The enclosure

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The enclosure is an autobiographical tale by Wolfgang Hilbig , which was written in 1979 and published in Frankfurt am Main in 1980.

background

In the GDR in 1978: Wolfgang Hilbig was in custody from May 10th to the beginning of July for illegal contact with S. Fischer Verlag .

shape

The narrated time extends over a few hours in a day. The day before, the narrator was released from custody. This protagonist splits his personality into an I and a he. He always changes between them. In terms of content, the narrator thinks about three topics. First, there are strange dream-like sequences: the hero in bed sorts his limbs when he wakes up. These impressions should perhaps not be taken too seriously, because the narrator ultimately takes back the relevant thought results - as is common practice with Wolfgang Hilbig - as regrettable errors. Second, the narrator looks out into the landscape around his Meuselwitz, which has been ruined for days by years of lignite mining . He thinks back to the time before 1945 . In the time after that, the flight of thoughts covered the career as a student and apprentice in the Eastern Zone and later GDR. Point three is outlined below under “Detention”. The mixing of the three narrative levels mentioned challenges the reader.

Of course, the text is composed much more complexly than sketched here. For example, the narrator apparently has no support from the population: back at large, he doesn't want to meet any neighbors. Because on the back of his neck he can still feel the looks of people behind the curtains when he was "led into the car with the toggle chain on his wrist."

title

The narrator, now living in freedom, was instructed to report to the authorities in the district town on the day after his release - this Pyrrhic victory . One look at the clock shows that he will miss the train there. Fearing another arrest, he runs off anyway. At the bottom of the house mailbox he finds a summons from the police. Otherwise nothing happens in the text. Everything has already happened and the first-person narrator is just wondering. In this sense, the title enclosure is ambiguous. On the one hand, enclosure stands for prison in which the protagonist was locked and, on the other hand, one of the main ideas in the text is alluded to. This is related to the word peace that appears a couple of times . The narrator, among others, ponders the question: What if I make my peace with the authorities?

Detention

There is talk of the prisoner's loneliness. And a good two weeks before the “release”, he was made insecure by ambiguous statements by the “security officers”. Of course, the narrator also has enough clear information to report from the weeks of imprisonment: "You know that you have to stand facing the wall, arrested man ...". His report culminates in a nightly beatings scene. The narrator becomes an ear-witness of how a prisoner is hit with a hard rubber stick by the guards.

reception

  • The protagonist reminds Gabriele Eckart of Foucault's disciplinary individual.
  • Steiner sees the self-division as a result of the imprisonment.
  • The experienced disenfranchisement made the former prisoner alien to himself.

literature

Text output

  • First published in the Neue Rundschau , No. 4 (1980), pp. 19-38.
  • Wolfgang Hilbig: The enclosure. Pp. 84-103 in Jörg Bong (Ed.), Jürgen Hosemann (Ed.), Oliver Vogel (Ed.): Wolfgang Hilbig. Works . Volume stories and short prose. With an afterword by Katja Lange-Müller . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-10-033642-2 .

Secondary literature

  • Erk Grimm: In the debris of the cities. Wolfgang Hilbig's topographical "I" exploration. P. 62–74 in Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Hrsg.): Text + criticism. Issue 123. Wolfgang Hilbig. Munich 1994, ISBN 3-88377-470-7
  • Gabriele Eckart : Speech trauma in the texts of Wolfgang Hilbig. in Richard Zipser (Ed.): DDR Studies , Vol. 10. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 0-8204-2645-8
  • Sylvie Marie Bordaux: Literature as Subversion. An examination of the prose work by Wolfgang Hilbig. Cuvillier, Göttingen 2000 (Diss. Berlin 2000), ISBN 3-89712-859-4
  • Jens Loescher: Myth, Power and Cellar Language. Wolfgang Hilbig's prose in the mirror of the aftermath. Editions Rodopi BV, Amsterdam 2003 (Diss. Berlin 2002), ISBN 90-420-0864-4
  • André Steiner: The narrative self - studies on Wolfgang Hilbig's narrative work. Short stories 1979–1991. Novels 1989–2000. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2008 (Diss. Bremen 2007), ISBN 978-3-631-57960-2
  • Birgit Dahlke : Wolfgang Hilbig. Meteore Vol. 8. Wehrhahn Verlag, Hannover 2011, ISBN 978-3-86525-238-8

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Dahlke (p. 69, 8. Zvu) cites a typical move by the GDR authorities in this regard. Wolfgang Hilbig had to pay a fine of 2,000 marks for his “foreign exchange offense” and received 2,000 marks in imprisonment.
  2. ↑ The reader encounters such changes, for example, in the edition used on p. 92, 5. Zvu to 3. Zvu or on p. 101, 5. Zvu to p. 102, 4. Zvo Bordaux writes: “So ist the doppelganger motif is also a means of evading repression. "(Bordaux, p. 226, 2nd Zvu)
  3. ↑ Three references to Meuselwitz: First, in the small town there was a part of HASAG's operations . There prisoners had to work among others (edition used, p. 94, 19. Zvo and 25. Zvo as well as p. 97, 8. Zvu). Second, the "BBS in M." (edition used, p. 95, 16. Zvu) is the company vocational school of VEB Maschinenfabrik John Schehr Meuselwitz . And thirdly, at the lignite mine Progress (edition used p. 97, 3rd Zvu), work was still carried out around the clock in the early 1960s.
  4. ↑ Hilbig mocks slogans of the GDR peace propaganda, everywhere unmistakable on banners - all of them "Proklamationen des Friedens" (used edition, p. 94, 14. Zvo): For example, education for peace (used edition, p. 94, 8th Zvo ), Securing the Peace (edition used, p. 101, 5. Zvo) or the narrator lives in the Camp of Peace (edition used, p. 96, 20. Zvo).
  5. ↑ Loescher (p. 107, 17. Zvo) sees the mistreatment described as a reference to Benjamin's angel .
  6. ↑ Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, pp. 763 and 765
  2. ↑ Steiner, p. 129, 6. Zvu and p. 134, 6. Zvo
  3. ↑ Erk Grimm in Arnold, p. 67, 1. Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 92, 11. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 87, 10. Zvu (see also Eckart, p. 107 above about the "disciplinary space prison")
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 87, 13. Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 93, 18. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 99, 10. Zvu
  9. ↑ Eckart, p. 101 middle
  10. ↑ Steiner, p. 141, 9th Zvu
  11. ↑ Dahlke, p. 69, 13. Zvo