Hooray we're still alive (novel)
Hurray, we're still alive is a bestseller by the Austrian author Johannes Mario Simmel from 1978 .
content
The saga takes place between 1946 and 1976 and tells both cheerful and serious events from the life of Jakob Formann. Formann came from a poor background, survived the Second World War on the Eastern Front and returned to Austria from captivity . In the turbulent post-war period he achieved rapid social advancement and became one of the most successful, best-known and wealthiest men of the 1950s. He owns several companies that operate around the world. The self-made millionaire is a womanizer who has many friends and enemies. As a result of the oil crisis and a plot directed against him, Formann loses all of his fortune and is just as poor at the end of the book as at the beginning. In the end he returns to the woman he left in 1946 and lives a simple life with her in a “little house in green”.
action
The action begins with a car accident at the Mangfall Bridge , in which Formann's Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow goes up in flames. At this life-threatening moment, he remembers his experiences on the Eastern Front when he was used in an alarm company to fight tanks. At that time he had been sentenced to this ascension mission because he was having an affair with the fiancée of a person who wore a knight's cross . As his car crashes down the ravine and goes up in flames, Formann thinks of intercourse . While he himself hangs helplessly in a tree and is close to death, his life passes him by in retrospect.
Shortly before the accident, Formann was awarded the Great Silver Decoration of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria on his birthday, February 26, 1965, at the Vienna Opera Ball , which was also attended by Chancellor Josef Klaus and Adolf Schärf . He was completely drunk and fell into the cream cake. Formann has built up a corporate empire that ranges from plastic production to prefabricated house production, its own ocean-going fleet, a clinic to a magazine publisher. Formann is also involved in a number of companies, including the world's largest brewery, through a nesting system.
In 1946 Formann was on guard duty at Hörsching Air Base near the city of Linz and worked as an interpreter for the Allies. He lives in a world of smugglers, crooks, displaced persons, refugees and whores, in which everyone is struggling to survive. This gave him the unique opportunity to acquire hatched eggs from Westmoreland chickens from the USA, which were earmarked for the rebuilding of Austrian agriculture. With this crook, Formann laid the foundation for his later fortune. He is helped by a professor who was involved in the breeding of Heinrich Himmler's "master breed" chickens during the Third Reich . To increase the laying performance of the hens, the animals are played with light entertainment music, v. a. Frank Sinatra , sprinkled.
The young Viennese Hilde Korn, who was suspected of being a member of the werewolf , arrested and released a short time later, meets Formann under a different identity in the sleeping car compartment of the Orient Express from Vienna to Munich and offers him a job in her new organization, the deals with illegal foreign exchange transactions . This gang of impostors includes the drive-controlled Argentine commercial attaché Amadeo Juárez and the Belgian foreign exchange dealer Robert Rouvier, who accompany Formann on his mission in Paris and Antwerp. Robert Mader, who served in the German Abwehr under Wilhelm Canaris , got him forged papers and visas for France and Belgium. Formann adopts the identities of the Argentine diplomat Miguel Santiago Cortez and that of Mr. Fletcher. Together with Laureen Fletcher, alias Hilde Korn, they play passionate lovers.
Back at the chicken farm at home, Formann's new foreman, Ignaz Hölzlwimmer, a former shop steward of the German Labor Front , developed a type of battery that enables 50% of the eggs to be embezzled and sold on the black market. The wholesale of chicken eggs leads Formann, among other things, to the Soviet occupation zone , where he is suspected of economic sabotage. The authorities also consider him a western spy. On his business trips, he met his former trainer, NCO a. D. Adolf Bohrer, who recognizes him and is dangerous to him. At the last second, Formann succeeds in diverting suspicion from himself by having Bohrer declare him crazy. On other occasions, Formann is recognized by former war comrades. However, he manages to maintain his camouflage.
Formann enjoys the elegant life and women. He has one of his numerous affairs with Dr. Ingeborg Malthus, an editor of the "Berliner Illustrierte" . Together with the alcoholic but particularly talented author and journalist Klaus Mario Schreiber, he founded the first German post-war illustrated publication "Okay". a. the novel Little Man - What Now? by Hans Fallada . The ongoing Marshall Plan and a sensationally designed crime report entitled “The Devilish Nuns”, which reports on the mysterious murder of children in a monastery in Athens , also made headlines . The first edition of "Okay" was sold out within a very short time. In June 1948, the magazine had a circulation of 0.5 million copies.
In 1948 Formann owned a group of companies that consisted of its prefabricated house factory near Murnau , three chicken egg farms near Waldtrudering and the magazine “Okay”. The eggs are delivered to the American occupation forces and to the food authorities with a certain quota. Formann delivers eggs to retirement homes, kindergartens and hospitals in a media-effective manner. He has himself photographed for his own magazine "Okay" and processes this as a charitable campaign. The other half of the eggs produced end up on the black market.
The last city that has not yet been supplied with Formann's eggs is Nuremberg. A Prussian civil servant with a high attitude towards service proves to be incorruptible. So Formann personally travels to Nuremberg in order to develop this sales channel as well. He was arrested during a raid on the black market, but released a short time later as a US government secret holder and VIP person with almost diplomatic immunity . Formann flies to the United States and meets with Senator Connelly. He finds out that Connelly's son is the lieutenant who had the encounter with the "werewolf" Hilde Korn in Vienna, with whom Formann was also present. The Austrian begins an affair with Jill, the senator's secretary, and learns from her about the senator's sexual BDSM preferences. A spicy secret that he used against the US politician.
Over the decades, Jakob Formann's turbulent life has taken him to the most varied of scenes in world history. For example, in 1963 he experienced the race riots in Alabama or in Central Africa a dictator who was reminiscent of Idi Amin . Other episodes of his life take place in Washington , Saigon , Rostov-on-Don , Bucharest , Paris , Los Angeles and Bonn. The protagonist experiences the climax of his career at the moment when he can acquire Neuschwanstein Castle and push the purchase contract for the million dollar property of his lover into the cleavage. In the end, Formann returns to his childhood sweetheart Julia Martens, whom he affectionately calls the “rabbit”, to “petty bourgeois cosiness”.
people
Simmel uses a number of real people in his story and mixes their fates with the fictional characters. One person who appears in the book is Simmel's alter ego Klaus Mario Schreiber. Schreiber is a man with speech defects , acne and also a chronic alcoholic , who ran a café in Munich in 1947 and writes stories, including for the fictional magazine "Okay". Schreiber's life describes the encrypted biography of Simmel.
main character
The central figure of the novel is the figure of Jakob Formann, who experienced a meteoric rise and then the deep fall of a failed entrepreneur. Formann's cosmopolitan career is symbolized like in a kind of fable “from egg thief to multimillionaire”. In a night-and-fog operation, the war returnees Formann stole the hens from the US occupiers and earned his first million. Through his good contacts, the protagonist opens the doors to the highest politicians. Formann achieved everything he always dreamed of: money, power and supreme influence. High society remains a stranger to him and as a simple person he feels most comfortable in his old pub, where he eats brown bread with lard .
His career shows a steep upward trend: In 1946 Formann is still an unemployed have-nothing, in 1956 already an aspiring multimillionaire , in 1965 a powerful, internationally active business tycoon , then his career ends and in 1975 he becomes an "early retiree with sun in his heart".
“ The great times, the heroic times need great, heroic people. The teacher told us that at school, and I keep thinking: what nonsense. If heroes are necessary at all, then please for small, bad, difficult times! The last thirty years, for example, have not been a pokemon for any of us - have they? Let's just think of the beginning. And today. Now there is a man whose name is of course not Jakob Formann, as he is called in this book, but quite different - and that is someone I have always wanted: a hero for bad weather! "
The first sentence is an almost verbatim quote:
“ Great times require great people. "
worldview
The worldview of “ Hurray, we're still alive! “Is shaped by the irrepressible lust for life of the post-war generation, who now live out everything that was previously denied them due to war and deprivation. It's mainly about culinary delights and sex . In the novel, for example, pages 157–159 mention the sexual practice of the Chinese sleigh ride, which Formann learned from a prostitute named Yün-Sin in a brothel in Antwerp . The author Simmel mentions this love technique, which leads those involved to previously unimagined “ peaks of ecstasy ”, several times, but only in the approach “ Left hand on left knee and smiling elbow between flowers ”, so leaves the reader with a few hints about the functionality in the dark.
“ While Konsalik's stories were always saturated with hatred of the new times, the Simmels lived from rapid praise for them. Simmel's heroes had something James Bond-like, they were sensual dramas about love, sex, envy, about eating and fucking, about restlessness and betrayal, about political corruption, about the cynicism of those in power . "
shape
The fast-paced book, conceived as a kind of European picaresque novel , is assigned to trivial literature . As a first-person narrator, Simmel describes an adventurous post-war career with wit and irony. In his authorial narrative style , Simmel often digresses from the plot through comments and reflections. The 640-page work is structured chronologically in time leaps, starting with the prologue , which is divided into six brief chapters, followed by 101 chapters in 1946, in 50 chapters in 1956 and in 66 chapters in 1966. The epilogue is divided into five chapters. The narrative thread is characterized by numerous scene changes, each chapter ends after a few sentences. Many sentences are confirmed with exclamation marks .
style
“ And forward with the ferocity of a bull. And back with all the lust of this earth. Forward. Back. Oh, what bliss, oh, what happiness. Stupid advertising slogan: »Only flying is better«. The most beautiful thing in the world was and is and will always be: that there! And before. And back. Of course there are many of us who sweat profusely at the same time, he thought. Drip properly. In the face of the cuties. Between the breasts. On the belly. Women told me. "
In addition to the actual narrative, contemporary developments of the respective year are displayed in chronological order as time tables, which have the function of outlining the zeitgeist of the epoch.
“ The year 1965 begins ... The new year is greeted in the Federal Republic of Germany with fireworks of 50 million marks. The Frankfurt Zoo Director Dr. Bernhard Grzimek fights bitterly against leopard fur. "
Research errors and inaccuracies
Simmel has generally researched his novel carefully, and yet he made some mistakes. Historical inaccuracies include, for example, write-offs and tax evasion , which began in 1961.
Economic success
The novel reached a readership of three million.
Reception and criticism
The time sees in “Hurray, we are still alive!” A “mixture of self-irony and voluptuous masochism, optimistic prankster and New German shit”. "Hurray, we're still alive!" Is "a program, a signal, whose recipients, pursued by fears of recession and terrorism, are receptive to any good news."
According to the taz , in contrast to Heinz G. Konsalik , Simmel designed a “choreography of freedom” and a “panopticon of sensual pleasure”. In the “basic feeling of the 50s” the “restabilization of old class and distinction relationships” arises. Jakob Formann's defiant will to survive, his strong ambition and will to rise to wealth and prosperity are driven by the backlog of the "seven years stolen" by National Socialism and World War II . Instead of champagne, he chooses beer. At the end of the story, Formann realized that he "now only wants to dedicate the strength that he has used for social self-assertion to love."
filming
The novel "Hurray, we are still alive" formed the film template for the satirical feature film The Wild Fifties from 1983. The literary template was already seen in advance as an ambitious and extremely lucrative project. Simmel later protested against Peter Zadek's implementation of the film and obtained an injunction.
expenditure
- Johannes Mario Simmel: Hurray, we're still alive , 640 pages, Droemer Knaur, Munich 1978, ISBN 978-3-426-00728-0
- Johannes Mario Simmel: Hurray, we're still alive , Knaur eBook, ISBN 978-3-426-40406-5
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Simmel: Sleigh ride into the grave, DER SPIEGEL 28/1983, July 11, 1983
- ↑ Droemer Knaur: Johannes Mario Simmel: "Hurray, we're still alive"
- ↑ Probation or punishment company
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Zeit Online Kultur, Who is Klaus Mario Schreiber? The world in ruins: daydreams and catastrophe fantasies of the citizen Simmel, by Hans C. Blumenberg, May 5, 1978
- ↑ the figure Jakob Formann is 45 years old at the time
- ↑ fictional chicken breed
- ↑ another fictional chicken breed
- ↑ today Trudering-Riem, districts of Munich
- ↑ TAZ, It almost always had to be caviar, obituary for the late Johannes Mario Simmel, by Jan Feddersen, from January 5, 2009
- ^ Writer Simmel is dead, With caviar and cigars against Nazis, TAZ, January 2, 2009