That is not possible with us
That is not possible with us is the German title of the satirical political novel It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis . The original was published in 1935, the German translation by Hans Meisel as the first edition in Amsterdam in 1936, after the war in Leipzig and Weimar in 1984 and Berlin in 2017.
Summary
The novel describes the rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a politician who defeated Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) and was elected President of the United States after fueling fears and drastic economic and social reforms, as well as a return to patriotism and "traditional." “Values had promised. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government and establishes a plutocratic or totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, the Minute Men . The focus of the plot is the resistance of the journalist Doremus Jessup against the new regime and his struggle as part of a liberal rebellion. Contemporary reviewers stressed the parallels with Huey Long , who was preparing to run for the 1936 US presidential election , when he was murdered in 1935 just before the novel was published.
Adaptations
Together with John C. Moffitt , Lewis created a stage version that premiered on October 27, 1936 and, supported by the Federal Theater Project , was performed simultaneously in 21 theaters. A new version by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in September 2016 .
In Germany, the piece had its world premiere on September 20, 2017 in the Kammerspiele of the Deutsches Theater (Berlin) . Director Christopher Rüping created his own stage version together with the dramaturge John von Düffel .
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) had already secured the film rights in late 1935 and Sidney Howard completed the script in early 1936 , but after long delays announced in 1939 that the film would not be produced.
ABC aired Shadow on the Land in 1968 , which was intended as a pilot for a television series based on the novel. A science fiction version of the plot is the 1983 miniseries V - The Extraterrestrial Visitors Are Coming .
Web links
- Willi Winkler: Shameless joy. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. 19th May 2017 .
- Gabriele von Arnim: Report from inside fascism. Deutschlandfunk, May 4, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alexander Nazaryan: Getting Close to Fascism with Sinclair Lewis's “It Can't Happen Here” . In: The New Yorker . October 19, 2016 (English, newyorker.com [accessed October 5, 2018]).
- ↑ Dirk Pilz: Who will stop the Führer? "It can't happen here" at the Deutsches Theater. In: Berliner Zeitung. September 21, 2017, accessed October 5, 2018 .
- ↑ Film Company Criticized for Dropping "it Can not Happen Here". In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency. July 6, 1939, accessed October 5, 2018 .
- ^ Shadow on the Land. In: The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. April 4, 2017, accessed October 5, 2018 .