There were hawks in the air

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There were hawks in the air is Siegfried Lenz's debut novel . He appeared in 1951 first as a serial novel in the world and in the same year as a book at Hoffmann und Campe .

action

The action is set in Finland shortly after the First World War and the Finnish Civil War . A stranger named Stenka appears in a small town in Karelia . This is a teacher who, along with many other teachers, was captured by the new government and who has fled. He finds work at the florist Leo. His employee Erkki recognizes Stenka because he was his student. However, he does not betray it, although it puts himself in danger. Erkki's lover Manja, an employee of the mayor, is a supporter of the new government and wants to convince Erkki to hand over Stenka.

In addition, the mentally confused Petrucha lives in the woods near the city. He was in the labor service in Russia for twelve years. On his return he finds a little girl with his wife - the daughter of his wife and his brother. He then throws a bowl that he had brought as a present against the stove and a shard hits the girl in the ear. Petrucha leaves his wife and has been wandering around with an ax ever since, looking for his brother and seeking revenge.

Aati, a functionary of the new government who is known to Leo, is determined to catch the teacher and also to drive away a group of monks who live on an island in a nearby lake. That is why Manja is supposed to go to the island in a boat at night - a girl with the monks is supposed to offer the pretext for expulsion. This is supposed to be Manja's last service to the government before she quits work and marries Erkki.

Stenka flees and at night comes to the lake where Manja is about to leave for the island. He hides and watches as Petrucha approaches Manja and hits her with an ax and kills. He had previously noticed the scar behind Manja's ear, which identifies her as the daughter of his wife and brother, who had received the shard many years earlier. Stenka shoots Petrucha with a revolver obtained from Erkki and learns the name of his brother from the dying man: It is Matowski, the previous owner of the flower shop in which Stenka worked, murdered by Aati. Stenka hides with Erkki, who initially suspects him of the murder of his fiancée, but then believes him and helps to escape one more time. Since he is being persecuted as a helper of the fugitive, he too flees. At the nearby Russian border, Stenka is shot dead by border guards in the last few meters, Erkki is shot but is able to flee.

reception

In his review of the novel, Karl Korn granted Siegfried Lenz “a place among the hopes of our young narrative literature” in the Frankfurter Allgemeine . The abundance of pinpoint human reflexes in the plot is astonishing, the description of terror unsentimental, sharp and correct.

In retrospect, Ulrike Sárkány reports in her review of the new edition from 2016 that critics and readers recognized immediately in 1951 that this new voice was important for German-language literature. The pictorial language, the events exaggerated into a parable and the coherence of the feeling speak to today's reader with undiminished intensity.

expenditure

  • There were hawks in the air , edited by Astrid Roffmann. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-455-40591-0 .
  • There were hawks in the air , Lenz, Siegfried: work edition in individual volumes, vol. 1., Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 978-3-455-04254-2 .
  • The early novels. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1976, ISBN 978-3-455-04221-4 (with Der Mann im Strom ; bread and games ; talk of the town ).
  • Kragulji so bili v zraku . Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana 1972 (Slovenian).
  • There were hawks in the air. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1969 (up to the 22nd edition, 1996, ISBN 978-3-423-00542-5 ).
  • There were hawks in the air. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1951 (up to the 3rd edition, 1970).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulrike Sárkány: NDR Book of the Month: "There were hawks in the air" . NDR Kultur , November 30, 2016, online version , accessed January 27, 2017.
  2. ^ Karl Korn , review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , April 21, 1951, online version (PDF), accessed on January 27, 2017.