The cemetery in Prague

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The cemetery in Prague (OT: Il cimitero di Praga ) is the sixth novel by Umberto Eco . It was published in 2010, the German translation by Burkhart Kroeber was published by Carl Hanser Verlag in October 2011 .

The title The Cemetery in Prague refers to the legend that the centuries-old Jewish cemetery in Prague has always been a popular meeting place for spies and agents who supposedly agreed to plans to rule the world there. Eco's novel is about the emergence and spread of conspiracy theories and the effectiveness of what is merely alleged against the background of the gullibility of people in the 19th century and later.

action

The protagonist, from whose point of view the plot is mainly depicted, is the fictional Simon Simonini , born in Turin in 1830 : a lawyer who begins his career by forging wills . His pertinent talent brings him into contact with various secret services, which lead him to the scenes of Italian and French politics in the 19th century and make them the secret masterminds.

From Turin, Simonini worked alongside Alexandre Dumas and in the wake of the irregulars Giuseppe Garibaldi to Sicily, later to Munich and Paris, where he lived for the longest time. As a kind of “ Forrest Gump of the 19th century”, Simonini experiences central events of his time: The Jewish captain Dreyfus supposedly sells secret papers to the German embassy (Dreyfus affair); Piedmontese, French and Prussian secret services are making even more secret plans; Freemasons , Jesuits and revolutionaries become active as conspirators in Simonini's documents , and in the end the Protocols of the Elders of Zion emerge for the first time , a forged “document” for the “Jewish world conspiracy”, for which Simonini provides decisive models.

The plot ends with a plan to bomb the Paris subway, which is under construction, which Simonini intends to carry out himself: an act that is supposed to make him “young again in one fell swoop”, but which he will probably die if carried out. This can be concluded from the fact that the novel ends with the announcement of this plan, after Simonini, drunk and euphoric, ignores the last instructions of his bomb maker. Eco's German translator, Burkhart Kroeber, gives Simonini's “lifetime” in the appendix to the book as “1830–1898”.

Narrative attitude

The author has assigned the task of narrating the plot to three different roles:

  • on Simon Simonini as a first-person narrator who keeps a diary,
  • on the Abbé Dalla Piccola, who supplements and continues Simonini's contributions and sometimes enters into a kind of written dialogue with Simonini, as well as
  • an anonymous narrator who comments and supplements the diary entries on a meta level.

The background of the narrative technique is Simonini's attempt to overcome an amnesia that has wiped out much of his memory. In doing so, he follows the recommendation of the young neurologist "Doktor Froïde" (i.e. Sigmund Freuds ), whom he met in Paris, to regain his memory by writing down what he remembers. It turns out that the Abbé, whom, strangely enough, he never meets in person, constantly gets in his way. Simonini suspected early on that Dalla Piccola could be a second identity of himself, that he therefore had a dissociative identity disorder . This suspicion is finally confirmed shortly before the end of the novel, and after Simonini has recognized his identity with the Abbé, he no longer appears as the narrator. Simonini's last insight consists in the words: "[I] I'm not gaga already."

Simonini's personality

In fact, at the end of the novel, Simon Simonini by no means got over the profound personality disorder that has characterized him all his life.

The main influence on the protagonist was the dominant grandfather on his father's side. This supporter of the Ancien Régime , who still wore culottes in the 19th century , hates all Jews; He blames them for all processes that he judges negatively. Grandfather transfers this anti-Semitism to grandson. To protect him from “false influences”, he ensures that Simon receives individual lessons from Jesuits.

Simon's father, whose influence on the upbringing of his son is limited, for his part despises the Jesuits and is an ardent supporter of the national unity of Italy, for which he fights and dies. The grandfather, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing to do with the emerging nationalism , especially since in his house, not only because of Simon's mother, a native of Savoy , the predominant language is French, which makes it difficult for the boy to choose one of two nations (Italian or French) confess. Later it was difficult for him to see “compatriots” in the Sicilians whom he visited on his first mission on behalf of the Piedmontese secret service and whose dialect he had difficulty understanding.

The upbringing of his grandfather to hate, the uptightness of his private tutors and the isolation of his peers make Simon an eccentric, who cannot get really warm with his fellow men, who hates women and makes a virtue out of this need. As a substitute for sexuality, he eats which he celebrates with relish; Recipes from Italian and French haute cuisine are repeatedly woven into his stories. According to his self-reflection at the beginning of the novel, Simonini hates and despises almost all of his fellow men, including Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons, Germans, French and Italians, whom he describes in stereotypical images - some of which were common in the 19th century .

As an adult, Simonini believes that he is above things and above the law, but ultimately becomes a victim of his uptightness and amoralism: He is responsible for several murders and can therefore be blackmailed, and he cannot cope with the trauma of having one mentally disturbed, sexually unrestrained "half-Jewish" seduced during a black mass . That he, the fanatical Jew hater, could have fathered a Jew on this occasion drives Simonini crazy.

Fiction and reality

In Eco's novel, most of the claims that characters make are based on unprovable prejudices and the unchecked adoption of rumors. Many of the characters have been proven to have actually lived under the names used in the novel. The main character, Simon Simonini, probably never existed. The author got the idea for the naming through a reference to a warning by a "Captain Simonini", of which Abbé Barruel , a conspiracy theorist , writes in his main work, which is quoted in Eco's novel. Umberto Eco described the events mentioned in the novel, which made headlines in the 19th century, realistically.

Themes and motifs from Eco's novels

Eco has dealt with Captain Simonini, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other people and motifs before, namely in his novel The Foucault Pendulum in chapters 91-96. However, there he classifies the protocols in his Templar conspiracy. In The Cemetery in Prague the story is rolled out again, but with a significantly different twist.

reception

The novel met with a divided response:

In Die Welt , the reviewer praised Eco's technique of generating tension (at this he was "just as good as any dime-book author ") and the subtle joke with which he incorporated his own post-structuralist thesis of the author's death into the novel. In spite of all the entertainment, he is ultimately concerned with "a highly moral purpose: he is interested in education."

The chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni , praised the "wonderful way" in which Eco had recorded the story of the forging of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but feared that the well-known anti-Semitic lies could be believed by inexperienced readers. The Italian historian Anna Foa made similar accusations in the Osservatore Romano .

The reviewer of the taz , on the other hand, found the anti-Semitism allegations absurd, since Simonini's anti-Semitic tirades were all too contradictory and very clearly reflections of himself; the problem lies rather in the fact that Eco could not decide whether he wanted to provide a psychogram of the anti-Semitic forger or an analysis of the society in which such forgeries were believed. As an independent novel, The Cemetery in Prague is “hard to digest”, even if it is of interest in the history of the work in the further development of topics since the name of the rose and Foucault's pendulum .

Gustav Seibt found in the Süddeutsche Zeitung that the novel was unable to convince as literature "because its best punchlines come from the sources ".

Editions

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Stein: Eco's myth of the Jewish world conspiracy . " The world ". October 10, 2011
  2. ↑ Review: The Cemetery in Prague. The new novel by Umberto Eco ( Memento of August 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) . In: Radio Bayen 2, October 4, 2011.
  3. ↑ Hannes Stein: Eco's myth of the Jewish world conspiracy . In: Die Welt from October 10, 2011 ( online , accessed July 22, 2012).
  4. ↑ quoted from Christoph Gutknecht: "The cemetery in Prague". World career of a fake . In: Jüdische Allgemeine, October 27, 2011. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
  5. ↑ quoted in: Paul Badde: Umberto Eco in the line of fire . In: Die Welt vom November 5, 2011. Retrieved October 15, 2011.
  6. ↑ Christiane Pöhlmann: With educational intent . In: taz of October 22, 2011 online , accessed on July 22, 2012.
  7. ^ Gustav Seibt : "The cemetery in Prague" by Umberto Eco . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 7, 2011. Accessed October 15, 2011.