The auditorium (novel)

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The Aula is a novel by Hermann Kant , which was first published in 1965 and which traces the history of the workers and farmers faculties in the GDR in the biographies of its protagonists .

place and time

The narrated time stretches from the founding of the GDR to the closure of the workers and farmers faculty at the University of Greifswald , whereby the present (1962) and the past (1949–1952) overlap.

genus

Arrival novel , Bildungsroman , developing novel

content

The successful journalist and literary critic Robert Iswall received a telegram request to give a speech on the occasion of the closure of his former school, a workers and farmers faculty (ABF). Although he was committed to other projects, the assignment casts him under its spell in the months that followed and became an occasion to look back at the efforts of the young GDR to establish educational opportunities for the underprivileged classes after the end of the war. The focus of the observations is on Iswall's friends and roommates, the young returnees Gerd Trullesand, Jakob Filter and Karl-Heinz Riek. All of them from proletarian professions, after a clumsy start, they become brilliant graduates of the ABF. This success is possible through their strong cohesion and the unconditional will to overcome the difficulties with iron diligence and devoted willingness to learn, which arise on the one hand from the subject matter, on the other hand from the patronizing, at best, but basically contemptuous attitude of the established educated middle class (lecturers as well as students) who blatantly displays his academic conceit. The clash of the unequal characters (Trullesand is a woman's favorite, Filter a sedate phlegmatic, Riek a born organizer, Iswall a notorious show-off) causes the situation comedy that contributed significantly to the success of the novel and the critic Reich-Ranicki to the apostrophization of the author as " really great expert ”.

Another motive that runs through the whole novel is that of personal guilt: After passing the Abitur exams, Iswall suggested to the party leadership in a cadre meeting out of (baseless) jealousy that Gerd Trullesand - his best friend, lifesaver and supposed rival for a woman's favor - is delegated to the People's Republic of China for seven years to start studying Sinology . The condition for this is Trullesand's immediate marriage to a fellow student. Obeying party discipline, the dismayed chosen one agrees. At the end of the novel there is a clarifying discussion of the protagonists, in the course of which it turns out that sinology - like the wife - were the "main hits". At the same time, Iswall received the news that his speech had been deleted from the program of the ceremony in the auditorium: You no longer wanted to look back, but to look ahead.

The novel conveys the self-assured conviction that the ABF has fulfilled its historical mission, the respect for the graduates and the approval of a country that made their brilliant careers possible in the first place.

particularities

Autobiographical expression

Like his protagonist Robert Iswall, Hermann Kant was born in Hamburg , ended up as a Polish prisoner of war towards the end of the war and visited the ABF Greifswald.

The motto

The Heine quote “Today is a result of yesterday. What he wanted, we have to research if we want to know what he wants ”comes from Heine's“ French conditions ”. This motto can be seen as the leitmotif of the accounting protagonist Robert Iswall.

The title

The title of the novel stands for “the proletarian expropriation of a bourgeois educational symbol” and thus “the rise of an entire class”.

Karl-Heinz Riek

Karl-Heinz Riek occupies a special position among the acting characters, called "Quasi" for a linguistic quirk. While his fellow students without exception began a successful course of study after graduating from high school and made respectable careers, of all people, the talented organizer, convinced agitator and talented mathematician Riek "goes to the west" to Hamburg, where he runs a dubious restaurant with a betting office. A curious visit during a business trip that Iswall takes to his birthplace on the occasion of the great Hamburg flood disaster of 1962 leaves him at a loss.

Some clues (such as the lack of Riek's cadre files in the university's archive, the still valid party guarantee for filters, the imploring words on the occasion of the meeting in Hamburg and, last but not least, the complete inexplicability of the process) suggest that the party is loyal to the line Communist is active as a spy and runs his Hamburg inn only pretend.

Critical rating

Reception of the first publication

“Kant's best known and best novel” was controversially discussed in both German states and made the author well known. In the East, Kant's irony in particular met with opposition from some Orthodox critics. Others praised the "cheerfulness that testifies to superiority", the "partisan commitment" of the Kantian main characters to "socialist development" and declared the book to be a work of art in socialist national literature. Kant's satirical attacks on the Federal Republic found approval in critics of the East, but aroused opposition from West German reviewers such as Günther Zehm or Marcel Reich-Ranicki , who lamented the “insincerity of the book” and accused Kant of being too cowardly to tell the truth about the situation in the To write GDR.

style

The author is unanimously attested to having great narrative talent. He confidently makes use of various stylistic devices that were previously frowned upon in socialist literature: changes in time and style levels, flashbacks, change of perspective, inner monologue (entanglement of reflection and action), socialist realism, jokes, satire and ironic refraction become effortlessly with one another connected. In the GDR reception, the intellectual speech on the forest worker Jakob Filter, who made it up to the main department head in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, plays a prominent role. Thematically, a certain similarity to Dumas' musketeers is obvious: A conspiratorial community advocates their common conviction. The often cheerful interaction of the four main characters could bring the work close to the picaresque novel if the protagonists weren't so incredibly capable.

The pride in what has been achieved occasionally seduces the author into self-satisfied diction, as is to become more and more evident in Kant's later works. In an effort to present the acquired knowledge to the reader, the text repeatedly turns into a - not exactly revolutionary - name dropping of educated bourgeois terminology. The result is a sometimes rather affected, lengthy habitus at the expense of Kurzweil and its particular strength, the anecdote . Nonetheless, the novel found and entertained its audience, not least in Germany.

It can be assumed that the author consciously uses the stylistic device of the name symbolism, that is, “Iswall” could stand for a wall made of ice or even iron, which, comparable to the iron bands in the fairy tale of the frog prince , has wrapped itself around the heart. Since the protagonist is characterized as haughty, cold-hearted and aloof, but tries to gradually come to terms with himself and his past (visits to Riek, Filter and Trullesand), such an interpretation does not seem to be completely out of hand (see Thomaneck). In conclusion, this question could only be clarified with a knowledge of Low German or onomastics .

Dealing with uncomfortable topics

Robert Iswall is not a seamlessly positive hero with moral integrity, but rather unheard of in many respects in the context of real socialist ideology: he does not worship a Soviet writer, but Ernest Hemingway and God forbid, Karl May , lets his lust for ridicule run wild, has the wrong books read and failed as a human. No doubt that contributed to the book's popularity. It achieved high editions in the GDR, was translated into numerous languages, read in East and West German schools and is considered “the GDR novel par excellence”.

The work touches on numerous uncomfortable topics (failure of the individual, failure of the collective , dogmatism , careerism, vanity, narrow-mindedness at functionary level , " flight from the republic ", rift between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China ), which in the meantime dissolve like a fairytale (the positively drawn party secretary Haiduck loses his post through an intrigue, but in the end gets a higher one), put aside with a pun or be regretted as the teething problems of the new system. The author's partiality , his fundamental commitment to the GDR, puts shackles on his characters: Kant "expands the limits within which criticism is possible, but does not break them anywhere".

In particular, the flight from the republic is seen as a personal failure of several participants or as a completely inexplicable process, but never as an action that can be rationally justified even to the point. It is possible that the fact that Robert Iswall lost his birth father at an early age contributed to his ideology that was loyal to the line ; It is reasonable to assume that the omniscient party not only replaces the family model, but also that which he emotionally lacks.

The flirtatiousness of the first-person narrator with his guilt plays a special role: According to Trullesand's confession, both sinology and the wife have proven to be the "main hits"; as a result, the party - never erring according to its self- confession - was infallible on this point too. Given the background knowledge that the author, Hermann Kant, was accused of being responsible for the banishment of an ABF fellow student to the Soviet Arctic Ocean, this passage in particular leaves an oppressive aftertaste.

Kant's nonchalant treatment of such topics has accused him of “neatly roughening up contradictions in order to smooth them down all the more reliably”: “Kant turns problems into loyal anecdotes”; "After promising beginnings, his memory and reflection processes regularly break off where a real taboo would have to be broken, a stubborn repression lifted."

Lifeless protagonists?

As contagious as the characters' enthusiasm is at times, the question of their credibility arises. Despite all efforts to achieve authenticity, which should be suggested in particular by the character breaks of the main person, they have a relief-like cut. Difficulties only serve to make the protagonists appear even more glorious after they have been overcome. Hatred, despair, thirst for revenge, joy, sadness, bliss and love hunger do not take place. There are no harrowing crises of meaning, no great feelings, neither in the Iswall-Trullesand relationship, and certainly not in the relationship between man and woman. Wrapped in an atmosphere saturated with reason, the characters do not talk about their problems from their hearts, but at best say them in order to solve them immediately with the help of the collective , party discipline or a deus ex machina . In all arabesques the protagonists are mathematically cold; Modeled ideally like a workers' monument, they leave a lifeless, synthetic impression despite the author's efforts to the contrary.

Formally, the novel has “a downright western touch”; In terms of content, however, it unfolds a socialist Biedermeier : After overcoming its teething problems, the GDR settles in self-satisfied with what it has achieved. The revolution releases its children into a petty-bourgeois idyll; great people live in a great country: good activists, carefree and sure of their future.

These points of criticism can of course only apply under the premise of the bourgeois concept of freedom , which postulates the greatest possible scope for action for the individual. From the Marxist-Leninist perspective, to which the author still professes, freedom is first understood collectivistically, namely as the absence of the dictates of capitalist domination and property relations. As a result, no matter how large the individual's room for maneuver, they would at best be a fool's freedom. The extent to which such a view - especially after the collapse of real socialism and in view of the global economic crisis of 2009 - is to be regarded as alien to life cannot be the subject of this consideration.

pads

Print editions

Audio books

  • Audio CD: Hermann Kant Reads from “The Aula” and “The Third Nail”, Label: Sony BMG Wort (2001), ISBN 3-89830-223-7
  • Audio cassette: Hermann Kant Reads from “The Aula” and “The Third Nail”, Label: Sony BMG Wort (2001), ISBN 3-89830-224-5

Translations

The novel has been translated into numerous languages ​​and has been published by a total of 22 publishers.

Dramatization

"The Aula" was first dramatized by the Landestheater Halle in the 1967/68 season. After a guest performance by the ensemble with Kurt Böwe as "Trullesand" at the "Berliner Festtagen" in October 1968, the Halle version was taken over by the Deutsches Theater Berlin , further edited and at the Kammerspiele with Reimar Johannes Baur as "Iswall", Dieter Franke as " Trullesand ”, Dieter Mann as“ Filter ”, Gerhard Bienert as“ Völschow ”and Peter Aust as“ Quasi ”(premiere on February 18, 1969). With more than 297 performances, “The Aula” is one of the most frequently performed pieces in German theater.

The only production outside the GDR took place in 1970 at the Vaganten stage in West Berlin (directorial debut: Egmont Elschner).

filming

TV adaptation BRD 1976 based on the stage version of the Landestheater Halle, director: H. Flick

literature

  • Wolfgang Emmerich: Small literary history of the GDR . Extended new edition, 1st edition, Berlin: Aufbau, 2000
  • Werner Grau: Aspects of a Novel . In: Kant, Hermann: The auditorium. Bertelsmann book club. Gütersloh, undated
  • Jos Hoogeveen: Satire as a reception category. Hermann Kant's 'Aula' in the discussion between East and West . In: Ders./Gerd Labroisse (ed.): GDR novel and literature society . Amsterdam: Rodopi 1981. (Amsterdam Contributions to Modern German Studies. 11-12) , pp. 163–216.
  • Walter Jens (Hrsg.): Kindlers new literature dictionary . Kindler, Munich 1990. Vol. 9, p. 118. ISBN 3-463-43009-6
  • Hermann Kant: credits . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin et al. 1991. ISBN 3-351-02146-1
  • Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Without a discount. About literature from the GDR . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1991. ISBN 3-421-06611-6
  • JKA Thomaneck: On the importance of the international brigadists for Anna Seghers in the context of the arrival literature of the GDR . In: Berlin Reading Signs 1/99
  • Gero von Wilpert (Ed.): Lexicon of world literature . Vol. 2, major works of world literature, 2., exp. Aufl., Kröner, Stuttgart 1980, p. 84. ISBN 3-520-80802-1

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Reich-Ranicki, p. 121
  2. ↑ cf. End credits, p. 320
  3. ↑ Emmerich, p. 203
  4. ↑ cf. Emmerich, p. 64; Reich-Ranicki, p. 126
  5. ^ Hermann Wiegmann : The German literature of the 20th century . Würzburg 2005, p. 336
  6. ↑ Inge Diersen: Humor and satire and the art of dealing sensibly with one another. To Hermann Kant's novel “The Aula” . In: Berliner Zeitung v. January 21, 1966
  7. ^ Maria-Verena Leistner: Hermann Kant's novel 'The Aula' . In: Deutsch als Fremdsprache 2/1967, pp. 108–113, here pp. 112f.
  8. ↑ Anneliese Große: On the value of history . In: Weimarer contributions 18 (8), 1972, pp. 65–91, here p. 81: "Satire, ... which attacks the complete stuntedness of man in capitalism"
  9. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: A land of smiles . In: On the literature of the GDR . Munich 1974, pp. 83-89 (first in: Die Zeit of April 1, 1966)
  10. ↑ cf. Reich-Ranicki, p. 121 ff., Emmerich, p. 203 f., Grau p. 415 f.
  11. ↑ cf. Reich-Ranicki, p. 124
  12. ↑ Emmerich, p. 203
  13. ↑ Jürgen Manthey, quoted from Emmerich, p. 204
  14. ↑ cf. Emmerich, p. 204
  15. ↑ Wolfgang Emmerich, p. 204
  16. ^ Reich-Ranicki, p. 125
  17. ↑ Wolfgang Emmerich, p. 204
  18. ↑ Emmerich, p. 203
  19. ↑ cf. "Credits"
  20. ↑ s. Ernst Schumacher: Berlin reviews . Berlin (East) 1975, Vol. 1, pp. 308ff.