Success (novel)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Success is the title of a contemporary novel by Lion Feuchtwanger . The subtitle is Three Years of a Province's History . It was written between 1927–1930 and was published in 1930. Together with the novels Die Geschwister Oppermann and Exil , it is part of Feuchtwanger's “Waiting Room Trilogy”. It has clear elements of a key novel.

action

The plot begins with an alleged perjury and a real perjury . The art historian and Munich museum director Martin Krüger came under fire in the early 1920s for purchasing and exhibiting several offensive paintings. He is then sentenced to three years in prison in a politically motivated perjury trial. Krüger is said to have followed a lady to her apartment after a party, which the latter had denied under oath. The conviction is based on the false testimony on oath of the chauffeur Ratzenberger. It is clear to all those involved that it is a pretext for the conservative Bavarian state government to remove Krüger, who is politically part of the left, of his office.

In the following years, Krüger's girlfriend Johanna Krain tried to obtain his pardon. To this end, she seeks contact with high-ranking personalities, with politicians, with the superiors in business and the church and with the abdicated monarch family.

Little by little, a moral painting of the "State of Bavaria" emerges at that time.

In the second part of the novel, the movement of Rupert Kutzner and the True Germans - cipher for the NSDAP - occupies an ever larger space. Kutzner clearly bears Hitler's traits , and the description of his uprising corresponds to the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch of 1923. General Vesemann is a literary copy of Erich Ludendorff . Feuchtwanger particularly emphasizes how the broad population supports Kutzner, but also how the conservative forces in Bavaria use the Kutzner movement to assert their own interests, which is what makes Kutzner's rise possible.

At the end of the novel, Martin Krüger dies in custody and Johanna Krain and her friend Jacques Tüverlin try to make the scandal known. Johanna is making a film and Tüverlin is writing a book. Since Tüverlin has the features of Lion Feuchtwanger, the reader can assume that this is the book he has just read.

Person key

Many of the characters in the novel are recognizable as being reproduced from personalities in Bavarian society at the time. It was first discovered by Bertolt Brecht , who recognized himself in the engineer and poet Kaspar Prockl. The comedian Baltasar Hierl is based on the model of Karl Valentin . In Dr. Matthäi paints Feuchtwanger an unflattering picture of the author Ludwig Thoma . His professional colleague Josef Pfisterer, who is connected to him in a love-hate relationship, is clearly reminiscent of Ludwig Ganghofer . The writer Tüverlin not only bears the features of Lion Feuchtwanger himself, but also those of Thomas Mann . This becomes particularly clear in the chapter The Function of the Writer in the second book, when Prockl argues with Tüverlin about literature and accuses him of making "sanatorium, winter spa poetry" "while the planet is being torn apart" (an allusion to Mann's novel The Magic Mountain ), and says: "While the world was on fire", he had "observed the emotions of pets" (an allusion to Mann's story Herr und Hund ).

In addition to Hitler (Rupert Kutzner) and Ludendorff (General Vesemann), other historical politicians can be identified. During the putsch, Minister Flaucher behaves like the real Gustav Ritter von Kahr . The state economics councilor Georg Heim ( Bavarian People's Party ) can be recognized in Privy Councilor Bichler . The figure of Otto Klenk is reminiscent of Attorney General Christian Roth . Finally, behind the “Crown Pretender” or “Crown Prince Maximilian” is none other than the son of the last King of Bavaria, Ludwig III, the Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria . He appears to Feuchtwanger as an influential personality who can be useful to know.

style

Feuchtwanger often uses Bavarian dialect expressions in his novel to enhance the local flavor. At the same time Feuchtwanger pretends that the novel was written from a long time lag, in which he explains what is generally known (for example that Schiller was a well-known poet at the time) or in which he speaks of "then" when he means his presence. The book is composed as a historical novel for readers from the year 2000. In a piece of information that the author placed before the second volume in the original two-volume edition, he takes the position of great temporal distance and formulates:

“Material about the customs and habits of the old Bavarian people in that era can be found in a newspaper that appeared in an old Bavarian town called Miesbach; the ' Miesbacher Anzeiger '. Two copies of this newspaper have been preserved, one is in the British Museum, the other in the Institute for Research on Primitive Cultures in Brussels. "

expenditure

from 1950 changed editions

Exhibitions (selection)

2014: Success - Lion Feuchtwangers Bayern , Literaturhaus Munich , Munich.

Edits

radio play

Audio books

Movie

literature

  • Egon Brückener, Klaus Modick: Lion Feuchtwanger's novel "Success". Librarian, Kronberg / Ts. 1978, ISBN 3-589-20657-8
  • Christian Fuhrmeister, Susanne Kienlechner: The present and the premonition: to what extent was the Munich art historian August Liebmann Mayer (1885 - 1944) a role model for the figure of Martin Krüger in Lion Feuchtwanger's novel “Success” (1930)? In: Literatur in Bayern, München, 24 (2008), 93, pp. 32–44
  • Dietz-Rüdiger Moser: The relationship between fiction and reality in Lion Feuchtwanger's novel “Success”. A contribution to the image of the city of Munich in the twenties of the 20th century. In: Read Munich. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2008. pp. 91–105
  • Susan Pickers: Lion Feuchtwanger's novel “Success” as a model of a contemporary history novel at the end of the Weimar Republic. Master thesis. University of Münster 1985.
  • Harald Weinrich: When Hitler was still Kutzner - about Lion Feuchtwanger's novel “Success”. In: ders .: How civilized is the devil? Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-56460-7 . Pp. 159-165
  • Judith Karin Wessler: Lion Feuchtwanger's success: a “big city” novel. Lang, New York et al. 1988, ISBN 0-8204-0449-7

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Harald Weinrich points out that Feuchtwanger's clarity and insight were astonishing for 1930 and explains: In the portrait of Kutzner / Hitler and in the inclusion of the first Nazi atrocities in the plot of a novel, we actually have the first significant structure - and motivational analysis of this political movement before us, and German literature can be honored that this warning analysis came from the pen of a writer in: When Hitler was Kutzner - on Lion Feuchtwanger's novel “Success”. In: ders .: How civilized is the devil? , SS 164.
  2. ↑ In later one-volume editions the “information” was placed at the end of the novel. Quoted here from the edition of Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin, 1948, 6th edition 1999, p. 807.
  3. ↑ On the whole shorter; Around 1948 there were concerns about the first version in the Soviet occupation zone, for example it should be "avoided" in lending libraries.
  4. ^ A key novel is viewed in FAZ on November 27, 2014, page 13