A look back from the year 2000 to the year 1887

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Reclam edition from 1919

The book Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (also as Looking Backward (2000-1887) or, Life in the Year 2000, AD ; German under the titles Ein Rückblick von der 2000 auf der 1887 , In 2000: ein Rückblick auf The Year 1887 and The Wonderful Experiences of Mr. Julian West in 2000 ) by Edward Bellamy , which first appeared in 1888, is about Julian West , a young American who, in the late 19th century, during treatment with animal magnetism , a Kind of hypnosis, falls into a deep sleep that lasts for over a hundred years. When he wakes up, he's still in the same place, but the world around him has changed.

content

Julian West wakes up in Boston in 2000 and finds himself in the care of Dr. Leete and his attractive daughter Edith, who turns out to be a descendant of Julian's fiancé. Over the past hundred years, the United States has become an ideal community. There is little plot in the novel , it is essentially only shown how the host, Dr. Leete and his daughter Edith introduce the protagonist to the new world and explain to him the living conditions of the ideal community.

How this community was reached is vaguely described. The change took place in an evolutionary way, since humanity decided in the 20th century to establish a cooperative state system. In the world of the year 2000, for example, there are industrial republics that work together as a global federal state and thus enable their citizens to live carefree. Work is required, but its form of organization and broad distribution of goods mean that exploitation has been overcome. All are trained according to their skills, but have to do labor service in an industrial army so that unpopular work can also be done. The individuals are active for the common good without neglecting their own inclinations, but the administrative bodies and labor armies are organized militarily. With his experience in the 19th century, Julian West becomes professor of the history of this era. A small elite of older male civil servants determines the occupation of the leadership positions.

The first thing Julian West notices is that the air in Boston is clean and not polluted by the chimney fumes, as he was used to in his day, in the 19th century. But social coexistence has also changed. People are actually equal, everyone has to work equally for the community for a period of their lives - Dr. Leete compares this industrial service with military service in the old days.

There is no cash, but credit cards , the value of which is deducted from each purchase (this is an anticipation of the author, because the first actual credit cards were only offered by Western Union in 1924 ).

All members of society participate in the industrial service, each according to his or her ability. And in return, everyone receives an equal share of the values ​​that have been developed together. The motto is that you don't get your reward for being able to do more or less, but for being human.

The need for entertainment is also taken into account. According to the technical possibilities of his time, the author designs entertainment media of the distant future. On the basis of the then just new phone , he developed a system of mass entertainment by the city in several places Orchestra different types of music play for 24 hours, the telephone lines to the homes transferred is. Those interested in music can choose a program there and play it back over loudspeakers in their living room ( see also theatrophon ). The fees for this will be deducted from his credit card.

Education has also been considered, and the fundamental principle of the Society of the Year 2000 is that he who needs education most is who has the least natural gifts. Intelligent, interested people look for it on their own initiative, only the less intelligent need support. And it is in everyone's interest that others are educated.

Position in literature

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Like Étienne Cabet , Bertha von Suttner and Theodor Hertzka, Bellamy envisions overcoming the social question through technology. His utopia is often rather dry and instructive, sometimes also overly sentimental. In it, partial agreement with modern reality (better air in some big cities, welfare state ) is transformed into hits of quasi- scientific accuracy (credit cards, mass entertainment based on a free choice between a large number of providers in an electronic network). It is not only a template for the pessimistic authors ( Aldous Huxley , Karin Boye , Stefan Andres , Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu , George Orwell ), but it also paves the way for future research and the like. a. by Walter Greiling .

effect

Editor Wolfgang Biesterfeld speaks of "the most successful utopia of the 19th century and perhaps the most widely read utopia of all" (1983, p. 296). The continuation under the title Equality was just as unsuccessful as the other writings of the author.

Editor Georg von Gizycki writes in the foreword (1890, p. 3):

“It seemed to me that this work could be placed alongside the famous utopias of the past, such as Thomas More's ' Utopia ' […] Bacon's ' New Atlantis ' and Campanella's ' Sun State '. No such book has had such astonishing success as this one: it was published about two years ago, and already has the 301,000 of the American original and the 21st edition of the English reprint. Since we had only one mangled and one illegible German translation of this book up to now, I thought it would be desirable to provide the German public with a useful one, and I hope that this one is one. Many objections have been raised against the work from socialist as well as from the opposite side, and it is certainly subject to not a few; but I believe it contains deep ethical truths. "

Contemporaries criticized advocacy for the emancipation of women and accused Bellamy of advocating atheism and materialism .

Ernst Bloch criticized the fact that the conditions described do not differ fundamentally from those of the capitalist world. While some detrimental effects are removed, the general makeup of the capitalist world remains:

“The world will be a gigantic Boston, or rather Chicago, with some agriculture in between; the area of ​​the latter was previously called nature. "

- Bloch

Especially the utopia News from Nowhere ( News from Nowhere ) by William Morris joins Looking Backward to:

“ Looking Backward's recording in Germany during the Wilhelmine era is particularly appealing . Immediately translated into German by various authors (first in a distorted version by Georg Malkowsky under the title Alles nationalized. Socialpolitischer Roman , 1889), the text caused lively controversy in the country to which the iron chancellor has just given the socialist laws. A series of transformations and parodies emerges. While Eduard Loewenthal ( Bellamy's State and its Successors , 1891) only uses Looking Backward as a vehicle for the dissemination of the worldview he invented and is now forgotten, `` Cogitantism '', other authors try to test the possible further development of the Bellamyian state in their own way deliver. Ernst Müller ( A look back from the year 2037 to the year 2000 , 1891) strives for a reconciling balance between the various political positions in the not at all ideal future state by recommending more charity to the rich and more satisfaction to the poor; Philipp Wasserburg ( A little later! Continuation of Bellamy's retrospective from 2000 , 1891) would like to use the example of Cuba to prove that Bellamy's construction cannot be applied to all countries and climates; Conrad Wilbrandt ( Des Herr Friedrich Ost's Experiences in Bellamy’s World , 1891) relocates the plot to Germany and shows the failure of the model because of the leveling of human needs and mistakes in foreign trade; the German-American Richard Michaelis ( Looking Forward , 1890; Ger. A look into the future. An answer to: A look back by Edward Bellamy. 1890) lets Julian West's experiences end in a bloodbath, portrayed by all means trivial, that of Dr. . Leete and his like-minded friends caused mobs who had been duped for years. "

- W. Biesterfeld : Afterword, 1983, p. 301 f.

expenditure

  • First edition: Looking Backward, 2000-1887. Ticknor and Company, Boston 1888.
  • Current issue: Looking Backward, 2000-1887. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2009, ISBN 0-19-955257-6 .
Translations
  • Translator: Georg von Gizycki. Ed. Wolfgang Biesterfeld. Universal library 2660. Reclam, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-15-002660-1 (with editor's afterword).
  • Translator: Clara Zetkin . Dietz, Stuttgart 1914. New edition: Review of the year 2000. Golkonda, 2017, ISBN 978-3-946503-14-9 .
  • Translator: Alexander Fleischmann. Translated from the 301st thousand of the American original edition. Ed. Georg von Gizycki. Reclam, Leipzig undated [1890] (the version had seven editions up to 1891).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Bloch: Principle Hope , 1959, p. 715 f .; quoted in the afterword by W. Biesterfeld 1983, p. 313.