The siblings (Brigitte Reimann)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Die Geschwister is a story by Brigitte Reimann from 1963. Two years later the author received the Heinrich Mann Prize for this text .

The young painter Elisabeth reports in 1962 how she persuaded her brother Uli to flee the republic at the last minute in 1960 .

content

The 24-year-old Elisabeth Arendt is of middle-class origin. One of her grandfathers was a loyal shoe manufacturer until 1945 . Up until the first years of the war, his father published illustrated books on subjects from the visual arts . Elisabeth has two brothers. The 29-year-old Konrad Arendt, a graduate engineer for shipbuilding, turned his back on the GDR after completing his studies and works at the Deutsche Werft in Hamburg. The 25-year-old Uli Arendt had successfully completed his studies in R. on the Baltic Sea, also as a graduate engineer for shipbuilding, and applied as a designer on the Elbe on the border with Germany . The manager of the small shipyard had rejected Uli despite very good final grades. The unreliable party had been certified by the responsible university party group . According to Uli's memory, what was meant was the assistantship of a professor who later fled the republic and a few skipped Gewi hours.

Elisabeth graduated from the art college in D. in the GDR - 500 kilometers from R. - and started production as a painter . She makes herself useful in “her” brigade in the lignite combine that has been rammed out of the ground and leads a circle of painting workers. The local party secretary Bergemann has their work monitored by the old communist Ohm Heiners. The painter Heiners is one of those persecuted by the Nazi regime . When he asks Elisabeth to assess one of his works of art and she tears it up, the disaster takes its course. Heiners slandered Elisabeth as an “intellectual hooker” and scolded her father as a “Nazi journalist”. As a non-party, Elisabeth turns to party secretary Bergemann and wins. The painter Heiners no longer understands the world. He has to apologize to Elisabeth and afterwards Bergemann throws the party book on the expansive, tidy desk.

Uli wants to leave the GDR for the FRG. A job at the Schlieker shipyard beckons. Elisabeth wants to keep her brother with her. Naughty, she believes that there is also a mountain man in the vicinity of her brother willing to travel. Uli brusquely rejects such a petition. Elisabeth doesn't give up. Full of ingenuity, she brings her fiancé, 28-year-old Joachim Steinbrink, manager of an outdated GDR rolling mill, into play. Comrade Steinbrink, a former classmate of Konrad, promises Uli, who is already sitting on the packed suitcase, a job as a control engineer in his ailing plant. Cybernetics has always been Uli's hobby. He unpacks the suitcase again.

Form and interpretation

The astonished reader finds the strength of the text in those passages in which the embittered Uli and also Elisabeth, who is always critical but basically willing to build up, ponder or rant about the encrusted GDR power structures. Brigitte Reimann's spelling is - for a GDR story from 1963 - of almost unparalleled openness. The absolute rule of the SED over the non-party GDR citizens is relentlessly and accurately denounced. Hardly anything appears to be drawn by the hair. For the reader from the 21st century, some stories may have been applied a little too thick - especially towards the end of the narrative - but the fact that the two siblings stayed in the GDR is all in all credible.

Sometimes the first-person narrator Elisabeth changes the tenses.

reception

  • According to Barner and co-workers, Brigitte Reimann presented a didactic solution on the subject of preventing people from fleeing the republic.
  • Wiesener contrasts statements from East with those from West Germany under the aspect of Cold War on the reviewer front.

literature

Text output

First edition
  • The siblings. Narrative. Construction Verlag, Berlin 1963. 252 pages. With illustrations by Horst Bartsch. linen
Used edition
  • The siblings. New life publishing house, Berlin 1969. Compass library 322. 144 pages. With illustrations by Gudrun Olthoff. Paperback

Secondary literature

  • Wilfried Barner (ed.): History of German literature. Volume 12: History of German Literature from 1945 to the Present . CH Beck, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-38660-1
  • Barbara Wiesener: About the pale princess who kidnapped a purple horse across the sky - the utopian in Brigitte Reimann's work. Univ. Diss. Dr. phil., Potsdam 2003, 236 pages

annotation

  1. ↑ At that time, students in the GDR had compulsory lectures and seminars on social sciences (Gewi) on their curriculum. There was usually a meticulous record of participation in this so-called ML subject .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wiesener, p. 128, 6th Zvu
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 110, 10. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 112, 12. Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 96, 10. Zvo
  5. ↑ for example used edition, p. 14, 8. Zvo
  6. ↑ Barner, p. 518, 15. Zvu
  7. ↑ Wiesener, pp. 127–128
  8. ↑ The edition used contains printing errors - see for example p. 74, 15. Zvu and p. 88, 18. Zvo