Installation of a king
The installation of a king is a novel by Arnold Zweig from 1937 and part of the cycle “ The Great War of the White Men ”.
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At the beginning of 1918, Captain Winfried served in the Supreme Army Command on the Eastern Front as an adjutant to his uncle, General von Lychow. After his transfer to the military administration of the occupied territories in Upper East , he witnessed power struggles and intrigues about the redistribution of power in Lithuania and ultimately drawn into it. At the same time, he is confronted with the economic exploitation of the occupied territories. He begins to doubt the meaning of the war. He spends his time off duty with his fiancée, the nurse Bärbe Osang, who works in a hospital . Both dream of a future together after the end of the war soon and want a child. Winfried receives the order to bring the vicar of the Bishop of Wilna to the monastery Maria-Laach for internment . He uses this trip to deliver a confidential message to the Social Democratic MP Kilian Hemmerle. His superiors learn of the contact. The Lithuanian parliament elects King Mindaugas II without the consent of the German occupying power . One night, after the curfew, Winfried is caught in civilian clothes and without documents and taken to a camp as an alleged enemy spy where Jewish civilians are forced to do forced labor under inhumane conditions. The Jewish lieutenant Perl freed Winfried after two days and had the camp closed. In the camp, Winfried learned that his uncle had been assassinated. In the meantime, Bärbe, who is expecting a child, is seriously ill with the flu. She dies in Winfried's arms. When Winfried learns that his imprisonment was not an accident, but a disciplinary measure of personal opponents and that it was carried out with the approval of his superior General Clauss, he turns away from German militarism.
expenditure
- Arnold Zweig: Establishment of a King . Querido publishing house, Amsterdam 1937.
- Arnold Zweig: Establishment of a King . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-596-25913-4 (licensed edition by Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin and Weimar).
- Arnold Zweig: Establishment of a King . 1st edition. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-351-03406-7 (revised version).
literature
- Rankl, Maximilian: "Lithuania should become Swabian ..." - Irony and history in Arnold Zweig's novel Appointment of a King. In: Literature in Science and Teaching XXXI / 2 (1998), pp. 125–143
Web links
- Literature by and about the installation of a king in the catalog of the German National Library