The questionnaire

The questionnaire is a novel by Ernst von Salomon , published in 1951 by Rowohlt Verlag , in the form of an autobiography .

content

Ernst of Salomon by the American military government after the Second World War in the automatic arrest had taken the questionnaire used (i. E., The survey form) of the military government to Entnazifizierung as a scaffold of this novel.
The questions asked in the survey form about personal history, political attitudes, membership in organizations, etc., he answered meticulously and in great detail. Salomon describes his time as a cadet , the battles in the Baltic States, in which he participated as a Freikorpsmann , his involvement in the murder of Walther Rathenau in 1922 and the subsequent imprisonment, his literary work, his experiences in France in the 1930s and in National Socialist Germany as well as the end of the war that he had experienced together with his Jewish friend Ille in Upper Bavaria; the subsequent internment in an American camp, in which Solomon was allegedly tortured , which later turned out to be untrue, is depicted drastically . The result was, on the one hand, an autobiography that also examined its contemporary historical background in minute detail, but also a work that reduced the attempt at a bureaucratic collective categorization of people to absurdity.

reception

The novel attracted a lot of attention and in the 1950s and 1960s, not only in Germany, had very large editions, which made it a bestseller of its time. For a time it was considered one of the most successful new publications in post-war literature. Editions of it also appeared in America, England, Canada, France, Italy and Spain.

The novel was understood not only as an exploration of the conscience and biography of an individual, but also as a document of the history of the first half of the 20th century, as an exemplary representation of the individual surrender to historical and political powers in general. The fact that Salomon offsets the injustice he suffered in American internment against the mass crimes of the National Socialists, which he dealt with without empathy and with cynical coldness, was sharply criticized.

expenditure

Ernst von Salomon: The questionnaire . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1951. (first edition), many other editions. Most recently as a paperback edition Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, ISBN 3-499-10419-9 , 2013 as an e-book under ISBN 978-3-644-02371-0 .

literature

Hermann Graml : An involuntary helper in denazification. Ernst von Salomon and his “questionnaire”. In Johannes Hürter , Jürgen Zarusky : Epic contemporary history - novels of the 20th century in a contemporary historical perspective. 10 essays for the 100th volume. 100th volume of the series of quarterly books for contemporary history , Oldenbourg, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-486-59235-1 .
Ernst von Salomon - The Questionnaire . In Torben Fischer, Matthias N. Lorenz (Ed.): Lexicon of "Coping with the Past" in Germany. The history of debates and discourse under National Socialism after 1945 . Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-773-8 . P. 113 ff.
Hans Sarkowicz ; Alf Mentzer: Writer under National Socialism. A lexicon. Insel, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-458-17504-9 . P. 512 ff.

Web links

The questionnaire in the German National Library

Individual evidence

↑ The questionnaire. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . dtv. Munich 1986, Vol. 5, p. 3646.

[1] The questionnaire. In: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . dtv. Munich 1986, Vol. 5, p. 3646.