The Decision (Seghers)

The decision is the penultimate novel by Anna Seghers , published in 1959 in East Berlin .

October 1947 to spring 1951 in the fictional steel and rolling mill in Kossin, these "eastern Bentheim works": While most of the workers stay on site - that is, east of the Elbe - some leading figures decide to continue working in West Germany. Schrade sums up this either / or situation in three sentences: “In a prominent place stands the communist , who brings with him from the past of the anti-fascist struggle the unconditional will to build a new world. He wants to change the situation, not himself. It is different with those who have not yet made the decision to 'collaborate'. "

In the east, Annemarie Auer welcomed the book in autumn 1959: “With more than eighty people - be it here in Germany or in western Germany, in Mexico, in Spain - the reader must be friends or be enemies. We can be sure that our people will take their events to heart with the same thoughtfulness as the experiences they draw from their own lives. ”In the West, Marcel Reich-Ranicki rejects this in“ Der Welt ”of September 3, 1959 Roman from: "The naivety and intellectual poverty of the 'decision' is downright shocking."

content

The table below lists some of the characters who act in the village of Kossin. Kossin is east of the Elbe on an unnamed river.

From the "belonging" of the person appearing in the novel, their behavior always clearly follows. In the relevant second column of the table, the "character" of the figure is taken from the text and in the third column the relevant page in the edition used.

Person in Kossin	Affiliation	Text passage	annotation
Robert Lohse	SED since summer 1946	228, 6. Zvo	Spain fighter , is considered a repair fitter "for good and fast and reliable".
Richard Hagen	Party worker (SED)	5	Spain fighter, grew up with Robert
Martin	Party worker (SED)	5
Heiner Schanz Günther Schanz	SED	167 and 225	Brothers, formers in Kossin
Gerhard Bechtler	independent	5, 225, 16. Zvu and 454, 14. Zvo	refuses to join the SED
Gerber, called Gerber Rooster	SED	6 and 584	Raised and sent out to be a competitive model in Soviet captivity
Vogt	Party Secretary (SED)	6th	Book printer , spent the Third Reich in prison
Strucks	Union official	6th
Professor Berndt	independent	6, 364, 15. Zvo	Plant manager
Toms	SED	6th	Chief engineer, from a family of scholars, grew up in Swabia
Ernst Riedl	independent	6, 229 and 378, 10th Zvu	Engineer, West German Catholic
Friedrich Rentmair	SED candidate	6, 366, 397	engineer

The people who appear in West Germany, mainly in the fictional Hadersfeld, are by no means exemplary, with the exception of Herbert Melzer. The non-party writer Melzer, formerly a fighter against Hitler and together with Robert and Richard Spaniards, is defeated in 1951 in a lonely fight in West Germany.

Will Lene Nohl wait for Robert Lohse?

Those in East Germany who wanted to turn the Kossiner rubble back into a steelworks in 1947 wanted to get their families through the emergency production of rollers , plows and harrows . Robert Lohse, who was stranded there, has no family. The “doggedly taciturn” worker lives in a shack in the partially bombed house of the Enders family. At a meeting of Spanish fighters, he met Erwin Enders. Old Enders had taken the uprooted Robert to Kossin. When Lene Nohl can no longer follow her refugee route with her little daughter Else, she slips into the overcrowded Enders apartment. She later found work in the Kossin-Neustadt light bulb factory. Robert keeps an eye on Lene. He has no luck with the married woman. She is waiting for her husband Albert. Lene's husband actually comes and is hired at the steel mill after checking his papers.

Robert hooks up with Lene's colleague, the widow Ella Busch. Ella, who has become a master at light bulb production, is also not the right person. But little Lisa Zech, also a worker in the light bulb factory, would like a husband. Robert gets to know the young girl, who is half his age, better. Lisa, with artistic ambitions, is an amateur player and dancer who thinks up, writes, sings, and practices her own performances for her troupe and wants to perform them at the FDJ Germany meeting at Pentecost 1950 in Berlin.

The love affair is under an unfortunate star. When one partner has free time, the other just doesn't like it. In addition, Lisa has no real understanding of Robert's friendship with the young man Thomas Helger. Lisa ends the relationship. She goes to Berlin. There she would like to learn to play theater.

The steelworkers willing to set up cannot count on the help of Director Bentheim. The director, a war profiteer, was expropriated by the "Soviet power" and a little later, with the active help of the Americans, builds a new, better, larger steel mill in the Rhine-Main area. In contrast, in the east “the Russians dismantled all kinds of things”.

Robert sets up a primitive training workshop on his own and teaches the youngsters something of his craft. Robert would like to become a training instructor, but he lacks the necessary qualifications. Union official Strucks whistles back to the locksmith: “Stop mixing things that are no longer your business.” But chief engineer Toms encourages Robert to take the necessary training.

One of the workers in the steel mill is to be sent to the school for instructors. The apprentices put Robert through as their favorite. He passes the entrance exam. Albert Nohl, retrained in an American POW camp, sent to the Soviet Zone by the Americans with identification papers and instructions , fled to the West. Lene stays behind with her little daughter Else and confides in Robert. After her husband escapes, she is briefly detained, released as innocent, and continues to work in the light bulb factory. In the continuation of “Decision”, the novel “The Trust”, Robert and Lene get married.

Engineer Friedrich Rentmair kills himself

Not the old friend Riedl, but Dr. Wolfgang Büttner, assistant and friend of the Kossin plant manager Prof. Berndt, had persuaded Rentmair to work in Kossin. Büttner and Rentmair had studied together with Prof. Berndt for a few semesters. The West German Rentmair cannot get used to some customs in the “Russian Zone”. The work in Kossin is controlled by the Soviet officer Petrov, a Ukrainian farmer's son from the Kharkov school. In Petrow's view, Mr. Marshall heals war criminals with dollars.

Rentmair takes its own life after two workers were injured in an industrial accident at the steel mill. One of the two workers died on the way to the hospital. It is said that Rentmair feared the upcoming investigation. He had failed to enforce a safety instruction on the workers. Dr. Büttner had received the state security at the factory gate and informed them that it was he who had known the engineer Rentmair the longest. Robert Lohse from the repair brigade doesn't just want the blame shifted on Rentmair. In his opinion, a lot would have come together - material defects and rather unlikely coincidences. The engineers Toms and Riedl agree that Rentmair has been left alone

Otto Bentheim is shot

Otto Bentheim, formerly a Nazi , appears energetically in the West German company of his father's director Bentheim after the war. On a business trip to Cairo, the former SS man pretends to be a colonial ruler. Not everyone wants to put up with that - neither the Egyptians who are pulled by the ears nor the German returnees. Anton from Born , son of the crooked Ursel, wants to shoot the factory owner's son. While Anton had been under Rommel in the Sahara, Otto Bentheim had been on home leave and had swept his father's factory with an iron broom, accompanied by the Gestapo . The worker Resi - Anton's girl - was arrested and later died in one of the National Socialist camps. Anton survived the war and shoots Otto Bentheim during Carnival in the Schlosscafé Biebrich .

Director Bentheim has another son. Eugen Bentheim succeeds the dead brother. His recipe for dealing with the workforce in a modern way: “In order to increase their desire to work, we need different, completely new means today. No longer the rough old measures, but distracting, stimulating ones. "

Writer Herbert Melzer demonstrates, is beaten down and dies

Herbert Melzer is writing his big book on Spain on the east coast of the USA. He writes the money and the time for it with articles for US magazines. Over time, thanks to his talent, he became a popular author with publishers who was allowed to write travel reports abroad. Herbert's sister Erna had a fatal accident on a trip to Boston . Erna and Herbert's father was employed in the Bentheim works. Erna's husband Stephen Wilcox remarries and distances himself from former relative Herbert. The successful travel reporter is sent from the USA to Western Europe and arrives back home via Paris. A former comrade in arms accuses Herbert of writing for a paper that "rages against the Soviet Union". Herbert thinks about it. He no longer wants to write for US publishers. Rather, he is thinking of a new German novel. "It is my country," he explains his plan. It doesn't come to that anymore. Herbert takes part in a strike against the Bentheims in Hadersfeld. “Heavy blows with the stick” put an early end to his combat-heavy life.

US companies initiate business relationships with West German partners. Wilcox came to Germany. He invites Eugen Bentheim and Dr. Büttner for dinner. Helen Wilcox, the American businessman's second wife, wants people like Dr. Büttner (see below "Dr. Büttner conspires with the US secret service") do not have in the house.

Engineer Ernst Riedl arrives in Kossin first with his mother and then with his child

Kossin had already reached Riedl in the early summer of 1945. He used to work there after graduating from college. On vacation he went to his mother, brother and sister in the Rhein-Main corner and married the orphan Katharina there. The young woman does not understand why Riedl is returning to Kossin. Katharina cannot make up her mind to move to the east. Every time Riedl comes to take the woman to the East, she finds a new excuse: “Don't go there. Stay with me. ”Riedl doesn't listen to his wife. The people of Kossin are amazed when Riedl brings his old mother with him from the west. The engineer always visits his wife in the west. Anna Seghers writes: “You spent the night like two lovers who were separated by a strange fate.” But whenever Katharina decides to move to Kossin, something comes up at the last minute. After that night of love just mentioned, Katharina found out about Rentmair's suicide from a West German newspaper and then separated from her husband. At the time when Prof. Berndt fled (see below “Dr. Büttner conspires with the US secret service”), Riedl wanted to bring his pregnant wife Katharina back to Kossin. Katharina reads a confusing report in the daily newspaper about the escape of the Kossin plant management and does not follow her husband. Before giving birth, Katharina goes to the East after all. The child is born on the inner-German border. The mother dies in childbirth. Riedl brings his healthy child to Kossin. The engineer was promoted to deputy technical manager at the Kossin steelworks.

Dr. Büttner conspires with the US secret service

During Rentmair's lifetime, in a private conversation, Riedl wondered whether he would find Büttner "as a resistance fighter, so to speak" after the war in Kossin.

The book can be read as an agent thriller. During a break from the conference, Mr. Meier, an employee of the US secret service, approached Büttner in an East Berlin café and blackmailed him with Gestapo papers. If Büttner does not sprint, the minutes will be handed over to the Russians. After further meetings in East Berlin cafes with Mr. Meier, Büttner realizes that the Americans are interested in Prof. Berndt. Büttner shares his knowledge with Meier: Everything that Prof. Berndt wrote down for the Russians in his curriculum vitae is true. Berndt even noted his aberrations before 1945. Meier wants more. Büttner is supposed to persuade Berndt to leave the GDR . As a first step, the assistant induces his plant manager to commit to obligations that are difficult to keep.

In the East Berlin café it is discussed whether Berndt could “pull in” further experts. Then the first five-year plan in Kossin would be a farce; a setback for the Russians.

Büttner has to take his wife Helga into confidence - solely because she suspects that some woman is behind the husband's trips to Berlin. Helga is on fire. She conspires diligently. The goal is the secret relocation of the Büttner couple to the FRG . Coincidences help. Helga knows that Berndt's wife and the children are already with their mother in the Black Forest. And the fatal industrial accident (see above under “Engineer Friedrich Rentmair kills himself”) makes the otherwise confident Prof. Berndt vulnerable.

Büttner manages to maneuver Prof. Berndt in a getaway car to West Berlin . The factory manager's management style had previously been publicly attacked by a young engineer. Büttner's wife Helga had left for Dahlem . Nothing will come of the professional comeback of the professor who has arrived safely in West Germany. When he is ill, he retires to his family in the Black Forest.

Testimonials

Anna Seghers: Collected Works in Individual Editions . Vol. XIV (discussions and interviews 1959–1978), pp. 400–401, Berlin 1975–1980

• "The main thing for me was to show how in our time the break that divides the world into two camps affects everyone, even the most private, even the most intimate parts of life."
• In an interview with Christa Wolf : “I like Lohse because it is not easy for him. People who always have it easy and are particularly radiant are mistrusted until they are put to the test. "

Form and interpretation

The novel consists of ten chapters. The text is not only a historical document of the first years of the Cold War , but also tells of the end of the Nazi regime . For example, a troop of happily singing, ruined women is described who survived a National Socialist labor camp.

The narrator is omniscient: "Because he thought: She [Katharina] must come voluntarily." Or: "Büttner thought: Whether this rentmair was solely to blame ..."

In 1959 - the year the book was published - Anna Seghers showed what appears to be a talent for vision. Otto Bentheim, for example, makes fun of his father, the director of Bentheim, in a conversation. The father goes wild when the reconstruction of four furnaces and a new rolling mill is discussed in “his” Kossin plant. But the interlocutors, a certain Kommerzienrat Castrizius comforting: "He will then rebuilt again get ."

In places it seems that Anna Seghers portrayed herself a little with the story of the writer Herbert Melzer: She comes from the Rhine-Main area, she spent years in America and she had to offer her manuscripts to capitalist-oriented publishers before 1947 . The latter problem, the resistance to sales-promoting deletions of the manuscript, affects every author, but Anna Seghers uses the example of the war in Spain to show why Herbert Melzer had to remain true to himself.

Anna Seghers once wrote: “He was on good terms with him.” After the admittedly, the reader waits in vain for the but.

reception

• On the occasion of the author's 80th birthday, Reich-Ranicki called the novel confused and superficial in the FAZ of November 15, 1980. By the way, in the text the reader will find an almost unmistakable abundance of stumbling blocks; at least on the subject "superficial" - for example:
  • "... Vogt [the party secretary], he is correct, I tell you, he is thoroughly decent."
  • “... the Americans in Korea - are they better? ... rule remains rule in every country. But comrade remains comrade. "
  • Robert Lohse says: "In the West they are arming like crazy again, they want to bomb everything up for us just like in Korea, all of our work."
  • Slogans in Kossiner competition: "Every stitch - a stitch against the warmongers!"
• Hilzinger rejects the moral preacher Anna Seghers including her "predominantly one-dimensional characters" and describes the novel as insignificant.

In the above context, one should perhaps consider - the stories inherent in the novel remain true in the sense that Anna Seghers was deeply convinced of the communist utopia. A historical foresight from the perspective of 1959, which apparently turned out to be wrong at the end of 1989, should not be blindly shelved in the 21st century.

• Research by the author on the material became known. Among other things, she went to a steel mill. The expropriated owner Bendtheim still had factories in the Rhineland.
• Batt calls the work a socialist contemporary history novel. In the novel, almost all characters deal with coming to terms with their past before 1945. In addition to the motive for choosing one of the two social systems, probation plays a decisive role. The characters don't just have to choose between East and West. Right at the beginning of the novel, the reader experiences a gathering of the workers at the Kossin steelworks. The speaker Richard Hagen calls on the workers to decide to support the new plant management.

literature

Text output

First edition

• The decision. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1959. 596 pages

Used edition

• The decision. Novel. in: Anna Seghers: Volume VII of the collected works in individual editions . 625 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1985, (4th edition, without ISBN)

Secondary literature

• Anna Seghers: The trust. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1968. First edition. Linen. 455 pages, without ISBN
• Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
• Kurt Batt : Anna Seghers. Trial over development and works. With illustrations. 283 pages. Reclam, Leipzig 1973 (2nd edition 1980). Licensor: Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main (Röderberg-Taschenbuch vol. 15), ISBN 3-87682-470-2
• Juliane Eckhardt: The works of Anna Seghers in literary classes in Germany in: Günter Eifler (editor), Anton Maria Keim (editor): Anna Seghers - Mainzer Weltliteratur. Contributions on the occasion of the 80th birthday. Publishing house Dr. Hanns Krach, Mainz 1981, ISBN 3-87439-074-8
• Ute Brandes: Anna Seghers . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1992. Volume 117 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”, ISBN 3-7678-0803-X
• Andreas Schrade: Anna Seghers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0
• Andreas Schrade: Draft of an undivided society. Anna Seghers' way to the novel after 1945. Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 1994, ISBN 3-925670-89-0
• Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9

annotation

1. ↑ The locksmith's apprentice Thomas Helger plays a secondary role here, but a leading role in the last novel, entitled "The Trust" (Seghers 1968, p. 5, 2nd Zvo).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 204, 9th Zvu
2. ↑ Edition used, p. 614, 4th Zvo
3. ↑ Schrade 1994, p. 84, 16. Zvu
4. ↑ Annemarie Auer in NDL , September / October 1959
5. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki, quoted in Juliane Eckhardt, p. 110, 17. Zvo
6. ↑ Edition used, p. 569, 15. Zvo
7. ^ Batt, p. 222, 4th Zvu
8. ↑ Edition used, p. 16, 6. Zvo
9. ↑ Seghers 1968, pp. 5, 5. and 6. Zvo
10. ↑ Edition used, p. 183, 3. Zvo
11. ↑ Edition used, p. 533, 14th Zvu
12. ↑ Edition used, p. 539, 17th Zvu
13. ↑ Edition used, p. 396, 4th Zvu
14. ↑ Anna Seghers, quoted in Schrade 1993, p. 116, 12. Zvu
15. ↑ Anna Seghers, quoted in Schrade 1993, p. 116, 2. Zvo
16. ↑ Edition used, p. 265, 11. Zvu to p. 266, 15. Zvo
17. ↑ Edition used, p. 328, 2nd Zvu
18. ↑ Edition used, p. 394, 4th Zvu
19. ↑ Edition used, p. 275, 2. Zvo
20. ↑ Edition used, p. 449, 3rd Zvo
21. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki, quoted in Juliane Eckhardt, p. 110, 18. Zvu
22. ↑ Edition used, p. 305, 12. Zvu
23. ↑ Edition used, p. 339, 4th Zvo
24. ↑ Edition used, p. 346, 11. Zvo
25. ↑ Edition used, p. 590, 10th Zvu
26. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 187, 20. to 24. Zvo
27. ↑ Schrade 1993, p. 117, 10. Zvo
28. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 155 above
29. ^ Batt, p. 216, 1. Zvo
30. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 166 center
31. ↑ Brandes, p. 78, 14th Zvu