Dorothea Merz (novel)

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Dorothea Merz is a novel by Tankred Dorst , published in 1976 and filmed by Peter Beauvais for WDR in the same year .

time and place

The action runs from 1924 to the summer of 1935 in the fictional small town of Grünitz in southern Thuringia - located between the major cities of Leipzig and Nuremberg . Meiningen , Marktredwitz , Bad Salzungen and Saalfeld are not too far away .

Erken assumes that by Grünitz Dorst meant his place of birth Sonneberg .

content

Dorothea had been sent to boarding school in the Thuringian capital Weimar by her middle-class family from the Ruhr area . It was there in 1924 that she met Rudolf Merz, the much older factory director and former lieutenant in the First World War . The couple are getting married. The attractively beautiful Dorothea moves to the deep province of Grünitz. Rudolf had a villa built near his machine factory and foundry. The marriage resulted in two boys - Tilmann and Heinrich. When Rudolf becomes seriously ill - he spits blood, has a fever and is excessively emaciated - he asks his younger brother Erich to take over the management of the company - a stock corporation . Erich hesitates and then agrees. After Rudolf passed away, the previously sociable brother-in-law Erich shows his true colors. The insincere Erich and his fiancée Elsbeth Ruckdeschel - a former teacher - want to fob off Dorothea with a small pension, drive her to the Ruhr area and move into the newly built house. When he bought a block of shares , Erich had betrayed his brother during his lifetime.

The older son Tilmann worries Dorothea. The boy is ailing. One of his two legs is splinted. Tilmann had to undergo another operation in Leipzig in the summer of 1935.

fragment

Two relevant questions remain unanswered: Can Dorothea let Erich and Elsbeth disembark? Which man does the young widow prefer? Candidates would be the widowed pastor Jarosch and the SA man Günther Regus.

shape

The fragment is made up of randomly thrown fragments. To put it flatteringly - the jagged text has in parts a documentary character. The period 1924–1935 given above is blown up in Chapter 80 - “Amateur Films”. The National Socialist Dr. Günther Regus also documented the time after 1945. We are talking about the 1950s and the period around 1970. Another example of the discontinuous treatment of the course of time: In the second of the 85 chapters of the novel, the death of the pastor's wife is reported and in the 21st chapter, some readers are given the description of how the but the dead have long been compelled to ponder brooding backwards.

The main thing in the little novel turns out to be an abundance of minor matters. For example, the unhappy marriage of Pastor Jarosch is told very sparingly. In one scene - Rudolf is already seriously ill - Jarosch steps into the field of view. Dorothea leans against him. He is holding her. But the reader does not get their money's worth. At the end of the novel it looks like Dorothea is giving preference to the SA man. Regus becomes the head of house for the two boys. Rudolf had financed the studies of the teacher Regus during his lifetime.

Chapter 21: The Swedewy couple (in the 85th chapter it is suddenly called Schedewy) should be selected from the immense variety of figures. Dorothea, the doctor Dr. Schwedewy went to Berlin with a saleswoman. Bella wants to train as a physiotherapist because she doesn't want to be financially dependent on a man a second time.

The old worker Heymann has to be mentioned. In the 6th chapter "Our Heymann" he is introduced as a veteran of the Merz company. Heymann, the moulder in the foundry and all-rounder, is only mentioned again in this text in the 7th chapter “Dorothea's diary”. But in the Nazi era he was denounced and then killed himself (see the play " Heinrich or the pain of fantasy ").

dialect

Locals, that is characters from Grünitz and the surrounding area, articulate themselves abundantly in dialect: "Well, communists are awesome, etzt hammer just aan" (meaning: we had two communists, now we only have one). Frequently occur in the Vogtland usual modal particle ( "not true" about) to "fei" and widespread in Thuringia particles "shrill". Strong expressions used in particular by Thuringians and Saxons are not missing: "miserable brood" (for example: miserable dog).

time of the nationalsocialism

The factory owner Rudolf Merz initially considered National Socialism worth striving for. But in death he had to revise his view. This worldview "feared and despised" the former officer in the end "as the absolutely brutal, intrusive and cheeky".

The chauffeur Mr. Schanzer, a NSDAP member, is painted completely pale. But an episode from the beginning of that fateful time has an effect. The very respected lawyer Dr. Stern is chased through the streets by the SA. A sign dangles around his neck that says “ Jew ”. The man's trouser legs were cut off at knee height before the run.

The episode from Chapter 78 - "Eagle Swinging" - with the sculptor Theodor Wollschedel, who was commissioned by the party boss Wächtler to create a giant winged animal, does not want to stick in the reader's memory. Ms. Mora, the sculptor's wife and singer at the theater, speaks plain language. The husband should rather make tombstones instead of the eagle for the whole "Nazibagage".

The reader becomes aware of two anti-fascists - Mrs. Falk and the worker Gebhard. The majority of the residents of Grünitz vote brown, because "at least they do something". After the election in 1933 , the window panes were thrown in Gebhard. His wife is injured by such a projectile.

Other things also remain in the air in the fragment. For example, there is the question in the room: How did Ms. Falk perish? The communist Anna Falk - eaten by rats - was pulled out of the brook ( Steinach ). Mrs. Falk had given handicraft lessons to children in the neighboring villages during her lifetime. She had a subscription to five socialist newspapers. Ms. Falk's vocabulary had included the words " classmate ", " proletariat " and " Leningrad ". The teacher had lived with a Pole whom the Grünitzers had dismissed as work-shy. Ms. Falk from the international nude culture scene in Switzerland picked up the much younger Mr. Kupka, they said in Grünitz . Ms. Falk's views never met with approval from the Grünitzers: real estate would be frowned upon. The teacher wanted to hand over her huge house to the workers' welfare organization. According to the communist, a woman belongs in production and the children must be raised by the state. Mrs. Falk believed in the extermination of capitalism .

After such a statement, Dorothea had terminated the friendship with Mrs. Falk, but made friends with her elderly daughter Klara Falk. After the body is found, Klara is interrogated by the police. Apparently she knows nothing; can only guess.

The next of the minor questions is: Why is Mr. Kupka gone? To this question, too, Klara answers with a guess: "Maybe he has to work."

interpretation

With the subtitle "Fragment" Dorst has stacked deep. The novel is just an honest text - nothing more and nothing less. Because towards the end of the narrated time, the author was a good nine years old. So what is being told cannot be based entirely on personal memory. Although the genre Roman allows imaginative constructs, Dorst has probably suppressed precisely these. In addition, adults from the years 1933–1935 were usually lazy if they had been questioned by the younger generation in retrospect - that is, after 1945.

reception

  • Klaus Umbach 1976, see under “Weblinks”.
  • cited in Arnold, p. 95, left column, first entry under “German pieces”: Alan Best: The Perils of Culture: Tankred Dorst's ›Dorothea Merz‹ . University of Hull , Department of German, 1980, pp. 135-155

filming

In the TV film by Peter Beauvais mentioned above, Sabine Sinjen played Dorothea Merz, Dieter Wernecke played her husband Rudolf, Dieter Kirchlechner her brother-in-law Erich, Katharina Tüschen the wife Falk, Elisabeth Schwarz her daughter Klara and Elisabeth Trissenaar played Bella Schwedewy. Tankred Dorst played Mr. Büttner (see also photo at Bekes, p. 48). Büttner paints Dorothea on Capri (see Chapter 50).

literature

Used edition

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 613, 2nd Zvo
  2. ↑ Recognize in the afterword of the edition used, p. 602
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 181, 1. Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 39
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 200, 7. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 157, 10th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 163, 8. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 166, 9. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 164, 17. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, pp. 127–129