The student Gerber

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The student Gerber is a novel by Friedrich Torberg from 1930 that tells the tragic story of a student-teacher power struggle.

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Starting position

Students like Kurt Gerber - more intelligent, rebellious and “mature” than their classmates - are a thorn in the side of Professor Kupfer . So it can be explained that during the holidays, the summer of which he happens to be spending the summer at the same place as Kurt Gerber with his parents, he lets Kurt's father drop the subordinate clause that he will break this Kurt Gerber even if he in get your hands on it. The breaking of one's will is a time-typical, common goal of an abusive upbringing and the drills in the military.

When Kurt Gerber's father learns that Artur Kupfer will be his son's new class head, he tries to persuade his son to either change schools or take private lessons in business subjects and then start working in his business. However, private tuition is not an option for Kurt Gerber, as he is aiming for a doctorate in law or philosophy , which is not possible without a school leaving examination. Plus, he's so confident that he doesn't think a teacher can break him. Nonetheless, he promises his father that he will change from the previous school years and study more diligently.

At this point in time, he also believed that Lisa Berwald's love was certain. He is therefore very disappointed when he learns on the first day of school that she has left school. However, he cannot openly show his disappointment, as his classmates do not know anything about what he regards as a special relationship with Lisa. He fears that they would reduce his feelings to pure student love. He thinks Lisa is very distant from him in front of other people for this very reason. And even if he often has doubts, e.g. For example, if he writes three or four letters, but only receives a short answer from her, a look or a word on your part is often enough to make him feel safe again in her love.

First half of the year

Kurt Gerber is an intelligent but lazy student. Although there are always minor conflicts with the teachers, they have nothing against him, as they basically consider him suitable. Because of this attitude of his teachers, despite his weaker subjects in mathematics and descriptive geometry, he has no problems until he enters the 8th grade of the grammar school, because there he gets the so-called "God copper" as class head. Professor Kupfer is a strict teacher and makes life difficult for Kurt Gerber and the other Octavians.

The first days of the school year went by without any major incidents until one day Lisa Berwald came to visit the school. The classmates can persuade her to stay for the next physics lesson, and physics professor Hussak has no objections either. Before the break bell, Lisa asks to be allowed to leave the classroom early.

Kurt Gerber follows her shortly afterwards under a pretext, which will cause him major problems in the further course. While trying to catch up with her, he trips over the stairs and injures his leg, but he can still catch up with her and have a brief conversation with her. On the way back to school he runs into Professor Kupfer and lies to him about the reason for his stay outside the school. When he gets back to school, the physics professor asks him for a short interview, during which he admonishes Kurt Gerber not to be so careless. When he heard that Gerber had run into Professor Kupfer, he only said that it was very bad and that he recommended Kurt Gerber to change schools. However, this admonition and recommendation have no effect either.

Because his knee was broken in the fall, Kurt Gerber developed a fever and was unable to go to school. Since he would miss one of the maths homework required before the 1st censorship conference, he comes to school the following day, just in time for Artur Kupfer's class. However, this math homework turns into a personal defeat for Kurt Gerber, as God Kupfer catches him cheating - so he cannot solve a problem.

However, the fact that he went to school has two effects - firstly, he has a febrile relapse and is unable to attend school for a few more days because of a high fever. Second, his arrival appears as an unexcused late arrival in the blue letter after the grading conference, in which admonitions in other subjects are also noted. Since Kurt's father has heart problems and he doesn't want to show him the blue letter in order not to upset him, he forges his father's signature.

He also forges the signature on the note to the father that he was supposed to bring home because of a four-hour prison sentence . This four-hour prison sentence was imposed for his unauthorized removal from school and for lying to Professor Kupfer.

So finally come the Christmas holidays that Kurt Gerber spends skiing with Lisa and her friends. The two of them come closer together in the form of a kiss in a pitch-dark train. Kurt now makes even more hope in Lisa, although she is firmly in a relationship with Otto Engelhart. In this relationship, however, both are not always faithful. What Lisa does not tell him is the fact that during this skiing holiday, shortly after the train interlude, she finally decided never to have a relationship with Kurt Gerber.

Kurt Gerber has to cut off this vacation when he receives a letter from his father asking him to come home. Kurt's father had a conversation with one of Kurt's teachers, so he now knows how bad things are for Kurt at school. He wants Kurt to take tutoring , but Kurt refuses. When he remarked that school was not life, his father replied that school and life had a lot in common.

However, Kurt realizes that he needs to improve his grades. So he joins a study group with the best math students in his class. In fact, it is having an effect and he is doing well in school. However, he soon had doubts when he realized that he was being counted more and more among the nerds and that he was increasingly excluded from his previous circle of friends. His doubts grow stronger when the excellent student Benda dies. When a teacher asked who was his friend, no one answered.

Second half of the year

The crux of the matter comes with the half-yearly news, which, despite Gerber's efforts, ends up being negative in the subjects of mathematics and descriptive geometry. From then on, his collaboration goes downhill again and he leaves the learning circle.

He falls into the opposite extreme and rather surrounds himself with hopeless classmates. Now his friendship with Weinberg, his best friend to date, threatens to break apart.

He has repeatedly suffered defeats against his teachers, one of the worst being a failed boycott in French classes, which is supported by a few classmates. He has to apologize after the lesson in order to undo the entry in the class register.

As a result, Kurt Gerber sinks more and more into his world of thought and loses more and more the connection to reality. So it happens that he does not even notice his first victory over God Copper . Artur Kupfer had imposed a prison sentence on him, but in the course of events it turned out that this had been given without sufficient authorization. For this reason, Kupfer has to withdraw this prison sentence.

The withdrawal from reality is also reinforced by the psychological pressure to please the father and not to attract negative attention at school in order not to upset the father who has had a heart attack.

Another low point follows when, during a meeting with Lisa, he realizes the pointlessness of his endeavor to start a relationship with her. So he has lost all hold in reality.

The exit exam

The decision will soon be made as to which student can take the oral Matura. The tutoring lessons that were finally accepted show an effect and so Kurt Gerber is admitted to the oral Matura.

In the course of the first few days - four students are examined every day - Kurt Gerber tries to encourage himself by comparing himself with a classmate who he is sure would pass the Matura. When he learns on the day of his own high school diploma that this classmate has not been declared mature, he is shocked.

The oral Matura begins with mathematics. Although Kurt realizes in retrospect that the examples would have been easy to solve, he is unable to solve either of the two examples. It works a little better in Latin; after a good translation, however, he can be confused by questions. In the following break he is no longer sure whether this performance was sufficient .

During this break, his classmates try to reassure him and tell him about a conversation they overheard. Professor Hussak had assured him that he would not allow Gerber to be declared unripe. Kurt doesn't hear this and scolds them for mean liars. The situation almost escalated into a fight.

After the break he gets the poem fall by Nikolaus Lenau submitted for analysis. The line of this poem, which can be interpreted for himself, “Dreaming my heart towards death” accelerates his psychological collapse. However, he can still get the subject German behind him.

In Geography / History, Professor Prochaska advises student Gerber several times that he is answering a question that was not asked. Kurt Gerber expected to get a question from the area that the geography teacher had specifically pointed out to him. For this reason, he did not look at the questionnaire. On average, he can answer the actual question well.

In the pause that follows before the results are announced, Kurt sinks more and more into his unreal world of thoughts. And despite his original claim that life has nothing in common with school, he is drifting more and more into a vortex of confused thoughts that reflect the past school year.

During the break before the hour when the results are announced, Kurt Gerber loses his nerve, jumps out the window and dies. A little later the reader learns that Kurt Gerber passed the exam.

background

The student Gerber graduated - as the original title of the book first published in 1930 - was probably inspired by Torberg's personal, sometimes negative, examination of the school leaving examination. Torberg failed his Matura in 1927 and was only declared "ripe" on the second attempt in 1928. Kurt Gerber's tragic end may have been inspired by several newspaper reports of student suicides in January and February 1929 that the author mentions at the beginning of the book.

The core of this novel - apart from the narrated story - is a plea against the then (and in some cases still today) valid standards of grading and their subjectivity. Would the good students still be good students - and the bad students still bad - if you changed teaching staff?

Under National Socialism, with a decree of August 24, 1933 (U II, C 6460), "Dramas and stories in which the generation problem and its variety, the teacher-student problem are treated in a hateful and distorted form," including the name of the student Gerber declared a "Forbidden Scripts for School Libraries".

Narrative perspective and language

The book is told from the point of view of an authoritative narrator who repeatedly anticipates events that will happen later in the book. As a result, the reader very soon knows what Lisa Berwald really thinks about Kurt Gerber or what motives Artur Kupfer is acting on. The language is easy to understand, mostly factual.

filming

The novel was filmed in 1981 under the direction of Wolfgang Glück under the title Der Schüler Gerber . Gabriel Barylli played the pupil, Werner Kreindl the teacher . The location was the Academic Gymnasium in Vienna.

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. : Hans Jürgen Apel, Michael Klöckler (ed.) The elementary school in the Nazi state (=  collections of laws, regulations, decrees, notices at the elementary or elementary schools in the 19-20 century. . Band 14 ). Böhlau, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-412-04395-8 , pp. 319 ( limited preview in the Google book search - original title: Die deutsche Volksschule im Großdeutschen Reich: Handbook of laws, ordinances and guidelines for education and instruction in elementary schools, including relevant provisions on Hitler Youth and national-political educational institutions . Breslau 1940.).