Power (novel)

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Karen Duve at the presentation of the novel “Macht”, Blue Sofa , Leipzig Book Fair , 2016

Macht is a novel by the writer Karen Duve , which was published in February 2016 by Verlag Galiani Berlin .

content

The scene of the action is the fictional community of Wellingstedt near Hamburg in the year 2031. Germany is ruled by feminists under the SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz who have implemented strict ecological policies . In “controlled democracy”, the right to stand for election was restricted to candidates who had undergone a psychological assessment . Eating meat is frowned upon and must be "paid for" with CO 2 points. Critical young people describe the regime as “ eco-fascism ” (p. 179; all quotations after the first edition). Heat waves and violent storms have become normal with climate change ; the damage is so bad that building insurance is no longer available. Genetically modified "killer rape" plants are proliferating everywhere . Most take the drug “Ephebo” in order to physically rejuvenate themselves - depending on the dose - by several decades (“chrono-old”, in contrast to the “bio-old” without such a rejuvenation cure). It does not matter that you run a considerable risk of cancer , because there is an end times mood: “We can all do what we want without having to fear the consequences. That is the good thing when there is no future ”(p. 92). Only religious fundamentalists refrain from taking the drug; they age naturally and are therefore discriminated against .

The cynical and macho protagonist and first-person narrator Sebastian Bürger, an eco-activist since his youth , works in the “Information Center” of the “Democracy Center”, where the state is explained to schoolchildren. The first-person narrator lives in a house that he took over from his siblings after the death of his parents and which he has been furnishing in the style of the 1960s and 1970s . His wife Dr. Christine Semmelrogge, who was Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Power Plant Shutdown and Nuclear Waste Disposal until she disappeared from the public eye, was kept chained in a soundproof prepper room in the basement of his house for two years against her will , in order to create a sadistic feeling of power to act out towards women and thereby to feel like a man: "How did women ever get the idea that they should have a say in any society?" (p. 337). He instructs her to cook him his favorite dishes and bake his favorite cookies, and he continuously rapes and other forms of sexual assault on her and experiences all of this in a narcissistic way as pleasurable. The little children they share have no idea of ​​any of this.

At a class reunion 50 years after finishing school together, Sebastian meets his former childhood sweetheart Elisabeth "Elli" Westphal. They fall in love, so Sebastian feels encouraged to start a new life with her. To get rid of his wife Christine, who would stand in his way with the new beginning, he tries to kill her with an overdose of sleeping pills. He gives her the poison, waits until she is passed out and finally walls her up in the false ceiling of the prepper room. While he is covering up the traces of the crime, Elli accidentally discovers the hidden room. She suspects that things are not going well there. Sebastian loses his nerve, overwhelms her and now holds her prisoner instead of Christine's, thereby destroying their happiness together. In Sebastian's absence, Elli opens the freshly plastered area in the ceiling when she tries to escape and hides Christine, who is still alive but seriously ill as a result of the poisoning, and tells her what was done to her.

In view of the two women trapped in his basement who threaten to betray him, Sebastian plans to flee abroad. He takes care of their children with grandmother Gerda. He recorded his confession in a letter that he would like to send to the police while he is on the flight to Paraguay on a plane .

On the way to the airport, however, in Hamburg he gets caught in a demonstration by militant and right-wing extremist men's rights activists of the "Maskulo Movement", in whose shadow a rocker gang under the leadership of his former classmate Ingo Dresen wants to wreak havoc . They want to attack African refugees before they use the media to save some doomed animals from being slaughtered by the evangelical “ disciples of John of the seven plagues of trumpets”. Sebastian gets involved in the bloody and apocalyptic -looking slaughter ceremony, from which he escapes seriously injured with Dresen's help. A letter of confession that he hands over to Dresen shortly before departure is not sent to the police, as agreed, but reads it himself and frees Christine and Elli from their prison.

Sebastian found out about the rushing news while on the plane. The Ingo Dresen announced coup d'état has failed. The flight has to make a stopover in Paris under a pretext . Sebastian expects to be arrested. He explains his failure by the lack of solidarity among men towards a world ruled by women: “There is no solidarity among the weak. What is male friendship against praise from the mouths of the really powerful, women? ”(P. 410). Sebastian's inner monologue ends with the question (p. 414):

“Where's Elli? I need her so much now.
Where's Elli? "

reception

“Power” is the fictional processing of topics that Karen Duve previously wrote in the non-fiction book “ Decent Eating ” (2011) and in the essay “Why things go wrong. How egoists, hollow heads and psychopaths are depriving us of the future ”(2014).

Duve explained in an interview with Marten Rolff that she essentially wanted to bring three ideas together: “A story that takes place in the near future. In addition, the thought that everything was better in the past ... And thirdly, the case of the Austrian Josef Fritzl , who held his daughter and later also their children captive for decades ... The protagonist says: I have done good all my life, been committed and for what? The world will end in five years, and now should I submit to my ex-wife's ego trip? Should other idiots do without, I want to live again. Why let someone else go first who is actually weaker than me? "

The novel was largely rejected by literary criticism .

Julia Encke called the book a "sadistic soft porn without surprise" that remains without consequences. Marlen Hobrack is ashamed to admit that some scenes are "very funny because written brilliantly", but she also admits that you have to like the "nasty bitterness" in order to be able to gain something from the book. Katharina Granzin finds Sebastian “disgusting, but also funny and at the same time strangely believable”. For Sigrid Löffler , Sebastian Bürger is a “secret angry citizen ” and a “dull psychopath”; Incidentally, the story has no depth.

The satire , laid out as an eco- dystopia , reminds Ijoma Mangold of Michel Houellebecq's “ submission ”, but he complains about the “complete lack of ambiguity (unlike Houellebecq)” and considers “power” to be a “failed novel” , because Sebastian Bürger as a psychiatric case could not embody a real alternative to state feminism. Therefore, there is no development in the story, the roles remain the same from the first to the last page. The flat characters offer little cause for identification. After all, the furious ending to the story has “action cinema qualities”. Volker Weidermann read the book as “a political novel without hope”.

Karin Herrmann has the presentation of Bluebeard's back and parallels to Duve's " Rain Novel " in which also the sex ratio as a zero-sum game will shown. There is no equality between men and women, only victorious and defeated, and the “concept of power coincides with that of abuse of power”. While Sebastian Bürger is regressively furnishing his own house in the style of his childhood, he is increasingly banning digital media from his life. In the end, he did not fail with his plans, he was "just unlucky".

Most critics overlook the fact that the portrayals of the political extremists in the novel follow original documents and testimonies. Gunda Bartels compares the statements that were moved by men with the slogans of the controversial AfD politician Björn Höcke , "who likes to call on the members at party meetings to 'rediscover our masculinity' in order to finally become 'defensible' again." Katharina Granzin points out that also the “manifest” of the mass murderer Anders Breivik for the novel “with direct quotations” was used, which gives the “portrait of a violent psychopath a creepy authenticity”. Overall, she comes to the conclusion that the novel is "a pretty colorful horror show of considerable entertainment value".

expenditure

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Marten Rolff: Do-gooders . In: sueddeutsche.de . February 13, 2016, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed November 18, 2018]).
  2. ↑ Julia Encke: "Power" by Karen Duve: The main thing is, roared . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed November 17, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Marlen Hobrack: Dystopia: You should bake. In: The Friday. March 3, 2016, accessed on November 17, 2018 (edition 09/2016).
  4. ↑ a b Katharina Granzin: Anger literature by Karen Duve: There is no pony farm in the cellar . In: The daily newspaper: taz . February 15, 2016, ISSN  0931-9085 ( taz.de [accessed November 17, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Similar: Rolf Löchel: Männerphantasien - Karen Duve's dystopian novel “Macht” leads us into the misogyne year 2031. In: literaturkritik.de. March 15, 2016, accessed November 17, 2018 . : "The morbidly suspicious psychopath citizen ...".
  6. ↑ Karen Duve: "Power" - Grossschlächtige worldview in the form of a novel . In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur . March 11, 2016 ( deutschlandfunkkultur.de [accessed November 17, 2018]).
  7. ^ Ijoma Mangold: Novel "Power": Speech bubble machos . In: ZEIT ONLINE . No. 7 , February 25, 2016 ( zeit.de [accessed November 17, 2018]).
  8. ↑ Volker Weidermann: Femi-Nazis in power . In: Der Spiegel: Literature Spiegel . No. 2 , January 30, 2016, p. 4–5 ( spiegel.de [accessed November 18, 2018]).
  9. ↑ Karin Herrmann: Karen Duve . In: Critical lexicon for contemporary German literature . 15th September 2016.
  10. ↑ Gunda Bartels: Men are big bags . In: Der Tagesspiegel . February 17, 2016 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed November 17, 2018]).