The White Rose

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The White Rose is a novel by B. Traven published in 1929, which deals with the fate of the Indian-inhabited hacienda "The White Rose" in Mexico in the 1920s.

content

The plot is divided into three parts:

First of all, Traven describes the idyllic, harmonious and nature-loving life of the Indians on the hacienda and consciously uses all the clichés of the romantic Indian life.

He also describes in great detail the contrasting life of Mr. Collins, head of an oil company , who is interested in the land of the white rose. But then the owner of the hacienda is murdered and Chaney C. Collins, President of the Condor Oil Company, illegally appropriates the farm. In this book, Traven deprives capitalism of its mystical complexity by reducing the system to the interplay between the protagonist and the antagonist and revealing the motivations and causes of their behavior. The last line of the book reads: “What do we care about people? Only the oil is important. "

criticism

For Kurt Tucholsky , who admired Traven, the figure of Mr. Collins was the only successful portrayal of a businessman in literature.

Name of the resistance group

The book was possibly the godfather for the White Rose , a resistance group under National Socialism . However, after his arrest in the Gestapo interrogation on February 20, 1943 , Hans Scholl stated that he had "chosen the name arbitrarily":

“Coming back to my writing 'The White Rose', I would like to […] explain the following: The name 'The White Rose' is chosen arbitrarily. […] It may be that I chose this name emotionally, because at the time I was directly impressed by Brentano's Spanish romances 'Rosa Blanca'. There is no relationship to the 'White Rose' of English history. "

This statement should be treated with caution, however, because Hans Scholl may have wanted to cover up his motives in order to protect the other members. It can be said for sure that Hans Scholl knew and appreciated the Traven book.

expenditure

  • B. Traven: The white rose. Book guild Gutenberg, Berlin 1929, DNB 576712442 .
  • B. Traven: The white rose (= Edgar Päßler [Hrsg.]: Work edition. Volume 5). Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-257-21102-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kurt Tucholsky: Collected Works. Volume 8 (1930). Rowohlt, Reinbek (near Hamburg) 1975, ISBN 3-499-29008-1 , p. 60.
  2. ↑ Peter Panter [d. i. Kurt Tucholsky]: B. Traven. In: The world stage . November 25, 1930, No. 48, p. 793 ( textlog.de [accessed on February 13, 2019]; review of The White Rose and others).
  3. ↑ Excerpts from the interrogation protocols of Hans Scholl. February 1943. Excerpts from the interrogation protocols, Part III. In: bpb.de. Federal Agency for Civic Education , April 20, 2005, accessed on February 13, 2019.