The steel dream
The Iron Dream ( english The Iron Dream is) a 1972 published science fiction - novel of US writer Norman Spinrad . The German edition appeared in 1981.
action
The novel takes place in an alternative world , in which Adolf Hitler's life was different than in the time of National Socialism .
Framework: the foreword
After the First World War , Adolf Hitler initially joined a right-wing radical group in Munich , but he was disappointed with the political developments. He then emigrated to the United States at the end of 1919 and settled in New York . He is learning English and works as a comic artist, street painter, illustrator and translator.
In 1930 his illustrations were accepted by the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories , and he worked as an illustrator. He gets to know Hugo Gernsback . From 1935 Hitler wrote science fiction stories for Storm magazine , which are quite popular, although they can be classified as trivial literature (" trash "). In 1953, the year he died, he processed his Aryan ideology in six weeks in a novel The Lord of the Swastika . For this work he was awarded the Hugo Award posthumously in 1955 .
Internal act: The Lord of the Swastika
After a nuclear war, humanity is divided into two races: humans and mutants .
The young Feric Jaggar is disgusted by the mutants around him and decides to move from exile to his homeland Heldon, where only "pure-bred" people live. After a short genetic test in the customs fortress, which classifies him as pure-bred, he can enter Heldon as a citizen and “right man”. But he is not enthusiastic about the lax security measures of the immigration control. Above all, he thinks he recognizes a “dom”, a dominator mutant, in a scribe. The Doms are a treacherous, scheming mutant genus that breeds slaves in their realm of Zind and seeks to destroy pure people.
In the city of Ulmgarn Jaggar happened to hear inflammatory speeches by Seph Bogel, the speaker of the “Party of Human Rebirth”. However, Bogel is unable to clearly denounce the grievances in the land of Heldon. When the mood in the audience turns against Bogel, Jaggar takes the floor and stirs up the crowd. He recognizes his talent as a speaker and guide and gets the crowd to storm the customs fortress with him. There they kill the cathedral, which previously confessed its guilt by cursing the pure people. The whole garrison thanks Jaggar for being freed from the "dominance pattern" of the mutant that enslaved their will.
After the incident, Bogel persuaded Jaggar to take over the leadership of the “Party of Human Rebirth”. You travel in a steam car through the Emerald Forest, a place full of legends and the origin of the Heldon Empire. The hero who founded the empire allegedly hid his holy club, the “steel commander”, there. Only an absolutely pure person of the finest blood can wield this weapon.
The steam car is ambushed by a motorcycle gang whose leader Stag Stopa demands money from the travelers for his war against the mutants. Jaggar refuses to pay and challenges Stopa to a duel. He passes the gang's entrance exams and parries Stopa's last blow during the direct duel by using the lost “steel commander” placed between them. Since Jaggar is able to lead the holy relic, the bikers swear eternal loyalty to him, because the "steel commander" confirms Jaggar's ancestry and his superhumanity. Jaggar now realizes his destiny: saving the real people and exterminating the mutants. He renames the motorcycle gang the "Knight of the Swastika" and wants to win power in Heldon with the Bogels party.
In the town of Walder, Jaggar, legitimized by the “Stahlkommandeur”, takes over the leadership of Bogel's party, renames it “The Sons of the Swastika” and bluntly explains his goals. He takes part in the National Council elections, in which there are always bloody street fights, and becomes a member of the National Council, which, to his horror, is controlled by a cathedral. In order to protect himself, he then founded the Schutzstaffel (SS for short), which only those who, in Jagger's eyes, are racially valuable can join.
When Jaggar learns that the cathedral minister wants to get rid of him and that Stopa has betrayed him, he carries out a coup with the SS and liquidates the National Council, including Stopa and his officers. Jaggar takes power with the military and begins the racial cleansing of Heldon and the war with Zind.
After the mutants in Zind seem almost defeated, they trigger a nuclear explosion, the fallout of which contaminates the genetic make-up of all living things. Then can Jaggar a genetics program develop all men to be sterilized in the frame and the preservation of humanity only through cloned , genetically bred and "improved" male members of the propagated by Jagger master race takes place.
The end of the novel is a rally in which Jaggar initiates the colonization of space and launches the first colonist rocket with cloned blonde SS men and a genetic duplicate of Jaggers as "destined to lead people" into space.
Framework: The epilogue
In an afterword, a fictional reviewer subjected both the style and content of the novel The Lord of the Swastika and the underlying ideology as well as the person of the author Adolf Hitler to a devastating criticism.
Indexing the novel
On April 9, 1981, Lower Saxony's minister of education, Werner Remmers, submitted an application to the Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to minors to index the book The Steel Dream for "glorifying National Socialist ideas". Despite two expert opinions in favor of the novel, which were provided by Rainer Eisfeld (on behalf of the publisher) and Dietrich Wachler (on behalf of the BPjS), the book was indexed on April 9, 1982. The Wilhelm Heyne Verlag fighting for the release of the novel, until the Oberverwaltungsgericht Münster 1985 abolished the indexing. This decision was upheld in 1987 by the Federal Administrative Court.
Novel elements and reality
In the novel The Lord of the Swastika , written by his character Adolf Hitler, Spinrad processes real events and persons of the National Socialist takeover and rule in Germany, such as the Röhm Putsch (the suppression of Stopa's revolt) and the wars of conquest against Poland and ultimately the Soviet Union (“ Zind "). Individual states and people in real history can be easily identified by similar names. The extermination policy towards the Jewish population ("mutants") and the eastern neighboring peoples of the German Reich is also fictionally traced, including the plan to secure the newly conquered Heldon habitat by interning and exterminating the local population in special camps.
In the “Afterword”, Spinrad, in the role of a book critic named Homer Whipple, attacks both the literary genre of Low Fantasy and the ideas of National Socialism put forward in The Lord of the Swastika . The novel is considered "not necessarily a completely successful satire on fascistic elements in science fiction and fantasy".
Trivia
The musician Richard Pinhas, a friend of Norman Spinrad, named his band project Heldon after the fictional country from the book and set motifs from it to music on the album Electronique Guérilla (1974).
expenditure
- The Iron Dream. Avon, 1972, ISBN 0-380-00200-0
- The steel dream. Science fiction novel. German translation by Walter Brumm. Heyne, Munich 1981, ISBN 3-453-30684-8
literature
- Wolfgang Jeschke : “The Steel Dream” and the Germans . In: Heyne Science Fiction Magazin # 3, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-453-30811-5 , pp. 231-273.
- Wolfgang Jeschke: “The Steel Dream” by Norman Spinrad is still on the index. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1986 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-453-31233-3 , pp. 278-281.
- Achim Barsch: Science Fiction and Legal Functions. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1986 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag Munich, ISBN 3-453-31233-3 , pp. 282-292.
- Gavriel D. Rosenfeld: The World Hitler Never Made. Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism. Cambridge University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-521-84706-0
- Norman Spinrad: Writing as Hitler . In: books . Issue 2/2007
Web links
- Entry in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- Review by Ursula K. Le Guin , Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 1, Part 1, Spring 1973
- Review by TM Wagner, sfreviews.net, 1999
- Review by Peter Schünemann, literra.info, November 11, 2006
Footnotes
- ↑ Quote from The Steel Dream , translation Walter Brumm, Heyne, 4th edition Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-30684-8 , p. 288.
- ↑ See Wolfgang Jeschke: "The steel dream" and the Germans . In: Heyne Science Fiction Magazin # 3 , Munich 1982, p. 235, p. 259.
- ↑ See Wolfgang Jeschke: "The steel dream" and the Germans . In: Heyne Science Fiction Magazin # 3 , Munich 1982, pp. 259f. and 264f.
- ^ Judgment of the Federal Administrative Court of March 3, 1987; Ref .: 1 C 16.86
- ↑ See Alpers / Fuchs / Hahn / Jeschke: Lexikon der Science Fiction Literatur , Munich 1988, p. 925.