The Nazi & the hairdresser

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The work Der Nazi & der Friseur by the German-Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath is a grotesque about the Holocaust during the National Socialist era . The work, first published in the USA in 1971 and in German only in 1977, describes the biography of the SS mass murderer and concentration camp overseer Max Schulz from the perspective of the perpetrators , who after the collapse of the Third Reich assumed a Jewish identity and finally emigrated to Israel To avoid persecution in Germany.

The grotesque is characterized by the consistent rejection of the reader's expectations as well as the reversal of all common clichés, here of the German Max Schulz and his Jewish friend and schoolmate Itzig Finkelstein:

“My friend Itzig was blonde and blue-eyed, had a straight nose, curved lips and good teeth. I, however, Max Schulz, had black hair, frog eyes, a hooked nose, bulging lips and bad teeth. "

- Edgar Hilsenrath : The Nazi & the hairdresser

Another special feature is the perpetrator perspective, a novelty for the German audience at the time:

“For years, German readers have also been familiar with novels, stories and plays that deal with the subject of persecution and extermination of the Jews under Hitler with poetic-satirical and grotesquely comical means. But they all tell more or less from the perspective of the victims. Hilsenrath, on the other hand, chose the perpetrator's perspective for his novel. "

- Manfred Rieger : In search of the lost guilt. Edgar Hilsenrath's grotesquely realistic novel about a Nazi who became a Jew

Hilsenrath was inspired for his novel by a newspaper report about the former Gestapo member Erich Hohn, who pretended to be a Jew after the war and was elected vice-president of a regional offshoot of the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime shortly before his exposure .

publication

Shortly after its publication, Hilsenrath's debut novel Nacht was withdrawn by Kindler-Verlag . For his second novel, Der Nazi & der Friseur , no German publisher was initially willing to publish it for the first time. In order to avoid any suspicion of anti-Semitism , the "well-intentioned" but nonetheless discriminatory extreme of philosemitism applied in Germany at the time , according to which Jews were only allowed to be portrayed positively - for example as heroes - in the literature of post-war Germany. Hilsenrath himself considered philosemitism to be an "upside down" anti-Semitism continued in a hidden form, and in all of his works he insisted on portraying Jews as well as the other characters in his novels with their positive and negative sides. Even when Der Nazi & der Friseur was published in 1971 as a translation in the USA and not only enjoyed great success there, the manuscript was still rejected by many publishers in Germany on the grounds that it was not allowed to write about Jews. It was not until six years after its first publication in the USA that the work was also published in German by the publishing house of the then Cologne-based small publisher Helmut Braun.

reception

In the USA the publication was a great success, in Germany, however, the work was initially rejected by various parties and, after its publication, was initially received with corresponding controversy by critics and readers. In a consistently positive review, Heinrich Böll particularly praised Hilsenrath's language, which he found for this work, "which proliferates wildly and yet hits often enough, unfolds a dark and quiet poetry."

The Nazi & the hairdresser then experienced increasing popularity in Germany over the years. In 1979 the work was selected as one of the three best books of the month in Sweden. In 2005 and 2006, respectively, as part of Edgar Hilsenrath's Collected Works , it was published by Jan Josef Liefers and Elke Heidenreich in the TV program Read! presented as a "great book". Academically, it is not only Hilsenrath's work that has long been established in Germany and abroad - especially in the USA.

literature

  • Alexandra Heberger: Fascism criticism and image of Germany in the novels by Irmgard Keun "After midnight" and Edgar Hilsenrath "The Nazi and the hairdresser". A comparison. 2002, ISBN 978-3-936231-43-4 .

Web links

Reviews

References and comments

  1. ↑ Edgar Hilsenrath, Der Nazi & der Friseur , 8th edition, Munich 2007, p. 31 f.
  2. ↑ http://www.hilsenrath.org/export/webarchiv/www.edgar-hilsenrath.de/friseur2.php , June 4, 2008
  3. ↑ Braun, Helmut: In love with the German language: the Odyssey of Edgar Hilsenrath. Dittrich, 2005. ISBN 978-3-937717-17-3 , p. 41 ff.
  4. ↑ a b dittrich-verlag.de - review quotes from Heinrich Böll and Jan Josef Liefers from the cover text for the book in the new edition of Edgar Hilsenrath's collected works