The two friends and their poisoning

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The two friends and their poisoning is a story by the German writer Alfred Döblin . The report was published in 1924 in the anthology Outsiders of Society. The crimes of the present and is based on a historical criminal case that caused a sensation in 1923. The author deals with the history of the poisoning in a literary way, describes the development of the young and fun-loving Elli Link into a poisoner, her marriage to a violent man, the friendship with Margarete Bende, from which a lesbian love affair eventually develops, and the decision of the two Girlfriends eliminate their husbands with poison.

Emergence

Döblin had copies of the indictment , expert reports and letters from the perpetrators. In addition, he resorted to newspaper reports that had reported in detail on the case, as well as articles from specialist journals. The statements made in the epilogue that he made contact with those involved and even with one of the women can neither be confirmed nor really denied. He mixes factionality and fictionality by adding fictional scenes to the file material available to him. Authentic quotations from letters and handwriting samples from the Klein / Nebbe case are attributed to the literary characters, with fictional and non-fictional material standing side by side on an equal footing. But he is less concerned with the authentic portrayal of the realistic case and an individual fate than with the consideration of the history and development of a criminal act. Döblin does not only deal with the history of the crime and its origins, but also the criminal proceedings against the two criminals, the course of the main hearing before the jury, the opinions of psychologists and sexologists and the difficulties in reaching a verdict. In doing so, he also draws on the contemporary criminological, psychiatric and legal specialist discourses that were used to explain female crime and also significantly influenced the cliché of the typical female poisoner.

content

Elli, described as pretty and blonde, came from Braunschweig to Berlin at the age of 19 and fell in love with the older carpenter Link. Two years later the couple are married. Shortly afterwards, her husband Karl turns out to be a brutal thug. After she was mistreated several times by him, she went to see her parents in Braunschweig. Only after a two-week stay does she return to Link, but this return turns out to be a gross mistake, because the disputes have not subsided. Karl and Elli move into a new apartment. In the hunting lodge they meet the train conductor Bende and his wife Margarete, known as Gretchen. From the initial support for Elli, a relationship develops over the course of the story that eventually ends in mutual promises to poison their husbands with arsenic .

In the epilogue , the author critically examines the reasons for the crime and draws the conclusion that it is impossible to really understand the events; No general statements can be made about the real motives for the crime. Language, too, is not able to depict the events and internal processes of the people involved in an objective and truthful manner and to grasp the complexity and complexity of psychological processes in their causality. In the epilogue, Döblin recorded his intention to write down the story: “I wanted to show the difficulties of the case, to blur the impression that one understood all or most of such a massive piece of life. We understand it on a certain level. ”In doing so, he not only questions his own narrative model, but also relativizes scientific claims to knowledge and truth, since human activity is too complex to be adequately analyzed.

Historical background

The Klein / Nebbe case was heard before the jury court of the Berlin Regional Court. The suspect Ella Klein is said to have poisoned her husband Willi Klein with arsenic on April 1, 1922. Her partner Margarete Nebbe was charged with complicity. The process developed into a local sensation with media support. After an almost year-long investigation time the main culprit Ella Klein was due on March 16, 1923 homicide to four years in prison, her accomplice to one and a half years prison sentenced and for complicity accused mother Nebbes acquitted.

reception

The Austrian director Axel Corti filmed Döblin's story in 1978.

literature

Text output

  • Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poisoning . In outsiders to society . Volume 1. The forge, Berlin 1924.
  • Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poisoning . (= Library Suhrkamp. Volume 289). Frankfurt am Main 1971.
  • Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poisoning . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1978, ISBN 3-499-14285-6 .
  • Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poisoning . Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf / Zurich 2001, ISBN 3-538-06331-1 .
  • Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poisoning . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-596-90463-1 .

Audio books

Secondary literature

  • Ute Karlavaris-Bremer: Outsiders of society. Alfred Döblin's story “The two friends and their poison murder” from an interdisciplinary perspective. In: Sabina Becker (Ed.): International Alfred Döblin Colloquium . Emmendingen 2007: “factual fantasy”. Alfred Döblin's Poetics of Knowledge in the Context of Modernity. ISBN 978-3-03911-626-3 , pp. 265-278.
  • Manfred Maiwald: The two friends and their poisoning. Legal considerations on a literary trial report. In: Ulrich Mölk (Hrsg.): Literature and law. Literary legal cases from antiquity to the present day . Wallstein, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-89244-215-0 , pp. 370-382.
  • Walter Müller-Seidel: Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poison murder: In: Ulrich Mölk (Hrsg.): Literature and law. Literary legal cases from antiquity to the present day . Wallstein, Göttingen 1996, ISBN 3-89244-215-0 , pp. 356-369.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Sabine Koos: The woman as a (poison) murderer. Narratological and discourse-analytical studies on Alfred Döblin's The Two Friends and their poisoning. Dissertation . 2010, pp. 29–32.
  2. ↑ See Sabine Koos: The woman as a (poison) murderer. Narratological and discourse-analytical studies on Alfred Döblin's The Two Friends and their poisoning. 2010, p. 34.
  3. ↑ Inge Weiler: Poisonous knowledge and poisonous women. A study of the history of discourse. (= Studies and texts on the social history of literature. 65). Tübingen 1998, p. 243.
  4. ↑ Hania Siebenpfeiffer: "Bad Lust". Violent Crimes in Discourses of the Weimar Republic. (= Literature-culture-gender, studies on literary and cultural history. 38). Cologne 2005, p. 133.
  5. ↑ Alfred Döblin: The two friends and their poisoning. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 97.