The sleepwalkers (novel trilogy)

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The sleepwalker is the title of a novel trilogy by Hermann Broch about the collapse of social values , published from 1930 . The actions of the three personally interwoven parts range from the beginning to the end of the Wilhelmine era.

1888 Pasenow or Romanticism (December 1930)

The first novel in the trilogy is set in Berlin and on the East Elbe estates of the Pasenow and Baddensen families. The main character, Lieutenant Joachim von Pasenow, is deeply insecure about the values ​​of the times, he lets himself go sleepwalking and seeks orientation. “Much had become like a melody that you think you cannot forget, and from which you slip out in order to have to painfully search for it again and again. It was a scary and hopeless game. ”Formally, his life seems to be in order: his older brother Helmuth is supposed to inherit the Stolpin estate and after attending the cadet school in Culm he embarked on a military career and now lives as an officer in Berlin.

His father visits him in the capital twice a year. The novel begins with the end of such a stay in the 'Jägerkasino', where they invite the Bohemian animation lady and prostitute Ruzena to have a drink. Soon afterwards she becomes Joachim's lover and represents the epitome of physical pleasure for him. She also falls in love with him and tries to bind him to her. After his brother Helmuth was shot in a duel in Posen ("He fell for honor" repeated Joachim's father again and again) he is supposed to take over his parents' farm in Stolpin and of all people to marry Elisabeth, the socially adapted daughter of the neighboring landowner Baron Baddensen for Joachim is a symbol of purity and thus a counter-figure to Ruzena.

In his uncertainty about his life, he seeks help from his friend Eduard von Bertrand, a globally experienced businessman who has given up his career as an officer. But the relationship with the dominant friend and potential rival is ambivalent. Until the end, when he visits Bertrand in the hospital and sees "with blond, wavy hair [...] lying in bed like a young girl", he puzzles about her true nature: "This is how darkness hides its true nature, its secret cannot be snatched away. “This is precisely what makes him so fascinated, because his security and irony repeatedly cast a spell over Joachim“ in a calming and unsettling way. ”With him he has controversial discussions about the meaning of life. While Bertrand, as a free spirit and civilian, has freed himself from the constraints of Prussian values ​​and makes fun of the social and military "circus", Joachim only feels safe in his tight-fitting uniform and seeks refuge from a world beset by decadence, military and military Christian symbols of the past, what Bertrand calls romance. Bertrand's emancipated life plan is perceived by Joachim on the one hand as threatening, on the other hand he hopes that his friend will help him to make decisions about his private life. For this reason, he introduces him to the two different women and runs the risk of losing the lover or the potential bride to him. However, this does not take advantage of the situation for itself, but rather acts as a catalyst. He helps with the order of the situation, gets Ruzena an engagement as a choir singer at the theater and in the end persuades Joachim to pay the beloved a pension after the separation (part III). His interference in Joachim's relationships, however, also leads to disturbances and causes clarification processes. While Ruzena does not like Bertrand's influence on her boyfriend and she fears that Bertrand is being influenced against her, Bertrand is welcomed by Joachim's family and Elisabeth on his visit to Stolpin. Herr von Pasenow, who has been confused since Helmuth's death and has developed suspicion of his son because he does not meet his wishes to take over the estate immediately and marry, thinks he will find the better son, Helmuth's deputy, in Eduard. Its effect on Elisabeth is even more decisive. During a joint ride, Joachim's horse paralyzes after a jump, which the rider sees as a wink of fate, to leave Elisabeth Bertrand. While he remains behind, Bertrand interferes in a dual role as guide and seducer, “as an instrument of a higher will”, in the emotional confusion and indecision of Elisabeth and Joachim. He confesses his platonic love to her and takes leave of her at the same time. Because strangers could love each other without restriction, but not those who are familiar with each other. Becoming familiar destroy the mystery. He advises her to free herself from social conventions and structures that offer security and asks her to decide about her true feelings. He is addressing a sore point with her: her attachment to her parents and the estate and her uncertainty as to whether she loves Joachim and would like to live with him. Joachim is in the same situation.

After this conversation, Bertrand hurriedly left for Berlin, Joachim followed shortly afterwards and tried to change Ruzena's situation. She is supposed to give up the theater and he wants to finance her small clothing store for embroidery. She fears that she intends to separate and rejects the severance payment. When Pasenow's health deteriorates, Joachim has to return to Stolpin with a nerve specialist. Ruzena feels abandoned by him and sees the trip as an excuse to end the relationship. Bertrand meets her in Joachim's apartment cleaning up. She accuses him of influencing Joachim against herself, reacts angrily to his appeasement and points Joachim's revolver at him. When he tried to disarm her, two shots were fired and his arm was injured, so that he had to be hospitalized. Ruzena runs away in panic. When Joachim found out about the incidents on his return, he looked for her. She has since broken up with him and is back working as a prostitute in the casino. She declines discussions, but after several efforts by a notary, she accepts a pension that enables her to live an independent life, whereby Joachim feels morally relieved.

Joachim can now ask Baron Baddensen for Elisabeth's hand. While the parents are delighted, the daughter visits Bertrand in the hospital before making her decision to continue their conversation in Lestow about true love and perhaps to enter into a relationship with him. The feverish patient repeats his confession and at the same time the impossibility of realization. He wants to go abroad (“I'm selfish”), refuses all marriage ceremonies and, on the other hand, does not want her to become his lover: “After all, I can't get you into a difficult situation, even if she might be for You could be more valuable than…, let's put it bluntly, marrying this Joachim. ”She cannot understand these contradicting thoughts and, as her kisses indicate, she would be willing to follow him:“ [W] we may both commit this most serious crimes against us. ”But she has to accept his attitude.

After saying goodbye to Bertrand, she accepts Joachim's proposal. The following discussion focuses on her relationship with Bertrand, who is traveling to India. Joachim admits his own insecurity, the superiority of his friend and the attractiveness of his life outside of conventions. He had hesitated for a long time with his advertising because he could not offer her anything exotic, just a simple life in the country. Elisabeth replies: “We are different from him [...] He doesn't need the protective warmth of being together like us.” And Joachim adds: “'He would have always remained a stranger to you' and this seemed to both of them to be of great and meaningful truth , although they hardly knew that it was Bertrand they were talking about. "Elisabeth is aware of the compromise:" We are not strangers enough and we are not familiar enough "and Joachim does not yet know how he would like his picture of the unearthly pure virgin Elizabeth is supposed to connect with the marriage bed. He's not looking for the Ruzena intoxication there, rather the duty. The wedding is celebrated in a small group in Lestow, and the couple, who are not yet familiar, decide on the wedding night to give each other time to overcome the strangeness. Joachim sleeps symbolically in uniform, his feet in patent leather shoes on a chair, "motionless" in bed next to his wife smiling over him. Their first child is born after 18 months.

Essentially, the plot is told chronologically in personal form from the perspectives of the main characters, with Joachim's observations, evaluations and reflections at the center. These sections are supplemented by parallel acts by Elisabeth, Bertrand or the parents Baddensen or Pasenow and by authorial overviews of the family histories or descriptions of the people and their homes.

1903 Esch or Anarchy (April 1931)

The second novel in the trilogy is set in the middle of the Rhine region in the middle class and working class. August Esch, 30 years old, clerk and accountant in the Stemberg & Co. wine wholesaler in Cologne, is in view of "the anarchist state of the world, in which nobody knows whether he is on the right or on the left, whether he is over there or over." Find a guideline for his life. For him the anarchy of values ​​prevails, an elementary disorientation in which lies and deceit expand: “In the business that they [people] do, their community lies. A community without strength, but full of insecurity and full of evil will. ”Esch himself, he feels ashamed again and again, is part of this contradicting world and therefore has a need for atonement and sacrifice and a new beginning. On the one hand, he stands up for justice, suffers with the unionist Martin and the vaudeville girl Ilona, ​​who is threatened with knife throwing, whom he sees as victims of the system, on the other hand he does business in the disreputable amusement park, entices friends with high profit promises to invest in the women's wrestling project, advertises instead of prostitutes as fighters and toyed with the idea of ​​mediating the troop in a kind of girl trafficking to the USA. On the one hand he is "well versed in pubs, brothels and girls" and uses sexual opportunities in his circle of friends. On the other hand, he despises this life as immoral and is fond of the straightforward, e.g. B. the imprisoned unionist, the widow Hentjen, who harshly rejects her suitors, and the Christian virtuous cigar dealer Lohberg. At the same time he scoffs at their limitation and reacts to them uncontrollably, coarse and irascible, making demands on them that he himself does not meet in his fickleness. He also has prejudices against artists, capitalists, homosexuals and Jews. He feels like a free person standing above the lowlands of life, but is caught in his loneliness and basically unable to bind. So he dreams himself into fantasies of a better, just world. For him, the USA is the land of freedom and justice, symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. He would like to emigrate there.

part One

After Esch was fired in Cologne because of a dispute with his boss, he met the disabled Martin Geyring, secretary of the union. They go together to the Rheinschifferkneipe of "Mutter Hentjen", a resolute 36-year-old landlady who keeps her distance from men, and Geyring informs him about a vacancy at Mittelrheinische Schiffahrts AG in Mannheim, whose CEO Eduard v. Bertrand (friend of the protagonist in: Pasenow or the romantic) is.

In Mannheim he works in the office of the port magazine, where he meets the customs inspector Balthasar Korn. He also befriends the cigarette dealer Lohberg and the variety director Gernerth and his artists Teltscher and Ilona. He moves in as a subtenant with Korn and his sister Erna, who tries to seduce him into marriage. Esch is only interested in a sexual relationship, which it rejects. As a result, the relationship is tense. She provokes him again and again and he reacts angrily.

Esch buys his cigars in Fritz Lohberg's shop, who interests him because of his consistent Christian lifestyle. On the one hand he calls this vegetarian and Salvation Army supporter an idiot, on the other hand he is fascinated by his worldview and his expectation of salvation: “The world is poisoned [...] not only with nicotine and alcohol and animal food, but with an even worse poison, which we hardly know ... it is no different than ulcers breaking open. "Esch relates these thoughts to the political situation:" [S] as long as you watch that injustice happens, there is no redemption in the world ... why did Martin sacrifice himself and sitting? ”Martin Geyring was arrested at a trade union meeting for alleged sedition, although the transport workers accused him of working with the plant's management. As the cause of the poison, Esch sees the president of the shipping company himself, whom he despises as a resigned officer and at the same time sees him as a figure “high above all the filthy rabble of little murderers”, but “hardly to be called human anymore, she was so far and high enraptured, and yet the figure of the murderer, unimaginable and threatening, the image of Bertrand, the pig president of this society, the warm brother who had put Martin in prison, arose. ”Later in Cologne he wrote a newspaper article about the background he suspected the social democratic “people's watch” does not, however, because the editor can understand the behavior of the “nice, friendly, sociable” president and blames the wildly strikers.

In the office, Esch met director Gernerth by chance, head of a variety theater in the city. The latter gives him free tickets and he invites Korn and Erna to a performance. He was particularly impressed by a knife throwing number by the artist Teltscher, who appears under the name Teltini, and the beautiful Hungarian Ilona. He would like to be the savior of the girl threatened by the knives. But he has to do without Ilona, ​​because she becomes Korn's lover. The theater people are looking for new attractions and funding opportunities. Director Gernerth has the idea of ​​organizing women's wrestling matches staged by Teltscher and financing them through a stock corporation; Esch suggests Cologne as the location and is ready to negotiate there with the agent Oppenheimer and to look for shareholders in his circle of friends. He also hopes that moving the vaudeville show could lead to the separation of Ilona from Korns. He can win Lohberg for a financial stake in the theater business, and Erna joins them in the hope of marrying the shop owner. Esch quits his job and returns to Cologne.

Part II

In Cologne, Esch resumes his old life, often visits Gertrud Hentjen's inn and tells her his fantasies of his new great life as "President [-] over the army of artists, artists and directors", the one time "strict order and Breeding must be taught ". These formulations show his "deep contempt for all artistry." The down-to-earth landlady hears his dream of a "mixture of glamorous wealth, artistry and the joy of traveling" with "a kind of sardonic admiration." On a trip to St. Goar, where they actually buy cheap wine wanted, the two approach each other and she gives in to his insistence and, contrary to her principles, enters into a secret affair with him. While in love he seeks the "redemption" and infinity that he does not find in the world, and awaits the devotion of the beloved and their separation from the old world, from the picture of her husband, who has been dead for 14 years, hanging in the tavern, " to be redeemed himself ”, she lets him penetrate her loneliness for a long time as an anonymous figure and seems to lose interest in him after the act of love. In the pub, she treats him like all the other guests with aloofness, but reacts jealously to his old or suspected new love affairs. On their 37th birthday they talk for the first time about their relationship, the age difference, which is unimportant for Esch, and about their future in business or in America.

In his new role as theater manager, Esch and Agent Oppenheimer prepare the women's wrestling matches. He leases the Alhambra theater and looks for wrestlers with foreign names in pubs and brothels because of the international show. a. the Bohemian Ruzena Hruska, Pasenow's lover from the first novel, has a brief appearance. The troops are trained by Teltscher. First the wrestling matches find a large audience, then interest subsides and Esch has to reschedule. He dreams of moving to the USA, for which he is looking for new staff in the bars. In a homosexual bar he met Harry Köhler by chance and learned that he had a love affair with Bertrand and was abandoned by him. His grief over the separation reminds him of his own view of the “strangeness, so to speak, into the infinite” and the “mystery of unity” and the problems of realizing this with Ms. Hentjen: “Love is great strangeness: there are two and each is on a different planet and no one can ever know anything about the other. And suddenly there is no more distance and no more time and they have collapsed so that they no longer know anything about themselves or about each other and also no longer need to know. ”Esch now directs the collective hatred of the world against the shipping company president and wants Bertrand, whom he imagines from Hentjen's picture, for his vices and his crimes, punish him: "Such a pig has to be stabbed."

Part III

Esch travels to Badenweiler to demand that Bertrand release the imprisoned Martin. On the way there, he stops in Mannheim and stays with the Korns for a few days. Erna is now friends with Lohberg. Esch pays them back part of the theater performances and then has no qualms about allowing himself to be seduced by the bride-to-be for two consecutive nights. However, he tinkered with a justification that Lohberg was not a real man and Erna deserved one, “[d] hen man has many possibilities, and depending on the logical chain he throws around things, he can prove himself that they are good or bad. ”Esch visits Martin in prison and tells him about his plan to stand up for him. However, this contradicts his theory of Bertrand's guilt for his imprisonment and calls him a "muddle head".

The following trip to Bertrand in Badenweiler stands out from the previous and subsequent novel as a dream-like, fairytale-like scenario and is introduced by a kind of philosophical essay on sleepwalking as a human state of consciousness: "Between a dreamed wish [for redemption] and an anticipatory dream, all knowledge hovers , the knowledge of sacrifice and the realm of redemption floats. ”Esch's ascent to Bertrand's villa, the reception and the informal conversation run like this journey of a sleepwalker, as if the host was waiting for the visitor and as if they had known each other and had been for a long time familiar with their metaphysical conceptions. They speak with Christian messianic symbolism about death and downfall, redemption and the beginning of a new life and Bertrand indicates his wish to die. “They sat together at table; Silver and wine and fruit adorned the table, and they were like two friends who know everything about each other. ”When Esch reports Bertrand in Cologne a week later for homosexuality, he learns that he has since shot himself and that Harry committed suicide out of grief committed.

After visiting Badenweiler, Esch returns to Mannheim, thinks about his future during the night (“The Sleepless”) and arranges his circumstances by mentally separating from Korn and Ilona and urging Lohberg to become engaged to Erna. With this he hopes to free himself from the lowlands of his past. In Cologne he agreed to marry Mrs. Hentjen, sell the inn and emigrate to America. But the dream of a new beginning and the erasure of the past is quickly shattered when director Gernerth disappears with the theater's money and leaves debts behind. In order to repay this and to pay off the deposits of Esch's friends, Teltscher wants to open a theater in Duisburg with Ilona in the autumn, and as a start-up investment a mortgage is taken out on mother Hentjens' inn.

Gertrud Hentjen, who was afraid of emigrating into the unknown right from the start and, as a businesswoman, rejects both anarchy and revolution, is, unlike Esch, satisfied with the development. She has her inn renovated, continues to organize her own business and takes her time with the marriage. For Esch, with the lost illusion, it loses its appeal and he feels trapped in its petty-bourgeois structures. He reflects that the order of the situation is only a smooth facade and “that the perfect love into which he wanted to escape was nothing but lies and deceit, naked swindle to cover up the fact that he was here as anybody The master tailor's successor [mockingly for Mr. Hentjen] ran around, ran around in this cage as someone who thought of escape and freedom and yet could only shake the bars. It got darker and darker, and the fog beyond the oceans will never lift. "Finally he came to terms with the fact that" there can never be fulfillment in the real, recognized more and more clearly that even the furthest distance lay in the real, meaningless the escape, to seek salvation from death there and fulfillment and freedom. [...] Because the earthly is immutable, no matter how apparently it changes, and even if the whole world were born again, it would not attain the state of innocence in the earthly in spite of the death of the Redeemer, not before the end of time is reached. “When Teltscher's theater project threatened to fail some time later, Esch and his wife tried to save it with their fortune from the sale of the house, but unsuccessfully. Esch finds the position of chief accountant in Luxembourg (Part IV): “[S] a wife admired him all the more for this. They went hand in hand and loved one another. Sometimes he still hit her, but less and less and finally not at all. "

Towards the end of the novel, the homosexual musician Alfons analyzes the situation of people after Harry's death: “[He] r knew that these men speak of love with great passion, but only mean possession, or what is meant by it [... ] and knowing many things, he was allowed to smile in spite of his sadness that people, in their fearful addiction to the absolute, want to love each other forever, believing that their life will then never end and last forever. […] That those hunted, who seek the absolute in the earthly, always only find a symbol and a substitute for what they seek without being able to name it, because they see the death of the other without regret and without sadness, are so much obsessed with their own; They hunt for property in order to be possessed by it, because they hope in it that which is fixed and unchangeable, which they should own and protect, and they hate the woman for whom they have blindly decided, hate them because they it is a mere symbol that they crush in anger when they find themselves exposed to fear and death again. "

Essentially, the plot is told chronologically in personal form from the perspective of the main character, with the reflections of Ernas, Gertrud, Ilonas and Alfons also appearing in individual scenes. The actions are supplemented by authorial overviews of the people or their apartments, the cities and an excursus based on the title of the novel trilogy about the sleepwalkers, which is explained metaphorically to travelers on a train journey.

1918 Huguenau or Objectivity (April 1932)

Compared to the first two volumes, the third part of the trilogy is not a traditional novel, but a collection of 88 mostly short narrative and thematically related essayistic chapters that result in a kaleidoscope of society at the end of the First World War.

1. In continuation of the plot and the authorial narrative structure, the main character Wilhelm Huguenau meets the two protagonists of the first two volumes: Joachim von Pasenow and August Esch. Major Pasenow has been reactivated as town commander for the duration of the war, his eldest son died outside Verdun, his wife lives with two daughters and the youngest son on the West Prussian estate. Esch has given up his position as chief accountant because he was able to buy the local newspaper “Kurtrierscher Bote” with a printer from an inheritance. The main plot and various parallel and personally linked subplots take place from early spring to late autumn 1918 in a small town in a Moselle valley east of Trier .

2. In a second storyline, the first-person narrator describes Dr. phil. Bertrand Müller, the author of historical-philosophical reflections on the decline of values, his encounter with the Salvation Army girl Marie and the Jew Nuchem.

3. The fictional stories are supplemented by essayistic articles written in the first person on philosophical-theological and political topics, v. a. about the disintegration of values.

4. There are also commentary texts for classifying the protagonists, e.g. B. on the accountant Esch and his problems in reality (10), which make him a rebel, or to distinguish Huguenau from the terms "rebel" and "criminal" (32). In the “Epilogue” (88) an overview of the further development is given and the protagon is characterized in connection with the topic “Decay of Values”.

Huguenau's war odyssey

Wilhelm Huguenau, a roughly 30-year-old merchant for hoses and textiles from Alsace, was drafted into military service in 1917 (1). In 1918 he came to the front in Belgium (2), deserted and, with “sleepwalking security”, arrived in a town where he hoped to do business with vineyards (3). When he wants to place an advertisement in the local paper “Kurtrierscher Bote”, he meets Esch, the head of the editorial department and the printer. He and his newspaper suffer from hostility from patriotic circles in the city because of their true reporting on the course of the war and would like to sell the company. Huguenau sees a chance to get in here and establish himself and is relocating his vineyard project. He offers himself as an intermediary in the search for interested parties (7, 14) and, in further discussions, pushes Esch's asking price with the argument of poor reputation and necessary renovation costs from 20,000 Marks to 12,000 (22, 26). In the meantime he is preparing his coup like a gambler: he faces old Major v. Pasenow as an agent of the press service of the patriotic big industry, which the dubiously subversive newspaper would like to see under the control of city businessmen, and asks him as city commander for his "patronage" for the state-supporting project. The non-competent major, who is actually not responsible for this civilian task, is taken by surprise by the eloquent and form-conscious appearance and accepts (9). In front of the city's dignitaries, Huguenau skilfully played the role of influential agent. So that this is not checked, he supports the credibility of the project by limiting their opportunities for participation with the plausible argument that his large-scale industry, which operates from secret, claims a two-thirds majority of the shares. With a complicated contract with installment payments, 10% stake and paid employment for Esch as editor and editor, the financial situation is further obscured and Huguenau can take over the newspaper with the printer as the editor and live in the house with free meals without any money or proof of financing. even if he does not yet know how to meet his payment obligations (21, 30). He increasingly believes in his lies and in his legitimate commercial behavior, thus creating his own reality. With his offensive, self-confident demeanor, he rises to the dignitaries of the city and consolidates his position with the foundation of the charity “Moseldank”, which takes care of wounded soldiers, war graves and the families of the fallen (50). At such an event, the victory celebration in memory of the Battle of Tannenberg in the beer tavern "Stadthalle", the citizens of the city meet with the soldiers of the hospital and after the patriotic-representative part try to cover up their depressed mood with alcohol, music and dancing (60).

For the opening number of the new edition of the messenger, the city commandant writes the leading article with the heading “Des Deutschen Volkes fateful turn” (33) and Esch is of the Christian thoughts about war as an apocalypse from which “the new brotherhood and community could arise, so that the kingdom of Christ may be established again ”, for he discovers his own social conviction in it. The egocentric Huguenau sees Esch's interest in religion only as a cover to prepare for an overthrow and reports this in a secret report to the major, who wants to observe the case despite the evidence that is not very convincing to him (46). However, he abandons this half-hearted project as unfounded when Esch tells him about his conversion to Luther's message of grace through the leading article, asks for confidence in his editorial work, converts to Protestantism (54) and invites him to Bible studies. Pasenow, increasingly gripped by resignation about the reality of the war, indifference and the desire to say goodbye, discovers in the editor a kindred spirit who believes in redemption from the warlike world in a Christian society modeled on Jesus, while he is Esch as a wolf Huguenau, who mocked in sheep's clothing, was treated in a distant manner (57). The author illustrates these attitudes in a table conversation written as a theater scene in the garden house, which increases to a fraternal alternating chant in the style of the Salvation Army preaching to praise God (59). This mutual feeling of brotherhood between the two also arises when Major Esch attends Bible study, in which a prison situation from the Acts of the Apostles , chapter 16, is symbolically transferred to the world. The appearance of Gödicke, who was buried at the front and cries confusedly that he has risen again, contrasts this exegesis (63). Huguenau regards Esch's closeness to the commanding officer with increasing distrust, he is jealous of him and his marriage, calls him “Mr. Pastor” because of his Bible studies and increasingly sees him as an ideological opponent who must be fought. For example, he writes a newspaper article about the prison revolt that occurred because of poor nutrition and hopes that Major suspects Esch to be the author (70). As the city commander in charge, Pasenow feels attacked, is disappointed by the journalists, who have to take into account the difficult supply situation for the population, and sees in the article a further deviation from earthly duty "as a reflection of the divine commandment", the obligation, including personal freedom give up and subordinate to the higher idea (76). The major's overstrained himself through his sense of duty in increasingly confusing situations leads him to great confusion when he finds Huguenau's name on a list of deserted soldiers and summons him. He reacts briskly with a tale of lies about bureaucratic errors of his authority, implies a denunciation by Esch and threatens with a newspaper article about the friendship of the commander and the editor, so that Pasenow leaves him helpless and does not pursue the case further (79).

Haguenau is threatened by enemies after being questioned. On the one hand, he hopes that his blackmail will have an effect, on the other hand, he takes the initiative, prepares a change of camp and, taking advantage of the opportunity, seeks contact with unionists, to whom he presents himself as a journalist critical of the system (81). When there were unrest among dissatisfied workers at the beginning of September (85), an ammunition depot was blown up and the detonation crushed the windows and doors of many houses, the prison stormed and the prisoners freed, order collapsed in the city and the protagonists fell into the A state of somnolence , a clouding of consciousness in which the boundaries of thinking and feeling become blurred. Huguenau, actually assigned to the service of the protective guard, leaves his post and unconsciously follows personal interests. So he helps the rebels singing the Marseillaise and Die Internationale to open the prison gate, rushes to the print shop to protect the machine from being destroyed and urges Frau Esch, who is unconscious for her absent husband, to sleep with her. He thinks that's okay personally and now wants to put an end to his rival. In the opposite direction, after the explosion, instead of protecting his wife and property, Esch left the house in a panic to protect the major, and thus the representative of order, from the rebels. He finds him under his overturned car in a state of disorientation, which has crashed on the way to prison, hides the unconscious man in the basement of his house and hurries back to the wounded soldiers. Huguenau observes his actions, follows him past the burning town hall through the dark, empty city, apart from the few injured wandering around, and uses the chaotic situation to stab his bayonet in the back and kill him with it. He informs the hospital about the hiding place of the commandant, pretends to be a rescuer with Esch and offers himself, equipped with military documents as a nurse and a marching order, to accompany the physically and mentally ill to a hospital in Cologne. There he had a military ticket to Colmar issued, withdrew the newspaper's money from his account and traveled back home. "His war odyssey , the beautiful holiday season was over."

Further developments are summarized in the “epilogue”: Huguenau sells his fraudulent shares in the printing works to the widow Esch for 8,000 francs and invests the money in his father's business, which he takes over. He marries a woman with a good dowry, converts to Protestantism for the sake of her family and lives as a completely “normal” merchant and French citizen in Alsace: “The pale gray mist of dreamy silver sleep had spread over what had happened, it became more and more indistinct for him [ …] And finally he no longer knew whether he had lived that life or whether it had been told to him. ”Only the commercial coup that fits his value system remains in his memory (88).

hospital

Other acts take place in the city's district hospital. Wounded soldiers transported from the front are treated there by Chief Medical Officer Kuhlenbeck, his senior doctor Friedrich Flurschütz, Sister Mathilde, a noble lady from Silesia, and her colleagues as well as the local general practitioner Kessel and, if possible, return to the fight and, as the doctors remark sarcastically , sent to death (28): The bricklayer Ludwig Gödicke was buried in the trenches for days, can be resuscitated to the amazement of the doctors, but then vegetates in a state of shock, the thread to the members of his biography, to the various parts of his self torn, individual fragments sometimes appear and disappear again. He can only orient himself slowly in his environment (4, 15, 29, 52). Lieutenant Otto Jaretzki had his left arm amputated because of a poison gas wound and was given a prosthesis (6, 19, 43, 74, 80). To forget his loss, he gets drunk and is admitted to a mental hospital.

Hanna Wendling

Hanna Wendling lives with her son Walter and the servants in the villa "Haus in Rosen" near the city, while her husband, the lawyer Dr. Heinrich Wendling, who is at the front in Southeast Europe. If she does not leave her home for the infrequent purchases, she becomes paralyzed and spends her days in idleness. But this outward indifference stands in a discrepancy to a deep spiritual life and is for the narrator "an expression of a highly ethical horror at the horror to which humanity was indulged [in the ongoing war]." Like many girls of the "better middle class" she has After her marriage, she put all her strength and motivation into the design and furnishing of her country house, which was in keeping with the fashion of the time, until an architectural balance was achieved for her. Now she has lost all interest in it. For the narrator this is a symptom: “[T] he entropy of man is his absolute isolation and what he previously called harmony or equilibrium may have been just an image, an image that he has created and is creating of the social structure had to as long as he was still part of it. “When her husband comes home two years after being called up for vacation, the feeling of emptiness and dawning does not change during the day, despite physical union at night (51) and she remembers that her loneliness and strangeness towards Heinrich was already on her honeymoon began (64). After the six-week vacation, the image of her husband slowly dissolves in her memory and her tragedy, "the loneliness of the ego" increases in her lonely house. She fell ill with lung flu, experienced the night of the revolution in her house traumatized in her fear of burglars and died the next day (85).

History of the Salvation Army girl Marie and the Jew Nuchem

Dr. phil. Bertrand Müller, the author of historical-philosophical reflections on the decay of values, tells, partly in verse, the story of Marie and Nuchem Sussin. Marie, a “fallen” and now “chaste” and poverty-stricken Salvation Army girl, works in a hospice and in the sick mission, walks through town in the evenings, sings songs, preaches the good news and collects donations for the homeless. Müller's apartment neighbors are Jewish refugees from Poland, u. a. the doctor Dr. Simon Litwak and the young Talmudist Nuchem Sussin. He becomes friends with them and they accompany him on his walks through the city to a Salvation Army evening. There Nuchem met Marie, fell in love with her and had faith doubts about deviating from the law and tradition of the family (Ahasver). They meet in Müller's room, sing songs, quote verses from the Bible about law and salvation, and pray psalms that unite and in principle separate them (67). But Marie is happy, in spite of unhappy love: “The evil in the world is great, but the joy is greater.” In the end, they separate “and in the city [...] track by track lost each other, heart for heart lost each other . "

Müller observes Marie's religious engagement with fascination and at the same time from a passive attitude: “[No] a being leads a life of its own. But the authorities that determine the fate are far beyond my sphere of power and thought. I myself can only fulfill my own law [...] I am not able to penetrate beyond it, and I may not die out of my love for the creatures Nuchem and Marie [...] the authorities on which they depend remain inaccessible to me [... ] Is this resignation? [...] I have gone many ways to find the one in which all others flow, but they lead further and further apart, and even God was not determined by me, but by the fathers. ”Later, Müller's passivity changes into a kind of limbo, a "sleepwalking" with a body feeling of "unreal reality, real unreality."

Essays on changing values

In ten essays, a first-person narrator tries to clarify the question of what kind of time he and the characters live in. He examines the changes in thinking since the "deductive theology" of the Middle Ages in religion, philosophy, the sciences, economics and art. The main concept is initially “the style of the epoch” (31, 20, 24, 34), which can best be read from the visual arts. At the moment, the loss of style in architecture shows itself in the sobriety and in the renunciation of the purposeless ornaments in their magical meaning, whereby the expediency appears as a yardstick. (20, 24, 31). The same applies to the history of ideas. In the Middle Ages there was still a unified Christian idea within the framework of theocracy. The great upheaval begins in the Renaissance (55) with the turn to the “positivistic view of the empirically given and infinitely moving world, with this atomization of the former wholeness” and thus to an individualization and the atomization of values. In contrast to religion, the problem of knowledge in philosophy never leads to a final answer, but to an "eternal continuity of the question" (34). Overall, the “crushing of everything earthly and content is the root of the fragmentation of values” (62). This becomes visible in the following tendencies: abstraction of the scientific worldview, increasing sect formation in Protestantism (62), autonomy of individual subject areas and value systems, dominance of functionality, aggressive radicalization, independence and absolutization of individual areas of life, e.g. B. economic or military, development of the person into a professional (44). The logic of this fragmentation lies in the fact that the economy is only about money, war is only about war and that in times of enthusiasm for war the individual is executioner and victim at the same time and longs for a "leader" (12) . The war is thus interpreted as the background of the events in which the unscrupulous businessman Huguenau is located.

Huguenau's behavior is explained as irrational under a rational upper class: “Bridges of the rational, which span and span, they serve the sole purpose of removing earthly existence from its inescapable irrationality, from its“ evil ”to a higher“ reasonable ”meaning and to that to actually lead metaphysical value, in whose deductive structure it is made possible for the human being to direct the world and things and actual actions to the appropriate place, but to find himself again so that his gaze remains steadfast and never lost. No wonder that under such circumstances Huguenau knew nothing of his own irrationality. ”This transformation is described as typical of every value system. “Every value system emerges from irrational strivings” and has the “ethical goal” of transforming this “ethically invalid understanding of the world into an absolutely rational [...] and every value system fails in this task” and becomes radically evil as “reason that has become autonomous [...]. "

After his analyzes of the irrational in the rational of every system and their incompatibility in the earthly, the essayist closes with the thought of a redemption of man in the sense of the Christian message and closes, referring to a Bible study by Esch (63), with a quote from the prisoner Paul from Acts 16:28, who reassures the jailer who fears punishment: "Do not be sorry! Because we are all still here!"

interpretation

While the part of the novel from 1888 resembles realism in language, presentation and structure , the part from 1918 is also formally a dissolved novel. Just as the values ​​have dissolved, the novel has also dissolved into parallel stories and is not bound by any convention.

Von Pasenow believes in the old values, even if they only exist in a "romantic" way (see the subtitle of the first novel). Esch (2nd novel) tries again and again to fight against injustice in the world; like a sleepwalker, he hopes for renewal and redemption. However, after a long search he realizes "that there could never be fulfillment in the real". The opposite figure to Pasenow and Esch is Eduard von Bertrand, an almost cynical intellectual who ultimately commits suicide. Huguenau, who has neither morals nor belief in anything, stands for the depravity of a life without values. As an opportunist, he embodies the low point of the new era without a value system. In his "objectivity" (subtitle of the third novel), his commitment to bourgeois conventions (condemned as "philistine" by Broch) and in a world shaped by commerce (as a member of a commercial "partial system") he represents the prototype of the human being Modernity. This is how the loss of values ​​manifests itself in all three title characters. The philosophical reflections of the third novel must be understood as a complement and counterweight to the narrated event: Only when the characters and their actions are placed in the great processes of change since the Renaissance can one grasp the meaning of their life and failure.

The motif of sleepwalking, which was introduced in "Esch or the Anarchy", appears several times in "Huguenau"; B. in connection with Wilhelm Haguenau or Hanna Wendling. The narrator of the “Story of the Salvation Army Girl” (77) explains the term as a physical feeling that gives him the certainty of “living in a kind of second-level reality, that a kind of unreal reality, real unreality had begun, and it trickled through me strange joy. It was a kind of limbo between not-yet-knowing and already-knowing, it was a symbol that was symbolized again, a sleepwalking that led into the light, fear that was lifted and yet renewed itself again. ”In the metaphorical chapter , in which the little girl Marguerite ran away from home and reached a strange village in the evening, the authorial narrator speaks of the fact that "the sleepwalking of infinity" has come over her and will never be released again (82).

“The social cross-section drawn in the three volumes reveals itself to be Nazi breeding ground in almost all characters.” (Hermann Broch) This fits in with the narrator's critical reference (at the end of the trilogy) to the wish of the disoriented person a leader, the “savior, who in his own actions will make sense of the inconceivable events of this time so that the time will be counted anew”. Soon after the completion of the novel, which was written between 1928 and 1931, this wish should become a fateful reality.

Radio play editing

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Hermann Broch: The sleepwalkers. A trilogy of novels. Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt 1978, p. 127.
  2. s. o. p. 143.
  3. s. o.p. 163.
  4. s. o.p. 163.
  5. s. o.p. 154.
  6. s. o. p. 155.
  7. s. o. pp. 158, 159.
  8. s. o. p. 159.
  9. s. o. p. 176.
  10. s. o. p. 260.
  11. s. o. p. 331.
  12. s. o. p. 256.
  13. s. o. p. 234.
  14. s. o. p. 240.
  15. s. o. p. 268.
  16. s. o. p. 258.
  17. s. o. p. 255.
  18. s. o. p. 254.
  19. s. o. p. 255.
  20. s. o.p. 306.
  21. s. o. p. 297.
  22. s. o. p. 296.
  23. s. o. p. 297.
  24. s. o. p. 323.
  25. s. o. p. 333.
  26. s. o. p. 340.
  27. s. o. p. 349 ff.
  28. s. o. p. 377.
  29. s. o. p. 379.
  30. s. o. p. 381.
  31. s. o. p. 364 ff.
  32. Their numbers are given in brackets.
  33. s. o. p. 468.
  34. s. o. p. 675.
  35. s. o. p. 687.
  36. s. o. p. 698.
  37. 8, 13, 17, 25, 38, 51, 64, 71, 78, 85.
  38. s. o. p. 423.
  39. s. o. p. 447.
  40. s. o. p. 615.
  41. 11, 16, 18, 27, 37, 41, 49, 53, 58, 61, 66, 67, 72, 77, 83, 86.
  42. s. o. p. 638.
  43. s. o. p. 657.
  44. s. o. p. 616 ff.
  45. s. o. p. 635.
  46. 12, 20, 24, 31, 34, 44, 55, 62, 73, 88.
  47. s. o. p. 536.
  48. s. o. p. 690 ff.
  49. s. o. p. 715 ff.
  50. s. o. p. 635.