The saboteurs

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The Saboteurs is a short story by Anna Seghers that was written in Mexico in 1945 and was part of the collection The excursion of the dead girls and other stories in Berlin in 1947 . A year earlier, 4,000 copies of the book had been published in New York.

For one day in 1941, some of the hand grenades were rendered unusable in an ammunition factory in the Rhineland .

content

In 1943, several hand grenades failed during the German assault on the Ukrainian village of Sakoje. The Gestapo is investigating. The stamping on the grenades leads to a factory near Griesheim am Main. The workers Hermann Schulz from the Rheindorf Binzheim, Franz Marnet from Schmiedheim and Paul Bohland from Kostheim are identified as three saboteurs on the production day June 22, 1941 . Hermann Schulz is executed. The other two had been drafted and are not available. Because Paul Bohland fell soon after the move and Franz Marnet is considered missing or even fallen after Stalingrad .

The sabotage was a one-time act. The three saboteurs wanted to set an example with their act on the day of the attack by the German Reich on the Soviet Union :

With about every fifteenth grenade, Franz makes the striker so short that it cannot hit the primer. Paul drills crooked and Hermann hammers on the hinges, making the timer unusable. The perpetrators have accomplices and sympathizers. The young shipper Spengler has to hand out the micrometer to senior engineer Kreß during the final inspection . Kreß, an expert on the smallest details in the production process, notices the reject , but sends intact grenades to the test field. Spengler then to Hermann: "Kreß found out, but he is holding on, be calm." Hermann finds it difficult to keep calm. After he's arrested, he goes over any work colleagues who may have betrayed him. At the end of his life he triumphed over the slightly insecure Frankfurt Gestapo investigator: none of his people betrayed him. Long before that, in a conversation with Franz's wife Lotte, Hermann had seen his mistake: “We said we just had to start ... We said that everything in the others must look like it does in us. But that was wrong. "

The resistance fighters went to work carefully. Outwardly, Hermann had developed a hostility towards Franz, his best friend - because of a garden pump. Spengler had seen through both of them. The action on that June 22nd was discussed on the way to work - this was done on the bike. Hermann, who did not want to endanger his much younger wife Marie and their small child, preferred to confide in Franz's wife Lotte in matters of resistance. Their first husband was killed in the summer of 1933.

shape

The succinct text does not appear to be a black and white painting. Old Bentsch, a confidante and advisor to the saboteurs, who in the end grew to around eleven people, looks at the spontaneous action with a shake of his head; waiting for the right moment for resistance. Even more, Bentsch resigned: "... there is no point in doing something about it."

The lecture deeply depresses the reader. The active Nazi opponents are isolated. With suspicious all-round looks and fear of denunciation, they wait for imprisonment. Anna Seghers glimmered two glimmers of hope immediately after the end of the war . It is said that Franz is alive. His return home from the far east of Russia is expected. Spengler, returned from the war, takes care of Marie and the child.

The three protagonists are portrayed as good guys. Hermann is gentle with his wife. Up until now, Marie had only dealt with grumpy men. Paul and his wife mourn their fallen son . And Franz understands that Lotte's first husband remained the only love of her life.

The story of the workers Franz Marnet and Hermann Schulz as well as the intelligentsia Kreß from the Seventh Cross - there Georg Heisler's escape helper - is continued.

In its details, the text appears as a small painting of time. The Germans at the beginning of the war about the Russians: "Our Fuehrer will show them." "They only recently killed their generals themselves ."

Kostheim is not the only reference to Anna Seghers' Mainz . The road on which the workers cycle to the ammunition factory leads on the right bank of the Rhine in the opposite direction to Höchst . There is talk of Betz, a colleague of the saboteurs. He was in the Osthofen camp because of an “inadmissible remark” .

reception

Contemporaries
  • October 27, 1949, Werner Rockel, Die Zeit : Reading of Weight
Recent comments
  • Neugebauer briefly goes into Marie, Hermann Schulz's wife.
  • In places it looks as if Anna Seghers is distancing herself from the millions of Germans who accepted the Nazi regime without contradiction. Schrade writes that when Anna Seghers was writing the text in Mexico in 1945, she had no contact with people in Germany.
  • The “brittle” prose is not only a sobering “chronic report”, but also conveys a belief in the new beginning to be written.

literature

First editions

expenditure

  • The saboteurs. P. 237–295 in Anna Seghers: Stories. Library of world literature . Epilogue: Friedrich Albrecht (pp. 593–605) Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1974 (2nd 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
  • 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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 92, 6. Zvo
  2. ↑ Hilzinger p. 201
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 262, 2nd Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 285, 6. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 269, 13. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 264, 15. Zvo
  7. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 127 below
  8. ^ Extract from the commentary by Bernhard Spies
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 248, 14. Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 254, 16. Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 258, 4th Zvu
  12. ↑ Reading Weight
  13. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 94 above
  14. ^ Schrade, p. 87 above
  15. ↑ Hilzinger, pp. 127–128