Horn's end

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Horns Ende is a novel by Christoph Hein from 1985.

In the early 1980s, five very different storytellers remember an event that was a quarter of a century ago. On September 1, 1957, the Leipzig historian Dr. Horn in the forest near the small town of Guldenberg in the Wildenberg district.

The narrators

Over eight chapters, residents of Guldenberg have their say in 39 articles. These requests to speak are actually less about the title topic of Horn's End , but more about the worries, needs, sensitivities and fates of the respective narrator himself. The narrators are

  • Dr. Spodeck, attending general practitioner Horns,
  • Thomas, 12-year-old son of the pharmacist Puls, Paul Fischlinger's friend,
  • Gertrude Fischlinger, Paul's mother, Horn's room landlady,
  • Kruschkatz, mayor, former historian in his hometown of Leipzig and
  • Marlene Gohl, mentally confused daughter of the painter Gohl.

content

When Ms. Fischlinger had her first word, she told us about Horn's arrival in Guldenberg. That was years ago. The city of Guldenberg had promised Mr. Horn, the new director of the museum on the Guldenburg, an apartment. When the museum director arrives, the city sends him to Ms. Gertrude Fischlinger. The woman who runs a small general store - all on her own - is amazed. Nevertheless, she gives her living room. Frau Fischlinger's husband, a crook, ran away never to be seen again soon after the wedding. Since then, the woman has lived alone with her son Paul - a 10-year-old boy who is difficult to raise. The later adolescent beats the mother. Horn lived with Mrs. Fischlinger until his death. In retrospect, the landlady does not hide her disappointment with Mr. Horn's complete lack of warmth.

Mayor Kruschkatz reports that Horn's body was found on September 1st - a Sunday - by schoolchildren in the forest, and in this context it reflects a strange encounter. About a year after Horn arrived, they meet by chance in town. You address yourself as “comrade”. At that time, Kruschkatz sat in the "commission" in Leipzig and explained the "decision of the party leadership" to Horn. After the Leipzig "trial", the two historians had parted ways. Kruschkatz knows it was wrong - Horn's career as a scientist was over. He, Kruschkatz himself, had had his part in it. Horn had been expelled from the party. Kruschkatz had applied for exclusion. Horn's mistake had been his "cowardly concessions to bourgeois ideology".

Kruschkatz was mayor of Guldenberg for nineteen years; so remained in office despite the gruesome find in the forest. With all of this, Kruschkatz looks back, the dead horn cost him his wife. Like many relevant facts in the novel, the breakup of this marriage is only hinted at and successively insufficiently illuminated by remarks in the margin. Irene Kruschkatz is one of those in Guldenberg who blame the mayor for Horn's death. After Horn's death, her husband's desire in bed triggers coldness, indifference and disgust in Irene.

The second investigation against Horn was initiated in Guldenberg shortly before his death on charges of revisionism . Horn's sister Marianne Brockmeier lives in West Germany. He is asked about contacts with the West. The narrator Kruschkatz is also summoned when the “representative of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie is exposed”.

Quote

  • "If you forget me, only then will I really die."

shape

See also chapter "Narrator" above.

The form of the novel is concrete and vague at the same time. It is told pretty precisely, but the reader is in the dark. Understanding the text is made difficult by the presence of the five narrators. The reader is constantly puzzling: At what time interval does the respective spokesman tell the story in the currently available 39 articles? In the case of Mayor Kruschkatz, however, a rough calculation is possible. Kruschkatz and Horn meet in Guldenberg around 1952. Kruschkatz was mayor for nineteen years and then lived in a Leipzig old people's home for about eight years. So in the eighth chapter he tells about the year 1980.

The dominant background theme of the novel is denunciation. Not only Horn was chased away by his own comrades in 1952 and denounced in 1957, but in 1943 the Gohl family was reported by an unknown Guldenberger for allegedly hiding “ unworthy life ”. Gertrude Fischlinger tells the harrowing story of Mrs. Gohl. The mother succeeds in deceiving the Nazis - impersonating Marlene. Frau Gohl sacrifices herself; goes to death for the sick daughter. Guldenberg and the surrounding area is represented as the swamp. In it, Marlene is raped - again by a stranger. That is not enough. Kruschkatz talks about his predecessor in office, Franz Schneeberger. The veteran is detained for a few days on nonsensical charges and breaks apart.

Despite all the hesitant narrative technique, the novel captivates with extremely haunting images of life. Meant are Dr. Spodeck's admission of his wretched life, the insight into the fantasy world of a child - here that of the pharmacist's son Thomas, the terrible screams of the tortured soul of Marlene Gohl and the revelation of Gertrude Fischlinger regarding her relationship with Horn.

interpretation

Meaning

The reader has to laboriously figure out the motives for Horn's act. In this context, Barner quotes from the novel: "Who do you work for, Horn?" The 12-year-old narrator Thomas had overheard a question from a strange man, put to Horn behind the door. The editor in Barner's literary history concludes from the keyhole scene that Horn had put his hand to himself because he was "persecuted by party dogmaticians and the state security service" and no longer knew what to do.

National Socialism

In the book, the role of the gypsies is largely obscure. Every year they camp for months on a Guldenberg meadow and turn the majority of the residents against themselves with their presence alone. Although the gypsies do not speak German, they are the only inhabitants to visit the painter Gohl. In the year when Gohl began to work at the Guldenburg, the gypsies reappeared in town for the first time after the war and then stayed away forever after Horn's year of death. Mr. Gohl cannot forgive the unknown Guldenberg resident for the written denunciation of his daughter in 1943. He only gets along with people who are also among the victims of the Third Reich .

Talks with the dead

Each of the eight chapters of the novel has a prologue ; more precisely, a dialogue in which the dead man - that is, Horn - appeals to the Guldenbergers to remember the year 1957. That was long ago. The answers are accordingly adversarial.

In this context, Kiewitz also reads the text as something like a history of salvation . Accordingly, Horn - a victim anyway - also appears as a savior from the hereafter. This explains the statements made by the Guldenberger respondents. All five talk about themselves without exception. A suicide is not redeemed after Kiewitz. The Guldenbergers should - in response to Horn's call from the realm of the dead - try to redeem him by remembering.

reception

  • Hein made the case of the historian Horn completely up, although a philosopher named Horn really committed suicide in Leipzig. By contrast, the gypsy camp in the small town was not invented.
  • Narrative intent is the desire for change.
  • Hein told the story according to the motto "keep for all time".

literature

First edition

  • Christoph Hein: Horn's end. Novel . 320 pages. Construction Verlag, Berlin 1985

Used edition

  • Christoph Hein: Horn's end. Novel. With an afterword by Christel Berger . 298 pages. Faber & Faber, Leipzig 1996. ISBN 3-928660-58-6

expenditure

  • Christoph Hein: Horn's end . 245 pages. Luchterhand, Darmstadt / Neuwied 1985 (1st edition, 8th edition 1992)
  • Christoph Hein: Horn's end. Novel . 262 pages. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004

Secondary literature

  • Heinz-Peter Preußer: “Criticism of civilization and the literary public. Structural and theoretical analysis of narrated texts by Christoph Heins. ”148 pages (Bochumer Schriften zur deutschen Literatur; vol. 26). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-631-44084-7 (pp. 45–76)
  • Klaus Hammer (Ed.): “Chronicler without a message. Christoph Hein. A work book. Materials, information, bibliography. ”315 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-351-02152-6 (pp. 113–146)
  • Wilfried Barner (ed.): History of German literature. Volume 12: History of German Literature from 1945 to the Present . 1116 pages. Beck , Munich 1994. ISBN 3-406-38660-1
  • Christl Kiewitz: “The silent scream. Crisis and criticism of the socialist intelligentsia in the work of Christoph Hein. ”308 pages. Stauffenburg Verlag, Tübingen 1995 (Diss. University of Augsburg 1994), ISBN 3-86057-137-0 (pp. 196-234)
  • Bärbel Lücke: “Christoph Hein. Horn's end. Interpretation. ”151 pages. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1994 (1st edition), ISBN 3-486-88671-1
  • Terrance Albrecht: “Reception and temporality of the work of Christoph Heins.” 191 pages. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-35837-7

Web links

  • Věra Černá: (PDF; 279 kB) Christoph Hein: Literature and Morals. The analysis of "Horns Ende" and " The Tango Player ". Diploma thesis on obtaining a bachelor's degree at the Philosophical Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno , pp. 8–32. Winter semester 2005. 49 pages

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guldenberg is a fictional health resort in the former district of Leipzig . Hein grew up in Bad Düben as the son of a pastor. Wildenberg district: Bad Düben was in the Eilenburg district during the GDR era .
  2. ↑ 1957 September 1st fell on a Sunday ( calendar ).
  3. ↑ Frau Fischlinger's son Paul discovers the dead. Horn had gone into the forest with a stool from his museum and hanged himself from a beech branch.
  4. ↑ At the end of the novel, the attentive reader does not know what kind of triangular relationship Horn - Irene Kruschkatz - Mayor Kruschkatz had been. Was it even one?
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 106, 11. Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 61, 7th Zvu
  7. ^ Preusser, p. 67, 6. Zvo
  8. ↑ Hammer, p. 129, 16. Zvo and p. 130, 16. Zvo
  9. ↑ used edition S. 31 12 ACR and S. 205 and S. 16. ZVO 74 14 ACR
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 54, 14th Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 260, 16. Zvo
  12. ↑ See also the estimate in Lücke, p. 17 below.
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 184, 13. Zvo
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 226, 12. Zvo
  15. ↑ In Barner et al. (Pp. X to p. XI) the novel is classified in the GDR literature of the seventies, which deals with Stalinism .
  16. ↑ Barner, p. 721, 16. Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 185, 13. Zvu
  18. ↑ Albrecht, p. 121, 10th Zvu
  19. ↑ Kiewitz, p. 196, 9. Zvo
  20. ↑ Thomas Neumann in Hammer, p. 116, 21st Zvu
  21. ↑ Lücke, p. 65, 5th Zvu
  22. ^ According to Kiewitz and Lücke, Thomas Puls is already around 40 years old at the time of the roll call (Kiewitz, p. 228, 5th Zvo and Lücke, p. 14, 3rd Zvu).
  23. ↑ Kiewitz, p. 201, 8. Zvo
  24. ↑ Hammer, p. 124, 2. Zvo
  25. ↑ "Remember!"
  26. ↑ Kiewitz, p. 221, 12th Zvu
  27. ↑ Berger in the afterword of the edition used, p. 274, 5th Zvu
  28. ↑ Barner, p. 721, 12. Zvu
  29. ↑ Kopelew , quoted in Barner, p. 721, 11. Zvu
  30. ↑ Printing errors have crept into the edition used; see for example p. 90, 8. Zvo; P. 137, 2. Zvo; P. 174, 6. Zvo; P. 200, 4th Zvu and p. 238, 3rd Zvu