The chain on your neck
The chain on your neck - records of an angry young girl from Central Germany is a novel by Ute Erb , who in 1960 first time in the European publishing house appeared and a few months in the life of a young functionary of the FDJ in the GDR mid- 1950s years until her escape from the GDR portrays.
This age novel is an autobiography of the author, who in the manner of a social novel portrays the social relations.
place and time
The novel is set in 1956 in a central German city in the GDR (meaning Halle ).
Khrushchev , who won the struggle for power in the Kremlin after Stalin's death (1953) , ushers in the period of de-Stalinization with a secret speech . The initially associated hopes for social liberalization, however, prove to be deceptive. The popular uprising in Hungary is violently suppressed by Soviet troops.
The Chairman of the State Council of the GDR is Walter Ulbricht . The inner-German border is not yet hermetically sealed. The escape from East Germany is in principle, although possible under certain difficulties.
content
The title The Chain on Your Neck goes back to the proverbs of Solomon : “My child, obey the discipline of your father and do not forsake the commandment of your mother. Because such is a beautiful ornament on your head and a chain on your neck. ”In this context, a chain can be an ornament, but it can also tighten the throat.
At the center of the plot is the high school student Gudrun Flach, who was initially fifteen and later sixteen. She belongs to the generation that experienced the Second World War as a so-called war child , but no longer consciously, and is already much more distant from the historical origins of the GDR than the age group of young communists of the early post-war years enthusiastic about the anti-fascist new beginning, such as those of Hermann Kant portrayed in his novel Die Aula .
Gudrun is characterized by strong individualism and non-conformism . Although she basically sympathizes with socialism and is actively involved in the FDJ, she experiences her environment as hypocritical, dogmatic and petty-bourgeois to the limit of philistinism. It sees itself exposed to a mind-numbing atmosphere that offers no room for small escapes (access to modern, especially Western cultural assets is hardly possible, if not prohibited at all), so that it is visibly atrophied. Unlike the others, she is not able to close the gap between the democratic claim and the realpolitical omnipotence of a party, which according to the self-portrayal ( song of the party ) is "always right", not with self-deception and lies.
She finds neither understanding nor support at home. The father, intellectual and staunch Marxist, does not take them seriously; the mother, simple-minded and self-pitying, is caught up in everyday housewife worries and is more interested in neighborly gossip than in the worries of the children. The domestic atmosphere is extremely depressing, not least because of the grueling marital and sibling disputes.
The adults, especially the members of the new ruling class, are perceived as narrow-minded and dull: “I don't think much of the workers [...] Anyone who is still a worker here today, with the opportunities to study , is stupid. Besides, they have no class consciousness, otherwise they won't put up with Ulbricht. "She comes to a devastating verdict on the chairman of the State Council:" I just can't stand him because he is so stupid and it is his fault that we are not modern Get literature to read ", and with irony:" Stalin is very important, after all, he killed communism. "
Last but not least, Gudrun despairs of her peers. Almost without exception, they are mirror images of the adult world experienced as puppet-like and repressive, lifeless and monotonous, frozen in rituals, oriented towards the professional future, for which common sense is carelessly sacrificed. They willingly take over the slogans given by the youth association, as stupid as they may be, and put their own thinking skills aside in favor of their careers. The individualism so valued by Gudrun is highly suspect in a society in which “the state is the most important and most glorious thing man possesses […]. If Tucholsky lived in the GDR, he would have been in prison long ago. "(P. 94)
This attitude is caricatured incomparably in classmate Karl-Heinz, the honest young functionary, who, completely incapable of making independent decisions, waits for directives from the FDJ before acting, so that he looks downright "arterial calcified" (p. 14), as well as his adult alter ego , the school director, who only notices the personality cult around Stalin when the party wants it that way: “'You didn't even notice it before.'” (p. 29) After Gudrun's leaflet campaign against Ulbricht had already failed in the bud , she sees herself limited in the possibilities of protest to the removal of armpit hair (“extravagant”, “immoral”) and the deliberate disfigurement of her hairstyle (p. 60).
assessment
The novel gives the impression of oppressive narrowness. You can clearly feel how the girl sits between all the stools: the family is loveless, the youth are taken over by the dogmatic organization, the adults only care about their property and their reputation: "They smiled on their washed faces every day and gave each other peace and quiet Luck ahead. […] Terrible. Why are they doing so well dressed and peaceful? You are not at all. Flat-faced people with party badges, philistines. They are walking their latest hairstyle and wardrobe. This people is building socialism, these unmoved, boring, monotonous figures have great ideals ”(p. 88)
The book is pervaded by the longing to break out of the norm, a life without dogmas and thought prohibitions; after spontaneous action beyond social and economic effectiveness: “I want to do senseless things! They make me happy. ”(P. 157) Compared to the brave activism in Hermann Kant's auditorium , the protagonist's nonconformism , her distance from the collective and, last but not least, her declared pacifism even in the event that the socialist fatherland had to be defended, seem almost unheard of : “'I wouldn't give my life for it,' I said. It was incomprehensible to them that I absolutely did not want to die. ”(P. 73)
As a result, they make these characteristics unsustainable for the rigid GDR society of the 1950s - and vice versa. So it is only logical that Gudrun sees no other way than to flee this repressive atmosphere to the Rhineland , where she has relatives. Immediately after crossing the border illegally in Berlin, however , she was sobered to discover that she had gone from bad to worse : The peers fell into meaningless Anglicisms , got drunk on consumption and superficial parties, and Gudrun knew so much about their individual freedom guess not to do anything. At the end of the novel, it seems more than questionable that she will be able to come to terms with the conditions in Adenauer's Federal Republic .
Autobiographical elements
The work has a strong autobiographical character. Only a few names and places were changed. Elke Erb appears as the older brother Peter, Cologne as Düsseldorf ; the father is the Marxist literary scholar Ewald Erb , the nameless place of the action is Halle (Saale) .
Literary classification
Although the scenery and historical framework have long since changed, the protagonist's rebellion against philistinism , social constraints and careerism still seems surprisingly topical. Despite strong autobiographical parts, the novel is much more than the mere "notes of an angry young girl from Central Germany", as it says in the addition to the title. His brilliant style puts him in a row with important relatives: Jerome David Salinger , Ulrich Plenzdorf , Milan Kundera . Free of confusion and with virtuoso lightness, elegance and verve, Ute Erb lets her protagonist of the same age walk through the action, sometimes laconic and serene like an adult, sometimes sensitive and vulnerable like a child, with an extraordinarily keen eye for observation with sometimes shirt-sleeved, sometimes poetic Narrative of the highest literary quality pairs. The novel is spiced with that uncompromising attitude that has always been the prerogative of young people. Schnoddy passages (everyday language) alternate with haunting images that reveal an extraordinary poetic ability of the young author.
Effect, translations and adaptation
When it was published, the book quickly achieved what is nowadays called cult status in Germany. It has been translated into six languages.
- Dutch (from Vic Stalling): Het snoer om je hals. Uitgeverij de Fontein, Utrecht 1961 (number 41 Fontein-Boekerij).
- Danish (from Bodil Mammen): Kæder til din Hals - Lænker om din Fod . Gyldendal , Copenhagen 1962 (Gyldendals Tranebøger, Copenhagen 1969).
- Swedish (by Erik Gamby): Kedjan om din hals - Självbiografisk roman om en arg ung flicka fran Östtyskland. Bokgillets Förlag, Uppsala 1962.
- Spanish (from Nuria Petit): El collar alrededor de tu cuello. Seix Barral, Barcelona 1962.
- Italian (from Alberto Martino): La catena attorno al collo. Feltrinelli , Milano 1962.
- French (by Josée Türk-Meyer and Boris Simon): Une Chaîne pour ton cou. Editions Gallimard , Paris 1965.
The NDR produced a television adaptation in 1964, directed by Claus Peter Witt .
With the exception of a reprint in the Gütersloh Bertelsmann Lesering in 1962, the novel has not seen any new editions and is now only available as an antiquarian or in libraries.
swell
- Walther Killy (Ed.): Literature Lexicon. Authors and works of German language. Bertelsmann Lexikon-Verl., Gütersloh 1989.
- Some of the information is based on oral information provided by the author.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Proverbs Solomon I, 8–9 www.bibel-online.net
- ↑ a b Ute Erb: The chain on your neck. Bertelsmann-Lesering, Gütersloh 1962.
- ↑ The chain on your neck. TV adaptation www.imdb.de