The golden glove

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Fritz Honka's house at Zeißstraße 74

The golden glove is the seventh novel by the writer Heinz Strunk and deals with sections from the life of the Hamburg serial killer Fritz Honka , which mainly revolve around excessive alcohol , sex , social neglect and the resulting violent crimes . The factual novel, which is mainly written from the perpetrator's perspective, was published in 2016 and in the same year was awarded the Wilhelm Raabe Literature Prize, one of the most prestigious and most highly endowed literary awards in Germany.

content

The strongly regionally related book consists of three parts: Part 1 - I met an elderly woman in St. Pauli , Part 2 - City Nord and Part 3 - This is not a nightmare, this is a death throes . The milieu study, which has its center in the pub " Zum golden Handschuh ", a kind of "limbo bar", deals with the story of the woman murderer Fritz Honka in the 1970s. The story is about his years in Hamburg, his encounter with Gerda Bräuer, to his increasing madness and the murders of three other women who were broken in post-war society. Honka is driven by a strong hatred of women , constant sexual lust and sentimentality. “If it falls, I'll just leave it there”. For him, sex has only the meaning of "destroying others as it was destroyed back then." With the physically and mentally decrepit, old and toothless prostitutes, he regularly drinks himself into unconsciousness and slips into a world which is shaped by destructive fantasies. A second narrative thread describes in episodes the fate of the fictional Hamburg shipowner family von Dohren, who enriched themselves with Jewish property during the Third Reich and have since been shunned by the Hamburg elites. The overlap with Honka's biography results from the fact that members of the Dohren family also seek out the “Golden Glove”.

The book's motto is preceded by an almost full-page autobiographical reflection by the boy murderer Jürgen Bartsch from his correspondence with Paul Moor .

View of the Zeissstrasse

action

The action begins in 1971 with the first body finds on the site of the former Holsatia chocolate factory in Hamburg-Altona . The deceased is identified as Gertraud B. and the suspicion initially falls on her former friend Winfried Schuldig, who is sentenced to imprisonment because of her testimony at the time. However, the police cannot prove the act of the violent worker. Chapter 1 begins in February 1974 in Honka's local pub "Zum golden Handschuh" on Hamburger Berg, where the alcohol-dependent casual worker Honka, who is called Fiete by everyone there , drinks large quantities of "Fako" (Fanta grain) every day and makes friends with women. He takes the homeless Gerda home with him on Zeißstrasse in Hamburg-Ottensen.

At the same time in the Elbchaussee the Dohren family is having dinner. While the senior and junior are busy with the business of their shipping company, the pubescent grandson, Wilhelm Heinrich von Dohren / WH3, who suffers from Noonan's syndrome , struggles with his burgeoning sexuality. Due to his repulsive appearance, he finds contact with girls of the same age difficult. Although on the outside it gives a reasonably intact picture of well-kept middle-class, the von Dohren family hardly differs internally from the socially weak environment of Fritz Honka: the individual family members fervently hate each other, they once made their fortune by unscrupulously exploiting the plight of a Jewish shipowner, who had to flee in the Third Reich. This not only earned her the contempt of the other wealthy families in Hamburg, but ultimately also did not last: Although the manorial life is still more or less maintained, in reality the shipping company has long since missed the boat and is heading for bankruptcy.

Honka decides to live with Gerda for a few days, but this degenerates into a violent intoxication due to the excessive drinking of the two. There is consensual sex for lodging. Honka takes her ID from her and locks her up in his dilapidated attic apartment . He also has to lock up his alcohol supplies to be on the safe side. Gerda decides in a sober moment to run Honka the household. As a reward, the two get drunk again in the “Golden Glove” . There are always crashes. Honka secretly does a cost-benefit analysis of his female guest and is annoyed by her uncontrolled alcohol consumption. He beats and abuses her. Her teeth break in the process. Honka has robbed the woman of her last dignity.

Entrance of the pub Zum Goldenen Handschuh on St. Pauli

Karl von Lützow, wealthy owner of a law firm in Kiel and son-in-law of von Dohren, is also seriously alcoholic, suicidal and fills the void in his life through random sex adventures with unattractive women. It is not perfect beauty that attracts him, but women with physical infirmities that he can control. Again and again he forces women to humiliating SM practices, in which he does them violence and almost kills them.

Gerda wants to show her appreciation in Zeißstraße and cook for a visit from Fritz 'brother "Siggi". The hospitality is a complete success for Gerda and the three then get drunk with cheap schnapps, which leads to a total "film tear" for everyone involved. Fritz Honka presents Gerda with a handwritten declaration in which she confirms with her signature that from now on she no longer has any free will, to submit to him completely and to bring her daughter Rosi (with whom she no longer has any contact). Honka justifies this with “people don't get too much freedom”. At first Gerda is grateful to have at least a roof over her head and in return accepts that Honka carries out humiliating sexual practices on her. The two of them are always drawn to their local pub on Hamburger Berg, where they spend their free time, which is characterized by an atmosphere of drunkenness and physical violence. One day there was a brutal bar fight in the “Golden Glove” , as a hurricane meant that fewer prostitutes were around and a larger group of English sailors were unable to react to their sexual urges. The men’s “drive backlog” is discharged in brute force. The police have to make several arrests. Fritz Honka suffers a new accident at work and lets Gerda buy it for himself. She made contact with older suitors in the “ Elbschlosskeller ” and took them to Zeißstraße. Honka's apartment turns into a brothel . One day their trail is lost.

Chapter 2 begins with how Wilhelm Heinrich von Dohren / WH3 makes advances to his attractive classmate Petra Schulz. He, who is constantly masturbating and still has no practical sexual experience, wants to seduce her. In order to mature as a man, he wanders around St. Pauli, and it ends up in the “Golden Glove”.

The former Shell house at Überseering 35 in City Nord

Meanwhile, Honka's desolate life takes an unexpected turn. He gets a job at Shell as a security guard in the City Nord office building . This fundamentally improves his social status. He now has money, a regular life, and a uniform to show off in. Fritz therefore drastically reduces his alcohol consumption in order to be able to meet the demands that are placed on him. He gets used to the normal life of a worker and does things he had never done before. For example, he takes part in a harbor tour and visits Hagenbeck's zoo . During his work he falls in love with the married cleaning lady Helga Denningsen. He also meets her husband Erich and the three of them celebrate a boozy birthday in the Shell office building on Kapstadtring. Fritz, who can no longer keep his resolutions, is completely drunk and tells episodes from his life story. About his escape from the GDR in 1952 or how he found a job on the farm of the farmer Frerk in the west in Hamburg-Billwerder . The farmer tortures and mistreats the refugee. One day Fritz can't take it anymore and he escapes with Frerk's bike. The farmer caught him with his tractor and seriously injured him. He leaves Fritz to his fate helpless in the ditch. Fritz is found and survives in the hospital. However, his face, nose, and teeth will remain deformed forever. Fritz begins to develop a strong jealousy of Erich Denningsen because he claims Helga for himself. His feelings of hatred even develop into murder fantasies towards his rival. Fritz is once again very drunk and becomes intrusive towards Helga. But she can free herself from him at the last moment.

After Helga's rejection, Honka immediately reverted to old behavior. He drinks again daily and uncontrollably. His hatred of women crosses all borders.

In Chapter 3, Honka's life has hit rock bottom again. He spends much of his wages on alcohol and prostitutes . In addition, his violent fantasies take on threatening proportions. He remembers the traumatic events shortly after his escape to Germany. How he was forced to drink vermouth in a homeless shelter until he became addicted and how he was raped by a man. Honka wants to take revenge for everything that was done to him. He spends his solitude on Zeissstrasse with a plastic doll. In the "Golden Glove" he occasionally makes new women acquaintances. The only women who are still with him are old and neglected prostitutes who are willing to have sex with him for alcohol. The "Golden Glove" is again the scene of human drama and accelerates Honka's downward spiral. A woman dies in the toilet and another brutal brawl breaks out in the guest room. "Violence is like a fire, thinks Fiete, you cannot control it when it has broken out." Honka takes Inge and Herta home to do them violence and to penetrate them with objects such as wooden spoons, cracked sausages and bananas . After the women enter his apartment, they complain about the unbearable stench. Honka reassures her by explaining that Greek guest workers live under him who cook strange dishes such as mutton with strong garlic . In truth, the odor of corpses comes from the wooden crate in his overheated apartment, behind which he keeps human limbs from previous acts. Herta manages to escape him and flees through the toilet window. Inge's fate is unknown.

Honka takes another alcoholic woman, Anna, home with her. She knows that she has to die and drinks nonstop so that she drifts into delirium. Fritz wants to put an end to her pathetic vegetation and strangles the woman. Frieda and Ruth become his last victims who have to die in his apartment.

In the postscript there are original quotations from the apartment fire and the discovery of the corpses on July 17, 1975 at Zeißstrasse 74, and the verdict was pronounced on December 20, 1976 before the Hamburg district court , his last years under the name of Peter Jensen in a retirement and nursing home in Scharbeutz on the Baltic Sea and finally the death news of Fritz Honka after a heart-lung disease on October 19, 1998.

Location

The eponymous setting of the novel is the traditional Hamburg pub Zum Goldenen Handschuh on Hamburger Berg No. 2 in Hamburg-St. Pauli , which was founded in 1962 by professional boxer Herbert Nürnberg . Opposite the “Golden Glove” is the “ Elbschlosskeller ” restaurant , which Honka also frequented. Nuremberg's pub is open all year round and almost around the clock and its audience comes mainly from the marginalized in society (“catwalk of the disfigured”). The "Golden Glove" offers a special sociotope of " originals " from the neighborhood , rockers , dock workers and shudderers , aging prostitutes and habitual drinkers.

“Some sit here for twenty or thirty hours. Once someone hung motionless on his stool for two days and two nights, he was already dead, but nobody noticed anything because of the shift change. Healthy sleep people thought. On the third night someone fell and swept the dead with him when he fell, otherwise it would probably only have been noticed if the rats had gnawed him. "

- Heinz Strunk : The golden glove , Rowohlt-Verlag, 2016, p. 17

Research work

Strunk was given access to the Honka trial file in the Hamburg State Archives , which had previously been closed to the public. He has visited the pub about 150 times since 2012 while the novel was being written. According to the author, the creation of the first version of a total of 18 versions took half a year. The editing took another year. The volume of the manuscript was reduced from 600 to 250 pages. In his speech of thanks for the Wilhelm Raabe Prize , Strunk thanks his editor Marcus Gärtner, who has looked after him since the beginning of his writing career.

characters

  • Fritz "Fiete" Honka: unskilled worker and later a security guard, tragic main character
  • "Siggi" Honka: his only brother living in Hamburg, takes care of Fritz
  • Gerda Voss: Occasional prostitute, lives with Honka for a while and finally disappears without a trace
  • Gertrud B. (48): Occasional prostitute, Honka's first murder victim
  • Anna B .: Occasional prostitutes, Honka's second murder victim
  • Frieda R .: Occasional prostitute, Honka's third murder victim
  • Ruth S .: Occasional prostitutes, Honka's fourth murder victim
  • Herbert Nürnberg: former professional boxer and host in the "Golden Glove"
  • " Anus " alias Arno: counter service in the "golden glove"
  • Helmut Berger alias "Leiche", the "Schimmligen", the "Säberalmas", "Soldiers-Norbert", "Doornkaat-Willy", "Fanta-Rolf", "Taxi-Dieter", "Tampon-Günther", Gisela von der Salvation Army: regular guests in the "Golden Glove"
  • Helga Denningsen: cleaning lady and work colleague, Fritz 'object of desire
  • WH1: Wilhelm Heinrich von Dohren, patriarch of a Hanseatic shipowner family, WH1 is full to the brim with hatred, up to the top, nothing more is possible.
  • WH2: Wilhelm Heinrich von Dohren, his relationship-disturbed son
  • WH3: Wilhelm Heinrich von Dohren (17), his pubescent grandson
  • Margit von Dohren: wife of WH2
  • Karl von Lützow: Margit von Dohren's brother, owner of a law firm, suffers from satyriasis
  • Petra Schulz: classmate of WH3, WH3's object of desire

The characters in Strunk's novel are characterized by alcoholism, a lack of education and a lack of respect for themselves and others. Their main fixation is on "impersonal intercourse" . For Honka, who was short in stature and disfigured by abuse, it was of great importance to choose those women who, due to their precarious financial situation, advanced alcoholism and poor personal hygiene, were still far below him in order to feel superior. Parallel to this is the story of the von Dohren family, as it were as a contrast point in his “social panorama of the 1970s” . Morally speaking, they are just as far down as the failed existences from the Hamburger Berg. The money nobility has very similar problems with sex and alcohol consumption. But on a different level. According to Strunk in the Tagesspiegel, a story that focused only on the figure of Fritz Honka would have "been too much of the bad". Honka, WH3 and Karl von Lützow are three men's fates, three losers and three ticking time bombs in the narrative.

linguistic style

“Three o'clock in the morning on an icy day in February 1974, the small, crooked man with the pressed-in face and huge hands has been sitting in his regular seat on the short side of the L-shaped counter for twelve hours and talking to the man next to me:“ Me I knew someone who I loved. At some point she was gone. All that perfumed meat, I still think about it for my life. The mole and everything ... but if you see the way you do now, you can't sink that deep that you don't care ... »."

- Heinz Strunk : The golden glove , Rowohlt-Verlag, 2016, p. 15

Strunk's book often makes use of crude gutter expressions such as “Please don't water your eel in the lady”, “I could eat pussies like potato salad. I'll wring out the sack first and then stuff it in. [...] I'm going to piss in her ass. You can have the first part "., The original vocabulary of the time, such as expressions like" not quite shot-proof "," Thööölke! "Or" Braunschen Röhre "for cola or completely new word creations about alcohol consumption in different levels such as" Schmiersuff ”,“ Destruction drink ”or“ Blend schnapps ”.

reception

Heinz Strunk in March 2016 at the Leipzig Book Fair

“The golden glove” received mostly positive reviews. The novel, which contains tragic-comic traits and only tells the explicit killing acts towards the end of the story after an extensive description of the losing, the ugly and the self-humiliation, wants to be more than just a " freak show ". "So after the introduction of the marginal staff, Strunk lets his narrator stand up from the counter of the glove and wander into the center of the story". He understood masterfully how to set a story in a difficult milieu like St. Pauli without slipping into social kitsch . The “disturbing, compassionate language” that Strunk uses is particularly memorable. One of his main statements is that “depravity is not a question of social status”, that it is not only based in the lower class, but also appears in a different form among the elites, who are embodied here by the von Dohren family. A unique selling point of Strunk's characters in contemporary German literature is their self-hatred. “Desire is a fire of evil”, so it says in Strunk's novel as a worldview and this applies to both the poor life of the unskilled worker Honka and the noble family of von Dohren.

Awards

Film adaptations

The shooting for a movie of the same name began on July 2, 2018 in Hamburg. The director is Fatih Akin , the leading role of Fritz Honka is played by Jonas Dassler . The producers are bombero international together with Warner Bros. Filmproduction Germany and Pathé. The film started on February 21, 2019.

Text output

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Heinz Strunk: "The golden glove" , hot off the press, new books with Denis Scheck, Das Erste. 3rd April 2016
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h An imposition - but an urgently needed one , Spiegel Online Kultur, February 26, 2016.
  3. ^ "The golden glove": Wilhelm Raabe Prize for Heinz Strunk. In: Spiegel Online . September 21, 2016, accessed June 10, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Neuer As long as there are such people , Frankfurter Allgemeine Feuilleton, February 17, 2016.
  5. ↑ If you watch Heinz Strunk getting annoyed , Die Welt, February 20, 2016.
  6. ^ In the black hole of human misery , Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 25, 2016.
  7. ↑ At that time working-class district, part of the district of Altona
  8. ↑ Heinz Strunk: The golden glove , Rowohlt-Verlag, 2016, p. 87
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h "The golden glove" : Once upon a time there was Fritz Honka, Hamburger Abendblatt, February 25, 2016
  10. ↑ Heinz Strunk: The golden glove , Rowohlt-Verlag, 2016, p. 197
  11. ↑ If you watch Heinz Strunk getting annoyed, Die Welt, February 20, 2016
  12. ↑ Heinz Strunk: misery and humor. Acceptance speech . In: Hubert Winkels (Ed.): Heinz Strunk meets Wilhelm Raabe . Wallstein, Göttingen, p. 128-134 .
  13. ↑ Book about serial killer Fritz Honka "There was no hope for him", Frankfurter Neue Presse, February 26, 2016
  14. ^ A b c d e Excess of “F” words: Heinz Strunk on Fritz Honka, Hamburger Abendblatt, February 24, 2016
  15. ↑ Schmiersuff, pressurized refueling, annihilation drinking. New novel by Heinz Strunk Honka and the glove. Der Tagesspiegel, February 25, 2016
  16. ↑ Buchrevier, Die Poesie des kleine Mann, March 26, 2016
  17. ↑ Soldiers-Norbert in conversation with WH3 at the counter of the “Golden Glove”. Heinz Strunk: The golden glove, Rowohlt-Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2016, p. 175
  18. ↑ from the ZDF quiz program Der Große Preis with Wim Thoelke , "Wum & Wendolin"
  19. ↑ Heinz Strunk: "The smear is the most terrible", Zeit-Online, March 3, 2016
  20. ↑ https://www.rowohlt.de/news/heinz-strunk-auf-der-shortlist-hubert-fichte-preis-2016.html
  21. ↑ Start of shooting for Fatih Akin's "The Golden Glove" . Süddeutsche Zeitung , June 29, 2018, accessed on August 25, 2020 . .
  22. ↑ Hard cover, not a paperback