Glass bees

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Transparent bees is a science fiction by Ernst Jünger from 1957. It deals with the topic of the automation of production and the associated society .

action

The Prussian Rittmeister Richard is unemployed and urgently needs a new job. To do this, he meets a former comrade named Twinnings, who maintains a lot of contacts and can convey something suitable for everyone. He helps Richard talk to Zapparoni, a well-off employer who manufactures unusual products in his factories, including robots that can hardly be distinguished from humans due to their appearance and actions.

Richard goes to Zapparoni's company premises and is taken from there by private subway to Zapparoni's private estate. Waiting there, Richard takes a close look at his surroundings and realizes that Zapparoni's personal life is in complete contrast to his progressive work.

There is a clash between Zapparoni and Richard. Zapparoni carries out a special personality test with Richard without the latter noticing anything. Then Zapparoni analyzes Richard's answers and portrays him as incapable of the job vacancy. He sends him into the garden with the instruction to be careful of the bees.

Sitting in the garden, Richard observes those bees and realizes that they are small machines that are arranged in a hierarchy and perform different tasks. Richard also recognizes ears in a pond. At first he reacts shocked, but then realizes that the body parts are artificial and that their interpretation is probably another personality test.

At this moment he just wants to get away from there and thinks about how he could say goodbye without Zapparoni noticing that he has found the ears. But Richard hesitates too long and realizes for himself that he has lost every chance of a safe escape and this thing can only come to a bad end. He considered. Ultimately, in a fit of anger, he gives in to his feelings and takes a golf club with which he smashes a monitoring device in the air, which immediately shatters and secretes a toxic liquid. At that moment Zapparoni appears. He solves the mystery that these ears were cut off by a frustrated employee who specialized in ears and was fired. With his resignation, he wanted to take his work, the ears, with him as the last act.

Richard receives a final rejection of the job, but receives an alternative offer from Zapparoni for a position within his company. This is the role of an intermediary between engineers and workers in Zapparoni's factory. Richard accepts the position with thanks and returns home happily to his wife.

An epilogue is attached to the 1960 story in a revised second version. Richard is introduced as a lecturer in the company's in-house training, who gives a biographical presentation of "problems in technology" at a seminar. The previous story Gläserne Bees is presented in this version as a recording by an unnamed reporter.

literature

  • Harro Segeberg: Ernst Jünger's transparent bees as a question of technology. In: Titan Technik. Ernst and Friedrich Georg Jünger on the age of technology. Edited by Friedrich Strack. Würzburg 2000, pp. 211-224.
  • Benjamin Bühler: Living Bodies. Biological and anthropological knowledge with Rilke, Döblin and Jünger. Würzburg 2004, pp. 271–274 [horses, tanks and transparent bees].
  • Thomas Crew: Ernst Jünger's "Transparent Bees" and the transition to perfection. In: Berliner Debatte Initial 31 (2020), volume 1 - special issue "Digital Dystopias", pp. 72–84.
  • Niels Werber : Younger bees. In: Journal for German Philology 130 (2011), pp. 245–260.
  • Jens Wörner: Puppet Play and Compression. Jünger's conception of authorship and the transparent bees . In: Ernst Jünger and the Federal Republic. Aesthetics - Politics - Contemporary History. Edited by Matthias Schöning and Ingo Stöckmann. Berlin, Boston 2012, pp. 89–118.
  • Bernd Stiegler: Technical innovation and literary imagination. Ernst Jünger's narrative technical versions in Heliopolis , Eumeswil and Transparent Bees . In: Ernst Jünger and the Federal Republic. Aesthetics - Politics - Contemporary History. Edited by Matthias Schöning and Ingo Stöckmann. Berlin, Boston 2012, pp. 295-308.
  • Lothar Bluhm: "Be careful with the bees!" Technique and reservation in Ernst Jünger's Transparent Bees . In: Artificial People. Transgressions between body, culture and technology. Edited by Wolf-Andreas Liebert a. a. Würzburg 2014, pp. 231–240.
  • Thomas Gann: Transparent bees (1957). In: Ernst Jünger manual. Life - work - effect. Stuttgart, Weimar 2014, pp. 207–211.
  • Title page of the first edition
  • Ernst Jünger: Transparent bees . Klett-Cotta, 1990, ISBN 3-608-95708-1 (reissued)