Army report

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Army Report is the title of a novel by Edlef Köppen published by Horen-Verlag in 1930 . It is also Köppen's most famous work. In this novel, the author processes his own experiences of the First World War , which gives the fictional plot autobiographical traits.

action

The novel describes the experiences of the student Adolf Reisiger, who came to a field artillery regiment as a war volunteer in 1914 and fought with this regiment on the western front until he was wounded . After his recovery at the end of 1916, Reisiger - meanwhile a deputy officer - was assigned to an artillery regiment on the Eastern Front . When the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Soviet Russia enabled the withdrawal of many German units from the Eastern Front, Reisiger, now a lieutenant in the reserve, was relocated with his regiment to the Western Front. After the German spring offensive in 1918 failed to achieve a breakthrough, the last attempt to win the war followed in mid-July 1918 . But this offensive also fails. As the novel progresses, Reisiger's growing doubts about the meaning of this war become clear. His initial enthusiasm completely waned in the late summer of 1918. He finally breaks down mentally, refuses to take part in further acts of war and is admitted to a mental institution .

shape

The special thing about Köppen's novel are the mounted original documents, such as B. Quotes from the emperor, high officers, decrees of the censorship offices or newspaper reports and advertisements. In addition, fictional elements such as Reisiger's declaration of fitness or his diary entries and letters were moved to the level of historical documents and historical documents were woven into the fictional plot, which leads to a mixture of reality and fiction. Some of the documents were collected by Köppen's mother (advertising, newspaper articles, ...) or came from his landlord, who worked in the Potsdam Army Archives . It is also interesting that the pacifist poems that Reisiger writes come from Köppen himself and had already been published. The documents are used to comment on Reisiger's experiences and to place them in a larger context. The reproduction of the war events in the original army reports compared to the hero's war experiences is a testament to the lies, absurdity and madness of the war. The Army report , together with Alfred Doblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz one of the first mounting novels in German.

“Formally advanced” (Baumann) is also the use of streams of consciousness and inner monologues in Reisiger's descriptions.

The Army Report confronts (according to Baumann), “like most war novels, regardless of whether they understand each other affirmatively or critically, the reader in an almost pornographic developmental rhythm with 'passages' of increasingly drastic representations and exhibitions of spectacular body states, here the staging of death , Mutilation and madness in the total war theater of trench warfare. "

Effect and adaptations

The novel first appeared in 1930, at a time when other novels about the First World War were also appearing, such as Remarque's Nothing New in the West (1929), Renn's War (1928) or Zweig's The Dispute over Sergeant Grischa (1927). In 1931 an English translation was published under the title Higher Command . A second edition followed in 1932 by List-Verlag , which had since taken over Horen-Verlag. The novel Heeresbericht is one of the literary works that fell victim to the book burning in Germany in 1933 (see list of books burned in 1933 ). After the edition of 1932 there were in the Federal Republic until 1976 back to a new edition of the work, in the GDR in 1981. 2005 was published by Ambo / Anthos in Amsterdam, a Dutch translation of the novel under the title battlefield reports . In 2012, the Hamburg painter and audio book author Andreas Karmers produced a radio play version of the novel.

literature

  • Erll, Astid: memory novels. Literature on the First World War as a medium for English and German cultures of remembrance in the 1920s. Trier 2003.
  • Franke, Albrecht (Ed.): The war really broke out. Conversation with and about Eldef Köppen. Hall 2014.
  • Gollbach, Michael: The return of the world war in literature. To the front novels of the late twenties. Kronberg im Taunus 1978.
  • Kopitzki, Siegmund; Salomon, Peter: "Don't kill for a day". The poet Edlef Köppen (1893-1939). A portrait. Eggingen 2004.
  • Murdoch, Brian: Documentation and narrative. Edlef Köppen's "Heeresbericht" and the anti-war novels of the Weimar Republic. In: German literature and the First World War. Edited by Brian Murdoch. Farnham 2015, pp. 245-262.
  • Nogal, Gerda: Individual Testimony versus War Propaganda. The First World War in Edlef Köppen's "Army Report" (1930). In: Declaration of War on Old Europe. Literary, historiographical and autobiographical perspectives on the First World War. Edited by Monika Kucner a. a. Frankfurt am Main 2017, pp. 59–73.
  • Schaffrick, Matthias: Coincidence. Inclusion and exclusion of chance with Ernst Jünger and Edlef Köppen. In: Aesthetics of Chance. Orders of the unpredictable in literature and theory. Edited by Christoph Pflaumbaunm a. a. Heidelberg 2015, pp. 237-255.
  • Schafnitzel, Roman: The forgotten collage of the First World War. Edlef Köppen: Army Report (1930). In: From Richthofen to Remarque: German-language prose on World War I. Edited by Thomas Schneider and Hans Wagener. Amsterdam u. a. 2003, pp. 319-341.
  • Stadler, Martina: disillusionment and Kriegsernüchterung in Edlef Koppen Army report , Erich Maria Remarque on the Western Front and Ludwig Renn's War . Vienna 2013.
  • Vinzent, Jutta: Edlef Köppen - writer between the fronts. A literary historical contribution to Expressionism, new objectivity and inner emigration; with edition, list of works and bequests. Munich 1997.

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Astrid Erll: memory novels . Literature on the First World War as a medium for English and German cultures of remembrance in the 1920s. Trier 2003, p. 339 .
  2. ↑ Appendix to Army Report p. 398, List-Verlag 2005, ISBN 3-548-60577-X
  3. ↑ Andreas Baumann: Death is woven. Edlef Köppen's montage novel "Heeresbericht" - a forgotten book about the First World War . literaturkritik.de review forum from August 8, 2004, accessed on October 6, 2016.
  4. ↑ Martina Stadler: Disillusionment and war disenchantment in Edlef Köppen's “Army Report”, Erich Maria Remarque's “Nothing New in the West” and Ludwig Renn's “War” . Thesis. Vienna January 30, 2013. p. 29
  5. ^ Anne Milachowski: Edlef Köppen: Heeresbericht (1930). In: Library of Burned Books , accessed April 2017.
  6. ^ New edition by Verlag der Nation Berlin (Ost) 1981, 2nd edition 1985.
  7. ↑ Dirk Verhofstadt: ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Front reports. ) In: Liberales , February 10, 2005 (Belgian review).@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.liberales.be
  8. ↑ Radio play Heeresbericht (publisher's presentation with audio sample), direction and production: Andreas Karmers (2012), playing time: 759 minutes (eleven CDs), ISBN 978-3-941940-11-6 .
  9. ↑ Review by Veit Justus Rollmann: And the enemy drums ... In: literaturkritik.de review forum of October 1, 2012, accessed on October 6, 2016.

Web links

Wiktionary: Army report  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations