The Companions (Seghers)

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Binding of the first edition by Kiepenheuer in 1932. Part of the edition was given to subscribers to the Universum Library for All .

The Companions is an internationalist novel by Anna Seghers from 1932. This first novel by the author was published in Berlin four months before Hitler came to power .

Brandes writes: “ The Companions are today one of the most important documents of socialist prose in the twenties” [of the 20th century]. Anna Seghers superficially presents “moral-idealistic attitudes”. Companions mean fighters from the communist ranks in the years 1919 to 1929. The acting communists are not members of a party leadership. You are always controlled by this from the background. With one exception - that of the renegade bourgeois skepticist Steiner - these communists are always true to the line. The fight for their ideal clearly takes precedence over the concern for the survival of women and children. There are hardly any traitors. The communist remains silent with Anna Seghers, even under hideous torture, and dies for the cause.

shape

Eleven chapters are continued in two parts. The figures come from Hungary, Poland, Italy, Bulgaria and China. In addition to these countries, the action leads to Austria, France, England, Belgium, Germany and Russia. Anna Seghers used the collage-like simultaneous technique of the North American Dos Passos as a model for handling the five figure constellations, which exist largely independently of one another . Afterwards, several actions at different locations are "linked by topic and leitmotif". However, the above-mentioned dictum of largely independent character groups is broken by at least one protagonist. The young, independent internationalist Pali alternates between the nations (see below: Hungary, Italy, France, Belgium) and thus constitutes the relations expected by the reader.

When the party is mentioned, the Communist Party is meant. This is evident from the vocabulary. Tien Shi-li is talking about the Soviets , the councils. Another Chinese speaks of a "red formation". Or Anna Seghers lets the Bulgarians talk about the “Committee of Communists” and they fight illegally outside the Soviet Union .

Once, Anna Seghers lets the other side have their say. The prison doctor Dr. Cink, who has to prepare prisoners to be force- fed in Poland , thinks: “Why am I doing this?” Anna Seghers plays sparingly with emotions. When Janek (Polish episode, see below) is visited by his wife in the Posen penitentiary , their toddler gives a "bright, trembling cry of joy" "like a water bird".

The strict language, trained in Kafka's “straightforward German”, requires a concentrated reader. Occasionally something like involuntary humor shimmers through in the first novel: "In the child's tender, lean face, the lower half was laughing and the upper half was sad."

content

1919

From July to August 1919: The Romanians occupy Budapest . It is over with the Communist Council Hungary . The third regiment, made up of metal workers from Budapest, took part in the civil war on the Volga . Now it is dissolving near Budapest. The commander Faludi chases the young officer Peter Böhm away. Every former Red Army soldier has to get by on his own. The uniform is exchanged for the peasant smock. Böhm made it to Budapest. The university professors Dr. Bató and Dr. Steiner managed to escape to Vienna by ship. The young worker Pali is accepted into the family of the worker Bordoni in Bologna . Bordoni works in a fittings factory. Signora Katarina Bordoni, her parents are craftsmen in Bordesiglio, cannot hide their dislike for the scarred, ragged refugee Pali.

1924 to 1929
Berlin

Bató went to Berlin with his wife and child and got a small job as a newspaper editor. In the summer of 1926, on behalf of party cell 15/16, he stuck posters at the Schlesisches Tor , distributed leaflets and attended meetings. He wants to go to Russia. Böhm and Faludi join him. In March 1928, the anniversary of the “ Hungarian Revolution ” is celebrated among compatriots in West Berlin .

France, Belgium

Pali found work in Enzères near Paris. There he meets the young worker Józsi, a friend from his former regiment. Józsi also managed to escape from Hungary. Like his friend, he was also badly mistreated in Hungary. He was hung upside down. Football was played with his head.

Looking for work in Paris, Pali meets his friend Bordoni again. The Italian worker had to leave home in 1922 . Ms. Bordoni's dislike of the Hungarian intruder into the small Italian refugee family remained. Pali looms around unemployed, takes part in demonstrations and gets to feel the police stick. It looks like a relationship between Palis and Giulia Bordoni, a giggling teenager, is about to begin.

Katarina Bordoni's aversion to idleness also extends to her own husband. He's got her pregnant again. Everyone hates the pregnant woman, even the biological children. After Bordoni took part in the next demonstration, the French deport the entire family to Brussels . When Bordoni wanted to go to Russia from Belgium, Katarina said: “Go ahead” The woman sets one condition. He has to write.

When Bordoni is finally gone, Katarina leaves the reserve. Suddenly she likes Pali, who has traveled all the way to Brussels. When Katarina finally gives up her prejudices against her husband and then surprisingly against Pali, she realizes that a fight is required. Giulia and Pali are likely to become a couple. The underage girl's breast begins to grow. Pali would rather own it today than tomorrow. Bordoni dutifully writes from Russia. He, who apparently did not invent work, had to toil in a fittings factory there - three days away from Moscow.

Poland

Janek, who worked as a dyer in the finishing department of a dye works in Bialystok , worked for four years. He was arrested with leaflets in August 1920 when the Russians were withdrawing from Poland. After the big textile workers strike in Lodz , Janek is sentenced to another five years in prison. His young wife Anka visits him regularly. Anka embeds party news in family news. Janek passes the former on to fellow inmates who are listening.

Janek becomes a father. Dombrowski, wife of a fellow prisoner, also becomes a mother. The next time Anka receives permission to visit, she has to report the death of the child. After the Pilsudski coup in May 1926, there is a lot of excitement among the prisoners.

Anka is not allowed to see Janek on the next day of her visit. He, Dombrowski and others are on hunger strike to get people to be put in one cell. Force-feeding, a hard tube pushed into the throat with force, is not without consequences. Dombrowski dies after that tube tore his esophagus and splinters of glass got inside his neck. Janek thinks of Dombrowski's unbelievably tough wife, how she said goodbye to her husband on her last visit to prison: “It works without you.” As a punishment for starving, Janek is transferred to the prison in Posen and is not allowed to receive visitors. When he comes out, Anka is under arrest. He doesn't know your prison. Janek travels to Moscow. There in the Polish club he searches for Anka until he finds her.

After returning from Russia, Janek was arrested again in connection with the elections. This time he got eight years. Anka gives birth to her second child and visits Janek in the Posen prison.

At the next demonstration, Dombrowski is one of the two bearers of the banner at the head of the procession. Even after her husband's death, she still carries food to prison for politicians.

Bulgaria

In Revesch, a forest farming village in the Prutka, Dimoff, a worker in a sawmill, and the farmer Stojanoff are talking about a certain Dudoff. The latter, also a worker in a sawmill, was imprisoned after the Bulgarian coup in 1923, fled, caught again, and his feet mutilated by his henchmen. The inmates in the central prison in Sofia can barely recognize the face mutilated.

Stojanoff, who has been in the war, knows that the villages are being combed for reds . He told his son Andreas to deny his father when there was a knock on the door. Stojanoff heard that Dudoff was supposed to have gone to Russia.

Dimoff, on the run, slips into Stojanoff's hut. Before dawn, Andreas shows the refugee the way. The persecutors torture Stojanoff to death in his home. The torturers can't get anything out of Frau Stojanoff. When Andreas comes home, he denies his father.

Dudoff is not in Russia but is in prison. He escapes, comes through and reaches Paris. He has to admit bitterly that he will not be sent to Russia. Years of imprisonment are bad for his health. Finally he reached Moscow exhausted. Dudoff doesn't understand why his fighting strength left him. He was nursed in the Crimea, returned to the Prutka and was hanged along with three other fighters during the election campaign.

Southwest Germany

Dr. Steiner struggles to gain a foothold in a German university town. After he married the twenty-year-old daughter of the archaeologist Schlueter, things are looking up faster. The doctor would like to go back to the front of the battle, although he is writing a letter to Dr. Bató, but he cannot find his way out of his chosen refuge. Bató reacts. He goes to Steiner. One last meeting takes place in the station management of that university town. The meeting doesn't change anything. Steiner stays at home with his beautiful wife.

London, Berlin and Shanghai

The young student Liau Han-chi, son of a landowner near Tangsi, receives news from home in Limehouse . The communists have joined the Kuomintang . In Berlin on Müllerstrasse, young Liau learns “German party work, how to keep people together” in a room illustrated with Liebknecht and Rosa . The news from home does not stop. In Canton , a certain Chiang Kai-shek becomes head of the Whampoa military school . In Rotterdam, the student Liau Han-chi wants to meet with seafarers from home.

The father has become a landowner again and sends the son money for the journey home. Liau wants to go to China, but not to his father, but to where he will be sent. According to the latest reports from home, Tschiangkaischek is ensuring civil order. He had two hundred workers shot in Shanghai.

The student's older brother, a certain Liau Yen-kai, lives with his wife in Moscow. In order to be able to go illegally, the couple handed their child over to the Soviet state in a children's home for upbringing on November 3, 1927.

On the way home to Canton, Liau Han-chi falls into the hands of a traitor and is arrested on arrival.

Much later, the ways of the brothers meet in Shanghai. The older one has to watch the younger one being shot in the speaker's platform before he can speak.

Quote

  • "These political [prisoners] are tough, they don't give in, they chew iron."

interpretation

The above-mentioned collage technique, freely based on Dos Passos, was not entirely successful in some places. There are too wide gaps between the individual scenes in the Chinese episode. The cold turning away of the fighters from the family may be possible, but in the presented phalanx it does not appear entirely credible. The language is strict, powerful and, on top of that, occasionally laden with archaic symbols: The hanged Dudoff climbs down from the gallows, glues around posters and "slips into the noose". Janek, transferred to St. Michael Prison, has another six years to serve and blesses a young fighter.

reception

  • Kracauer hits the nail on the head in the “ Frankfurter Zeitung ” of November 13, 1932 in the literary sheet No. 46 with the characteristic “Martyr's Chronicle”.
  • Bredel welcomed the novel in the “ Hamburger Volkszeitung ” of December 4, 1932, although he was perplexed by the “almost colorful mess” of the newfangled simultaneous storytelling.
  • Dr. Batós and Dr. Steiner's problems are rooted in their origins. In particular, Neugebauer considers Steiner's account to be fairly closed.
  • Batt considers the Hungarian and Bulgarian episodes to be particularly successful because, among other things, a sober presentation dominates. In addition, the relationship between intellectuals and workers is made transparent in the Hungarian episodes. Batt praises the author's narrative perspective . Anna Seghers does not look at the revolutionary struggle from the outside, but rather tells "entirely from the experience of her characters". Great explanations would be avoided in that context. However, the "objects" are dependent. It was no coincidence that Anna Seghers chose China (Tschiangkaischek) and Hungary ( Horthy ). The clear front line there spoke for itself.
  • Brandes presents the text as something like a commissioned work. Anna Seghers followed "the instructions of the BPRS ". Brandes calls this form experiment, which, in addition to Dos Passos, is also modeled on Joyce and Döblin, as a “collective novel”.
  • In the novel, the subject of uprising - successfully begun in the " Uprising of the Fishermen of St. Barbara " - is continued and expanded to include internationality. In addition, the confrontation with fascism is recognizable. The draft of the story “of Passion and Redemption ” was based on Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard .
  • Sigrid Bock: Historical balance sheet as a moment in which to grapple with the fascist danger. Anna Seghers´ novel "The Companions" Weimarer Contributions 11 (1980) pp. 5-34, quoted in Schrade, p. 162, 4th entry

literature

Text output

First edition
Used edition

Secondary literature

  • 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
  • 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
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Batt notes in this connection that at the time (1932) Anna Seghers had no illusions about a possible defeat of part of the European communists (Batt, p. 71, 3. Zvo). Before the author turned away from internationalisms and turned to national subjects, she had had bitter experiences after 1932 (Batt, p. 71, 7th Zvu).
  2. ↑ The Bulgarian episodes are set in the Balkan Mountains (Neugebauer, p. 38, 6th Zvu).
  3. ↑ As a Heidelberg student, Anna Seghers met many political refugees on the international scene. Schrade sees such encounters as one of the sources of the text (Schrade, p. 37, 4th Zvo).
  4. ↑ Brandes emphasizes the text as a remarkable singularity in the author's novels. Anna Seghers deviated from such heroism in later novels (Brandes, p. 39, 14th Zvu). Batt, on the other hand, considers “the severity and mercilessness of this image of man” (Batt, p. 67, 4th Zvu) to be absolutely necessary in the situation at that time (1932). Hilzinger takes the “courage to fight and the daring of the companions” (Hilzinger, p. 166, 11. Zvo) as the young author's writing motif.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brandes, p. 37, 9. Zvu
  2. ↑ Brandes, p. 39, 15. Zvo
  3. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 166, 4. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 279, 5th Zvu
  5. ↑ Schrade, p. 37, 18. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 284, 6. Zvu to p. 285, 4. Zvo
  7. ↑ Brandes, p. 38, 17. Zvo
  8. ^ Batt, p. 65, 13. Zvu
  9. ↑ see also Schrade, p. 38, 19. Zvo and Hilzinger, p. 165, 5. Zvo
  10. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 35, 15. Zvo
  11. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 38, 7. Zvo and Batt, p. 66, 2. Zvu
  12. ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 261, 14. Zvu
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 295, 14. 11. Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 296, 6. 11.vo
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 303, 6. 11. Zvo
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 301, 17th Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 249, 4th Zvo
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 283, 8. Zvo
  19. ↑ see also Schrade, p. 38, 17. Zvo
  20. ↑ quoted in Batt, p. 70, 3. Zvo
  21. ↑ Edition used, p. 301, 1. Zvo
  22. ↑ Edition used, pp. 99, 9, Zvo
  23. ↑ ital .: Bordesigli (edition used, pp. 298,16. Zvu)
  24. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 38, 18. Zvo
  25. ↑ Edition used, p. 260, 14. Zvo
  26. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 38 middle
  27. ↑ Edition used, p. 249, 7th Zvu
  28. ↑ Edition used, p. 179, 1. Zvu
  29. ↑ Edition used, p. 191, 14. Zvo
  30. ↑ Edition used, p. 240, 7th Zvu
  31. ↑ Edition used, p. 242, 13. Zvu
  32. ↑ Edition used, p. 186, 4th Zvu
  33. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 165, 5th Zvu
  34. ↑ Edition used, p. 305, 17th Zvu
  35. ↑ Edition used, p. 308, 4th Zvu, on this see also Batt, p. 68, 11th Zvo
  36. ↑ quoted in Schrade, p. 38, middle
  37. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 165, 15. Zvu
  38. ↑ quoted in Schrade, p. 37, 12. Zvu
  39. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 37 above
  40. ^ Batt, p. 63, 9. Zvo
  41. ^ Batt, p. 64, 6th Zvu
  42. ↑ see also Hilzinger, p. 165, 8th Zvu
  43. ↑ Batt, p. 69, 3rd Zvu
  44. ^ Batt, p. 68 below
  45. ^ Batt, p. 71, 10. Zvo
  46. ↑ Brandes, p. 38, 1. Zvu
  47. ↑ Brandes, p. 37, 1. Zvu and p. 38, 9. Zvo
  48. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 164, 11. Zvu
  49. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 166, 8. Zvo