The Rescue (Seghers)

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The Rescue is the fourth novel by Anna Seghers , published in Amsterdam in 1937. Walter Benjamin called the text "Chronicle of the German unemployed" during the global economic crisis . The book was made available to German readers in 1947 by the Aufbau-Verlag Ost-Berlin .

After a storm in the Upper Silesian “Sankt Agathen” coal mine near the German city of B., the Catholic miner Andreas Bentsch with many children did not lose his life in November 1929, but his job. The path taken by the non-party Silesian on the side of the communists is meticulously laid out in front of the reader until March 1933. The title is ambiguous. First, Bentsch was rescued underground in 1929. Second, little Grötsch - that's a communist - prevents Bentsch from being arrested in the late winter of 1933. When the third miner, Bentsch, decided to resist fascism in 1933 , he made an attempt to save the German people.

characters

Neugebauer selected relevant people from the extensive ensemble:

Rescued crashed miners:
  • Andreas Bentsch
  • Sadovski, Bentsch's friend, an orphan, raised by his grandmother
  • Martin Triebel
  • Hermann Kreutzer, Bentsch's friend
  • Andreas Kreutzer, his son
  • Zacharias Zander
  • Zabusch
Bentsch family:
  • Ursula Bentsch, Bentsch's wife
  • Katharina Woytschek, her daughter from her first marriage
  • Marie Bentsch, Bentsch's oldest daughter, born in 1920
  • Franz Bentschs, Bentsch's eldest son
Arrested by the SA in early 1933 :
  • Lorenz Eibner
  • Janausch
  • Kuhlmey (the horse)
  • Merz, trade unionist
Other communists:
  • little Grötsch
  • Albert (Mrs. Janausch's brother)
drifting towards the National Socialists:
  • Andreas Kreutzer (see above)
  • Malzahn, staying with Sadovski's grandmother, has become unemployed
  • Aunt Emilie (the sister of Katharina's biological father) and Uncle Paul (a married couple in B.)
  • The Kobalt family, neighbors, in the same house with the Bentsch family

content

1

Seven miners, trapped at a depth of seven hundred meters, wait seven days for rescue. The last miner's lamp goes out. About 40-year-old Bentsch raises the six desperate buddies in this extreme emergency situation through encouragement and a good example. Rescue is approaching in the form of a search party with the lively miner Janausch, a "dwarf with long, tough arms and nimble, funny eyes" at the head.

2

The 26-year-old Martin Triebel still has work after the accident. Towards the end of the novel, the young miner even survived a second mine disaster because his shift hadn't run in. Bentsch, living in a suburb of B. populated by proletarians (Batt calls it “Montandorf”), is released along with other surviving casualties. Bentsch appears as "something gray, torn, something old, lanky". His character becomes recognizable in a few events. While other unemployed people gather and discuss how a penniless neighbor could be allowed to stay in his shabby apartment, Bentsch avoids the chat room and solves the problem alone days later. The episode with the new three-mark piece is also characteristic. While standing in line on the stairs in front of the stamp office , an unemployed man had it jingled down while playing around with it. Nobody could find it. Bentsch, waiting in the long line, who usually thinks about ordering each beer three times in the pub, who saves electricity in the kitchen-cum-living room, had handed the loser three marks from his pocket. For the Bentsch family, who are blessed with small children, three marks is a considerable amount. At the end of the novel, when Bentsch had already fled the National Socialists, a certain Sauer, that unrecognized thief on the stairs, brought Frau Bentsch's new three-mark piece into the house.

After the exciting introduction to the first part of the novel, the next two hundred pages appear bulky to read. Batt aptly speaks of “immobility” and “persistent uniformity”. The “inner world of the workers”, more precisely, the “superfluous people”, is illuminated and illuminated. His “emotional distress” comes to light. The personality is deformed and withered in idleness. Bentsch listens to a speech by Chancellor Brüning on the radio . Occasionally Bentsch visit eight to ten miners in his kitchen and wait for a word from him; expect an answer to the question: what's next? Bentsch doesn't know. Later he sits alone with the children in the kitchen and makes a cathedral out of matches. Instead of this “senseless”, childish game, the mentally dulled man could actually turn to his numerous toddlers, but he doesn't think about it at all. The worn-out father turns to a child only after it has spoken to him. Furthermore, Bentsch lives apart with his wife Ursula. Her new pregnancy repels him. His wife had brought their daughter Katharina into the marriage. Katharina's father was killed in Romania on September 27, 1915. Sister Emilie had had to promise him during his lifetime that she would look after Katharina in the event of his death.

Bentsch had loved Ursula as a girl. But she was impregnated and married by Woytschek. Ursula had given Katharina to the "terribly sloppy" Aunt Emilie and to Uncle Paul after the neighboring B. Katharina had fled to her mother after Uncle Paul got too close to her. Ursula is suspicious of her almost adult daughter's relationship with her stepfather. But it turns out differently than feared. Katharina, who doesn't want to be alone, turns straight and uncompromising to Sadovski - that is Bentsch's 26-year-old friend. Bentsch had had endless conversations with his friend while he was unemployed. Sadovski once asked whether Bentsch would have worked so hard while waiting for rescue in the shaft if he had foreseen the insurmountable misery after the rescue. Bentsch had answered in the affirmative. The boastful Sadovski poses himself and Bentsch as the only two fearless people during the above-mentioned perseverance in the buried tunnel of the mine for days.

Ursula breathes a sigh of relief when the older daughter evades her lover; leaves the house and comes back to B. with Aunt Emilie and the obtrusive Uncle Paul. Bentsch reveals the stepdaughter's address to his friend. Sadovski travels to. The relationship, tolerated and even approved by Aunt Emilie, is not without consequences. Katharina becomes pregnant by Sadovski. The father-to-be does not want his child. Katharina dies after a lay abortion . Sadovski is "extremely relieved". The unreliable, sometimes despondent Sadovski is said to no longer show up with the Bentschs. The Bentsch's marriage is put to a severe test by the loss of their daughter.

Andreas Kreutzer can no longer stand it at home and goes on the roller . Hermann Kreutzer blames Bentsch for the son's departure. Bentsch had persuaded his sponsored child Andreas. Bentsch thinks Andreas' step is right. In B. he could only "go to the dogs".

3

The lack of action of the second part, its "epic slow-motion pace", is happily over. Bentsch, who was at a loss until the end of the novel, lost his authority as head of the family, stepped out of the limelight; but imperceptibly. He expects nothing from Briining, Hitler , Thälmann or from Hindenburg . His day remains “a single, unfilled hole”. The fascists are slowly but surely taking the stage; babble about the national community , the contract of shame and how "the Jew treats us". In the Montan region B. a talented speaker, a certain Dr. Goebbels , on. Andreas Kreutzer admires the skilled public speaker. Unemployed people in the street where the Bentschs live squint at neighbors who have turned to the National Socialists and seem to have no worries, who fear neither hunger nor winter cold, from whose heated apartments the laughter of the satiated can be heard. The unemployed, if they do not belong to a political party, ask themselves: Should free beer, warm food and, finally, fun be dizzy? You're sick of potatoes, oats, and roux. Troubled times are coming. Bentsch's neighbor, Mr. Kobalt, is beaten up on the street. In return, Merzen's window is demolished.

The matchstick dome has long been finished. Ursula, who has been mourning her child for over a year, keeps her distance from Bentsch. The young miner Lorenz Eibner takes Katharina's place in Bentsch's kitchen. The well-read youngster squeezes himself into the cramped conditions without hesitation. Despite his youth, Lorenz appears, to the reader's surprise, as the teacher of the thoughtful and eager to learn Bentsch. That seems strange. After all, Lorenz had worshiped the miner Bentsch, who was highly regarded in the region after the storm, as an idol. And thanks to the elder Lorenz had finally learned to love life again despite the job he had lost. Ursula wants the guy out of the house. Lorenz goes and turns to the Communists, more precisely, his brother-in-law Albert, in Janausch's apartment. Sadovski and Lorenz finally regain access to Ursula's realm. Sadovski was deeply injured after Bentsch turned to Lorenz. Now the woman in her apartment treats young Lorenz almost politely as a guest. One of the numerous side stories is the budding love of the barely 13-year-old Marie for Lorenz. That is the eldest daughter of the Bentschs. Marie also took after her father. Like him she waits. However, when the communist Lorenz was arrested, Marie courageously slips into her mother's dress and pretends to be the prisoner's friend in the SA barracks. Not so Franz, the eldest son of the Bentschs. This school boy feels, he too, his father, is almost magically attracted to Lorenz. But in contrast to his sister and father, he acts independently and self-confidently at the moment of danger. He puts the leaflets of the arrested communists in his school bag and smuggles them past the SA guards, who are laughing at the boy's excuse. These papers in the son's satchel are the utensils with which Bentsch - it looks like - will begin his struggle in illegality after the end of the novel. Ursula approaches her husband again. The woman agrees with Bentsch's move.

Quotes

  • Katharina: "Nobody gives you advice since the Lord was dead."
  • Sadovski about Hitler: “He was a poor devil, and now he's out of it. Rides in a black painted Jewish sleigh, with a chauffeur, eats what he wants. "
  • Martin Triebel's father: “Let Hitler turn to it, show what he can do. It will fly by itself. "

Form and interpretation

The novel consists of three parts. While the rescue of the seven miners is pleasantly short in part 1, in part 2 the idleness of the unemployed miners is depicted in an exorbitantly epic breadth. The reader only perceives the confrontation with the emerging fascism in the last fifth of the novel; so in the further course of part 3. In general, the characterization of the undecided, the non-party dominates. In contrast, the drawing of the communists - with the exception of Lorenz Eibner - falls away. If a National Socialist is drawn as a figure, it always remains pale.

An omniscient narrator is extremely rarely embarrassed. A figure's merits are briefly mentioned in Segher's lapidary style and that's it. Repetitions deviating from this are very rare. Only once does Anna Seghers briefly fall into her fairy tale tone known from certain stories : Sadovski promises marriage to the secondary character Josephine. Otherwise the irreconcilable harshness of the lecture makes even the hardened reader shiver at times - for example, when the heartless - now no longer-to-be father - Sadovski is relieved after the death of his pregnant friend Katharina. Even Bentsch feels a “certain relief” about the final absence of the “restless girl” in his kitchen. Consequently - in contrast to Ursula and Marie - he sees Sadovski as his friend even after Katharina's death. On the one hand, the style is strange. Ursula Bentsch is mostly "the woman". The fate of the unemployed is accepted for years without complaint. On the other hand, the author's typist must be admired. Brandes cites as an example the death scene of Katharina in the stairwell of the gynecologist in B. - this strange, cold city. Brandes acknowledges that the reader becomes “part of the world of the dead”. Anna Seghers did not receive the undivided applause of the Communists. In the Moscow “ Wort ” in 1938 the author was accused of pessimism.

With Anna Seghers, the communists are always the good guys: Janausch leads a rescue team that penetrates to the seven trapped miners. Little Grötsch saved Bentsch from being arrested by the SA. It is not easy for the troubled reader to recognize a communist in the text. It only dawns after carefully reading a few hundred closely printed pages.

The steadfast reader is implicitly assumed. Anna Seghers mentions the booby in Harzburg , Braun , Severing and the Reichstag fire . She quotes citizens without citing the source :

He was with King Friedrich's power
Drawn to the battle of Prague,
And hadn't written
Whether he stayed healthy.

reception

Anna Seghers talked to miners about their hard work on site in the underground borinage . Neugebauer expresses some essential truths: Bentsch, gifted with the qualities of a “proletarian leader”, hesitates far too long before he rises to oppose state power. Waiting and fleeing - but not acting - are the behavioral patterns that dominate the second part.

Batt calls the work the “first great novel” by Anna Seghers, which is also “her first novel about the German proletariat”. The author moved away from the communist martyrs from the “ companions ”, chose Bentsch as a non-party hero and gave this “proletarian leader figure” the deeply human features of “despair, doubt and powerlessness” in the face of power. Batt finds vivid and fitting adjectives for the almost unreasonably lengthy second part. In her “political novel” Anna Seghers wrote “almost imperceptibly and deeply” about the “politically passive” unemployed. Batt also suggests that the communist Anna Seghers is not concerned with communists in the novel, but with capable minds from the working class like Bentsch, whom the fighting proletariat cannot do without. With Bentsch, who acted too late, the author placed a picture representative of the German proletariat defeated in 1933.

The novel is seen as the “› total picture ‹of proletarian life in capitalist society”. If “The Way Through February ” is about an uprising, “The Rescue” is the opposite.

Hilzinger does not see the novel superficially as a purely communist book, for example when it comes to the passages that reveal the motives that make the unemployed susceptible to the “seduction of Nazism”. Anna Seghers demonstrated a “social order” that actually produced “such crises”. However, the list of the failures of the Communists shortly before 1933, recorded by the author, is very long. An example from this series is the ultimately incompetent communist functionary Albert.

Hilzinger names a work from 1986: Gerhard Bauer : “The sensitive, competent and paralyzed working class. To Anna Seghers' unemployment novel The Rescue . "

literature

Text output

First edition
  • The rescue. Novel. Querido Verlag , Amsterdam 1937. 512 pages, linen.
expenditure
  • The rescue. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1947. 479 pages, half-linen, head cut
  • The rescue. Novel. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1965. 503 pages, linen with dust jacket
Used edition
  • The rescue. Novel. in: Anna Seghers: Volume III of the collected works in separate editions . 410 pages. Aufbau-Verlag GmbH, Berlin 1951, 463 pages

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 13 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9

Remarks

  1. Anna Seghers probably means the Beuthen district in Silesia (Batt, p. 98 middle and Hilzinger, p. 172, 7. Zvo and p. 172, middle). There, on January 4, 1932, miners were killed in a landslide. Seven of those who were buried were rescued after seven days ( accident in Beuthen , see also Neugebauer, p. 54 above). The text also refers to neighboring Poland more than once.
  2. Bentsch, Hermann Kreutzer and Zander participated in the war .

Individual evidence

  1. Hilzinger, p. 204, 8. Zvo
  2. Die neue Weltbühne ” 34 (1938) H. 19, quoted in Hilzinger, p. 173, 1. Zvo; see also Walter Benjamin: Gesammelte Schriften , Vol. 3 (1972), pp. 530-538, cited in Schrade, p. 162, 3rd entry
  3. Hilzinger, p. 173, 7. Zvo
  4. Edition used, p. 31, 2. Zvo
  5. Brandes, p. 45, 4th Zvu
  6. Neugebauer, pp. 54–63
  7. Edition used, p. 268, 6th Zvu
  8. ^ Batt, p. 105, 11. Zvo
  9. Edition used, p. 365, 12. Zvo
  10. Batt, p. 101, 16. Zvu
  11. ^ Batt, p. 104, 10th Zvu
  12. Neugebauer, p. 53, 7. Zvo and p. 64, 12. Zvo
  13. Batt, p. 100 middle
  14. ^ Schrade, p. 52, 12. Zvo
  15. Edition used, p. 207, 7. Zvo
  16. Edition used, p. 228, 10th Zvu
  17. Brandes, p. 46, 7. Zvo
  18. ^ Batt, p. 105, 12. Zvo
  19. Edition used, pp. 270, 13. Zvo and p. 316, 8. Zvu
  20. Edition used, p. 354, 11. Zvu
  21. ^ Batt, p. 102, 9. Zvo
  22. ^ Batt, p. 101, below
  23. ^ Schrade, p. 52, middle
  24. ^ Batt, p. 105, below; see also use edition, p. 461 above
  25. Edition used, p. 207, 13. Zvu
  26. Edition used, p. 393, 16. Zvo
  27. Edition used, p. 420, 6. Zvo
  28. see for example the edition used, p. 148, 4th Zvu
  29. Edition used, p. 459, below
  30. Edition used, p. 316, 4th Zvo
  31. Brandes, p. 46, 12. Zvo
  32. Brandes, p. 46 below
  33. Edition used, p. 369, 17. Zvo
  34. Edition used, p. 402, 15. Zvu
  35. Edition used, p. 440, 7th Zvu
  36. Edition used, p. 360, 2. Zvo
  37. Neugebauer, p. 54, 5th Zvo
  38. Neugebauer, p. 55 above and p. 56, 5th Zvu
  39. Neugebauer, p. 61 middle
  40. ^ Batt, p. 98, 7. Zvo
  41. ^ Batt, p. 99, 9. Zvo
  42. ^ Batt, p. 102, above
  43. ^ Batt, p. 103, 11. Zvo
  44. ^ Wagner, quoted in Schrade, p. 47, 8th Zvu
  45. Schrade, p. 49, below
  46. Hilzinger, p. 174, 2. Zvo
  47. Hilzinger, p. 174, 8. Zvo
  48. see for example the edition used, p. 364, 10. Zvo
  49. Hilzinger, p. 174, middle
  50. quoted in Hilzinger, p. 214, 8th entry