because of her vicious behavior, when she turned out to be a "character pig " ( "Why do you think I threw her out like a whore who didn't pay her room rent?" ) . She practically orders him that from now on he is a new Fritz Adam and has the duty to go on living and to seek his luck. The Christmas party is a tense and spooky event for everyone. For example, some BdM girls are disgusted with dancing with the disabled people they are supposed to look after and letting them touch them. Others like Petra Wolfach met Walter Hertz. They arrange to go to the cinema together. “ The great love ” with Zarah Leander . But before that Walter should get to know Petra's parents. She introduces him as her great love. Her father is a manufacturer of an armaments supplier and is against the, in his opinion, "unnatural" connection with such a disfigured person.
Ursula Schwabe spends the Christmas holidays alone in Cologne. Karlheinz Petsch, a sergeant major, enters the basement and keeps her company without being asked. He brings the lonely woman various luxury goods (wine, Parisian ladies' stockings made of silk, butter, etc.) that are no longer legally available in times of need. Although she absolutely wants to remain loyal to her Erich and strongly opposes it, she finally gives in to his wooing and sleeps with him. Surprisingly, Hedwig comes back to the rubble apartment on Christmas Day and gives Ursula the gift from her son. It is a self-made glass mosaic. However, she feels terrible and feels like a whore because she slept with Karlheinz. Unexpectedly, mother Hedwig and Petsch meet. She throws Petsch out angrily, but pretends not to have noticed anything about the adultery. They swear to each other that he should never know.
The final phase of the Second World War has begun. An order arrives at Bernegg that the hospital is to be combed for men fit for military service for the final battle. General von Unruh is to personally inspect the implementation of this measure after Dr. Urban has already done the preparatory work for this. The list includes: a. the names of the comrades Feininger, Adam, Hertz and Oster. Dr. Rusch and Dr. Mainetti do not want to allow that at all. For that they have invested too much medical art in the patients, and not so that they will be shot down in the field within a few minutes. Lisa offers Dr. Urban opened a business. Additional morphine against the publication of the fitness lists. He seems to get involved. The soldiers, who will very likely have to go to the front, will be given a leave of absence for the coming night. Their distraction is very different. Fritz Adam uses it to go out with Sister Graff and the "Wastl", when he is not visiting a brothel , gets drunk in a pub senseless. Theater is played for the balance commission. During the final meal there is a scandal . Prof. Dr. Rusch makes it unmistakably clear that it is up to him alone to decide who is discharged from the hospital and who is not. His former doctoral supervisor, Professor Gilgen, supports him in this. However, the masquerade succeeds and the men can return to their stations unmolested.
Dr. Urban continues to intrigue. He brings Dr. Mainetti against her express will to operate on a man with facies hippocratica . The operation fails and the patient dies because he had an undetected thrombus . In 1945 Irma Fischer wants to visit her terribly disfigured husband, who has already passed away. Dr. Mainetti claims that he was shot in the head and didn't have to suffer for long. Erich Schwabe is operated on continuously. B. modeled his nose and his overall condition is improving. One day Fritz Adam catches Irene with Dr. Urban. Dr. Urban, who stole the wife of a wounded comrade, runs the risk of being punished for it. Dr. Urban flees after being hit by Adam.
On 9. April 1945 American tanks appear in Würzburg and on April 11 they will engage in Bernegg. Major James Braddock is now in command of the clinic. First, Dr. Mainetti the morphine she urgently needed. The American “miracle drug” penicillin is also received with great enthusiasm by German doctors. The initial animosity turns into admiration among the doctors for each other's art. For this, the rations for the Germans are reduced to 700 calories and the famine years after the Second World War begin. On May 9, 1945, the Wehrmacht surrendered, Germany had received the bloodiest lesson in its history and Bernegg Castle was controlled by the US occupation forces. In Cologne, an air mine completely destroyed Ursula's cellar. Ursula and mother Schwabe survived. Karlheinz also finds his way back to the two. The two do not tolerate his proximity. He, who has lost everything, then moves into a neighboring cellar. Ursula can no longer stand it in Cologne. She travels to Bernegg to see her husband again. The 200 facial injuries on the ward are still subject to prisoner-of-war regulations . Only at the request of Prof. Dr. Rusch and Dr. Mainetti finally allows Major Braddock that Erich can see his wife again. The major enables Erich and Ursula to spend a whole night together.
After five years, the Schwabes moved back from Bernegg to Cologne. A fateful encounter with Dr. Urban, who after his escape with a false statement made by Prof. Dr. Rusch got into big trouble. Erich succeeds in destroying incriminating files and then going out with his wife into freedom.
main characters
- Sergeant Erich Schwabe : highly decorated "Frontschwein" (26 yrs) from Cologne . His face is forever disfigured. He is the main driving character of the novel, to whose fate the main plot is tied.
- Ursula Maria Schwabe : his wife (24 y), who cheats on him but fights for her love until they are reunited.
- Hedwig Schwabe: his mother, who absolutely loves her Erich. For her, he will always be her “little, stupid boy”.
- Karlheinz Petsch: Ursula's lover and Erich's rival. He shamelessly takes advantage of Ursula's situation.
- Dr. Lisa Stephanie Mainetti : Italian ward doctor and facial surgeon with the "noble appearance of a Florentine Renaissance princess" . Her father was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp . Dr. Rusch saved them from being killed by the SS as well.
- Chief Medical Officer Professor Dr. Walter Rusch : Chief physician at the Facial Disabled Clinic Bernegg. Prof. Rusch is the humanist and anthroposophist of history. He does not hesitate for a second to endanger his own life completely irresponsibly, as long as he can save others with it. He and Mainetti are secret lovers.
- Senior Physician Dr. Fred Urban : staunch National Socialist and morphinist. Urban is the evil spirit in the hospital who misses every opportunity to harm Rusch or Mainetti, whom he deeply despises for their sentimentalism.
- Fritz Adam: former medical student, after a grenade explosion near Minsk his ears, cheeks and nose are missing.
- Irene Adam (23 yrs): his materialistic wife, a "fashion doll" and "bed bunny" who meets the opportunist Dr. Urban blows away.
- Sergeant "Wastl" Feininger: Erich's room mate from Berchtesgaden , a Bavarian "Urviech" and hard-drinking "Original", who makes the women of the area happy with his manhood on outings.
- Christian Oster, Sergeant Kaspar Bloch u. a .: Erich's room mates, including Theodor Baum, called "Boobs Theo" after an unsuccessful facial operation.
- Dora Graff: the sensitive ward nurse and many others.
Medical historical context
After both world wars, war invalids returned to their homeland and found themselves in a different life. They encountered a wall of disgust, horror and rejection. As a result of medical progress, fewer people were killed, but significantly more wounded and severely traumatized. The talk was of "chopped up faces" . A new kind of machine warfare and improved weapon effects caused extreme injuries, which posed great challenges for medical officers and war surgeons.
In the 1940s and 1950s, medicine was not as advanced as it was in the early 21st century: in 2005 , the world's first face transplant took place in the United States. In the time of the novel, face modeling mainly consisted of the application and reshaping of skin flaps and round handle flaps.
Reviews
linguistic style
“Like a sergeant from East Prussia!” The Berliner had said when the doctor was gone. »And it looks like it comes from Ufa! A murderous woman, that's for sure! ”Mrs. Hedwig Schwabe lived in the basement of the house at Horst-Wessel-Strasse 4. It was once a beautiful, stately house with an ornate sandstone facade, high windows and a slate roof. The master glazier Schwabe built it in 1928, rented two floors and even lived in the lower floor. "
criticism
Konsalik takes on the face of a difficult subject, which has often been hushed up in the public eye. It is about severely disfigured war invalids, in this case facial injuries who can hardly find their way back into civil life. In his book he relentlessly accounts for National Socialism and its excesses.
Konsalik's main concern is to present the “madness of war” in its worst form in a “readable” and very “moving book” . It's about facial injuries and the associated “leprosy”, which is so difficult that not even their relatives can live with it. In addition to the fleshly wounds, it is the soul that is permanently damaged. The return to “normal life” becomes a question of survival. Doctors who completely selflessly sacrifice themselves for humanity is one of the writer's great guiding themes. Konsalik determined the medical background to The Gifted Face for two years through intensive research and numerous on-site discussions with doctors and patients about plastic surgery. It is a special fate in the "House of Lost Faces" drawn by Konsalik. The reaction of the environment to a disfigured face is shown relentlessly. It ranges from disgust to helpfulness to understanding. The processing of the material, which the author succeeded in doing, is considered a “masterpiece”, as the real world is brought before the reader with haunting severity.
The novel also contains inhuman passages. Erich Schwabe's room requires entry in the form of cigarettes , so that other comrades can see “Boobs Theo” as a kind of monstrosity cabinet and shudder in front of him. Misogyny is expressed by the fact that the lovingly caring wives and fiancés are insulted or even brutally rejected by their disfigured husbands. One's own pain is seen as much greater than that of the loving woman. On the other hand, the excessive donation from Dr. Lisa Mainetti towards the patients. Despite all the medical ethos, a busy facial surgeon would in reality hardly devote so much time and dedication to trauma-damaged patients and their psychological care. The extremely over-motivated doctor even interferes in the private life of her patients out of a moral sense of mission and decides which partners are good or bad for them.
On a trip from Cologne and Bernegg, Ursula gets to know the harshness of post-war Germany. The people are brutalized and fight exclusively for their own survival. Everywhere there is need, misery and hunger. There is hardly any solidarity. Everything is fought for. Brute force is used to defend food, a dry place to sleep and a place on the train.
The face presented has numerous psychological facets and hints of subliminal sexual components. There is how patients treat their relatives and their lives after the trauma. Second, it is very much about repressed sexuality. A disfigured man with no face should not father children with a young and attractive woman. So it comes to the reaction of some of the patients that they grant their wife, their fiancée, for their own good a virile and potent man who is in his full bloom, or give up. As in Konsalik's other novels, it sounds like a woman in the midst of horny soldiers is seen as a "female" and a kind of prey. The author also talks about the short-lived nature of “war marital” when both partners have barely had time to get to know each other better and from the moment the man loses face and has become ugly, the character is very quickly subjected to a severe test .
Text output
- Heinz G. Konsalik: The face given . Original edition. Kindler Verlag, Munich 1962. ISBN 3-453-00184-2 .
- Heinz G. Konsalik: The face given . Licensed edition Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2004. ISBN 3-453-00184-2 .
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ↑ Heinz G. Konsalik: The face given . Kindler Verlag, Munich 1962, ISBN 3-453-00184-2 .
- ↑ officially Wehrmacht hospital for facial injuries
- ↑ possibly to the Upper Franconia Bad Berneck ajar
- ↑ kv = ready for military service, full use for front-line deployment
- ↑ against the medical conscience, because the pain reliever is needed by the patient much more urgently
- ↑ In Cologne there was no Horst-Wessel-Strasse, a Konsalik fiction
- ↑ Heinz G. Konsalik: The face given . Licensed edition Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2004. pp. 137–138. ISBN 3-453-00184-2 .
- ↑ "Heldenklau" campaign. General v. Unruh (balance commission) was due to these activities z. B. called "General Heldenklau"
- ↑ A decent soldier. Der Spiegel 12/1948 from March 20, 1948
- ^ POW - Prisoner of War
- ↑ Heinz G. Konsalik: The face given . Licensed edition Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2004. p. 17. ISBN 3-453-00184-2 .
- ↑ The War Surgeons. The time. April 19, 2007.
- ↑ The Western Front. Broken body and soul. For the first time in the history of the war, in 1914 a well-organized medical service was available to take care of the wounded. Not least because of this, an army of blind, amputees and mutilated people returned home. Der Spiegel March 30, 2004.
- ^ Trauma First World War. "We young men suddenly looked like monsters". Mirror online. Someday.
- ↑ The war surgery from 1939-1945 from the perspective of the consulting surgeons of the German army in the Second World War.
- ↑ Transplant Medicine. The face given. Focus, September 20, 2005.
- ↑ Heinz G. Konsalik: The face given . Licensed edition Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2004. ISBN 3-453-00184-2 .
- ↑ Book review by Heinz G. Konsalik: The gift face on www.lovelybooks.de
- ↑ : The jungle goddess is not allowed to cry . In: Spiegel Online . tape 50 , December 6, 1976 ( spiegel.de [accessed July 9, 2019]).
- ↑ The most widely read German author died after a stroke. Heinz G. Konsalik is dead. Hamburger Abendblatt from October 4, 1999
- ↑ Summary The face presented on www.zvab.com
- ↑ Heinz G. Konsalik: The face on www.buechereule.de