In times of waning light

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In times of waning light is a montage novel with an autobiographical background by Eugen Ruge , which was published in 2011 by Rowohlt Verlag . It reflects the history of the GDR in the fate of a family. The arc spans four generations from the grandparents, who are staunch communists, to the father and son who was sobered by his imprisonment in Soviet labor camps but who believed in the possibility of democratic socialism and who fled to the West shortly before the fall of the wall , since for him individual freedom and socialism are irreconcilable opposites, up to his great-grandson, who will only keep the GDR in memory as a strange childhood memory. The title actually refers to the early autumn, the time of the potato harvest in the Urals , which the Russian grandmother who moved to the GDR remembers (see p. 139), but symbolically means the fading radiance of the communist utopia that was created by Stalin's tyranny and the failed socialist experiment in the GDR has lost its credibility.

The novel was awarded the Alfred Döblin Prize in 2009 , the Aspect Literature Prize in 2011 and the German Book Prize in the same year , the jury of which justified the choice as follows: “Eugen Ruge reflects East German history in a family novel . He succeeds in taming the experiences of four generations over fifty years in a dramaturgically sophisticated composition. His book tells of the utopia of socialism, the price it demands of the individual and its gradual extinction. At the same time, his novel is very entertaining and has a strong sense of humor. ”By June 2013, the book itself had sold over half a million times. The film adaptation of the novel was released in German cinemas on June 1, 2017.

Frankfurt Book Fair 2011: Alexander Fest , Eugen Ruge, Holger Heimann

Contents, sorted chronologically

The novel begins and ends in 2001 with cancer and the subsequent trip to Mexico by the most important reflector figure, Alexander Umnitzer. Viewed chronologically, however, the action begins with chapter 2 in 1952, shortly before Alexander's grandmother Charlotte and her second husband Wilhelm move to the GDR after twelve years of Mexican exile . The narrated time begins, however, much earlier, namely in the childhood of Charlotte and Alexander's second grandmother Nadjeshda Ivanovna, which was opened up by turning back, so that the novel narrative covers a period of an entire century. In 1952, Wilhelm and Charlotte felt increasingly uncomfortable in Mexico. They were both relieved of their functions in the editorial office of the German exiled newspaper “Demokratische Post” and had long been waiting for their exit papers in order to be able to start a new life in the GDR. In addition, Charlotte lives in constant worry about her sons Kurt and Werner, who have disappeared in the Soviet Union, and about whose whereabouts she cannot find out for a long time. Finally, a former friend in exile, who has meanwhile become State Secretary in the GDR, provides them with the papers they long for and on top of that management positions at the newly founded Academy for Political Science and Law in Neuendorf.

In 1961 (6th chapter) Charlotte is the section leader at the academy, while Wilhelm, who quickly failed as administrative director, volunteered as a residential district party secretary. In order to distinguish herself against a rival in the institute, Charlotte wrote a review of the exiled novel “Mexican Night” by a FRG author for New Germany , which ended with the verdict that the book was “defeatist” and “does not belong in the Bookstore shelves of our republic ”(p. 127). For this she is sharply criticized by her son Kurt, who accuses her of allowing himself to be instrumentalized for a tougher political course that aims to return to Stalinism . The chapter captures the political mood in the GDR shortly before the wall was built and at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis .

After returning from a business trip to Moscow in 1966 (Chapter 8), Kurt, now one of the leading historians in the GDR, is informed by a party secretary about the “betrayal” of a colleague from his research group. Since he had criticized the KPD's united front policy during the Weimar Republic and the ban on thinking imposed on it in the GDR in a letter to a BRD historian , he was scathingly criticized at an institute meeting by ZK members and removed from his office. On this occasion, Kurt remembers his arrest in Moscow in 1941 and his interrogator at the time, whose “pig face” (p. 180) looked suspiciously like that of the Central Committee comrade who gave the indictment speech against Rohde. His letter to Werner, in which he carefully questioned the German-Soviet non-aggression pact , had brought the brothers ten years in camp for the formation of a conspiratorial association and thus led to Werner's death. Kurt consoles himself with the realization that it is a step forward when critics are no longer shot but only excluded from the party.

On Christmas Day 1976 (Chapter 12), Alexander and his new girlfriend Melitta arrive at his parents' home. Mother Irina prepares her French monastery goose, the ingredients of which she has to organize every year through an extensive barter. With Wilhelm and Charlotte and the Russian grandmother Nadjeshda Ivanovna, who had just moved from the Urals to Neuendorf four weeks earlier, the entire family is present. As a jealous mother, Irina cannot understand what her beloved Sascha thinks about the new girl. Her discomfort reaches its peak when she notices Melitta's pregnancy. Explicit historical references can be found in this chapter to the expatriation of the songwriter Wolf Biermann and to Christa Wolf's novel “ Childhood Pattern ”.

Alexanderplatz at night in 1974

In January 1979 (Chapter 14) Kurt visits Alexander, who illegally quartered himself in an empty and completely shabby apartment in Prenzlauer Berg after he left Melitta and his little son Markus and dropped out of his history studies. The walk on the snow-covered sidewalks through the dilapidated district in the vain search for an open restaurant and the conversation, which is constantly interrupted by traffic noise, reflect both the disturbed communication between father and son and the failure of the socialist construction, the queuing of restaurant visitors with the following joke comments: “What are the four main enemies of socialism? […] Frühjah, Somma, Herbst and Winta ”(p. 297 f.).

The chronology of the narrated events is October 1st, 1989, Wilhelm's 90th birthday, which is the subject of the 3rd, 7th, 9th, 13th, 16th and 19th chapters and thus represents the central event of the novel. Wilhelm's progressive dementia is reported from different character perspectives, of his - repeated year after year - honor by party officials, of the absence of Alexander, who had informed his parents by telephone in the morning that he was now in Giessen with his new girlfriend, which Irina replied retreats to her room for the rest of the day and drinks himself into a drunkenness, from the collapse of the extendable table that Wilhelm nailed together in an amateurish way, which, as a coup de théâtre, marks the end of the unsuccessful event, and finally from his poisoning by Charlotte, which no one else has ever heard of is experienced. By clearly showing the fragility of family and social structures, Wilhelm's 90th birthday forms the private counterpart to the state jubilee celebrating the 40th anniversary of the GDR, which took place just six days later and was framed by protests and overshadowed by Gorbachev's perestroika .

The story of Christmas Day 1991 (17th chapter) takes up the corresponding events from 1976 (12th chapter) in a varied form. This time, of course, Irina can buy all the ingredients for her monastery goose in the supermarket, and Alexander and his current girlfriend, Catrin, come from Moers, which is deep in the west of united Germany . Christmas Eve turns into a catastrophe: Irina, who is gradually getting drunk in the kitchen and observing the increasingly aggressive political disputes between Kurt and Alexander from there, ends up lying drunk next to the cracked goose on the kitchen floor, insulting Catrin, who rushes to help with the words “Don't touch me, you carrion”, whereupon Alexander draws a line under the family ties with the saying “So, that's it” (p. 370). At the same time, the news of the dissolution of the Soviet Union was announced on the radio.

In 1995, 18-year-old Markus appears at Irina's funeral, but does not address his grandfather Kurt or his father Alexander, who pass by him without recognizing him. Melitta is now married to a pastor who organized prayers for peace before the fall of the Wall and who is now in the Bundestag. Between drug consumption, nightly disco visits, unsuccessful attempts to get to know a friend and constant friction with his parents, Markus leads the life of a West teenager who, despite the considerably greater freedom compared to the GDR era, does not give him any satisfaction.

In 2001 (Chapter 1) Alexander, who was diagnosed with an incurable tumor, went to the severely demented Kurt after a hospital stay, gave him food and cleans him, then opened a secret compartment to store some of Kurt's personal notes, letters and Taking photos and destroying the rest takes 27,000 DM from the wall safe and announces a longer trip to his father, who doesn't notice any more of them. This trip to Mexico by Alexander is the subject of the 5th, 11th, 15th and 20th chapters. In Mexico, Alexander searches for traces of the origins of his family history. In doing so, he is driven by the desire to suppress his illness, he wants to "tear himself away from this sick, sick world" (p. 103). But just like his whole life, Mexico also appears to him to be a fraud (see p. 111). Only at the very end, in a small town on the Pacific, where he was stranded on the run from noise, heat and bad air, does Alexander calm down. In a pension for old German hippies he studies Kurt's personal documents, writes letters to his last girlfriend and deals with fundamental issues such as love, illness and death. The fact that the last pages are written in the future tense can indicate both an imminent end for Alexander and an open future.

Characters of the novel

Wilhelm Powileit

Wilhelm Powileit (1899–1989) is Charlotte's second husband and the stepfather of Kurt and Werner. Before Charlotte and Wilhelm went into exile in Mexico in 1940, Wilhelm worked for the Comintern's secret service in Hamburg as co-director of a front company that smuggled people and material. He and his wife were able to leave in good time before these activities were discovered. In Mexico he felt uncomfortable, among other things because he could only work as a bodyguard for a diamond dealer and only years later found a political job as managing director of the small exile newspaper "Democratic Post". In 1952 Charlotte and Wilhelm were allowed to return to the GDR, where they built a new life. In the GDR, Wilhelm was temporarily assigned the position of administrative director of the newly founded Academy for Political Science and Law.

Wilhelm sees himself as an ideal party member and places the party above his own family, whom he despises as a “defeatist family”. Because of his continued admiration for Stalin and his stubborn advocacy of repression against those who think differently, he can be seen as the embodiment of Stalinism. Wilhelm despises the reformers Gorbachev and Khrushchev , whom he summarizes under the abbreviation "Tschow". A central event in the novel is Wilhelm's 90th birthday on October 1, 1989. Due to increasing dementia, he is now unable to express his thoughts in full sentences, but he nevertheless considers himself omniscient and looks down on his fellow men. Wilhelm is not interested in deeper personal relationships, which is why he behaves negatively towards his wife and other people around him. Wilhelm describes himself as "the best for the party and the cause" and he settles differences of opinion with his wife by pointing out that he has been a member of the party for seventy years. His paranoid attitude towards Charlotte, whom he insinuates that she wants to poison him, comes true in the end as a self-fulfilling prophecy . Not only does he feel an increasing aversion to her, but also to his stepson Kurt, whom he considers a wimp due to his comparatively liberal views . In his opinion, Kurt is lucky to have been interned in Stalin's labor camps instead of having to fight at the front, an experience which Wilhelm himself never had.

Although Wilhelm is honored and showered with medals by representatives of the party and state organs on every birthday, he is an isolated and unhappy person due to his stubbornness, his self-overestimation and his lack of interest in others.

Charlotte Powileit

Charlotte is the wife of Wilhelm and the mother of Kurt and Werner. Born around 1903, she was often humiliated, imprisoned and mistreated as a child by her mother. It was not uncommon for her to feel “the rough hand of her mother, which hit her with full force” (p. 117). On the other hand, the mother very much preferred her brother, for whose art studies she saved in barbaric fashion (p. 47). After Charlotte met Wilhelm and separated from her first husband, a senior teacher who cheated on her with his students, she joined the Communist Party, where she received respect and recognition for the first time. After returning from twelve years of exile in Mexico in 1952, Charlotte became head of the institute at the newly founded Academy for Political Science and Law in Neuendorf near Potsdam. Charlotte has accumulated a lot of experience and knowledge in life, but does not find the recognition she wanted from Wilhelm and his party comrades. Although she always feels superior to the egocentric and self-righteous kind of Wilhelm, she has a subordinate role in their relationship. She avoids arguments and keeps her anger and later also her hatred of Wilhelm to herself. On the other hand, she is seen by her family as a reproachful and contentious person.

Due to Wilhelm's increasing dementia, Charlotte collects “solid facts” (p. 389) in order to push her hated husband to a home so that she can have peace before his destructive renovations to her house and can finally lead a self-determined life in old age. On the evening of his 90th birthday, she poisoned him with an overdose of aminophylline drops , which she always carries with her because of her shortness of breath. Shortly after Wilhelm's death, however, Charlotte herself was taken to a home, where she died a few years later alone.

Kurt Umnitzer

Kurt Umnitzer (born 1921 / see p. 160) is the older son of Charlotte and her first husband, senior teacher Umnitzer. Since he had expressed his skepticism about the friendship treaty between Stalin and Hitler in a personal letter to his brother Werner in Soviet exile in 1941 , the two were sentenced to ten years in camp for forming a conspiratorial association. While Werner did not survive the imprisonment, Kurt was sent to life in exile after serving his sentence in Slava, a desolate little town behind the Urals. There he met his future wife Irina, with whom he was able to return to his homeland GDR after the change of power in the Soviet Union. Irina is however unhappy in this marriage, as Kurt often cheats on her and increasingly neglects her, although he also shows tenderness and patience with her moodiness. Kurt also neglects their son Alexander, as he invests a lot of time in writing scientific works, which makes him one of the most important historians in the GDR. Nevertheless, he is torn internally because he is worried about the development of his son and wants to help him find his personal way within the socialist society. Kurt feels guilty towards his murdered brother, but also envy, because Werner, "his big little brother, the stronger one, was always the more beautiful of the two" (p. 185).

Forced labor in a Soviet gulag

Kurt's experience is very much shaped by the long years of imprisonment in the camp. Vivid memories are often triggered by external stimuli, such as certain noises or smells. The intensity with which these memories affect his everyday perception and actions suggests a lifelong trauma. When Kurt once took a long way home through the forest and heard a rasping groan, he behaved instinctively as if he were in the taiga and threatened by wild animals. When he then notices that a pair of lovers in a parked Trabbi are the source of the noise, Kurt's distrust of his wife comes to light - he initially suspects that it is Irina who is cheating on him at this moment (see p. 183).

Irina Umnitzer

Irina (1927–1995), a native of Russia, had served as a medic in the Red Army during the war and later married Kurt Umnitzer, who was exiled there in her home town of Slava. In 1954 their son Alexander was born, in 1956 the young family moved to the GDR and initially lived on the upper floor of Wilhelm and Charlotte's villa in Neuendorf. Irina was humiliated by Charlotte in the first few years and used as a cleaning help, which continues to strain her relationship with her mother-in-law even after they have long since moved into their own house. Irina is very jealous of Kurt for a reason, as Kurt actually cheats a lot. Irina is also jealous of all the friends of her son Alexander (Sascha), whom she adores. She doesn't accept any of them in the family and likes to make them bad in her mind: “Unsightly knees, no waist, no bottom. And a chin, to be honest, like a construction worker… ”(p. 62). When Alexander flees to the West, she blames his current wife for it. She suffers badly from Alexander's absence and therefore does not go to Wilhelm's birthday party, but gets drunk at home. This is the beginning of a long addiction to alcohol that Irina finally dies of in 1995.

Alexander Umnitzer

Alexander (Sascha) was born in Slava in 1954 to Kurt and Irina. In 1956 he moved with his parents to the GDR, in 1959 he traveled again with Irina to his Russian grandmother. Alexander grows up protected within the family and receives a lot of stimulation by learning the Russian language and culture from his mother and being introduced to the secrets of the Aztec gods by Grandma Charlotte. On the other hand, he was already suffering from the repressive climate in GDR society as a young boy, for example when he was terrified that his mother might be arrested because of a forgotten milk brand. While Irina treats him very caringly, he is neglected by father Kurt, who spends most of the time writing books, which he still resents as an adult. However, Irina's exaggerated motherly love, compensating for her own neglect by Kurt, later leads her to perceive Alexander's friends as annoying rivals, whereby the relationship with her son increasingly deteriorates until he ends up completely after she is completely addicted to alcohol renounces her. In 1979, Alexander left his young wife Melitta and their two-year-old son Markus, dropped out of his history studies and moved into an empty apartment in the neglected old building district of Prenzlauer Berg in order to find himself. He justifies this to his father by saying that he does not want to have to lie all his life, but is not prepared to enter into a deeper discussion because he despises his father's system-compliant attitude. During this time, Alexander obviously had his first mystical experiences and studied the Bible.

On October 1, 1989, to Irina's great desperation, he and his girlfriend Catrin left the GDR and two years later became a dramaturge at the theater in Moers . In 2001 he was diagnosed with an apparently incurable cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma . In order to escape the confrontation with illness and death, Alexander embarks on a trip to Mexico after he leaves his seriously demented father helpless in the house and takes his saved fortune. There he would like to visit the places of longing of his childhood. But in the face of the noise, hectic pace, misery and the feeling of complete foreignness in Mexico, he finds neither distraction nor mystical experience. Only at the very end does he find inner peace in a small town on the Pacific, which enables him to reflect on his life, his relationship with his parents and his wives, his illness and death.

Markus Umnitzer

Markus (born 1977) is the son of Alexander and his short-term wife Melitta. When his parents split up two years after his birth, he stayed with his mother. Although he visits his father regularly, he reproaches him because of the separation: "'The ass', Markus repeated" (p. 274). On Wilhelm's 90th birthday, Markus is disappointed and angry that his father is not among the guests.

In 1995 Markus was eighteen and was training as a communications electronics technician in Cottbus , which his stepfather Klaus got for him. Markus quickly adapts to the West German youth culture, often goes to clubs and bars and celebrates the night away. Drugs also play a role in his life: “Dope. Grass ”(p. 380). Markus is dissatisfied with his training and often demonstrates this to his stepfather: "It's shitty anyway [...] In the beginning, Telekom promised that everyone would be taken over, and now it all comes down to: only one!" (P. 379 ).

At Irina's funeral, Markus meets his father and grandfather again, but notices that he no longer has any connection to them, he can only feel sadness for the deceased Irina. This scene demonstrates the breakup of the entire family.

subjects

Family as a mirror of social processes

“In times of waning light” can neither be labeled as an unambiguous family nor as a society novel. Rather, what makes the novel so special is that contemporary history becomes perceptible as a family history, whereby both the influence of major political events and developments on the lives of ordinary people and the limited opportunities of each individual to recognize and evaluate these connections is made clear. Conversely, it is shown that social conditions and ideologies only ever occur in the concrete experience of individual people with all their contradictions, so that political discourses that are based on general assumptions of truth must become lies. Unlike the Buddenbrooks , with whom he is sometimes compared, Ruge's novel does not tell of the decline, but only of the dissolution of a family. Intact family structures never existed in any of the generations of the Powileit-Umnitzers described. Because she is a girl, Charlotte is severely disadvantaged compared to her brother and regularly abused by her mother.She has no sexual relationship with Wilhelm even during her time in exile, she feels humiliated again as a woman in marriage, and mutual aversion grows in her So much over the years that it resulted in a poisoning. Wilhelm and Kurt despise each other, Irina cheats on Irina with other women and lets it pass without doing anything that she drowns her disappointment in alcohol and perishes from it. Finally, Alexander, who feels misunderstood by his parents, escapes the family, but is himself unable to develop a lasting, loving relationship with a woman and his son.

If there is a tendency to be seen here, it is not that of decay, but that of an increasingly open approach to family problems. The family, which even in the great-grandparents' generation no longer corresponds to traditional bourgeois values ​​regardless of the prevailing political ideology, is no longer held together by any external ties in the course of increasing individualization, which, however, is hardly seen as a disadvantage in view of the previously disguised fragility of its structures can. In addition to Wilhelm's birthday party, which ended in the catastrophe, the novel illustrates these connections in the two chapters on the Christmas parties in the Umnitzer house, which despite Irina's best efforts can no longer celebrate family ties, but only lead to the dissolution of existing ties.

The failure of the socialist experiment

The story of the decline of the GDR runs parallel to the story of the dissolving family. Here, too, the term decay would be incorrect, as the novel shows how far the GDR was from the original socialist ideal from the hour of its birth. This is borne out by the fears of Charlotte, who is returning from exile, a truly staunch communist who, during the train journey, fears that the State Secretary who promoted her may have fallen out of favor as a Zionist agent , and that she will be arrested as soon as she arrives, as was the case with the Soviet Union happened to their sons (p. 51). Originating in the shadow of Stalin, the GDR did not succeed in permanently producing socialism with a human face. Occasional tendencies towards democratization were repeatedly undone by repressive changes of course. These relationships are reflected in the novel in the relationships between the individual family members and reflected from their very different subjective perspectives. According to the almost unanimous opinion of the reviewers (see section “Reception”), this is precisely where the strength of the novel lies, while the deficits of GDR society described have already been dealt with in detail in numerous other books.

In particular, the family patriarch Wilhelm Powileit embodies the system of repression. As a backward-looking old Stalinist, he puts the party's ideals above his own family. Since he never suffered from authoritarian rule, he has no aversion to Stalinist ideology. He underestimates Kurt's experience in the Soviet gulag , considers him a weakling and detests his liberal attitude towards socialism. Despite his dementia, Wilhelm can still remember the “ song of the party ” that he sings on his 90th birthday (p. 208), so dogma has become second nature to him. In contrast, as a proponent of democratic socialism, Kurt comes into conflict with the regime's expectations several times. In contrast to his stepfather Wilhelm, he fears the return of Stalinism to the GDR, which he makes clear in an interview with Charlotte about her book review in Neues Deutschland : “This is about a struggle for direction. It is a question of reform or standstill. Democratization or a return to Stalinism ”(p. 136). He reminds his mother of the fate of her son Werner, who was killed in the Soviet gulag, but Charlotte seems to want to suppress this: “'Your son was murdered in Vorkuta.' 'I don't want you to say such a thing' ”(p. 136).

The historical falsification of the SED regime is evident in the process of expelling a historian from the party who viewed the KPD's united front policy critically during the Weimar Republic. Although it was clear to everyone that this policy was wrong, because it had promoted the rise of fascism in the worst possible way (p. 171), there is a ban on speaking and thinking about it. Accordingly, Kurt's speech by a party official on Wilhelm's 90th birthday appears to be a hodgepodge of lies, for which he applauds (p. 341). At these points the novel makes it clear that the lack of openness in dealing with the past was one of the GDR's birth defects and contributed to the failure of the socialist experiment.

Alexander is the only family member who grows up entirely in the GDR. The chapters told from his perspective give an insight into the one-sided education system of the GDR, which glorified communism and the Soviet Union. Mutual spying on the part of GDR citizens is also alluded to several times: “And again they did not vote, the Schliepners. But we can also get it on, ”says Wilhelm (p. 94). Alexander's development in the GDR, which ended with his flight to the West on October 1, 1989, illustrates the regime's inability to convey socialist values ​​credibly to young people. Already in his youth he came into conflict with his father Kurt when he allowed himself to be influenced by western youth movements: “You will be a bum! My son becomes a bum! ”(P. 173).

In Eugen Ruge's novel, the economy of shortages in the GDR is depicted in several places and from different character perspectives. The deficiency is particularly evident in the area of ​​living and eating. Because many products were difficult or unavailable at all, there was often a lack of ingredients to cook something more imaginative. These coveted foods could only be acquired through personal contacts and sometimes extremely laborious barter. This is made clear by Irina in Chapter 12: "The greater part of Sobakin's caviar, however, was used as a lubricant and means of payment in the opaque cycle of goods traded under counters and in back rooms" (p. 244). Since the rental prices of the apartments were frozen at the pre-war level, the municipal housing administration hardly carried out any renovations or repairs, so that the old buildings in entire districts fell into disrepair. Even private initiative often did not lead to success, precisely because the necessary materials were almost inaccessible. Many of these rental apartments are nowadays considered uninhabitable and hazardous to health. These circumstances are illustrated by the description of Christina's apartment: "[Alexander] trotted afterwards, sniffed the well-known house floor smell (half mold, half cat piss) ..." (p. 221). After separating from Melitta, Alexander found himself illegally in an empty house in Prenzlauer Berg, which is described as follows: “Kurt passed a ruinous hallway. The remains of flower reliefs on the ceiling. Sleeping Beauty. Ancient signs: peddling prohibited. Playing ball is prohibited. Parking Bikes is not allowed. Side wing on the right. Torn, opened mailboxes. The door was wide open, could not be closed because a thick layer of ice on the floor blocked the threshold: Broken pipe, thought Kurt, the word of this winter ”(p. 290). In keeping with the desolate state of the district, it is impossible to find a restaurant that is not "closed due to technical problems" (p. 293), does not have a day of rest or can offer a table without a long wait, so that in the end only the vending machine restaurant on Alexanderplatz remains.

Literary form

A first look at the table of contents indicates an achronic structure of the novel, but in reality three narrative lines are intertwined according to the montage principle, to which different time levels are assigned. The first is the chronological narrative of the family history with the stations 1952, 1959, 1961, 1966, 1973, 1976, 1979, 1991 and 1995. October 1, 1989, Wilhelm's 90th birthday, is highlighted in this chronology family history (Alexander's flight, Wilhelm's poisoning, Irina's first alcoholic excess) as well as foreshadowing the imminent end of the GDR. This day, interspersed with the other chapters, is told a total of six times from different character perspectives (Irina, Nadjeshda, Wilhelm, Markus, Kurt and Charlotte), whereby both the political events and the family relationships are assessed very differently and the events presented with their The reasons for the reader only gradually become understandable by means of the multiple perspectives .

The third time level is Alexander's trip to Mexico in 2001, which is told in chronological order in five chapters, including the first, which deals with the preparation of the trip, and the last, and enables a critical, temporally distant review of the story told. Wilhelm, Charlotte and Irina are long dead, Kurt doesn't notice anything anymore due to his dementia, and while Alexander traces the myths of the origins of his family history in his grandparents' country of exile, he grapples with his life, his illness and the predicted end to him. As this narrative line forms the primary level of reflection in the novel, Alexander, as the author's deputy in the fictional world, becomes a prominent mediator between the world of the novel and the reader, but nevertheless remains one narrated figure among several who, due to their confrontation with the perspectives of other characters and theirs unadorned presentation is perceived by the anonymous narrator with critical distance.

The spectrum of these reflector figures ranges from five-year-old Alexander, who divides the world with his childlike point of view into a few very simple categories, to Markus, who is filled with disappointment, anger and hatred for adults, to the capricious, eternally jealous Irina, who sees the world with a scientific eye analyzing Kurt, who is haunted again and again by his memories of the camp, to the demented old communist Wilhelm and the Russian grandmother Nadjeshda Ivanovna, who was transplanted into a completely alien, inscrutable environment and lives entirely in her memories. In this way, the reader opens up a rather comprehensive understanding of the narrated reality in the manner of a puzzle, which neither an authoritative narrator with his nowadays no longer credible postulate to create meaning nor a single reflector figure with its limited perspective could be achieved. The dominant narrative style is the experienced speech , which is often connected with the technique of the stream of consciousness , most extreme when reproducing Nadjeshda Ivanovna's thoughts: "[...] or what was on television was just television, and in the end it wasn't much unlike here, you could almost look over, or was it still Germany that you saw across the lake, or was Germany America, so part of it, so the part of Germany that was part of America, that maddening mind Confusion, and why, if in the end it was the same as Ira claimed, only that you could buy everything there, Ira had said, in the other Germany that was America, but she didn't understand it […] ”(p. 140). This enables the reader to temporarily understand the perspective of a completely alien personality, without running the risk of identifying with the respective character, because the narrator always makes sure to use verba dicendi or . credendi as "thought Nadezhda Ivanovna" to break through.

In addition, multi-perspective narration allows the creation of situation comedy, as the episode with the pickle jar shows, which Wilhelm von Nadjeshda was given. When he received the cucumbers, he thanks him with the word Garoch (peas), whereupon Nadjeshda says Ogurzy (cucumber), but Wilhelm confirms his Garoch. Nadjeshda now interprets the situation in such a way that Wilhelm had “set off” and believes that he sees “the dark in his gaze” as with those about to die (p. 153). When the same situation is later told from Wilhelm's point of view, one learns that he found the word "garosch: good, excellent" (p. 204) under the rubble of his Russian, so that from his point of view the dialogue sequence Garosch - Ogurzy - Garosch in no way represents a failed communication. The situation is analyzed more closely, but also interpreted subjectively, later when the birthday party is told again from the perspective of Kurt, who speaks both languages: "She gave him a jar of pickled cucumbers, and Wilhelm, who never missed an opportunity, Bragging about his knowledge of Russian, tried Garosch, Garosch! He probably meant: Charascho (good), but he didn't even manage that ”(p. 331). This example illustrates the technique of subsequent motivation and the bracketing of the individual chapters through leitmotifs, which also include goulash, turtles, pig faces, the song "Mexico lindo y querido" and many others.

Autobiographical references

The biographical starting point of the novel is the family history of the author Eugen Ruge, for whom the need for self-assurance was an important reason for writing. Ruge himself is represented by the central character in the novel, Alexander Umnitzer. Both were born in 1954 in the Urals as children of a German and a Russian (the name of the place of birth Soswa was changed to Slawa in the novel), came to the GDR at the age of two, and went to the West shortly before the end of the GDR (Eugen 1988, Alexander one year later ) and then worked for the theater. As with Alexander, the author was also diagnosed with cancer, which for some unclear reason did not break out.

Ruge's father Wolfgang Ruge is represented in the novel by Kurt Umnitzer. Born in 1917 (Kurt: 1921), he emigrated with his family to the Soviet Union shortly after the National Socialists came to power, where, unlike in the novel, he was initially deported to Kazakhstan after the German attack on the Soviet Union , before being later deported due to fictitious Allegedly detained in a labor camp in Soswa. After his return to the GDR in 1956 and an early doctorate, he became one of the most important and productive Marxist historians in the GDR, who, like Kurt, only published his memoirs after the fall of the Wall. In contrast to Kurt's brother Werner, who was murdered in the Gulag, Wolfgang's brother Walter Ruge (born 1915) survived imprisonment in the camp and died in Potsdam in 2011. At the age of 91, he visited the Siberian city, where he lived in exile and where he met his Russian wife Irina (documented in the film "Over the Threshold" by Stefan Mehlhorn). Eugen Ruge transferred their name to Kurt's wife in the novel, but their real role model is Wolfgang's third wife and Eugen's (Shenja's) mother Taissija (Taja) Kutikowa (1924–1993), whom he married in 1954. Ruge took the first name for a mistress of Kurt's from Wolfgang's first wife Vera Forsander, from his second wife Veronika Ivanovna he used the surname for Irina's mother Nadjeshda Ivanovna. Ruge has adopted the name of his German grandmother Charlotte unchanged in the novel.

Charlotte's first husband was actually called Erwin Ruge, her second, Hans Baumgarten, was like his counterpart Wilhelm Powileit courier of the Comintern . Both husbands died in 1968. In addition, some well-known GDR personalities appear in the novel with alienated names, such as the publisher Walter Janka as Frank Janko, the philosopher Wolfgang Harich with the speaking name Karl Irrwig and the Brecht actress Steffie Spira-Ruschin as Stine Spier, who represent the "interesting people" who used to come for Wilhelm's birthday.

reception

After being awarded the German Book Prize, In Zeiten des Falling Light climbed to first place on the Spiegel bestseller list and stayed in the top ten for months. Denis Scheck , who regularly comments critically on the works on the bestseller list on television and in the press, is pretty much alone among the critics with his judgment that Eugen Ruge's novel is "a well-crafted, humanly moving, but literarily insignificant family saga". According to Jörg Magenau , the novel is convincing "with its compact form and the elegance of the language", but above all with "the multiple perspective refraction that results from the lively variety of figures". For him, the artful perspectivizing technique gives the novel its special literary value: "If literature that deserves its name gets its meaning through expanding perspectives, then this novel is great literature."

Many critics also praise the quality of the literary language. In contrast to Uwe Tellkamp in Der Turm , according to Sandra Kegel in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, “Ruge writes in clear, sober language, whose main concern is not to shine but to almost disappear behind the objects and topics”, and Michael Kumpfmüller sees “the real miracle of the novel” in “how he does justice to each of his characters, in a precise, unpretentious language that relies entirely on observation, the meaning of things, smells, gestures”. In summary, Felicitas von Lovenberg assesses the work as “outstanding and, in its narrative maturity, cannot be recognized as a debut”.

For many critics, the relevance of the content of the novel does not lie in its political-ideological subject matter as such, as this has already been dealt with frequently in the extensive GDR literature, but in the fact that contemporary history is cleverly presented here as a family history, which makes the work, as Tom Fugmann thinks, “[extends] beyond the GDR. Because people get lost in wrong ideologies at all times and remain disappointed or stubborn. Eugen Ruge tells a family story that does not have to fear comparison with the Buddenbrooks . ”At the same time, as some reviewers make clear, the novel approaches the GDR in a new way, precisely because it tells a family story. For Lovenberg he grants “a fascinating interior view of the GDR” and for Magenau he tells with “the undisguised, humorous and sensitive look” that he throws at his characters, “precisely for this reason more about the GDR and the needs of life than all the books who work their way through ideologies and hard reality ”. Dirk Knipphals points out that the novel not only tells a family story, but also deconstructs family histories: It is also a novel about “the need to be part of a story, and at the same time a novel about how such stories have always been are tinkered together and constructed ”. There is a hidden irony in the fact that “Alexander, the family refugee, is most faithful to the family stories; in an indirect way - a chessboard and old notes play a role - he even gets the order from his now demented father to tell all of this ”.

With its relaxed narrative style and sober distance from historical events, the novel, according to Knipphals, overcomes the pathetic or heroic gestures that characterize post-Wende literature: “When you read it, you notice that the GDR is now far away, so it is [...] a heroic literary counter-instance that, however broken, defends the individual against an overpowering whole, or no longer needs narrative voices heroically struggling with conscience and third paths. "The way in which the characters construct their own family stories, contribute to overcoming the internalized east-west contrasts, because “this tinkering takes place equally with Ossis and Wessis. And it is precisely in this respect that In times of setting light [sic] is a novel that really leaves the GDR behind. "

expenditure

Audio book

  • Ulrich Noethen reads Eugen Ruge In Times of Waning Light . Argon Verlag 2011. 10 CDs. 727 minutes.

radio play

Movie

  • Eugene Ruge. A family novel becomes a bestseller. Documentary, Germany, 2011, 55 min., Written and directed by Árpád Bondy , first broadcast: December 5th, 2011 by arte, production: Árpád Bondy Filmproduktion, rbb , arte , film information from rbb.
  • The novel was adapted for the cinema . Matti Geschonneck directed, Wolfgang Kohlhaase wrote the script. X Film brought the film to the cinema. He was funded from there with 400,000 euros. The film opened in German cinemas on June 1, 2017.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ All page references to the novel refer to the edition: Eugen Ruge. In times of waning light. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 2011.
  2. ↑ Eugen Ruge receives the German Book Prize 2011 for his novel "In times of waning light" . deutscher-buchpreis.de. October 10, 2011. Archived from the original on October 30, 2012. Retrieved on July 23, 2012.
  3. ^ Eugen Ruge: “Cabo de Gata” ( Memento from December 31, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), kulturradio.de
  4. ↑ a b What is meant is Babelsberg , which emerged from the villages of Neuendorf and Nowawes.
  5. ↑ achronia: lack of a chronological relation between different events that are told in a narrative. Cf. Matias Martinez, Michael Scheffel: Introduction to narrative theory. Munich: CH Beck 1999, p. 186.
  6. ↑ Verbs of saying or thinking
  7. ↑ a b Elmar Krekeler: Book award winner fell in love with his math teacher. In: Die Welt from October 12, 2011, interview.
  8. ↑ See Wolfgang Ruge: Berlin-Moscow-Sosswa: Stations of an Emigration. Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 2003, p. 214.
  9. ^ Wolfgang Ruge: Berlin-Moscow-Sosswa: stations of an emigration. Bonn: Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, 2003.
  10. ↑ Valentin Tschepego: Walter Ruge goodbye. In: Syndicalism Research , November 13, 2011.
  11. ^ Documentary film "Across the Threshold" with Walter Ruge , Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, 2006
  12. ↑ See Wolfgang Ruge, 2003, p. 416.
  13. ↑ See ibid., P. 67.
  14. ↑ See ibid., P. 72.
  15. ↑ See ibid., P. 69.
  16. ↑ See the documentation in Wolfgang Ruge, 2003, after p. 88.
  17. ↑ See ibid., P. 11.
  18. ↑ Cf. Eugen Ruge, In times of waning light, p. 332.
  19. ↑ Denis Scheck : comments on the top ten. ( Memento from August 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: ARD , December 18, 2011, accessed on June 20, 2012.
  20. ↑ a b c d Jörg Magenau : Eugen Ruge: In times of waning light. In: Getidan of December 2, 2011.
  21. ↑ Sandra Kegel: A German Century in a Novel. The downfall of the house of Ruge. In: FAZ of August 26, 2011.
  22. ↑ Michael Kumpfmüller : The miracle of a novel. In: Die Welt from September 24, 2011.
  23. ^ A b Felicitas von Lovenberg : Novel readers are better people. In: FAZ of August 2, 2011.
  24. ↑ Tom Fugmann: In times of waning light. ( Memento of October 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: NDR on October 10, 2011, accessed on June 20, 2012.
  25. ↑ a b c d Dirk Knipphals: How do you make a family story? In: The daily newspaper on August 27, 2011.
  26. ↑ Description of the program on the SWR2 website, accessed on December 16, 2012.
  27. ↑ In times of waning light. In: moviepilot.de. Retrieved June 9, 2016 .
  28. ↑ Medienboard - funding decisions for film. (No longer available online.) In: www.medienboard.de. Archived from the original on June 9, 2016 ; Retrieved June 9, 2016 . 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 / www.medienboard.de

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