The gunman
The gunman is a novella by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig .
It was first published in 1922 in the Neue Freie Presse newspaper and a little later appeared as a book in the collection of novels Amok: Novellas of a Passion . Like several other works by Zweig, who was fascinated by the work of Sigmund Freud at the time , Der Amokläufer also has a strong psychological background: The story is about an extreme obsession that leads the hero to sacrifice his professional and private life to this passion, and the eventually drives him to suicide .
The name of the novella is the - at that time still little known - term amok , which originally comes from the Indonesian culture and describes a state of intoxication in which the person concerned attacks the enemy in a supposedly blind rage and tries indiscriminately, regardless of danger, kill him and anyone standing in the way.
Since Stefan Zweig was put on the list of books to be burned , many copies of the novella were destroyed in book burns .
action
In the framework of the storyline, the nameless first-person narrator travels from Indonesia to Europe on the ocean liner Oceania in 1912 . During a nocturnal walk on the deck, he meets a man who looks visibly confused and afraid and who avoids any company on the ship. One night later the narrator meets this man again on deck. Embarrassed at first, he confides in him and tells his story - the actual plot of the novella:
He, a doctor from Leipzig , went on a permanent business trip to Indonesia seven years ago to work as a doctor in a small and remote place. After a certain time, the wasteland depresses him more and more; he feels there “like the spider in the web has been motionless for months”. One day a white woman unexpectedly appears at his place - "the first white woman in years" - who from then on fascinates him with her haughty, cool manner - something he could never experience with the awesome and humble local women. In the course of the conversation it turns out that the woman - an Englishwoman and wife of a Dutch wholesale merchant - wants him to have a discreet abortion . She is willing to pay a very large sum of money for it. But the doctor, unexpectedly captivated by a sudden passion, demands that the woman spend a night of love instead of the money, whereupon she leaves the house, visibly offended. But his obsession overcomes the doctor even more: Similar to an insane gunman, he follows the woman to her house, doing several stupid things that only deter the woman from getting involved with him.
Since she doesn't want her pregnancy to be made public, she finally confides in a local healer. The operation fails and the woman dies in agony. In her agony, she swears the doctor to do everything possible so that neither her husband nor anyone else learns of the true cause of death. He is now obsessed with fulfilling the woman's last wish: he persuades the responsible medical officer to issue a false death certificate against a promise to leave Indonesia immediately and permanently. When the husband of the dead wants to transfer them to Europe with the Oceania , the doctor - sacrificing his career and pension - leaves Indonesia on the same ship for Europe. At all costs he wants to prevent further investigations into the cause of death of the woman. On board the ship, he hides from all the other passengers so as not to run into the widower and therefore only leaves his cabin at night.
When the first-person narrator offers the doctor his help, the doctor strictly refuses the offer, disappears and has not been seen since. Only on arrival in Naples does the narrator learn from the local newspapers of a "strange accident" that occurred while the ship was being unloaded at night: while carrying out the lead coffin with the remains of the dead, the doctor rushed from the high shelf onto one Ropes attached the coffin and dragged it down with it. Neither the “gunman” could be rescued nor the coffin recovered.
Film adaptations
- 1927: Amok - Soviet Union - silent film
- 1934: Amok - France
- 1944: Amok - Mexico - with María Félix
- 1993: Amok - France / Portugal , Germany - with Fanny Ardant
radio play
- 2006: The gunman . Deutschlandradio Kultur (52:58 minutes, director: Ulrike Brinkmann, with Michael König , Falk Rockstroh , Hans Teuscher )
Web links
- Digitized version of the first edition of Der Amokläufer . In: Neue Freie Presse , June 4, 1922, pp. 31–40
- The gunman in the Gutenberg-DE project