The 13½ lives of Captain Bluebear

The 13½ life of Captain Blaubär (subtitle: "Half the memories of a sea dog, with numerous illustrations and using the lexicon of the miracles, forms of existence and phenomena in Zamonia and its surroundings by Prof. Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller.") Is a novel by Walter Moers , first published in 1999. It is also the author's first novel to be set in the fictional continent of Zamonia . It describes half of the 27 lives of a blue bear, starting with its childhood. In contrast to the Käpt'n-Blaubär TV episodes in the show with the mouse , in which the character first appeared, the novel is not primarily aimed at children.

The lexicon-like inserts

Unlike the TV character, the plot is set on the fictional continent of Zamonia , which is said to have been on earth in the past. Here the blue bear belongs to the "Zamonian form of existence" of the colored bears. Moers uses this book and the course of the plot to introduce numerous other imaginative "Zamonische forms of existence". These are again in the lexicon of requiring explanation wonder existences and phenomena Zamoniens and around Prof. Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller (see subtitle) described in a pseudo-scientific way. The Morgenstern-Nasobēm ( Nasobema lyricum ), which is now listed not only in “im Brehm ”, but also in other German encyclopedias, can serve as a model for this . This form of representation derives its wit first from the fact that the objective tone counteracts the clearly fictional character of the forms of existence. The book refers parodistically to the literary tradition of fictitious lexicon articles .

action

The title refers to the 27 lives that a blue bear has. But the protagonist only tells about the first 13½ lives. The events are described in 14 chapters from the bluebear's first person perspective (each of which describes one or half a life).

1st chapter: My life as a miniature pirate

The first thing Bluebear remembers is drifting in a nutshell toward a gigantic maelstrom called Malmstrom (northwest of Zamonia). He is discovered and raised by dwarf pirates and learns everything about seafaring.

2nd chapter: My life with the Klabauter ghosts

Due to its enormous size - compared to the dwarf pirates - which would sooner or later capsize the ship, the dwarf pirates are forced to release Bluebear on an island where the ghosts of Klabau live. The goblin spirits feed on the fear of the most defenseless creatures possible. Blaubär succeeds in gaining the benevolence of the Klabauter spirits through artistically designed wine demonstrations , and he is downright adored by them.

Klabauter ghosts allude to the Klabautermann superstition.

3rd chapter: My life on the run

As it is the lot of whining too much, flees Blaubär with a homemade raft from the Klabauterinsel , met on the sea for the first time juggernaut , a huge ship and make acquaintance with the Trat thresholds , extremely talkative waves Blaubär teach speaking and him his Give names. He meets the tyrannical whale Rex , from whom he is almost inhaled, and wants to build a new raft out of the harpoons in the back of the whale. In his zeal, Bluebear throws the harpoons carelessly into the sea and has to reach a nearby island on his own.

The name Tyranno Whale Rex is undoubtedly a reference to one of the largest (former) carnivores in the country, the Tyrannosaurus Rex .

4th chapter: My life on the gourmet island

The bear escapes from the back of the tyrannical whale Rex to the next island. All kinds of delicacies grow on this (comparable to the land of milk and honey ), hence the name "Feinschmeckerinsel". Here Blaubär leads the life of a gourmet until he has gotten so fat that he can no longer walk. The island turns out to be a carnivorous plant called Gourmetica Insularis , but before it can devour Bluebear , it is rescued by a pterodactylus Salvatus , a flying rescue dinosaur called "Deus X. Machina", Mac for short.

The chapter is an allusion to Gottfried August Bürgers Münchhausen's adventure on the cheese island and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe . The name Deus X. Machina is an allusion to a means used in Greek theater technology that helps the protagonist in situations or conflicts that cannot be resolved by himself. Nowadays, Deus ex machina is mainly associated with unexpected help or rescue at the last second. The parallel to the helping character of the rescue dinosaur is obvious.

5th chapter: My life as a navigator

Traveling on the back of the saving flying lizard, the blue bear gets to know the whole world. However, Mac, as Bluebear's Deus X. Machina calls himself, has such poor eyesight that Bluebear has to navigate him during his missions as a rescue dinosaur. Among other things, they save some Wolpertinger puppies, including Rumo , or a young man who wants to test the reliability of the rescue dinosaur and who often deliberately puts his life in danger. When Mac retires after about a year of working together and goes to the Nordend rescue dinosaur senior citizens' home, he takes Bluebear to night school in the Dark Mountains .

6th chapter: My life in the dark mountains

Blaubär attends the night school of Prof. Dr. Abdul Nachtigaller , where he meets the two friends Qwert Zuiopü, a jelly prince from the 2364th dimension, and the mountain hat Fredda, who falls madly in love with Bluebear. When Fredda and a little later also Qwert have to leave the Finsterberge after completing their school days, Blaubär is alone with the new students Fogelweide, a unicorn, Groot, a pig barbarian, and Zille, a little Hempel. Shortly before Blaubär also has to leave school through the Dark Mountains, he is infected with intelligence bacteria by nightingales, from now on he knows the most incredible things and has a kind of dictionary in his head. Bluebear has to wander around in the tunnel labyrinth until he finds a way out. He meets Qwert, who was sent into the tunnel labyrinth before him, and pushes him into a dimensional hole. Then Bluebear encounters a tunnel troll who leads him astray, and a Finsterberg maggot who, like a termite, perforates the Finsterberge. Bluebear is washed out through one of the holes that lead outside during a dark mountain thunderstorm.

The Finsterbergmade poem is based on Schiller's Das Lied von der Glocke . The name Qwert Zuiopü consists of the letters on the top row of a German PC - or typewriters - keyboard , according to the English translation was carried out Qwerty uiop after the English keyboard.

7th chapter: My life in the great forest

After Bluebear has left the mountains, he wanders through the Great Forest and, due to a lure method that always shows the victim what he wants most, gets caught in a web of the forest spider witch . Bluebear, however, manages just in time to loosen the glue on the net from his fur through tears and dew, and he can free himself. But the spider is not willing to give up its prey without a fight, and after an adventurous chase in which Bluebear temporarily falls into marathon fever, he stumbles into a dimensional hole.

8th chapter: My life in the dimensional hole

In the state of casual catatonia, Bluebear sails through space, time and all the other dimensions and lands in Qwert's dimension, where his friend is about to be crowned. Fearing that Qwert will fall into the dimensional hole in the throne room, Bluebear runs up to him to warn him, but stumbles over a fold in the carpet and achieves exactly the opposite. To escape the angry subjects, he jumps after him without further ado and ends up in the Great Forest again, but at a different time.

This is reminiscent of the origins of the sci-fi novels Trip to the Moon ( Cyrano de Bergerac ) and Journey to the Center of the Earth ( Jules Verne ).

9th chapter: My life in the sweet desert

From the Great Forest, Bluebear enters the Sweet Desert , which is made of sugar instead of sand. He joins the wandering bullfinches who only feed on Gimp and are looking for the city of Anagrom Ataf (reverse mirage ), a semi-stable mirage. With Blaubär's help, they face some dangers and are finally able to “catch” the notorious city by sticking it to the ground with the melting sugar during a sugar melt under Blaubär's guidance. The bullfinch get there with local spirits in a conflict and so can Blaubär the Gimpel by a ruse by a town called Tsnips-Eg'N-Rih (reverse chimera ) seeking and makes himself on the journey with the aim of Atlantis.

The chapter is an allusion to Frank Herbert's Der Wüstenplanet .

10th chapter: My life in the tornado city

On his way to Atlantis, Bluebear passes a tornado stop . He thinks this is a kind of bus stop and not the warning sign that it actually is. He is sucked in and carried away by a huge tornado and ends up in a city that is inhabited by old men, including the young man from Chapter 5. He discovers that he has also aged about 100 years. This has to do with the rotation of the tornado: inside the time is extremely stretched, but in the wall it is strongly compressed. Since the rotation is reversed once a year, Blaubär and some other residents of the tornado city escape at the moment of standstill. When you pass through the tornado wall, they taper again.

11th chapter: My life in the big head

After his exit from the tornado, Bluebear is still in the Sweet Desert, but is already near the city of Atlantis. But the only entrance to the city is blocked by a Bolloggkopf (a Bollogg is a kind of giant that from time to time puts its head down and wanders on without a head). So it enters the head through the right ear and tries to get through the brain to the left side to exit the head through the left ear. In the Bollogg's brain he comes across a bad idea that shows him how to get a special map of the brain. In order to be able to pay for this, Blaubär takes a job as a dream organist: By operating the “dream organ”, the Bollogg dreams and does not wake up. Bluebear's creativity and skill with this instrument have made him popular, but as soon as he has enough money to pay for the card, he leaves his head.

12th chapter: My life in Atlantis

From the Bollogg head, Blaubär now goes to the capital of Zamonia, Atlantis , where he gets to know Chemluth Havana and keeps afloat with odd jobs until he enters the business of lying gladiators and becomes the most successful lying gladiator of all time. But after some intrigue, he is captured at the height of his career and is said to be banished to the Moloch . Rumo, one of the Wolpertingers whom he saved in his fifth life with Mac, accompanies him and Chemluth out of gratitude to the underground of Atlantis, where they meet Fredda, the mountain hatchet. Since the city of Atlantis turns out to be a gigantic spaceship, the launch of which is imminent, Bluebear tries to get to the harbor to get to safety by ship. Unfortunately, he lets the tunnel troll show him the way , which leads him to the Moloch .

This is undoubtedly meant to allude to Freiherr von Münchhausen and the legend of the city of Atlantis.

13th chapter: My life on the Moloch

The Moloch is a gigantic slave ship on which countless bears are kept in bondage. It is ruled by the zamomin , the only thinking element. Created by nightingales, it is extremely intelligent, but also downright megalomaniac and manipulative. Therefore, it was thrown into the sea by its inventor himself to prevent it from usurping world domination. But after he has succeeded in becoming captain of the Moloch, it can only be defeated by nightingales. Nightingale arrives on the Moloch riding on a dark cloud. Bluebear destroys the zamomin by throwing it into the dark cloud. When the Moloch heads for the Malmstrom, almost all passengers are rescued by pterodactyls, the rescue dinosaurs. Only Bluebear and the ship fall into the maelstrom. Bluebear meets Qwert, who has just come out of the Malmstrom, which, it turns out, is a dimensional hole. The enslaved bears turn out to be the long-missing colored bears of Zamonia, the last representative of which was believed to be blue bear. He learns the story of his origins, whereupon everyone, with the help of the rescue dinosaur, fly to the great forest to repopulate it.

13½. chapter: Half of my life in peace

Qwert decides to stay away from the dimensional holes for the time being and opens school with Bluebear. Blaubär writes the lexicon of requiring explanation wonder existences and phenomena Zamoniens and surroundings from his head, makes it compulsory reading of the great forest, and moved with his young love Avriel together.

Importance of the book for the other Zamonia novels

Moers chose his most famous invention, the character of Captain Bluebear, as the protagonist of his first novel. Although this is by no means a children's book, but a novel aimed at an adult readership and the figure of the Zamonier Käpt'n Blaubär differs in many details from his famous role model, it worked: Moers had helped the book to become quickly popular in this way . The author decided to write another book to build on the success of the blue bear: Ensel und Krete . The structure of half the biography is taken up again by Moers. The work begins, albeit many years later, in terms of content at the point where the bluebear left off, so it is a kind of continuation. Furthermore, in the follow-up novel, the character Käpt'n Blaubär - in his role as a lying gladiator - is mentioned and assessed. In his third Zamonien novel, Rumo & die Wunder im Dunkeln , Moers makes a connection to his first text by making a secondary character of Captain Bluebear the main character: Rumo, the Wolpertinger, whom the Bluebear together with the pterosaur Deus X. Machina once saved life. So Rumo's adventure story is a biography that we can only read because the blue bear entered the hero's life. Only The City of Dreaming Books can be described as "bluebear-free" because the character is no longer mentioned - neither directly nor indirectly - and the plot takes place beforehand. The reader is only left with the small intertextual references: For example, the mountain hatchet Fredda appears as the author of a collection of poems, Rumo as a card game and the shadow king in his hall of mirrors reminds of King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who was already in the Bluebear as the mad King Kivdul II. (Backwards "Ludvik"!) Is mentioned.

But if you read this third book first (which would not be unusual, since the books are actually in a loose chronological order), the others also take a bit of tension: At the end of the Bluebear novel, the reader asks himself whether the Bluebear can withstand the whispers of the zamomin. The same scheme occurs in Rumo & the Miracles in the Dark . There, too, Rumo is said to succumb to the zamomin's power suggestions, whose first “victim” was General Ticktack. A scene that can only be grasped in its full dimension if the reader is also familiar with Captain Bluebear . However, when reading Rumo, he quickly knows that this hero will not ally himself with the Zamomin: Rumo represents too much the classic " hero type ", whose behavior is expressed in clear decisions and not in ambivalence.

Audio book productions

The novel was produced as an audio book by Hessischer Rundfunk in 2002 , read by Dirk Bach . In 2013, based on the recordings, directed by Claudia Gehre and Thomas Krüger, a new production with music by Oskar Sala and a new sound design was created. Wolfgang Völz read the foreword.

Text output

The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär , Eichborn Verlag , Frankfurt a. M. 1999. (Hardcover)
The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär (numbered luxury edition), Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1999. (Hardcover)
The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär , Goldmann Verlag , Munich 2001. (Paperback edition)
The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär , Eichborn Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2006. (Special hardcover edition)
The 13½ Lives of Captain Blaubär , Albrecht Knaus Verlag , Munich 2013. (Hardcover, with color illustrations by Florian Biege )

Audio book editions

The 13½ lives of Captain Blaubär , Weltbild, Frankfurt a. M. 2002. (audio book, read by Dirk Bach)
Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär , Der Hörverlag, 2013 (new version of the audio book, read by Dirk Bach)

Secondary literature

Anja Dollinger, Walter Moers: Zamonia. A journey of discovery through a fantastic continent. From A for Anagrom Ataf to Z for Zamomim. Knaus, 2012.
Magdalena Drywa: Knowledge is night. Concepts of education and knowledge in Walter Moers' Die 13½ Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär. In: Walter Moers' Zamonien-Romane. Surveying a fictional continent. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2011, pp. 173–190.
Eva Kormann: Spinning sailor's yarn or: in the maelstrom of storytelling. Walter Moers' variant of the picaresque novel. In: Walter Moers' Zamonien-Romane. 2011, pp. 157-171
Katja Pawlik: From Atlantis to Zamonia, from Menippos to Moers: Walter Moers' Zamonia novels in the context of Menippi satire . Dissertation. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8260-5899-8 .
Mareike Wegner: »Knowledge is night!«. Parodic procedures in Walter Moers' Zamonien novels and in Wilde Reise durch die Nacht. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8498-1137-2 .