The company from the attic
The Society from the Attic is a longer story by the writer Ernst Kreuder , which first appeared in 1946 and is still the only work by the South Hessian narrator that has seen numerous editions and several translations. It ties in with romantic tradition, but also takes up a biographical motif: During a trampoline trip through Yugoslavia and Greece in 1926/1927, Kreuder and three friends camped for a few months on the roof of a seven-story hotel shell in Thessaloniki under adventurous circumstances .
content
On the bank of an unnamed river, first-person narrator Berthold joins the fishing Wilhelm, in whom he believes he recognizes an old school friend. They quietly go back into the city, where they climb the junk store of a tall apartment building, which apparently serves some eccentrics both as a shelter and as a playground. Karl runs a children's shop, Oskar a photo studio with no customers, Wilhelm writes poetry, and teacher Waldemar takes turns correcting the German dictation books brought from school. While a bottle of vermouth circles around the disused pool table, the secret League of Seven is founded and the search for a treasure buried in the city forest is heralded. The secret society is primarily committed to promoting the imagination and the mockery of the “relentless, melancholy realism” in contemporary literature. This is preferably done in flowery sermons that make up a good part of the book.
Berthold separates from his comrades because he has been assigned to the treasure hunt. He runs into some colorful characters who are good for exchanging philosophical thoughts, among other things. Slender Mr. Quichow keeps opening his gold pocket watch because he has not yet given up hope of being able to catch a glimpse of time for himself. The old man from the weir runs a trap in a bridge pillar for the purpose of purifying greedy or otherwise malicious contemporaries, including Mr. Quichow's wife, who intended to couple their daughter Clothilde, alias Lysiane, to a shoe manufacturer. Instead, the daughter leans first towards Berthold, then towards a fire dancer. Berthold cannot use the shackles of love because they would hinder him in captivating storytelling.
He also meets an old pharmacist whose tame raven can say "strange". With part of the upscale treasure on the way back to the city and the warehouse, Berthold ends up in a partly comical, partly macabre silent film screening. The memory has disappeared. In the harbor, Berthold meets teacher Waldemar, who has already paid for an old river steamer. Stalking through the city with posters on stilts, they manage to reassemble the broken up secret society. The League of Seven is being renewed in the basement of a shell . Then you go to the deck of the newly purchased steamer. Berthold's cabin is equipped with a typewriter, because he's supposed to write the history of the secret society ...
style
The story takes place in Germany, but the time and place are left in the balance. Stephan Rauer dates her plot to around the "golden" 1920s. Even the somewhat antiquated has an attraction for the reader. Kreuder then takes improbable or grotesque incidents for granted. With the exception of the embellished speeches, he uses short, succinct sentences. With "stories in history" he avoids the monotony of linear narration.
effect
According to Henner Reitmeier, the number of copies of the attic printed in German alone is estimated at 250,000. Stoll / Goldmann name around 70 domestic and foreign reviews for the period from 1946 to 1972. Almost everyone was positive. The greeting of the first edition by Alfred Andersch in the magazine Der Ruf is much quoted . The editor speaks of a daring, masterfully successful balancing act between fantasy and reality. Kreuder was the first, actually already the fulfilled hope of young German literature after the war.
In 1964, Peter Härtling was not quite as exuberant in the world of literature . The writer thinks back to the many dreamy circles that met between the mountains of rubble after the war. “Kreuder wanted to write against the epoch (...) which he scolded soulless, which was addicted to the machine and to murder. Nonetheless, the atmosphere of the end of the war stole into his book. "Härtling quotes the final sentences of the attic , with which cabin dweller Berthold is drawn into the maelstrom of writing, and comments:" How strange that someone from 'another world' into another world 'falls, but does not want to admit the world in which he actually moves. Does he flee all the time? ”Kreuder has always believed in the power of the imagination - perhaps also of madness, like the romantics. “So a revolution broke out, which actually taught us that reality cannot be trusted. That reality surpasses reality, that dreams can become housing estates and philosophies can become nightmares. "
Kreuder's rebellion was more of a refusal. It included the refusal to "really" deal with the past, complicity in fascism, and one's own biography. In the attic, too, you can find all the trains to which Kreuder remained faithful in the following books, despite different designs, up to his death in 1972 (and the posthumously published novel The Man in the Railroad Warden's House ). This includes the weather against the disfigurement of nature and against the corruption of the world in general. It always comes from stenciled figures that remain the author's “speaking bags”. They don't have biographies. The company , which allegedly looking in their loose men's societies, they tend to avoid; they are consistently loners. If women are involved, then above all as grateful listeners, as Clothilde / Lysiane shows. On the other hand, the strong self-referentiality of Kreuder's prose works is striking, although it is limited to equally stereotyped self-images, but above all to the reflection of the writing.
Expenses (selection)
- 1946 and 1947 by Rowohlt , 1st and 2nd editions 5,000 each
- 1948 engl. at Putnam & Co Ltd , London
- 1950 Swedish at Natur och Kultur , Stockholm
- 1951 in French with Librairie Plon , Paris
- 1953 as rororo (50,000 copies)
- 1963 European Publishing House (61st to 63,000)
- 1965 as dtv
- 1978 in the suhrkamp library
- 1997 at Rotbuch
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.alfons-hochhauser.de/thessaloniki.html See also: Ernst Kreuder estate in the DLA, Marbach aN Letters from Greece and diary entries, January to May 1927.
- ↑ Attic (1978 edition) p. 23
- ↑ Attic p. 82
- ↑ Stephan Rauer: Ernst Kreuder , Bielefeld 2008, pp. 187–189
- ↑ Henner Reitmeier: Something Kreudertee , portrait from 2007, on: Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved on Aug 23, 2010
- ↑ Christoph Stoll / Bernd Goldmann (eds.): Ernst Kreuder , Mainz 1974, p. 197
- ↑ Stoll p. 38
- ↑ Stoll p. 40
- ↑ Reitmeier 2007. “Anyone who tries to capture their natures or characters looks into the tube. They remain pale, indistinguishable, almost interchangeable. At Kreuder there are no development processes that should be taken seriously either in terms of character or ideology. His characters always represent the same worldview - that of Kreuder or that of the other side. "
- ↑ Attic p. 97
- ↑ Rauer 2008
