I was Jack Mortimer (novel)
I was Jack Mortimer is a novel by Alexander Lernet-Holenia set in Vienna , published in 1933 by S. Fischer Verlag . It was filmed three times: 1935 (directed by Carl Froelich ), 1952 ( Adventure in Vienna , directed by Emil E. Reinert , American version with partly identical cast 1953 under the title Stolen Identity , directed by Gunther von Fritsch ) and 1961 ( Jack Mortimer , Director: Michael Kehlmann ). In 1986 a radio play was also produced (for ORF ).
content
The plot extended over a few days in November. The 29-year-old Viennese taxi driver Ferdinand Sponer drives a young lady (at the age of "barely 20") from Hohen Markt to Prinz-Eugen-Strasse (to her aunt) and falls in love with her. Distracted by this, he almost had an accident while driving. After dropping off his pretty passenger, he finds out a lot about her through the porter's wife. Sponer waits for her and follows her from afar to her nearby house on Alleegasse (today's Argentinierstrasse). There he found out more about the lady through several people: Her name is Marisabelle von Raschitz (“baptized” after Archduchess Maria Isabella ) and is the niece of Countess Dünewald. The next day Sponer waits again in front of her house, and when she steps out of the house after a long time, he offers her his car. She recognizes him again, but refuses.
Sponer goes home and spends the evening with his longtime girlfriend, Marie Fiala. The relationship with her had become something ordinary for him:
- “They already knew each other and had nothing more to say to each other. She loved him and would have had so much to say to him, but you can't say anything to anyone if he has nothing to say to you. Actually he still loved her too, but he had forgotten that he loved her. It was there, but it had become natural that it was there, and everyday like everyday life. "
He's off duty the next day, goes back to Alleegasse in the morning and waits for Marisabelle to come out of the house. He offers her his company. When she refuses, he follows her anyway and tells her in a short conversation on Karlsplatz that he has fallen in love with her. In the evening he meets again with Marie in a suburban cafe, and she feels a crisis in their relationship: "That was the end of love, that it couldn't end."
Again Sponer waits for Marisabelle the next day. Annoyed, she forbids his advances. When she is accompanied in the evening by her brother, who is two years younger than her, this sponer strictly forbids molesting his sister. Annoyed, he goes back to work. At the Westbahnhof he picks up a passenger whom he is supposed to drive to the Hotel Bristol. But shortly before the destination, in front of the opera , Sponer notices that his passenger is dead in the back.
The passenger was shot, as Sponer realizes. He tries several times to point out to others that he has a dead person in the car, but strangely enough he fails. Finally, he goes directly to a police Commissariat ; while the police officers present there are busy with a drunk man, Sponer thinks through the upcoming conversation with the police superintendent ; In doing so, he realizes how absurd it must seem that he has not seen a murderer or heard any shots, so that he drives on with the dead man without stopping immediately and reporting the murder. Sponer imagines the cop finally asking him skeptically:
- “There's a murder going on in your moving car and you don't notice it? A man is gunned down so close behind you that you can reach with your hand, and you have seen nothing, nothing at all from a perpetrator? "
Sponer fears that in view of the untrustworthiness of his story he himself will be suspected, and when the conversation now begins spontaneously gives another reason for his coming and leaves the police station. He decides to make the body disappear. With the plan to throw the dead man into the Danube at night, he drives through the districts.
Before that, however, Sponer goes to a pub to have a glass of sherry. He's parked the car with the corpse on the street and even has the nerve to talk to two girls until one of them tells him that he has a blood stain on his sleeve. Panicked, he ran to his car and imagined with horror that the police would have to come across him as soon as they investigated the stranger's disappearance. Sponer drives into the floodplains to the pleasure house , takes documents, valuables and luggage from the deceased and finally sinks it into the river with many difficulties. Then he cleans the car and takes it to the garage, where he hands it over to a colleague. Dressed in the dead man's suit and in possession of his passport - his name is Jack Mortimer - Sponer gets into a taxi, drives to the Bristol and moves into the suite reserved for Mortimer .
Since Sponer believes on the verge of a nervous breakdown that is the only way to divert suspicion from himself, he would like to play the role of Mortimer until the next morning - after that Mortimer could have gone somewhere, but as a chauffeur who had already delivered him to the Bristol, would no longer affect. However, he has little knowledge of English, so he can hardly read the letters given to him by the porter and he does not understand what a caller on the phone is saying to him in English. To his horror, a young lady suddenly appears in his room at night.
Flashback: Jose Montemayor was an American cattle herder who worked on the Mexican border and met the beautiful Consuelo on a horse ride to Mexico, who, like him, had a beautiful singing voice. She became his partner, and soon they were performing together in New York. There they met the banker Jack Mortimer, who drew Consuelo to himself. The abandoned Montemayor went to Paris, had great musical success there and eventually married a young woman named Winifred. From acquaintances he learned of Consuelo's illness and death. One day Montemayor and his wife met Jack Mortimer, and again he soon succeeded in winning Winifred over. However, Montemayor did not give the two the opportunity to meet and left for Vienna with his wife. Mortimer followed them, and Winifred waited longingly for his appearance at the Hotel Bristol. In the evening, secretly pursued by her husband, she went to his hotel room, now sees herself facing a stranger, but recognizes Mortimer's luggage and therefore realizes that something must have happened. Sponer is now preventing her from going away.
Sponer and Winifred try to figure out each other's role in this game, made more difficult by the language barrier. When Winifred finally manages to leave the room, she runs into her husband, who pushes her back and then hits her. Finally all three sit across from each other, Montemayor speaks German, and Sponer informs the couple that Mortimer is dead. Montemayor prevents his wife from calling the police. Since Sponer's plan had failed anyway, he suddenly escapes from the suite, which he locks behind him, and leaves the hotel.
With the plan to flee across the border to Croatia, Sponer drives to Marie Fiala in the middle of the night. She is supposed to get him money from his apartment because he fears that the police will be waiting for him there if Winifred has filed a complaint in the meantime. The police are actually waiting for him there, but because blood and then the bullets were found in the taxi. So Marie is caught in Sponer's apartment, but can run away with the money.
After an adventurous chase down Mariahilfer Straße and Gürtel , Marie manages to hide from the police and Sponer's colleagues in a suburban hotel. Sponer waits in vain with the Fialas for a while and hangs over his thoughts, based on the different social classes:
- “Ever since human existence existed, there have been upper and lower humans, there was not just one human race, but two, that was humanity. Ever since it existed there have been high and low, noble and ignoble, saints and criminals, gods and animals, that is what people were like. But since human existence has existed, he has not been noble or mean, not noble or mean, not good or bad, but noble, low, noble, mean, good and bad at the same time. That was just the person. "
Since Sponer fears that the police will soon be looking for him at Fialas, he leaves. Without money he cannot flee abroad as planned. Then he had the idea of going to Marisabelle. When she comes home very late, not until after midnight, he throws himself at her feet and explains what has happened to her. She believes he really is the murderer, but hides him in an empty apartment in the house and spends the night with him - he was now something special to her:
- “He was no longer the chauffeur you could tell you didn't want a car now, you didn't want to be bothered, and least of all in front of your own house. ... He was only the one who would be delivered tomorrow and who came because he was delivered, and before him, who approached her in the terrible ornament of crime, everything broke in her, restraint, decency, education and rank, together for nothing but a tremendous feeling. "
In the morning Sponer leaves Marisabelle, who is still sleeping, and goes to the Bristol, from where he wants to call the police to be arrested. There is a crowd in front of Mortimer's room. Winifred, who notices but does not seem to recognize him, is being questioned by the police and reveals that she shot her husband after he confessed to killing Mortimer. Sponer immediately runs back to Marisabelle, but now that his innocence has been found out, she doesn't want anything more to do with him. Sponer goes to the Fialas, where the sobbing Marie falls around his neck. He says to her: “I was just on my way to see you. I was Jack Mortimer. ”With these words the novel ends, so its title is also the last word.
criticism
“A somewhat illogical crime story based in Vienna. A panicked taxi driver, afraid he would not be believed, wants to play the role of the murder victim so that the murdered man is not missed. It is clear that this makes him even more suspicious and ends up in a possibly hopeless situation if it is discovered that he is not who he claims to be. "
literature
- Ulrike Götting: The German crime novel between 1945 and 1970. Forms and tendencies . Tectum, Marburg 2000, pp. 84-94. ISBN 3-8288-8127-0 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ by Hans Gigacher, Library Online Catalog