The prison doctor or the fatherless
The prison doctor or The Fatherless is a novel in four parts by Ernst Weiß , which was published in 1934 by Julius Kittels Nachf. In Mährisch-Ostrau . After the war , the factory was relocated to Claassen in Hamburg in 1969.
Not only the brothers Konrad and Rudolf D. became fatherless due to the First World War . The gambling and cocaine addicts at Chiffons Casino are also uprooted .
time and place
The novel is set in 1918 and 1926 in the large East German city of B. and then in Prague. B. could mean Breslau .
action
- 1
In 1926 Manfred von G. and Vera married. For years the police have tolerated the drug trade of the casino owner Manfred, known as Chiffon. Because chiffon is a proven police spy. In October 1923, for example, after the robbery and murder of the realtor and war speculator Jakob Zollikofer, known as Rosenfinger, Chiffon had informed the police that Rudolf D. was suspected of the murder. In November 1918 Chiffon met Rudolf in the victim's house. Chiffon's hatred of Rudolf goes back that far. Chiffon's wife Vera still loves Rudolf.
Rudolf delivers chiffon. During the police operation to arrest the denounced person , Rudolf shoots the policeman Max Birkholz and injures a second policeman. Rudolf manages to escape because Vera is in the line of fire between the refugee and the police officer Steffie. After all, Vera saves the life of the second policeman. Steffie was Rudolf's Jiu-Jitsu teacher.
The prison doctor Dr. Konrad D. loves his brother Rudolf beyond measure. The book can be read directly as an example of unrequited brotherly love. Konrad tries everything humanly possible to help Rudolf. The prison director Peter von Ohr advises his subordinate to take the maiden name of his wife Flossie for such a brother and to leave the city temporarily. Konrad stays.
Rudolf reappears in Chiffon's casino at night and is not squeamish with the owner. Vera, who suspects a robbery and does not know that the intruder is the lover, alerts the police. Rudolf ends up in prison. The city of B. has become too hot a place for Chiffon, because the police headquarters have changed personnel. At this sweep, Chiffon's patron Steffie fell out of favor. Chiffon flees abroad with Vera.
- 2
Flashback: On November 17, 1918, six days after the armistice , Lieutenant Ludwig D., the returning father of Rudolf and Konrad, was ambushed by a 9-year-old Belgian girl while marching through a village. Regimental comrade Captain Peter von Ohr stands by the dishonorable fallen in his last minutes, has him buried in Belgian soil and brings Konrad the news of his death after his own return. Von Ohr becomes prison director in B. Konrad, as the new head of the family, is forced to change saddles. He becomes a doctor and receives the position of doctor in v. Ohr's prison. Konrad takes a position of trust. The poorly paid prison doctor and court expert invested most of his working time in difficult forensic reports.
- 3
When Rudolf was arrested at Chiffon on June 17, 1926 at four o'clock in the morning and taken to the remand and penal prison B., it did not take long before director v. Ohr his demand: Konrad, finally isolated from society by his brother, has become unbearable as a medical officer in his position in B. and must absolutely leave the city. Konrad stays again. Rudolf is addicted to cocaine and has a prison rehab make. Konrad's wife Flossie wants her husband to break away from their brother, this cunning cop killer. Konrad, undeterred - downright narrow-minded - helps Rudolf survive the rehab and parries the persistent investigating judge's suggestive questions about his imprisoned brother with flying colors. For Konrad, Rudolf is not a murderer. The fatal shot at the policeman occurred in " hallucinatory confusion" under cocaine. Flossie can no longer stand the blind brotherly love of her husband and leaves the house with her little daughter Ottegebe. Konrad, the doctor who was very busy with his brother, the husband left alone, looked in vain for his wife by phone.
- 4th
Flossie and the child fled to Konrad's mother Lucie's sanatorium . Ottegebe's grandmother, increasingly depressed after the death of her husband Ludwig , has been treated there for three years. For Lucie, who absolutely loves her son Rudolf, the lively granddaughter Ottegebe proves to be the most effective medicine against depression. The mother's health is improving.
Steffie is arrested. He considers the murder of Rosenfinger to be insignificant: hundreds of thousands died before Verdun , he recalls. The police are on the trail of Chiffon. He stayed in Prague with Vera and was arrested after trying to sell jewelry.
The happy ending: Flossie, who is pregnant for the second time, returns to Konrad as a faithfully loving woman. The couple want to take care of Rudolf, who is proven not to have murdered Rosenfinger. One hopes for a mild verdict. At the end of the novel, it is forgotten that Rudolf murdered a police officer after all, while under cocaine.
shape
Although a capital murder has to be solved from the first page of the novel, this thread is dropped. At the end of the novel it is only hinted that the police officer Steffie murdered the broker Rosenfinger and that Chiffon was guilty of complicity; most likely was even a witness. It is not about suspects, victims or murderers. Rather, the novel is the broad-based story of the D family. In addition, the cunning deceptions of the crook couple Chiffon and Vera are described.
reception
- Hesse recognizes in the work "a very dense, careful fabric of naturalistic individual descriptions".
- Engel regrets the relapse of the author "into the role of the omniscient narrator" after a confident first-person narrator in Boëtius von Orlamünde and also in Georg Letham had entertained the spoiled reader at a higher level.
- Engel sees two narrative highlights light up from the novel: the description of Rudolf's " drug rehab treatment" and "the gradual recovery of the mentally ill mother" Lucie.
- Weinzierl hits the bull's eye in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 22, 1982: "A world of pushers and criminals" is presented in this "thoroughly political novel, which makes social development visible in private fate, a mixture of criminal history and family drama. that brought Hitler to power ".
- Wendler also aptly sums up: "Here [in the novel] the narrator hides behind long, sprawling speeches and thoughts by the various people. The main character himself [Dr. Konrad D.] has the least say."
literature
source
- Ernst Weiß: The prison doctor or the fatherless. Novel . 364 pages. With an afterword by Peter Engel (pp. 361–364). Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 794 (1st edition, 1982), ISBN 978-3-518-37294-4
Secondary literature
- Wolfgang Wendler: The philosophy of weightlessness . Pp. 20-32. In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Ernst Weiß . Issue 76 of the magazine Text + Criticism. Munich, October 1982. 88 pages, ISBN 3-88377-117-1
- Margarita Pazi : Ernst Weiss. Fate and Work of a Jewish Central European Author in the First Half of the 20th Century . Pp. 86-91. Vol. 14 of the series of Würzburger Hochschulschriften on modern German literary history, Ed. Anneliese Kuchinke-Bach. Frankfurt am Main 1993, 143 pages, ISBN 3-631-45475-9
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . S. 658. Stuttgart 2004. 698 pages, ISBN 3-520-83704-8
Web links
- The text at Gutenberg-DE