Loveless legends
Loveless Legends is the title of a collection of short stories by the German writer Wolfgang Hildesheimer . The book edition first appeared in 1952 in the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt ; In 1956 a second edition followed by Diogenes Verlag . The stories were previously published in German newspapers, the first being Der Kammerjäger on March 25, 1950 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung .
In the following two years, 21 more short stories appeared, most of which were first published in the Neue Zeitung . Until 1962, Hildesheimer wrote other legends . In the same year the Suhrkamp Verlag published a new compilation of the texts with partly revised and newly recorded stories; others were no longer included in this compilation. It was not until 1983 that Suhrkamp published all 26 stories belonging to the cycle of loveless legends .
In 2008 an audio book with Mechthild Großmann was published by Patmos Verlag .
Short stories
For the edition of All Lieblos Legends , which appeared in 1983, Hildesheimer arranged his short stories in the following order:
- The light gray spring coat
- A major purchase
- Why I turned into a nightingale
- The search for the truth
- I am not writing a book about Kafka
- I find my way around
- Portrait of a Poet
- Weyerswyl as a symptom
- The two souls
- Gregor Rutz and existentialism
- The death of my traveling salesman
- The guest performance of the insurance agent
- The studio party
- From the career of my poodle Cassius
- My experiences in the age of exclamations
- Encounter on the promenade
- The fairy tale of the giant
- The attic apartment
- The holidays
- The end of a world
- 1956 - a year of mushrooms
- Westcotte's luster and end
- From my diary
- I am carrying an owl to Athens
- The porridge on our stove
- Sleep
Content components
In terms of content, Wolfgang Hildesheimer primarily deals with cultural issues in Lieblos Legends . In a satirical form, he considers the reception of culture in a large part of the stories, the cultural business as such and individual forms of what is commonly regarded as intellectual and cultural property.
Hildesheimer uses irony as a narrative tool and describes bizarre scenarios and events that often drift into the surreal , for example in The End of a World . In addition, Hildesheimer anticipates motifs that also appear in his later works, especially his plays, which are assigned to the theater of the absurd .
drawings
The illustrator Paul Flora made drawings for many of the Loveless Legends , which were included in the book editions.