Loveless legends

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Cover of a Suhrkamp edition

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.