John le Carré

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John le Carré (2008)

John le Carré , civil a) David John Moore Cornwell (born October 19, 1931 in Poole , Dorset , England , † December 12, 2020 in Truro , Cornwall , England), was a British writer . After he had worked for the British secret services MI5 and MI6 , he became known from the 1960s for his spy novels . Initially, they mostly played in the Cold War climateand entwined around the figure of the secret agent George Smiley . From the 1990s on, le Carré's thriller also took up other topics such as the entanglement of politics and economics. His works have been sold 60 million times around the world and many have been made into films.

Life

Cornwell's mother, Olive Moore Cornwell, née Glassey (* 1906), unexpectedly left the family when he was five and did not reappear until much later in life when he wrote a letter to relatives at the age of 21 asking about her - she answered and the two met at Ipswich train station . His father, Ronald Thomas Archibald ("Ronnie") Cornwell (1906–1975), a con man and fraudster who worked with the Kray twins , felons from the East End of London , and for insurance fraudWas sentenced to four years in prison, exercised great influence on him throughout his life. Le Carré repeatedly had to support him financially (“A few ten thousand pounds here and there.”) And at the end stayed away from the funeral, even though he had paid for it. In his strongly autobiographical novel A Perfect Spy (German Ein dablender Spion ) he processed the relationship literarily. His older brother Tony (1929-2017) was a cricketer, his younger half-sister Charlotte Cornwell (* 1949) is an actress and his younger half-brother Rupert Cornwell (1949-2017) was a journalist. His uncle Alec Glassey (1887-1970) was a member of the lower house.

“I had a very complicated and messy childhood. A rich one too. "

Because he could no longer reconcile his life with that of his English environment, Cornwell “fled” from his English school at the age of seventeen. In 1948 and 1949 he studied German and New Languages ​​at the University of Bern , a. a. with Fritz Strich , who supported him despite his lack of knowledge of German. He fell in love with classical German literature and was in contact with many Jews from intellectual Germany who had fled to Bern, including professors at his university such as Fritz Strich. the SwitzerlandDue to the unpleasant course of his youth, he became “a second home” and Bern his “mother city”, which he has repeatedly described in his works; he remained connected to Switzerland all his life, he had a châlet. In 1950 he joined the intelligence service of the British Army in Austria . There he heard people who had fled through the iron curtain . In 1952 he returned to England and studied at Lincoln College of University of Oxford , where he worked for the British domestic intelligence security service(MI5) spied on ultra-left groups for Soviet agents. After a short break in his studies because of his father's bankruptcy, he graduated from Oxford in 1956 with honors. He taught French and German at Eton College for two years. In 1958 he became an MI5 agent and in 1960 moved to the British foreign intelligence service Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), for which he worked in Bonn and Hamburg . He was there during the construction of the Berlin Wall . During this time he wrote his first novels, before he quit his job in 1964 and devoted himself exclusively to writing under his stage name John le Carré.

"Maybe the secret world was a kind of protection, a kind of identity, the discipline attracted me very much."

In 1954 he married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp, with whom he has three sons. This marriage ended in divorce in 1971. In 1972 he married the editor Valérie Jane Eustace. With her he has a son who publishes under the name Nick Harkaway .

In February 2011 John le Carré donated his literary archive to the Bodleian Library for permanent storage.

In October 2019, he applied for Irish citizenship in order to remain an EU citizen after the UK left the European Union . His paternal grandmother was born in Ireland .

John le Carré died on December 12, 2020 at the age of 89 of complications from pneumonia .

plant

Until the 1980s, the subject of le Carré's novels was the East-West conflict and the Cold War . The novels are characterized by a differentiated psychological drawing of the characters involved and are meticulously researched. Le Carré broke with the conventional black-and-white view. The West intervenes in the fight against communismto the methods of the East and thus betray the ideals for which he is fighting. In his novels, Le Carré repeatedly asks the question whether the end justifies the means and whether the West can resort to the means of the East to defend itself, and still remain a society worth defending. In the press of the Soviet Union he was referred to as a "cold war agitator". Even after the end of the Cold War, le Carré remained true to its theme: men who decide for the individual and against the institution, as well as criticism of the politics of the West. The Independent newspaper called le Carré "a fascinating mix of patrician and populist " in relation to the criticism of the times in his novels .

Cover of the first edition of The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold

In his first novel Yesterday's Shadows he introduced George Smiley , probably his best-known protagonist, whose genius as a secret service man stands in stark contrast to his inability to socialize, which was contrary to the usual image of a heroic spy. Le Carré's international breakthrough came with his third book The Spy Who Came Out of the Cold , in which Smiley merely pulls the strings in the background. The British agent Leamas, whose East Berlin spy ring has been exposed (with dire consequences for his agents), is sent on a final mission to the east. Too late he has to realize that he is just a pawn in the cynicalRepresents game of secret services. This representation of the agent world stands in stark contrast to the spy stories about the character James Bond that were published and filmed at the same time . In the film adaptation of the novel , Richard Burton plays the role of Leamas.

In the novels Dame, König, Ace, Spy and Agent on his own behalf , Smiley's fight against his Russian adversary with the code name Karla is portrayed, from the exposure of a Russian mole agent in the British secret service (apparently an allusion to the Kim Philby affair ) until the final overthrow of his adversary. The two stories were featured on the BBC with Alec GuinnessFilmed as George Smiley in 1979 and 1982. Le Carré, very satisfied with the implementation, in which he himself was involved, saw himself from then on no longer able to develop the character further because the film character created by Guinness blocked his own view of Smiley. In the subsequent novel The Secret Companion , which was published in 1991 , Smiley appeared again as a supporting character and key word for an old spy who remembers episodes of his life and remembers comic, heroic or absurd stages in his career.

In addition to the East-West conflict, le Carré also deals with the tensions in the Middle East . In Die Libelle , an Israeli team of agents uses a young English woman to target a top Palestinian terrorist . Here too, in addition to the exciting and realistic plot, the question of morality is in the foreground; manipulating people and taking advantage of the opponent's human weaknesses. The unfair treatment of the Palestinians is also discussed.

Even with his later novels he succeeded in integrating important contemporary topics into a highly complex and exciting plot, for example in his book The Eternal Gardener , which deals with the machinations of internationally active pharmaceutical companies . Again and again one encounters tragic and bizarre characters, which are often based on personal encounters during his research trips. In Der Nachtmanager (1993) he described the international arms trade in detail , in Marionetten (2008) he devoted himself to the fear of Islamist terror that prevailed in society after September 11, 2001 , in traitors like us(2011) the money laundering operations of the Russian Mafia . In 2016, le Carré's memoir Der Taubentunnel was published , in which he reports individual episodes from his life. In 2017 he published The Legacy of the Spies , in which he again refers to the Cold War era, lets George Smiley appear again and makes a political commitment to Europe. Although the legacy of le Carré was planned as a conclusion of his work, he put 2019 badminton a new novel before, who is also a reaction of confident Europeans on the daily political events around the United Kingdom and Gibraltar European Union membership referendum is.

“I think every writer is actually a spy: he has to be able to observe well, he has to be able to report well, he has to use his imagination, this imagination must be suitable as reality. [...] I would have become a writer even without having been a spy, but would have had a different material, material. "

- to his earlier self-posed question: "I'm not sure, am I a writer who was a spy before or was I a spy who became a writer?"

Favorite books

In 1996 the Internet magazine Salon.com asked John le Carré what his favorite reading material was. Le Carré replied that he actually hated that question. They seduce you to show off your choice of unusual works. He went on to say, however, that his favorite novel Then was not Jeeves by PG Wodehouse - in his opinion this comic novel with its memorable award ceremony by the drunken Gussie Fink-Nottle belongs in every book collection. So that everyone would remember that reading is a pleasure, he named two other works by PG Wodehouse, namely the two golf stories The Clicking of Cuthbert and The Heart of a Goof. Among his other favorite books, le Carré counted the novel The Very Saddest Story (Original Title: The Good Soldier ) by Ford Madox Ford , which le Carré described as one of the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century. The love in the times of cholera of the Nobel laureate in literature Gabriel García Márquez can only be compared to his novella Chronicle of an Announced Death and this in turn only has a match in Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich , which le Carré described as the world's best short story.

If you want to learn a lot about human nature beyond that, it would be well advised to read the novels by Charles Dickens and Honoré de Balzac , followed by Alexander Iwanowitsch Herzens From the Memoirs of a Russian , Edward Gibbons The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , Flavius ​​Josephus History of the Jews and finally Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina .

reception

John le Carré giving a speech at the German Embassy in London in 2017

For a long time John le Carré was perceived as a pure genre author who was out of the question for higher literary awards. It was criticized, for example, that his political views exceeded his literary rank and that a tendency to preach often overshadowed the plot. Still, according to Sebastian Shakespeare, his novels have made a lasting impression on English literature. In their moral depth they served as a vehicle to explore good and bad, trust and deceit, hope and despair. Toby Clements emphasizes le Carré's opacityand moral complexities that pointed beyond the genre of the espionage novel and, not least, would have mirrored the decline of Great Britain since the Second World War. The best of his novels would persist because of their complexity and sophistication:

“Today only Fleming is read by his competitors , mostly out of nostalgia. Len Deighton and Alistair MacLean today can only be read with a lot of irony. But we will still read le Carré in a hundred years. "

- Toby Clements, The Daily Telegraph

In 2013, the British writer Ian McEwan praised Le Carré as “perhaps the most important British novelist of the second half of the 20th century”, who like no one else described the decline of the country and the constraints of bureaucratic systems and thus long ago exceeded the espionage genre should be noted.

Awards

For his literary work he was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America in 1984 and the Diamond Dagger from the Association of English Crime Writers in 1988 .

In 2005 the British Crime Writers' Association (CWA) awarded a special Dagger of Daggers for the best crime novel of the last 50 years on the occasion of the 50th award . Winner was John Le Carré with his novel The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (dt .: The Spy Who Came in from the cold ) . Other awards:

Works

Film adaptations

literature

  • Myron J. Aronoff: The Spy Novels of John le Carré. Balancing Ethics and Politics . St. Martin's Press, New York 1999, ISBN 0-312-21482-0 .
  • Peter Bennett: Wilderness of mirrors: the representation of identity and subjectivity in the spy novels of John le Carré . Dissertation in English studies , University of Hanover 1998.
  • Harold Bloom (Ed.): John le Carré . Chelsea House, New York 1987, ISBN 0-87754-703-3 .
  • Jost Hindersmann: John le Carré. The spy turned writer . NordPark, Wuppertal 2002, ISBN 3-935421-12-5 .
  • Eric Homberger: John le Carré . Methuen, London 1986, ISBN 0-416-40450-2 .
  • Vittorio Hösle : Professional ethics of the secret services and crisis of high politics. Philosophical reflections on the literary universe of John Le Carré's espionage novel in general and on "Absolute Friends" in particular. In: German quarterly journal. Volume 79, 2005, pp. 131-159.
  • Elena Jenssen: The narrative of the secret. Narrative plots in the spy novels by John Le Carré . Libri Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2000, ISBN 3-8311-0371-2 .
  • Peter Lewis: John le Carré . Ungar, New York 1985, ISBN 0-8044-2243-5 .
  • David Monaghan: Smiley's Circus. The secret world of John le Carré . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-453-05629-9 .
  • David Monaghan: The Novels of John le Carré. The Art of Survival . Basil Blackwell, New York 1985, ISBN 0-631-14283-5 .
  • Winfried Schuster: Parallels and contrasts in the spy novels by John le Carré as a sign of humanity. Research into storytelling with David John Moore Cornwell . Laumann Verlag, Dülmen 2005, ISBN 3-89960-269-2 .
  • Adam Sisman: John le Carre: the biography. Bloomsbury, London / Oxford / New York / New Delhi / Sydney 2015, ISBN 978-1-4088-2793-2 .

Web links

Wikiquote: John le Carré  - Quotes

annotation

a) In private he stayed with David, professionally he called himself John le Carré

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ulrich Noller in conversation with Angela Gutzeit: On the death of John le Carré - chronicler of the Cold War. In: Deutschlandfunk . Accessed December 14, 2020 (German).
  2. ↑ Zoe Brennan: What does John Le Carre have to hide? Retrieved April 2, 2011, December 15, 2020 (UK English).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j John le Carré in conversation with Anton Schaller in Das Sonntags Interview ( SRF ) from 1989: YouTube. Retrieved December 14, 2020 .
  4. ↑ "Thanks to my father, an impostor and fraudster, I was already familiar with the seductive charm of the criminal world in my childhood and was forced to carve out a moral concept for my life." About life in the "secret world" . Interview with Thomas David in Neue Zürcher Zeitung March 12, 2011, p. 69.
  5. ↑ a b “As for Ronnie Cornwell, he was a charming confidence trickster and womaniser, who repeatedly made and lost fortunes and spent four years in prison. He was an associate of the Kray brothers in London's criminal fraternity. “ What does John Le Carre have to hide? The reclusive spy novelist is finally letting a biographer loose on the skeletons in his past. . Interview with Zoe Brennan in The Daily Telegraph April 2, 2011.
  6. ↑ Interview in Schweizer Radio DRS 1 on October 11, 2010, talk of the day
  7. ↑ «We have to beat people like Trump while they are on the rise» (Interview, title in the printed edition: Hypocrisy is out of fashion ). In: nzz.ch. NZZ, June 17, 2017, accessed December 15, 2020 .
  8. ↑ John le Carré to gift his entire literary archive to the Bodleian Library . In: Bodleian Libraries. February 24, 2011, accessed December 15, 2020 .
  9. ↑ John le Carré wants to remain an EU citizen with an Irish passport. In: The time . October 21, 2019, accessed December 15, 2020 .
  10. ^ John le Carré, author of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, dies aged 89. In: www.theguardian.com. The Guardian , December 13, 2020, accessed December 13, 2020 .
  11. ^ The Independent: Our Kind of Traitor
  12. ↑ Marcus Müntefering: "I was born to lie" . In: Spiegel Online . September 7, 2016.
  13. ↑ Marcus Müntefering: "For God's sake, don't hold a referendum". In: Spiegel online. October 16, 2017, accessed January 19, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Jochen Vogt : Encore for the spy . In: The Friday of October 29, 2019.
  15. ↑ John le Carré; Personal Best: Right Ho, Jeeves , Salon. September 30, 1996 , accessed April 24, 2016.
  16. ↑ Sebastian Shakespeare: The finest genre writer never to win the Booker . In: London Evening Standard . September 16, 2008.
  17. ^ Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Love letter to John Le Carré. In: The Daily Telegraph . September 9, 2011.
  18. ↑ John le Carré, Best-Selling Author of Cold War Thrillers, Dies at 89 The New York Times , December 13, 2020, accessed December 15, 2020
  19. ↑ Based on a short story by Le Carré. See Internet Movie Database
  20. ↑ for more information see http://krimiserien.heimat.eu/fernsehspiele/1973-endstation.htm


personal data
SURNAME Le Carré, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cornwell, David John Moore (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Poole , Dorset , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH December 12, 2020
Place of death Truro , Cornwall , England , United Kingdom