The wall

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Die Wand is a novel by the writer Marlen Haushofer from 1963. This third and most successful novel by the author describes the life of a woman who is cut off from civilization by a suddenly appearing, invisible wall . The film version of the novel was released under the same title Die Wand in October 2012. The material was staged by Christian Nickel for the Burgtheater in December 2012 .

content

The forty-year-old protagonist , who is not named, appears in the novel as a first-person narrator . She is traveling with her cousin Luise and her husband Hugo for a weekend to a hunting lodge in the mountains. In the evening the couple visits a restaurant in the valley. In the morning the narrator misses her companion and leaves the hut to look for them. But at the exit of the ravine, the couple's remaining dog pokes its muzzle bloody against an invisible barrier. A man who draws water from a well in the valley looks as if petrified in her binoculars.

It seems as if a great misfortune has caused all living beings to freeze to death - at least all living beings that can be recognized through the transparent wall. The first-person narrator is protected from this misfortune by the enigmatic wall and at the same time trapped. Since the area enclosed by the wall extends over several hunting grounds, the isolated person gradually learns to feed on the remaining supplies, the fruits and animals of the forest and her garden. In addition to worrying about her own existence, she soon has to worry about the various animals she runs into: besides the dog, several cats and a pregnant cow. During the third winter she prepared this report - without knowing whether anyone would ever see it. She develops an increasing distance from her previous life, which is particularly evident when looking at her relationship with her daughters, whose fate is uncertain.

Towards the end , a man appears on the alpine pasture that the woman has moved into as summer quarters. Since for no apparent reason he kills her young bull, born of the cow, with an ax and also kills the dog that hurries to help, the woman runs to the alpine hut, armed herself with her hunting rifle and shoots the man without hesitation. The story ends up optimistic; Among other things, it says: “As of this morning I have known for sure that Bella will have a calf. And, who knows, maybe there will be kittens again after all. ”The prisoner postpones her breakout, which she has repeatedly considered, even though she is running out of ammunition and matches. Your fate remains open.

Origin and background

Residence from 1960: Taborweg 19 in Steyr

Marlen Haushofer mentioned in an interview: “The fabric for the wall must have always been there (...) I carried it around for several years, but I didn't even take notes (...). I haven't talked to anyone about it either. ”In the 1950s, the author lived with her family in downtown Steyr , most recently in the house at Pfarrgasse 8. This several hundred year old town house was not only cramped and poorly heated, it also housed a slaughterhouse. This put a lot of strain on her, as she writes in a letter to her mentor Hans Weigel .

In the late summer of 1960 the family moved to Taborweg 19, a two-family house with a garden and central heating in the Tabor district . Only then, in November 1960, did Haushofer begin to write the novel. The working title was initially Die glaserne Wand , but was changed to Die Wand while the manuscript was being worked on . The first writing is still in the third person and the later nameless first-person narrator is called Isa , the dog Maxi (later: lynx ).

The model for the hunting lodge is the Lackenhütte in the Mollner district of Ramsau , which was built in 1924 and is about an hour's walk from the Forsthaus Effertsbach . The alpine pasture to which the narrator moves with the animals in summer is modeled on the Haidenalm .

The author asked her brother Rudolf , who had a degree in forest science , to advise her on questions about animals and plants . She left the setting of punctuation marks and paragraphs in typescript to her mentor Hans Weigel. For the publication, Haushofer switched from the Austrian Zsolnay publishing house to S. Mohn (Gütersloh).

reception

Haushofer's novel can be received in many ways. It can be understood as a radical criticism of civilization that transports people back into nature and deprives them of cultural assets such as the Mercedes, which is slowly growing in front of the house, as absurd as they are superfluous. Viewed positively, it ensures people's survival - and the opportunity to purify themselves. On the other hand, it takes a heavy toll on the narrator through the solipsistic and isolated way of life.

The only other survivor turns out to be so aggressive that, barely introduced, is shot by the protagonist. A related reading is to interpret the novel as a criticism of patriarchy . Although the narrator's deceased husband is not denounced in her memories, he plays a minor role.

The characteristics of a Robinsonade are clearly recognizable: A person is forced to a lonely island existence unexpectedly and through no fault of their own and must first acquire the necessary cultural techniques again in order to survive. There is also the deeply unsettling encounter with the long-hidden other person in Die Wand - in contrast to Robinson Crusoe , however, the encounter here ends immediately in a catastrophe.

The motif of the wall appears again in the childhood novel Himmel, which was published in 1966 and is strongly autobiographical and ends nowhere . There it says: “A wall is slowly growing up between mother and daughter. A wall that Meta can only jump over in a wild run; upside down in the blue apron, in an embrace that almost cranks her neck and pulls her hair out of the knot. ”From this point of view, the location of the wall narrator can also be understood as a metaphor for the loneliness of people, as imprisonment in me Henner Reitmeier takes this point of view in his Relaxikon article about Haushofer. In addition, Reitmeier draws attention to a critical weak point in the construction of the novel. At the beginning, after the collision with the invisible barrier at the exit of the ravine, the first-person narrator has no way of knowing the extent of the fatality. She breaks off a brief examination of the course of the mysterious wall in order to look after a cow that she has caught. Nevertheless, she immediately assumes that she is isolated in the mountain basin. This was only confirmed weeks later on a hike to the alpine pasture. Here the suspicion is obvious, despite the tragedy of our being lost and abandoned, she welcomes them too. The wall forces them to face their fear. She can no longer run away from herself.

Oskar Jan Tauschinski assigns the novel to magical realism : once you have accepted the inexplicable existence of the wall, everything else results with "[...] the relentlessness of an ancient tragedy of fate [...]". The tension lies in the factually dry and exact description of these events. Topics are not only the “matriarchally ruled microcosm” that the first-person narrator creates, but also the isolation that affects most thinking people from mid-life. Tauschinski sums up the hopelessness and futility or “space coldness” of the novel as follows: “Do not expect anything and still try to survive with all your might! You're alone. You are not useful to anyone. And if someone were to be found near you, be convinced that he would be your mortal enemy! "

Beyond the previous approaches to reception , Haushofer's novel can also be read as the story of an ultimately harmonious coexistence of humans and animals in largely untouched nature. In some passages even features of a cat story appear, which the author in turn takes up in the children 's book Bartls Abenteuer (1964). All in all, Haushofer's novel remains a utopia presented in simple, albeit very precise language , which seems to vacillate between rebellion and forgiveness and which is perhaps precisely why it is the author's most popular work.

Social media

In 2019, French blogger Diglee accidentally discovered the previously unknown book in a bookstore. She was so impressed that she posted her sentiments on Instagram . This led to such a rush of buyers for the book that the Actes Sud publishing house had to reprint it in an “emergency”. "Since then, the novel has been booming across France under the sign of a new eco-feminism ".

Expenses (selection)

Audio book

Movies

In 2010 and 2011 the Austrian director Julian Pölsler filmed the novel with Martina Gedeck in the leading role. The film of the same name was produced by Coop99 and Starhaus Filmproduktion and had its premiere at the Berlinale 2012 . It was released in theaters in October 2012.

literature

  • Ulf Abraham : Topos and Utopia. The novels of Marlen Haushofer. In: Quarterly publication of the Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria. No. 1-2, 1986, pp. 53-83.
  • Anke Bosse , Clemens Ruthner (ed.): "Unraveling a secret world from this fragmented work ...". Marlen Haushofer's work in context . Francke, Tübingen / Basel 2000, ISBN 978-3-7720-2747-5 .
  • Jörg Kaiser: Marlen Haushofer's novel "The Wall" as a representation of a mental state of emergency. Diploma thesis, Graz 2003.
  • Gertrud Schänzlin: Life attempts by women. Klett, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-12-399250-0 .
  • Ansgar Skoda: Isolation as a self-design. The dialectical relationship between utopia and restriction using the example of Marlen Haushofer's “Die Wand” and Ingeborg Bachmann's “Malina”. Master's thesis, Bonn 2010.
  • Celia Torke: The Robinson. Representations of femininity in German and English-language robinsonads of the 20th century. V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89971-667-2 (also dissertation at the University of Göttingen , 2008).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b website of the film
  2. ^ Marlen Haushofer: The wall . 14th edition. Claassen Verlag, Hamburg and Düsseldorf 2004, p. 275 .
  3. ↑ Daniela Strigl: "Probably I'm crazy ..." , List Verlag, 2008 ISBN 978-3-548-60784-9 p. 242 ff., Chapter: 1960 - Escape through the wall and From real life in the wrong: The wall
  4. ↑ Marlen Haushofer: Heaven that ends nowhere . Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2005, p. 15 .
  5. ↑ Der Große Stockraus , Berlin 2009, p. 80; the article can also be read online , accessed on July 4, 2012.
  6. ^ Oskar Jan Tauschinski : The secret wallpaper doors in Marlen Haushofer's prose . In: Or was there something else sometimes? . Texts about Marlen Haushofer. Frankfurt am Main: New Criticism Verlag , 1986, 2nd edition 1995. pp. 141 - 166. First published in 1966 as a foreword to the Haushofer story volume Lebenslänge (slightly shortened and given a title for the new publication).
  7. ↑ Joseph Hanimann : Instagram bestseller machine. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 19, 2019, accessed on January 6, 2020.
  8. ↑ Berlinale website