The artificial silk girl

This article is about the novel. For the film, see Das Kunstseidene Mädchen (film) .

Book burning memorial on Bonn's market square

Memorial plaque for Irmgard Keun in Berlin

The artificial silk girl is a time novel by Irmgard Keun , published in Berlin in 1932. The protagonist Doris writes about how she first survived in her hometown and then in Berlin.

action

At the beginning of the Weimar Republic - from the end of summer 1931 to spring 1932 - the novel is set initially in a medium-sized city and then in Berlin. One suffers from the emergency ordinance .

A phase in the life of the eighteen-year-old protagonist (Doris) is told in the form of a continuous, undated diary. Coming from a small family, she dreams of a life as a celebrity. To be able to afford a better lifestyle, she goes out with wealthier men. She loses her unpopular work as a shorthand typist in a town in the Rhineland because she rejects her boss's sexual advances. Through the mediation of her mother, who works as a cloakroom attendant at the theater, she becomes an extra. In order to be recognized by the drama students, she invents an affair with the theater director, which threatens to be exposed soon. In this situation, she "borrows" an expensive fur coat from the cloakroom, but ultimately does not bring it back. Because she fears the police, she then flees to Berlin.

In Berlin she got back on her feet financially through various male acquaintances, but also repeatedly lost her property and her accommodation. She befriends a blind neighbor who is soon given to the home by his wife. Finally, when she was completely penniless, she met the employee Ernst, who took her home and allowed her to live with him without expecting anything in return. He was abandoned by his wife, whom he still mourns. Little by little, Doris begins to run the household and finally a relationship develops between the two of them. When Doris realizes that Ernst cannot forget his ex-wife, she locates her and causes her to return. It is clear to her that the ex-wife is only going back to seriousness for material reasons. Still, Doris thinks he'll be happier than with her. At the end of the novel she is again destitute and homeless and finally decides to move in with the peddler Karl, who lives in a gazebo. This brings her back to an earlier offer that she rejected because she did not want to live in poor conditions.

Translations

The novel was translated into Danish, English, French, Russian, Hungarian in 1933, into Polish in 1934, and into Spanish in 1965. Translations are also available in nine other languages. The first Hebrew translation appeared in October 2013.

Dramatizations

Stage versions

• The artificial silk girl . Director: Kai Wessel , actress: Pheline Roggan , Hamburger Kammerspiele 2012.
• The artificial silk girl . Book: Gottfried Greiffenhagen / Hardy Halama . Director: Hardy Halama. Actress: Birgit Pelz. Municipal stage Lahnstein , 2012. (Rhein-Zeitung)
• The artificial silk girl . Script: Gottfried Greiffenhagen, director: Tobias Materna, actress: Birte Schrein , Theater Bonn 2002, revival 2007.
• The artificial silk girl . A review by Charles Lang. Bremen, 1973.
• The artificial silk girl . Book: Gottfried Greiffenhagen. Director: Volker Kühn , actress: Katherina Lange . Renaissance Theater Berlin , since 2003.
• The artificial silk girl . Book: Gottfried Greiffenhagen. Direction: Götz van Ooyen , Nele Ziebarth, actress: Nele Ziebarth. Braunschweig State Theater, since 2005.
• The artificial silk girl . First arrangement as a solo piece. By Michaela Hanser and Peter Meinhardt . Berlin and Hanover, 1988.

filming

• The artificial silk girl . Director: Julien Duvivier , Script: Robert Adolf Stemmle , René Barjavel , Julien Duvivier, Actors: Giulietta Masina , Gert Fröbe , Gustav Knuth , Rudolf Platte , Agnes Fink , Hannes Messemer , Ingrid van Bergen , Friedrich Schoenfelder , Ernst Schröder , Jan Hendriks , Joachim Hansen . Berlin, 1959.

Dubbing

• The artificial silk girl. Strong voices. Brigitte audio book edition, read by Fritzi Haberlandt , 2007, ISBN 978-3-89830-968-4 .

literature

source

• Irmgard Keun: The artificial silk girl . Novel. 5th edition. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag , Munich 1995, ISBN 3-423-11033-3 (first paperback edition 1989).

First edition

• Irmgard Keun: The artificial silk girl . Novel. Deutsche Verlags-Aktiengesellschaft Universitas, Berlin 1932.

expenditure

• Irmgard Keun: The artificial silk girl . Edition with materials (selected by Jörg Ulrich Meyer-Bothling). Klett Schulbuch-Verlag, Leipzig / Stuttgart / Düsseldorf 2005, ISBN 3-12-351141-3 (is quoted by Margret Möckel in the explanations for the work (" King's Explanations ") (Bange, Hollfeld 2006)).

Secondary literature

• Gabriele Kreis: What you believe is there . The life of Irmgard Keun. Arche, Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7160-2120-2 , p. 88-93 .
• Ingo Leiß, Hermann Stadler: Weimar Republic 1918–1933 . In: German literary history . tape 9 . dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-03349-5 , p. 138-142 .
• Gero von Wilpert: Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A-Z . Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 .
• Gesche Blume: Irmgard Keun. Writing in a game with modernity . In: Dorothee Kimmich, Walter Schmitz, Detlev Schöttker, Marek Zybura (eds.): Work on modern German literature . tape 23 . Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-937672-38-9 , pp. 91–95, 104–116 (also dissertation at the Technical University of Dresden 2004).
• Margret Möckel: Irmgard Keun: The artificial silk girl . In: King's Explanations and Materials . 3. Edition. tape 447 . Bange , Hollfeld 2006, ISBN 3-8044-1834-1 .
• Doris Rosenstein: Irmgard Keun. The narrative work of the thirties. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1991, ISBN 3-631-42565-1 .
• Liane Schüller: On the seriousness of distraction . Writing women at the end of the Weimar Republic: Marieluise Fleißer , Irmgard Keun and Gabriele Tergit . Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89528-506-4 (also dissertation at the University of Duisburg-Essen 2004).
• Gudrun Raff: Scenes of a game of deception: on Irmgard Keun's literary techniques of the seriousness of distraction . ( Dissertation at the University of Hamburg 1999).

Individual evidence

1. ^ District p. 294.
2. ↑ Avner Shapira: Berlin thrall: The German author Whose novel are back in vogue . In: Haaretz . October 22, 2013 (accessed October 30, 2013).
3. ↑ hamburger-kammerspiele.de: The artificial silk girl. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 18, 2012 ; accessed on June 26, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Monika Nellissen: Realistic Dreamer. www.welt.de, October 8, 2011, accessed June 26, 2018 . 
5. ↑  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )
6. ^ "Artificial silk girl" in Lahnstein: Doris experiences a rollercoaster of emotions. ( Memento from September 13, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
7. ^ Theater Bonn: The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun (accessed on June 6, 2014)
8. ↑ ^{a b} Kreis p. 295.
9. ↑ renaissance-theater.de Note on the performance of Das kunstseidene Mädchen . Book: Gottfried Greiffenhagen. Director: Volker Kühn