Heart plants or The Fall of Adam

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Bamberg, Heinrichsdamm 10: the house where the heart plant protagonist Michael Adams grew up in the attic and where he returned as a writer in 1950

Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam is the title of Hans Wollschläger's avant-garde novel, published in 1982 , which is at the same time a deep psychological interpretation of Faust material and a detective novel . The novel was laid out in two volumes, but only the chapter “ Enuma elisch  …” is available from the “Second Book” . A previous version from 1961, which differs greatly in content, is in Wollschläger's archive, which was transferred to the Bamberg State Library in 2011 at his request .

Work title

The allusive work title Herzgewächse refers to an outdated medical term and to Arnold Schönberg 's op.20 for high soprano , celesta , harmonium and harp (1911), which is the setting of the German translated poem Feuillage du coeur from Maurice Maeterlinck's Serres chaudes (1889 ) is. The sub-title The Fall of Adam alludes to the myth of the Fall and a passage in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake . The subtitle Fragmentary Biographics in Random Waste Sheets in turn refers to ETA Hoffmann's novel Life Views of the Katers Murr together with a fragmentary biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler in random waste sheets .

Novel plot

Wollschläger, who in the fictional "Foreword" to the "Herzgewächsen" mimes the editor of diary-like notes by a writer and philosopher named Michael Adams, born in 1900, has often sketched the novel plot with the following introduction at readings:

“… This book Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam is a novel like any other, a first-person record, and on the surface it 'plays' in a very concrete time and in a very concrete place: it is the self-reflection of an emigrant who, after the war, in 1950, returned to the city in which he grew up and rented the same house and rooms in which he spent his youth. But that is only the outer shell of the diary-like form, that is, what is commonly called “substance”, “content”, “fable”; it is only the outer contour of an isolation that is now brooding inside - and float into memory and reality alike and finally shatter one another in such a way that a - clinically speaking - paranoid disintegration of the thinking, feeling, writing self takes place. The crack into which one can look down goes through many layers of personality; in the end it reaches down to early fate - not only of the individual human being, but of the whole human species, that is, into that psychology or meta-psychology whose laws of experience are frozen in myth.
The book deals, one could say in a very general way, with the 'return of the same', and not only there, at the top and outside, where it reflects the tangible political fate of 1950, indeed a true fateful year; What recurs is the mythically intertwined matrix of onto- and phylogenetic pre-history, which inevitably determines the reaction of what is idealistically called the “free will” of the ego. Since it is about literature, this prehistory is also reflected in literary-historical terms: if one of the carrier layers of the successive form is the Faust myth , the scene plan makes use of the numerous adaptations that this myth has in literary history, in advance of the German, so far has learned. Accordingly, the up-splitting, crumbling I is about mirrored configuration relationship of those who in Goethe , Faust - Mephistopheles is' and provides a weiteresmal the contrast unit of the two-souls-in-a-breast to which you psychologically today could also use the term ' Freudian instances '. Here the first-person protagonist is Michael Adams and his opponent FA Galland, and the contrast extends from the basic characteristic to the aesthetic: if the depressed tone of the heavy soul movement is also linguistically assigned to that, then it moves allegro con brio through the turmoil of the world: he changes his essential colors like the colors of an orchestral instrumentation and hides his devil manner behind the mask of a style that scurries across time, in which baroque opulence and faded phrases flow together. ... "

- Hans Wollschläger : Preliminary remark on a heart plant reading.

As a novelist, Wollschläger formulated the fictitious editor role so convincingly that the "heart plants" were listed in the catalog of the " Austrian National Library " under the name of the novel protagonist "Michael Adams" and the actual novelist was only listed as the "editor".

History of origin

Spiral-bound sample of the "Herzgewächse" for the representatives of the Diogenes Verlag (1978)

The Fall of Adam

At the end of the 1950s, Wollschläger began writing his first novel, which he called The Fall of Adams and which he presented to his mentor Arno Schmidt at the turn of the year 1961/62 . For this version of the novel, which ended in late 1961, Schmidt and Wollschläger searched in vain for a publisher. The Suhrkamp publisher, Siegfried Unseld , contacted by Schmidt informed Wollschläger that he, Martin Walser and Hans Magnus Enzensberger had spent several hours discussing Wollschläger's novel and its possible publication with Uwe Johnson . Although they would be fascinated by his extraordinary linguistic talent and individual great passages, in summary they were against publication, since Wollschläger, as the narrator, does not maintain enough distance from the main character and this has almost terrorist traits, in that too many of her statements are insulting and hurtful.

Wollschläger recorded a section of his novel “The Fall of Adam” on November 5, 1964 for the radio series “Studio for New Literature” of the Hessian Radio . The 34-minute recording, to which Jürgen Manthey gave a brief introduction as the editor responsible for the broadcast, was broadcast on November 28, 1964 under the program title “Waiting for G.”, whereby G was not Samuel Beckett's “ stage non -figure ” Godot , but Michael Adams' Mephisto FA Galland thinks.

In mid-December 1964, Wollschläger read from the finale of the novel at a three-day literary event in Oberursel , which Hans-Jürgen Fröhlich reported on in the newspaper Die Welt .

Heart plants or The Fall of Adam

Bamberg, Jakobsplatz 1, where Hans Wollschläger wrote the 1982 version of his historical avant-garde novel Herzgewächse , set in Bamberg

Following the success of Wollschläger's highly acclaimed and award-winning translation of James Joyce's “ novel of the century” “ Ulysses ”, the editor-in-chief of Diogenes Verlag , Gerd Haffmans , announced in 1976, with Wollschläger's consent, the publication of “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adams” by Diogenes Verlag. In 1978 Haffmans had a spiral-bound reading sample of the "Herzgewächse" made for the publishing house representatives, which contained the first two of the seven-chapter novel. Wollschläger recorded an almost 30-minute passage from this version of the novel on November 17, 1980 for the NDR radio series "Neue Texte", supervised by Gisela Lindemann , in the NDR-Funkhaus Hannover, which was broadcast on November 25, 1980 in the evening.

Nevertheless, the publication of the "Herzgewächse", announced in 1976, was postponed from year to year. Diogenes publisher Daniel Keel justified the delay of several years with the fact that Wollschläger wanted to shorten the novel, which loosely revolved around Nietzsche, and make it a little more realistic. Wollschläger justified the delay with the expense of the revision, which he considered necessary in order to be able to publish the novel after twenty years with a clear conscience in a quality corresponding to his growing demands.

After all, the “First Book” of the “Herzgewächse” was published at the end of 1982 by the newly founded Haffmans Verlag . The “Second Book” announced for 1984, which was to continue and complete the novel, remained unwritten except for the passage published in 1987 under the title “ Enuma elisch… ”, which Wollschläger first read publicly in January 1994 in Vienna.

In autumn 2011, the unfinished “Herzgewächse” version from 1982 appeared in the Wollschläger edition together with “Enuma Elisch”, the only fully formulated passage of the planned “Second Book”, which is printed in the appendix.

reception

According to some critics, the “First Book” of the Herzgewächse was a “literary sensation” when it was published in 1982 and was soon the subject of several Austrian and German diploma theses and dissertations . Other reviewers were “respectful, but somewhat perplexed” about the work. Paul Ingendaay sums up on the occasion of Wollschläger's death: “What was started in it [in Herzgewächse ] could not be redeemed, and beyond the routine bow to the avant-garde intent of this artist and consciousness novel, it can be said that Wollschläger is not a narrator and the novel is clearly not his genre was. "

In a short discussion, Andreas Weigel , author of a two-volume Herzgewächse monograph, summarizes the content and design of Wollschläger's experimental novel as follows:

“The fascinating novel has it all behind the words. Wollschläger shows sentence by sentence how much he has learned from his role models (Adorno, Chandler, Freud, Joyce, Kraus , Mahler , Nietzsche , Poe, Schopenhauer, Schmidt ...). But as a good student he differs from his teachers, whom he emulates without imitating them. This Faustian striving to do it like gods is also a main motif of the Herzgewächse - the consequence is indicated in the secondary title: the fall of hell, the fall of man and the devil's pact are depicted in depth psychology as a split in consciousness and offer the framework to present a scientific theory as a rousing criminal case. As absolute literature, the heart plants consciously talk about themselves with themselves, which means they are also their own secondary literature. In general, Wollschläger's remaining work is primarily a comment on this survival work. "

Hans Wollschläger's magnum opus with its handwritten dedication

The history of the reception of Wollschläger's novel is remarkable for the Herzgewächse interpreter Andreas Weigel in several respects. In his opinion, the most vehement criticism concerned less the written than the unwritten work and it came less through words than through deeds: Many readers who wanted to wait for the "Second Book" of the heart plants to read or discuss would have their heart plants - Copies taken to second-hand bookshops out of disappointment at the lack of continuation. For many, the failure to complete the heart growth led to a lack of interest in Wollschläger's further work. This turning away from large parts of a sworn community of readers is reminiscent of comparable events in Bob Dylan's history, when he was not even ignored by his regular audience for almost a decade because of his turn to religious sectarianism.

“The long-stoked expectation that the 'Second Book' of the heart plants will keep what the 'First' promises has been disappointed. As a half-finished work on Faust , the heart plants will not be taken for full by the history of literature. The lack of a degree has devalued much of the praise Wollschläger received for the 'First Book' into advance praise, "concludes Andreas Weigel with regard to his own two-volume Herzgewächse monograph and regrets that" Wollschläger of all things has the 'Herzgewächse', which established and would have secured his literary reputation as a novelist, left unfinished in order to dedicate himself instead to the edition of the works of Karl May and Friedrich Rückert. "

A copy of the full version of his novel, written in 1961 and recommended for publication by Arno Schmidt to several German publishers in the 1960s , is in Wollschläger's archive, which in 2011 was transferred to Wollschläger's request according to the Bamberg State Library , which is why in addition to the 2011 in In the context of the Wallstein Verlag - work edition, the newly set “Herzgewächse” edition, the “complete edition” of “The Fall of Adams” in the version from 1961 is possible, which according to reports is intended to conclude Wollschläger’s writings in individual editions .

The Wollschläger confidante Gabriele Gordon summarized the difference between “The Fall of Adam” (1961) and “Herzgewächse” (1982) as follows: “The first publication of the› Herzgewächse ‹from 1982 was based on a version that was no longer based on the original version The other manuscript, which was completely revised in 1981/82, has little to do with the old one, because the Mahler occupation at that time was overlaid by the May occupation, which only became more intensive after 1962 when the psychoanalysis knowledge was incorporated into the revision and the Galland figure, at that time created as a portrait of the Karl May Verlag publisher Roland Schmid, became timeless and the leitmotiv heart-plant poem lost some of its meaning. The published text (along with the revision ›Enuma Elisch‹) has to be regarded as a new work that has remained a fragment and the complete existing work from 1961 as an independent preliminary stage ”.

Wollschlägers himself left no doubt that the "heart plants" are his life's work: "This is my focus, these heart plants, and everything around them is marginal."

literature

Primary literature

Text output

  • “Heart plants or The Fall of Adam. Fragmentary biography in accidental waste sheets ”. Spiral-bound reading sample for the "Diogenes" publishing house representatives (1978) - The 169-page typescript comprises the first 270 pages of the printed version of the Herzgewächse published in 1982 .
  • We in effigy. Pre-printed from "Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam". In: Inkwell. No. 2. Zurich: Diogenes 1981 (= detebe 22002). Pp. 209-226.
  • “Heart plants or The Fall of Adam. Fragmentary Biography in Accidental Waste Sheets ” , First Book (1982); ISBN 978-3-251-00006-7
  • "Enuma elish" . Pre-print from the previously unpublished second volume of the “Herzgewächse”. In: Der Rabe number 500, pp. 134-139 (1987).
  • “Heart plants or The Fall of Adam. Fragmentary biography in accidental waste sheets ” . Writings in separate editions. Edited by Monika Wollschläger; Göttingen 2011; ISBN 978-3-8353-0958-6

Sound carrier

  • Hans Wollschläger reads "Wir in effigie" from heart plants . Recording of a reading at the University of Freiburg. Introduction by Uwe Pörksen . Staufen im Breisgau. Aurophon 1984.

Radio readings

  • Hans Wollschläger reads “Waiting for G” from “The Fall of Adam”. Hessian radio . II. Program. "Studio for New Literature". November 28, 1964. 22 minutes.
  • Hans Wollschläger reads “Wir in effigie” from “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam”. NDR . "New texts". November 25, 1980. 28 minutes.
  • Hans Wollschläger reads “Contritio et poenitentia” from “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam”. NDR. "Read authors: Hans Wollschläger". April 12, 1983. 68 minutes.

Secondary literature

Books

  • Andreas Weigel: "jerks against the current of the lines". Reading notes on Hans Wollschläger's "Heart plants or The Fall of Adam" . 2 volumes. Frankfurt / M. 1992 ISBN 3-924147-11-6 and Wiesenbach 1994 ISBN 3-924147-18-3 .
  • Rudi Schweikert (Ed.): Hans Wollschläger . Eggingen 1995 ISBN 3-86142-060-0 .

College work

  • Werner Gotzmann: Hans Wollschläger. Storytelling between essay writing and translation. Berlin 1984 (Master's thesis).
  • Andrea Scholz: "Absurd enough - the similarity". On Karl May's literary work in Hans Wollschläger's novel "Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam". Karlsruhe 1986 (Master's thesis).
  • Gerhard Kaucic: Grammatotechne as grammatology of the "heart plants" or of the incommunicability. Salzburg 1986 (dissertation).
  • Andreas Weigel: "jerks against the current of the lines". Reading notes (I) on Hans Wollschläger's “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam. First book". Vienna 1988 (Master's thesis).
  • Andreas Weigel: "If it can be read, without a memory of the present - I have never read for such a long time from such shortened lines: hours from seconds." Reading notes (II) on Hans Wollschlaeger's "Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam." First book. “ Vienna 1990 (dissertation).
  • Bernhard Bittl: Literary representation of psychological processes in Hans Wollschläger's "Herzgewächse or the Fall of Adam. First book. “ Munich 1998 (housework).

Book contributions

  • Maria Eger: Hans Wollschläger. In: Critical Lexicon of Contemporary Literature . Munich: edition text + kritik 2009. pp. 2–10.
  • Volker Hage: On German literature 1982. In: Volker Hage: German literature 1982. A review of the year. Edited by Volker Hage in collaboration with Adolf Fink. Reclam, Stuttgart 1983, pp. 7-27. P. 9 ff. (= Universal Library; Volume 7915).
  • Martin Huber: Polyphony of writing. On the function of the music in Hans Wollschläger's 'Herzgewächse or the Fall of Adam'. In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society Volume 39, 1995, pp. 371–387.
  • Stefan Iglhaut: Hans Wollschläger. In: Moser, Dietz-Rüdiger (Hrsg.): New handbook of contemporary German literature since 1945. Founded by Hermann Kunisch , continued by Herbert Wiesner and Sybille Cramer, re-edited by Dietz Rüdiger Moser with the help of Petra Ernst, Thomas Kraft and Heidi Zimmer . dtv, Munich 1993 (= dtv; Volume 3296). Pp. 1168-1171.
  • Thomas Körber: Nietzsche's eternal return with Hans Wollschläger. In: Thomas Körber: Nietzsche after 1945. On the work and biography of Friedrich Nietzsche in German-language post-war literature . Würzburg 2006, pp. 138-145 ISBN 3-8260-3220-9 .
  • Josef Quack: Contemporary literature, Alexandrian. In: Quack: The Questionable Identification. Studies on literature . Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 1991, pp. 155–172.
  • Kurt Rothmann: Hans Wollschläger. In: Kurt Rothmann: German-speaking writers since 1945 in individual representations . Reclam, Stuttgart 1985. pp. 394-398.

Bargfeld messenger

  • Andreas Weigel: Lost his pupil. Hans Wollschläger's investigations into Arno Schmidt's wordless rejection. On the correspondence between Alice Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger (January 1975 - July 1983). In: » Bargfelder Bote «, Lfg. 401–403, August 2016. pp. 3–35.
  • Changing turns. Arno Schmidt's Goethe Prize speech in Hans Wollschläger's correspondence with Alice Schmidt. In: »Bargfelder Bote«, volume 400, May 2016. pp. 32–35. ISBN 978-3-921402-50-4 .

Reviews

  • Udo Benzenhöfer : “Heart plants or The Fall of Adam”. Comments on a novel by Hans Wollschläger. In: Ärzteblatt Baden-Württemberg . 10. Stuttgart 1990. pp. 650-654.
  • Jörg Drews: Temptation and fall from hell of St. Michael. Published after 20 years: Hans Wollschläger's “Herzgewächse”. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , 18./19. December 1982.
  • Ludwig Harig : imagery of difficult years. Box fullness. Hans Wollschläger's "Herzgewächse" - also a novel from the restoration period of the fifties. In: The time. No. 13. 13. – 25. March 1983 (literature p. 5).
  • Peter K .: Work In Progress: Aesthetics Against Death. Hans Wollschläger's »Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam, first book«. In: Umbruch 5/1984. Pp. 20-23.
  • Ernst Nef: In search of the original thing. Hans Wollschläger's novel "Herzgewächse". In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 22, 1983.
  • Helmut Schmiedt: fights, games, lawsuits, sounds. Instead of no review: Hans Wollschläger's novel “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam, first book”. In: Die Horen No. 28 (1983). Issue 2. pp. 183-186.
  • Thomas Schreiber: Soiree. New books - new texts. “No more tangible spot of life, only the printed” (HG 167). Review of Hans Wollschläger: Herzgewächse. Südwestfunk II. December 18, 1982.
  • Walter Schübler : Wollschläger for readers. About Andreas Weigel's groundbreaking and spell-breaking work on the "heart plants". In: present . Edited by Stefanie Holzer and Walter Klier . No. 25 April / May / June 1995. ISBN 3-216-30139-7 .
  • Albert von Schirnding: Higher Indian game. Hans Wollschläger's »Herzgewächse«. In: Mercury . German magazine for European thinking. Issue 6 September 1983. pp. 701-705.
  • Andreas Weigel: Give and read! Hans Wollschläger: "Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam" and "Reunion with Dr. F. Reading recently. ”In:“ Falter ”. No 51-52 / 1997. P. 98.
  • Elsbeth Wolffheim: "A bit of time: a section". In: Frankfurter Hefte 2/1984. Pp. 76-77.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “ … making his reporterage on The Adam Case for the Frankofurto Siding, a Fastland payrodicule… ” James Joyce . Finnegans Wake .
  2. ↑ Printed in: Andreas Weigel: "ruckworts against the stream of lines". Reading notes (I) on Hans Wollschläger's “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam. First book ” . Frankfurt a. Main 1992, p. 3 ff.
  3. ↑ Scan of the catalog card of the "Austrian National Library" ( memento of the original from January 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / members.aon.at
  4. ↑ a b Andreas Weigel: "jerks against the stream of lines". Reading notes (I) on Hans Wollschläger's “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam. First book". Frankfurt a. Main 1992, pp. 6-23.
  5. ^ Siegfried Unseld: Letter / proofreading report from December 5, 1963 to Hans Wollschläger. Suhrkamp Verlag.
  6. ↑ a b Andreas Weigel: Hans Wollschläger's radio reading from “The Fall of Adam” (1964) ( Memento from January 14, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ).
  7. ↑ Literature and your own existence. A survey
  8. ↑ A copy of this radio broadcast made especially for Arno Schmidt's widow Alice is in the archive of the Arno Schmidt Foundation , Bargfeld.
  9. ↑ Hans Wollschläger: Enuma elisch… In: Gerd Haffmans (Ed.): Der Rabe , No. 500, pp. 134-139, Haffmans, Zurich 1987.
  10. ^ Wallstein-Verlag: Hans Wollschläger. Heart plants or The Fall of Adam. Fragmentary biography in accidental waste sheets.
  11. ↑ a b Andreas Weigel: Hans Wollschläger's heart plants ( memento from November 6, 2005 in the Internet Archive ). In: Falter. Stadtzeitung Wien , No. 51/52, 1997, Kultur, p. 98.
  12. ↑ Werner Gotzmann: Hans WollschlägerTelling between essay writing and translation. Berlin 1984 (Master's thesis)
  13. ↑ Andrea Scholz: "Absurd enough - the similarity-". On Karl May's literary work in Hans Wollschläger's novel "Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam". Karlsruhe 1986 (Master's thesis).
  14. ↑ a b Andreas Weigel: "jerks against the stream of lines". Reading notes (I) on Hans Wollschläger's “Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam. First book ” . Vienna 1988 (Master's thesis).
  15. ↑ Bernhard Bittl: Literary representation of psychological processes in Hans Wollschläger's Herzgewächse or the Fall of Adam. First book . Munich 1998 (housework).
  16. ↑ Gerhard Kaucic: Grammatotechne as Grammatology the 'Herzgewächse' or the incommunicability . Salzburg 1986 (dissertation).
  17. ↑ a b Andreas Weigel: as long as it can be read, without a memory of the present - I have never read from such shortened lines for so long: hours from seconds . Reading notes (II) on Hans Wollschlaeger's Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam. First book. Vienna 1990 ( dissertation ).
  18. ^ A b Paul Ingendaay: On the death of Hans Wollschläger - the greatest of all servants. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. dated May 20, 2007.
  19. ^ A b Andreas Weigel: Notes on the unpublished correspondence between Arno Schmidt, Alice Schmidt and Hans Wollschläger. 1998.
  20. ↑ Andreas Weigel: "jerks against the stream of lines". Reading notes on Hans Wollschlägers' Herzgewächse or The Fall of Adam. 2 volumes. Frankfurt 1992 and 1994.
  21. ↑ Gabriele Wolff: Hans Wollschläger: Sudelbücher I - III. March 17, 2012.
  22. ↑ Gabriele Gordon: E-Mail of September 13, 2009 to Andreas Weigel.
  23. ↑ Hans Wollschläger: I make music with letters. Conversation with Monika Buschey (2003). In: How to become what you are. Hans Wollschläger writings in individual editions. Wallstein Verlag 2009. pp. 305-316. P. 312.