I often think of Piroschka

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I often think of Piroschka is a novel by Hugo Hartung from 1954, which has a charming Hungarian summer love as its content. As early as 1951, Hartung had dealt with the topic for a 30-minute radio play on Bavarian Radio .

action

Andreas, an aging writer, remembers his childhood sweetheart in Hungary while taking a train ride:

As a young man, in 1923 he went to Budapest as an exchange student with fellow students (“I hated this word that was so bad”) on the Danube . On the ship he falls in love with a pretty German woman named Greta, the “raisin girl” (that's the title of the chapter). He spends the night in Budapest with her and a violinist gypsy who follows the couple fiddly. But he needs the next day to his "vacation family" in a remote place in the Puszta called " Hódmezővásárhelykutasipuszta " ( "Bibersfeld Marktplatzbrunnen Heide") continue (his seatmate on the train there referred already Hódmezővásárhely as "dog miserable Saudorf"), and Greta has to Balaton , where she is expecting her Greek fiancé ("He has a raisin wholesaler in Athens" and is her father's business friend).

Andreas meets Piroschka, the 17-year-old daughter of the station master István Rácz, in the Puszta. They spend romantic days ("Kérem, Andi! Make a signal!") Until a card from Greta arrives. Then he decides to go to Greta at Lake Balaton. Piroschka, who knows the contents of the card through her mother, decides to follow Andreas and puts him in a precarious position in Siófok when she meets him and Greta. When Andreas finally realizes who his heart actually beats for, it is almost too late. ("But I took her hand, held it in mine for a long time and looked her in the eye.") But there is no happy ending , as is usual in comedies, for the two of them, although they meet each other tenderly at night on the embankment, after Piroschka stopped the train on which Andreas was leaving, contrary to the schedule. Andreas still has to go home.

“I promised to see you again,” Andreas recalls thirty years later. But when he wanted to visit Piroschka two years after they met on the way back from a summer stay in Transylvania , he fell ill in Kronstadt : “Scarlet fever, and my father picked me up afterwards. We drove a different route ... ”So for him Piroschka remains“ always young and sweet, seventeen years old, with the perky six-curl on his forehead. ”What did he experience then? “Sometimes I think it was nothing - that with Piroschka. But it must have been everything. Everything."

Adaptations

In 1955, Hartung's novel was dedicated to “Austrian mother and the Hungarian friends from those days”, also under the title I often think of Piroschka , with Liselotte Pulver (Piroschka), Gustav Knuth (István Rácz) and Gunnar Möller (Andreas) under the direction filmed by Kurt Hoffmann . The film, which Hugo Hartung helped to write the script, was very successful and will be shown on television decades later. Liselotte Pulver is identified with Piroschka for life.

A radio play version of the topic was also created. Hugo Hartung also worked on the material as a comedy for the theater. The play Piroschka was premiered in 1958 at the Hebbel Theater in Berlin . Film, radio play and theater play are very similar in content and even the same in many parts and follow the novel faithfully.

In 2011 Klaus Maria Zumstein wrote a new stage version for the Naturtheater Heidenheim , which - in contrast to Hartung's theatrical version - is designed for a larger ensemble. The story is also told from the perspective of 'old Andreas', who remembers his childhood sweetheart Piroschka in his later years .

Editions and edits

  • First edition: I often think of Piroschka: A cheerful summer story. Ullstein, Berlin 1954.
  • I often think of Piroschka. Novel. Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Gütersloh 1958.
  • Comedy versions:
    • Hugo Hartung: Piroschka. Comedy, Lechte Verlag, Emsdetten 1959 (Dramas of the Time, Vol. 41).
    • Klaus Maria Zumstein: I often think of Piroschka. Melancholy Comedy, large-scale (open-air) theater version, 2011.
  • New edition: I often think of Piroschka. A cheerful novel. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-550-08522-2 .
  • Paperback: I often think of Piroschka. Ullstein-Taschenbuch Nr. 24588. Ullstein, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-548-24588-9 .
  • Audio version: Kurt Wilhelm (director): I often think of Piroschka. Ullstein-Hörverlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-550-09092-7 (1 CD, 50 minutes).
  • Audiobook: I often think of Piroschka. Unabridged reading by Fritz Stavenhagen . Location manager: Johanna Steinbach-Grobst. Steinbach, Schwäbisch Hall 2005, ISBN 3-88698-811-2 .

literature

  • Christian Adam : The dream of the year zero: Authors, bestsellers, readers: The reorganization of the world of books in East and West after 1945. Galiani, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86971-122-5 , pp. 275–280.
  • Kristin Kopp: An Eastern Dreamland in West German Heimatfilm. Kurt Hoffmann's “I often think of Piroschka” . In: Gregor Thum (ed.): Dreamland East. German Pictures from Eastern Europe in the 20th Century , Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006, ISBN 3-525-36295-1 , pp. 138–156.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deutschlandfunk : “I think often of Piroschka” from May 15, 2007, accessed on November 23, 2015
  2. ↑ Hugo Hartung. In: Hugo Hartung: I often think of Piroschka. Novel. Licensed edition for Bertelsmann Lesering, Mohn & Co, Gütersloh 1958, p. 253.