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Friedrich Dürrenmatt in the year the work was published, 1989

Durcheinandertal is a novel by the Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt . It was published in 1989 and is the writer's last completed novel.

The work takes a critical look at theological and social issues, but does so without “pointing fingers”, but rather with irony and sarcasm . In this burlesque , Dürrenmatt repeatedly confronts the reader with the abysses of human existence through grotesque exaggeration .

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In the 1989 novel Durcheinandertal by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, published by Diogenes Verlag , the “blessed are the poor preacher” Moses Melker tries to free the rich from the burden of their wealth so that they can find redemption before God.

After the association “Swiss Society for Morality” bought the health resort of a remote mountain village in the Swiss Muddled Valley - Dürrenmatt served as a real model, the Hotel Waldhaus Vulpera - Melker's wish for a recreation center for millionaires came true. According to God's word, all those who have come to see him in the Kurhaus are not lost. During the summer season, in which the later overcrowded "House of Poverty" is rented to the "poor Moses", who owns a villa in the Emmental as a millionaire , he preaches and extols poverty so powerfully that the guests enjoy the hard way of life in the Begin to enjoy the Kurhaus. For the winter season, the Kurhaus is rented to the Liechtenstein “Reichsgraf von Kücksen”, who, as a member of the syndicate, robbed the empty apartments of the millionaires in the summer and now uses the Kurhaus, which appears closed to the outside, as a hiding place for criminals.

After Elsi, the 14-year-old daughter of the mayor, is raped and only defended by Mani, her father's dog, Oskar, the Count's adoptive son, demands that the dog be shot. This starts a big mess with several nested storylines .

At the end, the story takes its “worst possible turn”: the villagers set fire to the Kurhaus - after extensive clarification of the events - the fire ultimately devours the whole village and its residents, only the pregnant Elsi survives with her dog.

interpretation

Formally, the novel consists of 176 pages, with one section following the other without further subdivisions, which clearly shows how closely the events of the individual scenes are interwoven. There are, however, leaps in time, as can be read on page 58 (“But also in winter…”), which at least make it possible for the reader to divide up.

To keep the reader away from the action, Dürrenmatt also depicts grotesque figures here , above all Moses Melker, who calls himself the “poor Moses”, not least because the wealth that “weighs down” on him (p. 34) repeatedly falls back on him (p. 144). The "Blessed are the poor preacher" (p. 73), through this title he is exposed as a deceiver, has murdered his wives and a lover (p. 20) and now wants to convert the rich (p. 16) . The "God without a beard" who sits on a wall at the beginning of the book (p. 5) and a little later nobody knows whether he even exists (p. 9) is just as grotesque.

A big mess is incorporated into the text, which with Melker now comes into the mess, which is part of the confusing and chaotic world in which we live according to Dürrenmatt's theories. The confusing entanglements are supported by constant repetitions, such as "If no one knew who was flying, he who was flying did not know where he was flying, because he was always flown elsewhere, but also to whom, it could never be determined" (P. 22), which require a high level of concentration on the part of the reader when reading the book, which also shows through twisted biblical words that some things are still turned upside down here.

Dürrenmatt's "mousetrap", the comedy , always brings up new ideas, like when Melker falls on his knees and whispers from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel during his address (the reader still has the wealth in his mind, because here the rich of the Kurhaus be enumerated), shows in his utterance: "Come to me all who are troublesome and burdened, I will refresh you" (p. 54). In addition, hyperbolas , sarcasm and irony make some situations look ridiculous and again distance the reader from what is happening. For example, it says on page 51 “[he] has no eyes at all, just empty sockets” and on page 149 “She asked, whether he had shot many people, and when he nodded again, she said: "Really cool."

In all the chaos, biblical words can be found again and again, on the one hand the path of Moses out of Egypt, which at the end of the book runs similar to 4 Mos 16,31  EU , when the earth devours people with all their belongings (p. 176) and God sends fire from heaven to remind you, on the other hand, indicate the way of Jesus reversed up to the birth of "Christmas [...] the child" (p. 176). Friedrich Dürrenmatt provokes again and again to the extreme in this novel. It seems like a cry for help from Dürrenmatt when the killer speaks about the community: "[s] you should think about it, Heavenly Thunder" (p. 157), "[the] dead are easier to raise than those down there in their laziness and Comfort ”(p. 155) and“ it's about the honor that they have more than hay on their heads ”(p. 156). While the killer and rapist Marihuana Joe "rings the bell [to attack]" (p. 160), Moses describes the biblical Jesus as a "marzipan savior" and not believable (p. 172), which puts the reader in doubt about the truth of the biblical stories arise or as a believer he feels provoked to the highest degree.

On Melker's personality

Melker appears as a "monster" (he kills his wives), poor, rich and cheat at the same time. Towards the end the portrayal of him even appears godlike, as can be seen on page 174, “the great old man was his thought, his idea, his creation and nothing else”. At the beginning of the novel, he honestly tries to help the rich to poverty and to take on the wealth without a guilty conscience, towards the end he admits his own guilt, counts himself among the criminals and catches himself because he is not against himself Fate refuses, as hero and madman at the same time, to laugh when the flames seize him.

Reviews

"Dürrenmatt's imagination strikes again and with it the events roll over: a firework of absurd ideas and grotesque inventions" is a review by Deutsche Welle .

Der Spiegel wrote: "[...] In addition to the bogus, they have paradoxes clinging to them: gangsters want good, madmen are human, and the seeker of God is, understandably, a passionate wife-murderer".

Book cover

A section of the painting Man with Dog by Willy Guggenheim is shown on the dust jacket or paperback cover .

Book editions

literature

  • Heinrich Goertz: Dürrenmatt. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1990, ISBN 3-499-50380-8 , p. 127.
  • Jürgen Meyer: Allegories of Knowledge. Flann O'Brien's “The Third Policeman” and Friedrich Dürrenmatt's “Durcheinandertal” as ironic cosmographies . Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2001, ISBN 3-86057-744-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Visiting the old dramas . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1989 ( online ).