The green light of the steppes
The green light of the steppes. Diary of a Siberia trip of Brigitte Reimann came out in Berlin 1965th The book is the author's last work that she saw to be published. Together with Thomas Billhardt and Kurt Turba , the writer accompanied a delegation of the Central Council of the FDJ through the Soviet Union from July 7 to 20, 1964 .
content
On July 4, 1964, Brigitte Reimann received a call from Kurt Turba in Berlin in Hoyerswerda . It should start on July 7th. Before the machine takes off to Moscow, the delegation is received by Horst Schumann in Berlin .
From a visit in the autumn of 1963, the author knows of triumphant Moscow buildings , formerly erected as a self-affirmation. I mean the university and the Kutuzov prospectus . In Peredelkino - which lies in the southwest of Moscow - looking Brigitte Reimann Pasternak to grave. At the reception in Moscow, Kurt Turba encourages the author to talk to the Russian hosts. Brigitte Reimann can essentially only recite a few of Stalin's speeches. She also has a fable by Krylow in her repertoire.
Having finally landed in Asia, the first-person narrator is tortured with mammoth sessions in Zelinograd . Outside is the Kazakh steppe and Brigitte Reimann has to sit still at the table inside for five hours. In Koktschetau , northern Kazakhstan , the author starts talking to women. Similarities are found. One likes to read Balzac and Tolstoy . The population is of a more relaxed way of life, but when Brigitte Reimann complains of a headache, her state of health is put through its paces by a doctor who has been summoned. In general, the hospitality there proves to be difficult to compare. So the Kazakh host insists on accompanying the Germans a few thousand kilometers to Novosibirsk .
In Russia, the flight to the Far East usually has a stopover in Omsk . So also on this tour. In Novosibirsk on the mighty Ob , Brigitte Reimann then experienced her blue miracle in the Siberian Academy of Sciences . It is true that instead of the five-hour oriental speeches, pleasantly short toasts dominate, but the very special research directions are astonishing. The scholars ask themselves, for example: "In which units should occupational inclinations be measured?" Furthermore, reasons for fluctuation in companies are examined carefully. In general, the Russian youth like to study - the boys physics and the girls medicine. Brigitte Reimann raves about an attractive man, comrade Aganbegjan , corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences. And she describes life in the Novosibirsk cybernetic coffee club. There the scholars tell those who stayed at home about their travels abroad. In the academic town , the author could fall in love with the mathematical physicist Prof. Lyapunov. She regrets that he was not her math teacher. For his sake, she would have “even tried to find the damn logarithms.” On the last evening in Novosibirsk, Prof. Budker raised the German guests of little faith. Before Hitler came to power, Budker sees Germany as one of the cradles of natural science and tells those who leave that this destroyed high culture must be rebuilt in Germany by the Germans. Before the flight to Irkutsk , Brigitte Reimann sees her first Sputnik in the Siberian sky that is opening up . One of her Russian companions dismisses this as nothing special here. From Irkutsk we continue to Bratsk . During the construction of the power plant there, the manager could hardly save himself from young applicants from all over Russia. The man slept on a sack full of letters from Komsomol . Back then, the engineers in Bratsk would have planned twenty hours a day for the five-kilometer-long dam. The last stop on the trip is the iron ore town of Zheleznogorsk . For the construction manager, a 25-year-old senior engineer, the guests from the GDR brought an Artur Becker medal with them. The young woman "howls for joy".
The return flight from Irkutsk to Moscow - with the inevitable stopover in Omsk - takes seven hours. Brigitte Reimann is expected at home.
shape
Brigitte Reimann tells fresh from the liver. The stories are "not Mosfilm inventions". However, the text is not devoid of praise for the great Soviet Union. Russian scientists, for example, have established analogues of Siberian and South African geological conditions. So in Siberia there is success in digging for diamonds. In Siberia all elements - according to Mendeleev's table - would appear. The Soviet scholar is portrayed as "free from arrogance and know-it-all and from glory". However, the author tells with a wink. She soon takes back her show-off à la Baron Münchhausen with lively jokes: "... in this immeasurable country even the mosquitoes are too big." Many such annoying insect species would have been sent to hell by the resourceful Siberian scholars.
There is still no talk of the environmental damage caused by the cellulose factory on Baikal in 1965 (the factory was only under construction at the time), but the reader can feel how Brigitte Reimann's environmental conscience stirs during a short visit to the aluminum town of Schelechow .
It seems as if the edition used contains photos of some of the personalities discussed (p. 48: Prof. Barajew in Zelinograd, p. 79: Prof. Lyapunow in Novosibirsk and also p. 114: Chief Engineer Martschuk in Bratsk).
Brigitte Reimann was probably less concerned with Russian food culture. So she describes as pierogi as "with tender meat filled Teigkissen".
The book contains poetic passages. How does a Russian woman imagine peace? Brigitte Reimann replies that Nadja - that is the Russian woman we are talking about - "sees beehives under apple trees in a Russian village".
reception
- Wiesener jokes that Brigitte Reimann is experiencing the learned republic in Novosibirsk . Although the author did not publish some of the critical points in her notebook, the references to Russel , Einstein and Pauling in connection with the nuclear weapons tests carried out in the Soviet Union at the time are clear. With all of this, the title-giving color green signals hope.
literature
Text output
- First edition and used edition
- The green light of the steppes. Diary of a trip to Siberia. Photos by Thomas Billhardt. New Life Publishing House, Berlin 1965, 154 pages
Secondary literature
- Barbara Wiesener: About the pale princess who kidnapped a purple horse across the sky - the utopian in Brigitte Reimann's work. Univ. Diss. Dr. phil., Potsdam 2003, 236 pages
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wiesener, p. 133, 5. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 70, 15. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 78, 10. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 89, 12. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 137, 5. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 60, 11. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 92, 10th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 95, 4. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 115, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 100, 7th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 141, 3. Zvo
- ^ Wiesener, S, 140, 8th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 143, 1. Zvu
- ^ Wiesener, p. 135, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Wiesener, p. 137, above
- ^ Wiesener, p. 137, 5th Zvu