The mute prophet

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The silent prophet is a novel by Joseph Roth , which - written around 1928 - was reprinted in 1929 in the Neue Rundschau . The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published the work from October 27 to December 10, 1965.

The story is told from the life and the battles of Friedrich Kargan, the disappointed revolutionary without a fatherland. The novel can be read as the story of the unhappy love of Friedrich and the Viennese Hilde von Derschatta. The text is finally one of the author's wistful reminiscences of the perished Danube monarchy .

time and place

The novel is set in the first quarter of the 20th century - more precisely: until the end of 1926 - in Odessa , Trieste , Vienna, Zurich , Moscow , Kursk and Paris .

Joseph Roth wrote in 1929 - when he talked about the time shortly after 1914 - among other things about a concentration camp for civil prisoners in Austria .

characters

  • Friedrich Kargan, alias Friedrich Zimmer, revolutionary
    • Comrade Berzejew, Russian anarchist , his friend
    • Hilde von Derschatta, b. von Maerker, his childhood sweetheart
  • Savelli, aka Tomyshkin, Caucasian , author of International Capital and the Oil Industry .

Bandits in the hostel to the ball on the leg :

  • the old Parthagener, smuggler
  • Kapturak, red spy

action

Friedrich Kargan was born in Odessa. His mother is the daughter of a wealthy tea merchant, the father, Friedrich Zimmer, a piano teacher from Austria who was chased away by his grandfather. The mother dies early. Friedrich was given a commercial apprenticeship with relatives in Trieste. As a parentless person, Friedrich is cautious, clever and can pretend. In 1908 Friedrich “worked” in the Austrian-Russian border area for the old Parthagener as a smuggler and there he met the shrewd Kapturak and the black Caucasian Savelli . Savelli admits he had been working for the revolution since 1900. Friedrich did his A-levels in Vienna and met and fell in love with the beautiful young Miss Hilde von Maerker. Hilde probably notices his visible poverty and his radicalism . Friedrich lets his revolutionary friends send him to Russia . He is arrested at the Russian border and deported to the Kolyma in Kolymsk in Siberia . There the Russian anarchist Berzeev becomes his friend. In the Siberian winter near the cold pole, Friedrich came to the knowledge that he was not a person, but an ideologue . He only speaks the bare essentials and mourns the lost lover. Around the time the First World War broke out, Friedrich fled together with Berzejew via Charkow to the old Parthagener. The old man and Kapturak can barely cope with the many deserters , but they quickly direct the two refugees to Switzerland . Friedrich chooses the route via Vienna. There he meets Hilde and then travels to Zurich. Pacifists keep Switzerland occupied. Friedrich is sent to revolutionaries in that central German town of M. Bebel had lived, and writes love letters to Hilde with the content: He could not forget Hilde, so he loves her. In 1917 Friedrich left Switzerland and worked with Berzejew in Moscow. Both fight in Russia; kill people. In 1919 Hilde received a letter that Friedrich had sent in 1915. Hilde, now the mother of two healthy boys, is unhappily married and wants to be with the only person she has ever met .

Friedrich, having fallen ill, without a fatherland, goes to Paris. Berzejew stays in Russia . Friedrich writes to Hilde in Vienna. After the war, Swiss Post no longer needed three years to deliver letters, but only three days. Hilde comes and goes over to you. The couple make love in Friedrich's hotel room. Although Hilde wants to follow her Friedrich everywhere, love remains unhappy: Friedrich obediently travels to Moscow alone. Savelli and his bailiff Kapturak rule relentlessly there . Friedrich is punished because he no longer wants to do his job . Savelli banishes Berzejew and Friedrich to Siberia.

Mute prophets

At the end of the novel, Berzejew and Friedrich walk around with the proud grief of silent prophets . But are for the two disillusioned revolutionaries not the hammer and sickle , the symbol of the future . Logically, both - Friedrich half voluntarily - end up in exile in Kolymsk again.

shape

Two first-person narrators appear in the novel: first Joseph Roth and second Friedrich.

Quotes

  • Love is a force that can grasp and hold its object.
  • Friedrich as an exile in Siberia: the size of the room included more than a cell.
  • As civil servants, taking their time when issuing a passport for Friedrich: The German authorities also create circumstances where they themselves become illegal .
  • They [the students] were preparing for life in barracks, and everyone was already carrying his rifle, it was called 'ideal'.
  • He didn't hide anything, he always told the truth, but always the one he knew.
  • He did not realize that death, and not change, was the immediate result of the war.
  • Regarding the mood in the First World War: "To the satisfaction of their parents, some sons were in mortal danger."
  • The mothers of the dead wore their pain like generals wore their golden collars, and the death of the fallen became a kind of award for the bereaved.

words and phrases

  • the contempt for books that distinguishes the wise
  • as little fear as a tree
  • Journalists, the fortune tellers of the modern bourgeoisie
  • Railway stations are the glass halls of longing

reception

  • The novel is the story of an intellectual's disillusionment .
  • The novel is about the bureaucracy after the First World War.
  • Sternburg takes the text as one of the documents of the departure of the "red Joseph" from the left of all stripes. Roth used the Savelli to paint a picture of Stalin . Roth considers the turning away from religion to be a serious mistake for the Europeans after the war . According to Manès Sperber, Roth even doubts the “meaning of life” in the text.
  • According to Kiesel, the novel - in short - describes “failures and disappointments” of Friedrich Kargan, a “temporary revolutionary”.

literature

source

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sternburg, p. 364 above
  2. ↑ Hackert p. 843
  3. ↑ Hackert p. 926
  4. ↑ Hackert, pp. 793, 802, 843, 844, 868.
  5. ↑ Hackert, p. 866.
  6. ↑ Hackert, p. 785.
  7. ↑ Hackert, p. 825.
  8. ↑ Hackert, p. 866.
  9. ↑ a b Kesten, p. 712.
  10. ↑ a b c Kesten p. 768
  11. ↑ Hackert p. 793
  12. ↑ Hackert p. 854
  13. ↑ Hackert p. 878
  14. ↑ Hackert p. 929
  15. ↑ Nürnberger p. 74
  16. ↑ Steierwald p. 90
  17. ↑ Sternburg, p. 365 middle
  18. ↑ Roth's pseudonym probably not meant very seriously as a columnist for " Vorwärts "
  19. ↑ Sternburg, p. 368 above
  20. ↑ Sternburg, p. 369 middle
  21. ^ Sperber, quoted in Sternburg, p. 369, 20. Zvo
  22. ↑ Kiesel, p. 868 middle