Life and adventure of the trobadora Beatriz
The montage novel Life and Adventure of Trobadora Beatriz, based on the testimony of her minister Laura von Irmtraud Morgner , was first published in 1974 in the GDR and in 1976 in the Federal Republic of Germany. The book was very well received in both the East German and West German women's movements. The book, which has around 680 pages, is summarized below under its main topics:
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The Provencal love singer Beatriz finds herself after a pact with the goddess Persephone after more than 800 years of sleep in 1968. She is looking for a liberated life as a woman, in which she is recognized as an equal person. In France, she experienced various episodes in the construction site, student and prostitution milieu as well as in a civil marriage that she chose as a facade and is very disillusioned with regard to her concern for a liberated life. In Paris she meets Uwe Parnitzke, an apparently convinced communist from the GDR who made a lasting impression on Beatrice. Uwe's family history and life situation is conveyed with a change of perspective in inserted intermezzo books. These are based on the novel Morgner's "Rumba für ein Herbst", originally not released for publication in the GDR in 1965. These intermediate books show Uwe, who works as a journalist, as an insecure, sometimes suicidal man, who suffers from his biography as the son of an SA man and refugee child and who is unsure of his naive loyalty to ideology after the reform process initiated by the 20th party congress of the CPSU .
After becoming acquainted with the German language and the works of Karl Marx and Uwe Parnitzke, Beatriz traveled to the GDR with euphoric expectations and, after further escapades into the everyday world of the GDR, met, among other things, in a circus via a letter to the railcar driver Laura, who was with her first marriage Uwe Parnitzke was married. Laura passes her lover Lutz on to Beatriz. Beatriz is disappointed that “her incarnation” as a woman will not succeed despite the leap in time she has made. Laura finally agrees to Beatriz's suggestion to become her minstrel who takes on the artistic duties of the love singer and poet in everyday Berlin life.
At Laura's behest, Beatriz sets out to search for the unicorn Anaximander in various parts of Europe, while Laura is busy with everyday life with her young son Wesselin and an activity as a writer under the name Beatriz. Laura finds her loving second husband Benno Pakulat, Lutz's younger brother, the temporary lover of the two women, through mediation from the divine sphere. The family history of the Pakulats is presented in intermezzo narratives from the perspective of the war-traumatized father. Stories that Laura and Benno told each other are little chapters of their own. Other chapters describe that Laura deals with the GDR reporting on the law on the interruption of pregnancy . Beatrice returns to Laura after she has finally discovered Anaximander in Venice . Laura and Benno get married. At the wedding, Beatriz performs a wedding song by Paul Vienna as a trobadora , whose name is identical to Irmtraud Morgner's real second husband. Beatriz is increasingly taking on the classic female housewife role and is also immersed in everyday life in the GDR, e.g. B. on the penultimate train journey from Laura's father as a steam engine driver. At her request, the goddess Persephone granted Laura's mother a 300-year sleep in the future. After Lauras, Bennos and Beatriz had a drinking bout on the occasion of the French national elections in March 1973, Beatrice fell to her death while cleaning windows. Uwe Parnitzke's second wife Valeska turns into a man in Moscow and experiences the different gender roles. Back in the GDR, she temporarily transforms herself into a woman for her lover Rudolph by means of a rib presentation. As Beatriz's successor, Laura is appointed to the leadership group under the goddess Persephone. To comfort Laura, Benno tells the story of Beatrice with a positive outcome.
Genre, structure and style
The following can be said about the genre, structure and style of the novel: Morgner himself reflects on the form of the novel in the context of her book as an “operative montage novel”. It is divided into twelve parts called books by Morgner, which mainly deal with Beatriz and Laura's fate, and also inserted explanations by the fictional narrator IM and other fictional parts (such as a free interpretation of the biblical story Jonas from the perspective his mistress or an interview with a world chess champion on women's issues). There are also seven intermezzo books that deal with Uwe Parnitzke's life and the family history of the Pakulats. The style of the novel is characterized by an exact description of both fantastic and everyday topics and places. The novel is continued in Morgner's 1983 novel "Amanda".