Johann Holtrop

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Johann Holtrop is the protagonist of the novel of the same name by the German writer Rainald Goetz from 2012.

The novel describes the rise and fall of top manager Dr. Johann Holtrop in the 2000s, who at the height of his rapid career becomes CEO of an international media group, Assperg AG. Johann Holtrop is depicted as a narcissistic-egomaniacal man of action. Holtrop likes the grand gesture and is not very interested in business needs. His communicative assertiveness and capricious appearances are on the one hand the stirrups of his personal success, on the other hand the reasons for his deep fall. The figure of Johann Holtrop is described from an attitude of rejection and disgust, although occasionally it does not exclude a certain fascination.

In addition to the plot about Holtrop, the novel is at the same time a time-diagnostic social panorama of the noughties, as it is suggested in the ambiguous subtitle `` Outline of Society '' . Developments and events such as the collapse of the New Economy at the beginning of the noughties or the first red-green federal government and in particular the German media industry are recapitulated and evaluated. Numerous real people from contemporary events appear in the novel, or characters whose resemblance to real people is obvious. Because of this, criticism repeatedly brought the figure of Johann Holtrop into connection with the manager Thomas Middelhoff , who was chairman of the board of the Bertelsmann AG media group from 1998 to 2002 .

Rainald Goetz had already used the name Johann Holtrop in his book loslabern from 2009 and used it to describe one of his many legendary pre-great-grandfathers.

Radio plays

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Weidermann: The bad message of literature. In: FAZ.net . September 1, 2012, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  2. ↑ See Rainald Goetz, loslabern, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main, 1st edition 2012, page 111f.
  3. ^ BR radio play Pool - Goetz, Johann Holtrop

See also