The real blue

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The story The Real Blue , published in 1967, is part of Anna Seghers' older work . In this she works up her time in Mexico .

Table of contents

Mexico during World War II: the potter Benito sells his wares at the Mercado in Mexico City . His customers buy his dishes because of the deep blue pattern.

Suddenly, however, he can no longer get the blue paint: It is war, and the goods of the German company that produced the blue paint are no longer allowed to be sold because of the trade embargo against Germany. Using a color other than blue is out of the question. Benito's druggist offers him other shades of blue, but his customers only want his blue and "not just any one that is only called blue because no other name is ready, they call it blue, but it doesn’t open your heart."

Benito's aunt Eusebia, an old herb woman and the authority figure in the family, tells him that his cousin Rubén, far from his village, discovered a rock on the dump of a silver mine that - roasted and ground - gives exactly the color he needs. So Benito sets off and travels through half of Mexico by train, bus and on foot to find the silver mine and cousin Rubén; it is a long and arduous journey.

The potter Benito repeatedly meets people on his journey who help him - with a handful of rice, a tortilla , a sip of water and good, but sometimes confusing, advice.

At the end of his arduous search, Benito finds cousin Rubén in the mountains not far from the city of San Cristóbal, where he had withdrawn to be safe from imitators. Rubén, who was initially dismissive, and his helper Lorenzo actually succeeded in extracting the blue, "the real blue", from the garbage in the silver mine. But Benito has to win the blue for himself from his relatives and help.

Only then, when all of his paint cans are full, can he start the journey home. His family waited there for months and in the meantime a daughter has been born.

expenditure

  • Anna Seghers: The real blue. A story from Mexico . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1967, 1st edition, 108 pages.
  • Anna Seghers: The real blue. A story from Mexico . Aufbau-Taschenbuchverlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-5152-2 (with an afterword by Sonja Hilzinger).

filming

The story was filmed in the GDR in 1986 under the direction of Christa Mühl with the actors Gojko Mitić , Henry Hübchen , Werner Dissel , Blanche Kommerell and others by the DFF .