The Brenner and the good Lord
Der Brenner und der liebe Gott (2009) is the seventh volume in the Brenner crime series by Wolf Haas .
The continuation of this series was a surprise because it was previously considered to be complete. The author had announced this before the publication of the sixth volume, Das ewige Leben (2003), and later confirmed it several times. In addition, in this volume he let the first-person narrator - next to the detective Brenner, the second main character and carrier of the special language of the series - die.
Main characters and plot
The author explains the continued existence of the first-person narrator in the first sentence. Instead of the usual now, something has happened again, it says here: My grandmother always said to me that if you die once, you have to kill the mouth extra. The first-person narrator lives on as a “mouth”. This is conclusive in so far as it was already laid out in this way: as someone whose urge to narrate simply cannot be killed, and as a narrator's voice in the sense of a nameless and disembodied being who does not intervene in the plot itself.
Haas stages the return of the actual main character differently: ex-policeman and ex-detective Simon Brenner. The former rough leg is barely recognizable in “Mr. Simon”, as he is discreetly referred to on the first pages by his wealthy bread-makers, the Viennese couple Kressdorf: he is a building contractor with headquarters in Munich, she is a gynecologist and head of an abortion clinic. Brenner is her private chauffeur - apparently "arrived", pacified and purified (albeit not without psychotropic drugs and ironic undertones) - and preferably with her two-year-old daughter Helena on the way between Vienna and Munich. With the kidnapping of Helena during a stopover on one of these trips, however, Brenner again lost his job and apartment and is thus completely the same again: the one who investigates himself and on his own initiative and thus both persecuted and persecuted.
The further course of the action can be briefly outlined as follows: The police initially suspect Brenner of the kidnapping, but Brenner suspect the boss of the anti-abortion opponents "Proleben". This in turn animates Brenner to pursue an act of abuse, in the course of which Brenner finally comes across a case of bribery. The focus of attention shifts, for Brenner as well as for the reader, away from kidnapping and towards other crimes that, as "basement corpses", lie in the past. Such a history exposure is a common practice for crime thrillers, and it is also common that the actors' efforts to hide these basement corpses lead to further criminal energy charging and discharging (there are no fewer than seven deaths , including six murders). The difference to most other crime novels lies in the understatement with which these deaths are portrayed, and in the fact that the causality between the initiating and the subsequent acts is cut, because the kidnapping proves to be the only act that is isolated and in the Basically happens randomly.
layout
Narrative technique and language
The originality of the Brenner crime thrillers is closely linked to the unmistakable voice of the narrator character. Nevertheless, this can be assigned to a category: that of the authorial first-person narrator. The Haasian has all the essential attributes in common with the omniscient narrator ; only this is far more subjective and more present. Typical for him are the digression ( now because I am saying ... ), the focus and direct addressing of the fictitious counterpart ( now watch out ... ), the correction ( in reality ... ), the anticipation ( in retrospect it was said ... ) and the Delay, e.g. B. when stretching the show or countdown, but also at the point when the reader only learns three pages after Brenner and quite casually who committed the act of abuse.
The narrator also fulfills a special function with regard to different varieties of irony . There is the benevolent and humorous (e.g. in the portrayal of Brenner) and the satirical - caricature (especially in the depiction of Kressdorf's henchmen), and finally there is the subtle, ironic exposure of a character - exemplified in the case of a benevolent one Thread puller of the caliber of bank director Reinhard. The author's procedure here consists in first sending his narrator in front of him and giving him plenty of space to portray the sympathetic outside of the bank director, only to put him on a short leash later when it comes to looking behind his facade so that the work - or the pleasure - of recognition is largely left to the reader.
The most striking characteristic of the narrator remains his language. Their closeness to the spoken language , combined with the suggestion of a listening addressee, has led literary critics again to use terms such as regulars' table speeches and pub squadrons for this volume . However, the justification of these terms was also questioned: The language developed by the author is not a counter parlando , but an absolute art idiom that is highly recognizable and so singular that no other term than Haasisch is suitable for it. Particularly certain “Haasische” phrases ( but interesting, quasi, auxiliary expression, now watch out , etc.), Austriasisms , ellipses and repetitions ensure that they are recognizable .
The technique of varying repetition contributes significantly to the musicality of the text - a principle to which the author expressly acknowledges. The repetition is present as a design element in the mostly laconic dialogues ( "echo" ) as well as in the narrative speech. An often cited example is a sentence from the first chapter that sums up the close bond between Brenner and Helena: And believe it or not, the first word from the Kressdorf child is not “Mama”, the first word is not “Papa ", First word" Fara ". What is noticeable here - in addition to the "Haasische" introductory phrase, the elliptical sentence structure and the assonance of the a - above all is the "unnecessary" repetition of the first word three times .
The varying repetition is also used in structuring the action over time. In the course of the investigation, which lasted more than 100 hours and was largely told chronologically, every new event is related to the time of the kidnapping. One or more of the previous events are often repeated and the manner in which reference is made to different circumstances surrounding the abduction is varied. B. means: Ninety-six hours after the distiller has thought too long which chocolate to use ...
Furthermore, the varying repetition is a central feature of the plot construction: More than half a dozen elements recur in a modified form in the course of the novel. Cell phones are left lying around and used by others twice; there are soon two girls that Brenner is looking for; two women he hits on; two envelopes with money to reward or bribe him; two offers to be reinstated as a driver; twice he jumps death off the shovel, and twice appears to him in the same place, a cesspool, the "dear God": first only acoustically and at the edge of the pit, then - in a borderline experience - "bodily", as Brenner literally and figuratively stuck up over the neck in the pit's contents.
Motives and Myths
The title "Dear God" is one of the constituent elements in the central network of motifs of unborn, born and borrowed (read kidnapped) life, of motherhood and fatherhood. Among the mothers there are late and early, legal and illegal; and ironically, of all people, the woman who professionally prevents the motherhood of others is beaten by not being able to realize her own for a long time until an extramarital act leads to Helena's conception. The variations of fatherhood are even more numerous. There is the surrogate father, the duplicate and competing fathers, the knowledgeable and unknowing, the wanted and the unwanted, and mostly with effects of repetition and variation. This is probably most amusing with two of the would-be-not-fathers - amusing because Haas lets both fail, one of them even twice and three times: the young Brenner, whose childhood sweetheart initially takes money from him for an abortion (which makes them jealous), then collected alimony for two more years, only to finally tell him after their marriage that the real father was someone else (and by the way no longer to be prosecuted because he had a fatal accident). Haas lets Brenner relate this episode himself, or, to put it more precisely: develop it in a pointed manner in conversation with the doctor. It is most effective where there is a compassionate, motherly element. So you are a father? Brenner only laconic cryptic Been says - and only a few lines of the whole relationship is revealed later. Haas, however, is rarely concerned with the narrative effect alone. B. also about the consistency of his figure: As a substitute father, Brenner passed with flying colors. But father? Even the producer would be too sentimental. He must or should remain the "Lonely Wolf".
Haas would not have named the two-year-old Helena if he had not built bridges to the classic myth in addition to the act of kidnapping . In both cases, the abduction is followed by acts of violence that are disproportionate to the offending act (in terms of both extent and causation); the kidnapping lasted 100 hours, the Trojan War 10 years; Both Helenas are conceived out of wedlock, the Greek by Zeus , the Austrian by an enemy friend from the father's business world (whether knowingly and approved, whether artificial or natural, remains open); the classic Helena is the ideal image of a beautiful woman, the Kressdorfsche is the model of a nice child .
In every Brenner crime thriller, Haas tells such episodes from the turbulent youth of his hero, and in each there is a melody that pursues him and wants to "say something" to him. Often both are related, i. H. It's about a melody that Brenner knows from his youth, and that's how it is here too. The difference, however, is that this time it is not his unconscious that is playing the melody to Brenner, but rather the ringtone of his cell phone. It is a song by Jimi Hendrix , the musical icon from Brenner's Sturm und Drang era, which says: Castles made of sand fall into the sea eventually . - As usual with Haas, this line has a leitmotif . There is a clear reference to the rise and fall of a building contractor, to one who builds palaces out of sand and on sand. The sea or water refers to the fatal cesspool in which he buries his dreams or corpses. The palaces in turn (or castles; both levels of meaning, glamor and isolation, fit) are taken up again at another point where the Büchner quote Peace to the huts, war to the palaces! It is parodistically reversed when Brenner climbs into so-called hut anger , which culminates in the idea that Büchner would say today: War on the huts! This aims at the central place of action - in the geographical as well as figurative sense - the Kitzbühel alpine hut of the building contractor, the construction of which marks the beginning of his hubris and which represents all those, behind whose ostentatious and camouflaged facade, the things that make the actual crime of this Detectives represent ausgeschnapst be.
Book editions
- The Brenner and the good Lord . Novel. Hoffmann and Campe , Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-455-40189-9 .
- The Brenner and the good Lord . Novel. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag , Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-423-21282-3 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Daniela Strigl: A Suada that changes the world, faz.net, September 25, 2009 Wolf Haas: The Brenner and the Dear God - A Suada that changes the world
- ↑ Nicole Rodriguez: ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Schlitzohriges pleasure ), hr-online, August 30, 2009
- ^ Der Büchermarkt, Deutschlandfunk, October 23, 2009
- ↑ Wolf Haas: ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: “Der Brenner und der liebe Gott” ), ARD, October 16, 2009