The moon went down
The moon went down (English original title: The Moon Is Down ) is a 1942 novel by the American writer and later Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck . He wrote the work at the beginning of the Second World War , which he experienced as a reporter and war correspondent. The novel deals with the military occupation of a small town in Northern Europe by the army of an unnamed state. Unmistakably, however, Steinbeck used the events surrounding the occupation of Norway by the German Wehrmacht in 1940 as a template.
The book was published in 1943 in a translation by Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten in Switzerland and had its eighth edition in 1944. During the war, translations were still being printed and distributed underground in several Nazi-occupied countries. In the Soviet Union, The Moon went under was the most widely read work in American literature at the time. After the war, King Haakon VII of Norway awarded Steinbeck a medal for the book.
Content and effect
A small town on the coast is occupied by a battalion of soldiers from an unnamed power. The population is surprised, the mayor is waiting, but does not want to cooperate with the occupiers. The occupiers are generally nice people who only do what they are told. Your job is to get as much coal out of the mines as possible. When an officer is killed by a miner, the occupying power wants to force the mayor to sentence him to death, which the mayor refuses. Slowly the resistance begins to form, people are waking up. Via two fishermen who flee, the mayor asks the Allies to help them help themselves: simple weapons that anyone can use. Life is slowly turning into hell for the occupiers: A simple victory turns into a tough struggle for survival.
The mayor is arrested as a hostage for the good behavior of the population. He knows he has to die because his people cannot be oppressed.
people
- Mayor order
- Doctor Winter - a friend of the Order
- Joseph - servant order
- Annie - cook of the order
- Madame (Sarah) - Mrs Order
- Alex Morran - miner, kills Captain Bentick and is sentenced to death and shot
- Molly Morran - his wife
- Will & Tom Anders - fishermen
- George Corell - traitor, shopkeeper and "benefactor" of the city
- Colonel Lanser - commanding officer of the battalion, veteran of the First World War
- Captain Bentick
- Major Hunter - engineer of the occupation forces
- Hauptmann Loft - firmly believing in authority
- Lieutenant Prackle
- Lieutenant Tonder
Anna Katharina Rehmann-Salten translated the novel into German in 1942, it was published in Zurich in 1943 and had at least eight editions by the end of the war. She also arranged the dialogues for a staged performance. The first performance of the drama took place on October 27, 1943 at the Basel Theater and was a great success.
literature
- Thomas Reuther: Germany in American literature, in: ders., The ambivalent normalization. Discourse on Germany and images of Germany in the USA, 1941–1955. Stuttgart 2000. pp. 135-140.
filming
The Moon is Down, a film by Irving Pichel with Lee J. Cobb , Cedric Hardwicke , Henry Travers