Born (Robert Schindel)
Native is the title of the debut novel by Robert Schindel . It was published in 1992 by Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main.
construction
The novel consists of a prologue, seven chapters and an epilogue. The seven chapters are divided into further sections, their headings partly correspond to each other - for example narrow (1st chapter) with width (6th chapter) and cold (2nd chapter) with heat (7th chapter).
The numerous characters in the novel can be divided into four large groups of people, each with two to three protagonists. The storylines of three of these groups of people are interwoven and play at the same time, the fourth precedes in time and has no influence on the progression of the other storylines.
The individual chapter sections tell alternately about the respective groups of people. The fourth group of people is only introduced in the third chapter - but it is actually decisive for the title of the novel.
The plot is portrayed by an omniscient narrator . With regard to the first three groups of people, you know his name, he is even integrated into the plot.
content
1. Group of people
(Winter 1983 - summer 1984)
- Danny Demant - Jewish editor, currently editing a manuscript by Emmanuel Katz
- Christiane Kalteisen - emergency doctor, father was ÖVP party secretary
- Wilma Horvath
Demant starts an affair with Christiane at Christmas, although he is actually in a relationship with Wilma. Nevertheless, he starts the planned trip to Venice with Wilma, only to find again that he is more attached to Christiane. They both leave separately; Christiane picks up Demant. You spend the turn of the year in Christiane's home community of Lilienfeld. Demant learns that Christiane has been married for 10 years and has two daughters aged three and eight. Because of you, Demant leaves soon after, exasperated - alone. Nevertheless, Demant and Christiane quickly reconcile and even move in together. However, their relationship is disturbed by frequent quarrels and the many reconciliations only improve the situation for a short time. Even without the two children, Demant can hardly stand two days in Lilienfeld. He drives to Italy without her, meets Konrad Sachs on the way and is involved in a car accident that forces him to hospital for two weeks. Here he is visited by Christiane, who has meanwhile been on an adventurous journey through half of Europe and, after a brief affair with a drug dealer who ends up in prison, returns ruefully to Demant. Finally, the two manage to help Sachs and drive back to Vienna together.
2. Group of people
(Winter 1983 - summer 1984)
- Alexander Graffito - Danny's twin brother, chronicler; from his point of view, the action of the first three groups of people is described
- Mascha Singer - unemployed sociologist from Ottakring
A complicated affair develops between Mascha and Sascha, but after a number of U-turns it ends because Mascha finally decides in favor of a Styrian farmer's son.
3. Group of people
(Winter 1983 - summer 1984)
- Emmanuel Katz - Jewish writer
- Konrad Sachs - German cultural essayist, father was NS Governor General of Poland
It was only after the death of his father - which was two years before the events - that Katz developed a literary interest and concerned himself with the fate of his Jewish family. For a short time he has a relationship with Käthe Richter, a blonde German, who is falling apart because of her two clearly "Aryan" looking brothers. Sachs, on the other hand, is suddenly haunted again by nightmares that he last encountered during his student days. In them, as the "Prince of Poland" - as his father, who was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials, called him - complicit in the atrocities in the German concentration camps. His wife Else doesn't know anything about this dark past, so he can't trust her with his nightmares. At Jens Stuwe and his wife's house, he met Emmanuel Katz on New Year's Day and immediately had a heated debate with him about Jews and Germans. Konrad, however, cannot free himself from his anxiety, "flees" to Munich, suffers a weakness there and has to go to the hospital. From there he went on to Frankfurt and turned to a prostitute to whom he wanted to reveal the secret of his origin. However, she does not want to "remove" his guilt and recommends that he consult a doctor. Finally he writes a letter to Katz, who sends Demant to Sachs. They meet in the hotel lobby and want to go to Italy, but Sachs runs a deer in front of the car and both end up in the hospital. Sachs fears that he is "already beginning to hurt Jews" and describes his problem to Demant. Christiane then advises him that he should write a book about his father and thereby try to leave his past behind.
4. Group of people
(Spring 1981)
- Herrmann Gebirtig - world-famous Jewish author of plays and musicals
- Susanne Ressel - journalist
During a hike by Susanne Ressel with her father Karl, the latter recognizes a cruel guard at the Ebensee concentration camp. He calls the police, but the next moment he collapses and dies soon after of a heart attack. Susanne has made it her business to collect as much material as possible about "the skullcracker" Egger and to present it to a trial against him. In doing so, she came to Gebirtig, who was also deported to the Ebensee concentration camp and now lives in New York. He detested the idea of returning to Vienna and testifying against Egger in the trial; In the end he lets himself be persuaded by Susanne, with whom he fell in love at the meeting. Despite all attempts, the imminent arrival of the famous author does not go unnoticed, and the city of Vienna plans to present Gebirtig with an award on his return after almost fifty years. For this reason, Gebirtig first flies to Munich and is picked up by Susanne there. He stayed in a small guesthouse, but was harassed by journalists and admired the city on a tram ride on the Ring - in search of new quarters. Suddenly he has a positive attitude towards the ceremony and the associated media presence. He visits old places of his memory and meets a few acquaintances from earlier times. After the ceremony, his testimony and a night with Susanne, he is even considering moving his main residence to Vienna ( "Maybe I just got out of the camp now" ). He sells the translation rights to his pieces, which were previously not allowed to appear in German, to a Frankfurt publishing house and appraises an apartment in Josefstadt. But his statement has no effect: Egger is acquitted; At the same moment Gebirtig leaves the city - and with it Susanne too - and flies back to New York.
Motifs
- Coping with the past of Jews on the one hand and Germans on the other hand (particularly pronounced in the 80s, since victims or perpetrators were still alive and their past was critically questioned by the younger generation)
- undiminished detachment between Jews and Germans. "May our Jews occasionally be a little dead or do they have to be kept sharpened as bone meal?"
- Love between births
- Danny Demant = a kind of alter ego of the author
filming
Due to its great success, the novel was made into a film in 2001 by the Austrian CULT film production.
Directed by Lukas Stepanik and the author of the novel, Robert Schindel ; The script was also written by these two men with the assistance of Georg Stefan Troller and published by Suhrkamp Verlag .
The main actors were Peter Simonischek as Herrmann Gebirtig, Ruth Rieser as Susanne Ressel, August Zirner as Danny Demant, Katja Weitzenböck as Christiane Kalteisen and Daniel Olbrychski as Konrad Sachs .