Free meal (novella)

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A red VW Beetle convertible is shown on the cover of the novella

Freitisch is a novella by the German writer Uwe Timm that was published in February 2011. It is about two former fellow students who meet again more than forty years after their studies, with the plans of one, a waste management entrepreneur , threatening the secluded idyll of the other, a retired teacher. Both remember their shared past as recipients of a free table at the university. At the end of the semester, they took a trip to see the writer Arno Schmidt . In the meantime, the admiration for his work has passed from one to the other.

content

After the fall of the Wall , the nameless first-person narrator and his Norwegian wife settled as a teacher couple in Anklam , a small town in the northeast of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . He is now retired and runs a second-hand bookshop , which primarily serves as a pretext for collecting first editions. He was particularly fond of one author: Arno Schmidt . A planned landfill seems to be a lucrative business for the provincial city, which is struggling with the emigration of its citizens. The entrepreneur, who has traveled from the west, tanned and in a Saab convertible, turns out to be the narrator's former college friend. The mathematics student, called by everyone “ Euler ” at the time, made his fortune with logistics in waste management and now runs a company with 250 employees. The encounter between the two fellow students pushes the business into the background, and they bring back the time they spent studying together at Munich University in the early 1960s over a coffee in the Grützmann country bakery.

Cows in half mourning . Etching by Jens Rusch for Arno Schmidt's story of the same name

They were four scholarship holders who met every lunchtime at a so-called free table in the canteen of an insurance company instead of in the cafeteria : Euler, Falkner, a law student who was simply called a “lawyer” and the narrator. While the “lawyer” was conservative and upwardly oriented as a student and has since made a career at Siemens , the existentialist falconer confirmed his reputation as a “young author” without his fellow students having seen his works back then and is now a well known writer.

The topics of conversation in the Free Table Quartet revolved around philosophical things like the afterlife or political things like the emergency laws and the Vietnam War , but never about “relationship boxes”. Because no one wanted to be naked with his feelings. They laughed about Luebke - and Zitzewitz -Witze or was impressed by Godard's film Breathless . But most of the talk was about literature . Because it was a time when literature still had "radiance" and one could be known for reading good books. Euler was a disciple of the eccentric writer Arno Schmidt. With his infectious enthusiasm, he inflamed the whole group for his language games and especially for the recently published volume of short stories Kühe in Halbtrauer . Euler himself was literarily active in the style of the “master” and had already sent him talent samples. Only the young author Falkner was not infected by Euler's enthusiasm. For him Schmidt remained a philistine , and his “idiocy” an infantile “quirk”. Falkner's understanding of art was experienced by his table companions at a happening in which he smashed a piano with a knife and ax. He was also the only one who already practiced free love , be it with two stewardesses or an actress who scratched his face.

Arno Schmidt's house in Bargfeld .

When Euler set off one day in a borrowed VW Beetle convertible to visit his idol in Bargfeld , nobody from the group joined him. The experience ended in disappointment. After a long drive to the Lüneburg Heath , Euler called Schmidt for a full hour at the fence until his wife Alice appeared and announced that her husband was not receiving, whereupon the student left without having achieved anything. But this did not diminish his enthusiasm, after all he had been able to see into the lighted room of the master. On the second attempt, Euler asked the narrator to accompany him. With a borrowed theodolite they went to work in front of Schmidt's house and marked a land survey . As expected, it wasn't long before Schmidt stepped out of the house and asked about the purpose of the hustle and bustle. Euler claimed that a pig fattening facility with a manure pit was being built right next to Schmidt's property . To the horrified reaction of the writer, he admitted that the two students only wanted to catch his attention with their acting. After visible astonishment and feelings of anger, Schmidt's humor prevailed and he invited Euler into the house. Meanwhile, the narrator guarded the measuring devices in front of the property. When Euler returned, he had become very taciturn about Schmidt. Euler's talent tests had dismissed him as a “brave Schmidt imitation”. Only on the way back did the narrator understand that he would never get the chance he had just missed again in his life: to speak to Arno Schmidt personally in his workshop. Only years after Schmidt's death did the narrator return to Bargfeld, where Schmidt's house had meanwhile become a museum. With the semester break in the week after their trip, the free table broke up and the students lost sight of each other.

The conversation between Euler and the narrator has also come to an end. Above all, one topic reveals the changed attitude of the two: While the narrator is constantly trying to let the conversation revolve around Arno Schmidt, who has meanwhile been admired by him, and to refresh memories of the trip together, in which he himself only played an extra role Euler lost all interest in Schmidt's work and can only faintly remember everything that has to do with the literary figure or literature as a whole. Euler's still infectious enthusiasm now shows when he talks about his Indian bride or the logistics of garbage management. When asked about the location of the planned landfill, he merely points in an approximate direction into the landscape. After Euler's departure, with the screeching tires of his Saab convertible, the narrator's thoughts return home to his wife. Behind her secluded house he sees the meadows with the black and white cows in his mind .

background

Uwe Timm's novella is based on autobiographical elements: During his studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, he received an insurance grant for a free meal. In addition, the protagonists share Timm's preference for Arno Schmidt. In the nameless narrator, Timm took up his hero Ulrich Krause from Hot Summer and Red , which, in his own words, wanted Timm to develop the formerly politically active activist further in his résumé and therefore let him retire to an idyll as a retired teacher.

shape

Uwe Timm was free table subtitled amendment . However, this literary genre was questioned by various reviewers who instead classified Freitisch as a narrative . Jörg Magenau judged that the text "lacks everything novellas: not only the unheard-of incident, but even an act worth communicating". For Kristina Maidt-Zinkes, on the other hand, the trip to Bargfeld saw the “unheard-of, also unheard-of comic incident […] in this not quite perfect novella”. Frank Schäfer referred to Heyses' falcon theory with reference to the numerous falcons that appeared and noted that "Longer story, which he calls novella" is "ironically decorated with the appropriate generic formalities". And with a look at the framework narration in a café, Ina Hartwig concluded : “People like to eat in novellas”. Thomas Rothschild made it clear, however: “It will be difficult to find a definition of the 'novella' that covers this text by Uwe Timm. 'Narration' does it too. ”For Martin Halter, Freitisch was “ not just part of Timm's smaller works in terms of scope ”.

Despite the "allusions to Arno Schmidt and quotes from his work", which, according to Kristina Maidt-Zinkes, drag themselves through the free table, the style of the novella does not take over Schmidt's language games, but is told according to Ina Hartwig "rather conventionally." According to Gerrit Bartels, Timm writes in “short, choppy, superficially casual sentences”. For Thomas Rothschild, these are "sometimes incomplete, approximating to oral narration". For Maidt-Zinkes, the “North German dry, laconic tone” prevails: “The attitude is ironic, the diction tight.” However, Frank Schäfer also recognized the Schmidt homage in the form of “meandering, repeatedly mixed with longer reflexive digressions , resplendent with education, but also no witty anecdote and no pun shying person narratives, as they - something like that - also knows of Arno Schmidt ".

reception

Free meals were mixed in the German-language feature pages, but were mostly received favorably. Jörg Magenau described "a cheerful tone pervaded by quiet melancholy". “The inevitable sentimental aspect is a bit annoying”, but in the end “an interesting panorama of Germany” emerges that “leads back from post-89 reality to the pre-1968 era.” Kristina Maidt-Zinkes also read “a little bit in the novella Mental history of the Federal Republic, loosened up anecdotally and turned into the individual ”.

Judith von Sternburg called the content of Freitisch a book about “a double failure”, narrative however “not only solid, but also without a trace of bitterness. Meekness and ingenuity seldom go hand in hand so harmoniously. ”For Gerrit Bartels, a“ somewhat contemplative, babbling story ”ended up being“ a kind of little educational novel ”, the tone of which, however, seemed“ clumsy and ingratiating ”.

Martin Halter recognized “no convincing form” in the text. Despite clever “observations about Schmidt and the spirit of the sixties”, the novella is a “condensed but fragmented dream in nostalgic half-mourning.” Kristina Maidt-Zinkes also drew a comparison with Arno Schmidt's Zettel's dream : “Uwe Timm's slim, unpretentious little book looks like it the antithesis to that monster, but the free table is surprisingly well covered. ”For Frank Schäfer, the free table was a“ thoroughly hybrid text ”. Nevertheless, for a Schmidt homage, Timm would have had to "tighten the screw a few more turns": "This is Schmidt with the handbrake on and therefore at most half the fun."

For Ina Hartwig , the free table was “much easier, more playful, more mischievous” than, for example, using the example of my brother or The Friend and the Stranger . The author's strength lies in the “reconstructive touch of fulfilled and unfulfilled wishes”. Thomas Rothschild used the same word to describe the novella as “a mischievous declaration of love to a time”, narrating “not smugly, not with the cheap superiority of those who have arrived in the establishment today and squandered their Judas wages there.” Instead, Timm sticks to the recommendation of the Marquis of Posa in Don Carlos : "Tell / him that he should respect the dreams of his youth / if he becomes a man."

expenditure

Reviews

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In Germany there is a new arrogance . Interview with Uwe Timm. In: Spiegel Online from March 30, 2011.
  2. ↑ a b c d Thomas Rothschild : Kale with pee . In: Die Presse on February 26, 2011.
  3. ↑ Conversation with Uwe Timm about his new novella  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.br-online.de   . In: Bayern 2 Diwan from February 19, 2011.
  4. ↑ a b Jörg Magenau : Reunion of two Arno Schmidt fans . In: Deutschlandradio Kultur from March 1, 2011.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Kristina Maidt-Zinkes: Back then, feelings were free . In: The time of March 24, 2011.
  6. ↑ a b c Frank Schäfer : The good left man and waste logistics . In: the daily newspaper of March 5, 2011.
  7. ↑ a b c Ina Hartwig : Young men in half mourning . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of March 15, 2011 (literature supplement).
  8. ↑ a b Martin Halter: Trouble in half mourning . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 12, 2011.
  9. ↑ a b Gerrit Bartels: Lively sixties . In: Der Tagesspiegel of March 7, 2011.
  10. ↑ Free table with perlentaucher .
  11. ^ Judith von Sternburg: When we read Arno Schmidt . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of March 4, 2011.