Maigret and the crime in Holland

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Maigret and the crime in Holland (French: Un crime en Hollande ) is a crime novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . It is part of the first season of 19 novels in a series of 75 novels and 28 short stories about the detective Maigret . The novel was written on board Simenon's boat Ostrogoth in Morsang-sur-Seine in May 1931 and was published by the Paris publisher Fayard in July of that year . The first German translation Maigret in Holland by Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau was published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in 1960. Twenty years later the Diogenes Verlag published a new translation by Renate Nickel under the title Maigret and the crime in Holland .

When a French professor is involved in a murder case while on a lecture tour through the Netherlands , Commissioner Maigret travels from Paris to investigate. Not only the language, but also the mentality of the Dutch is alien to the inspector, who with his unconventional methods offends the locals time and again. But Maigret does not let himself be dissuaded from solving the mysterious crime in Holland.

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Panorama of Delfzijl
Delfzijl train station

It is May and Commissioner Maigret is sent to the north of the Netherlands on an unofficial assignment. Jean Duclos, professor of sociology at the University of Nancy , who is on a trip through Northern Europe with a criminological lecture, was arrested on suspicion of murder during his stay in the small town of Delfzijl . His host Conrad Popinga, a former sea captain and now a teacher at the local naval school, was shot on the night of his stay, and Duclos of all people held the weapon in his hands, Popinga's revolver, which he claims to have found in the bathroom.

In addition to Popinga and Duclos, at the time of the murder, Popinga's Puritan wife Liesbeth and her younger sister Any Van Elst, an intelligent but unattractive blue stocking , were in the house. After the neighbors Wienand had left the company early, the 18-year-old Cornélius Barens was also on his way home. For the cadet of the naval school and half-orphans, Mrs. Popinga had taken on the role of a surrogate mother. The same age Beetje Liewens, the daughter of an influential farmer, was accompanied by Popinga to the local farm after he had danced and flirted with the girl. On his return he was shot from the house, an act that must have been committed from Duclos' room or the adjoining bathroom. The police investigation found cigar marks and a hat in the house. Its owner Oosting, called the "Baes", is a boatman from the nearby island of Workum, who earns his living with semi-legal business and is considered the spokesman for the "Kairatten", a group of seafarers who hang around in the port of Delfzijl.

The investigation is not made easy for Maigret due to his lack of knowledge of the Dutch language . So he repeatedly has the impression that Oosting wants to trust him with something that the language barrier prevents him from doing. To make matters worse, both Duclos and Any Van Elst work as hobby detectives and are not very impressed by Maigret's unconventional methods. The Dutch colleague Pijpekamp, ​​on the other hand, wants above all to avoid a scandal and is willing to believe the agreed statement by Oosting and Barens, according to which a long-departed foreign sailor stole the hat of the "Baes" and murdered Popinga.

When letters emerge confirming the dead man's affair with the young Beetje, it becomes apparent that the drive came from the 18-year-old, who hoped to escape the narrow-minded small town and her strict father at the side of the former adventurer and sailor. Popinga was not the first to be seduced by the runaway into her dream of big city life. She had previously planned to escape with her gymnastics teacher, and when Popinga, a prisoner in his marriage, proved too hesitant, she approached Cornélius, who was the same age, with the same intention. For the fun-loving Popinga, on the other hand, the girl was a harmless flirtation like his adventures as a sailor on shore leave or, when he settled down, flirting with his maid.

At a local appointment, Maigret lets all those involved re-enact the course of the evening, taking on the role of the victim himself. The spectacle reveals that only Any Van Elst had the opportunity to steal the hat from Oosting's boat while walking to the Popingas' house. She was watched by the skipper who secretly followed her. In a repetition of the events, this time too, Cornélius Barens fired a shot at Maigret to protect his host family. But the inspector, who previously filled the weapon with blank cartridges, remains unharmed. However, he exposes someone else as the perpetrator: Any Van Elst, who was once seduced by Popinga and has since loved him unrequitedly. She could accept sharing her beloved with her sister, but not with the flirtatious Beetje, and so after the criminalistic lecture and Popinga's flirt with her young rival, she planned a perfect crime against her unfaithful lover, in which she simply too many interpreted implausible traces.

The explanation is followed by embarrassed silence and the widow's heart attack. Without thanks, Maigret travels back to Paris the next morning, although Duclos, who is relieved, does not want to accompany him. Two years later, the inspector meets Beetje again. Marrying a representative made it possible for the young woman to escape from Delfzijl without the happiness she had longed for having set in in her life. However, she has a story to tell about Any Van Elst, who committed suicide with a fork on the day the trial against her was about to open.

background

Maigret sculpture by Pieter d'Hont in Delfzijl

With the novel Maigret and the crime in Holland , Georges Simenon had his fictional character Maigret return to the place where the author once invented it: the Dutch port city of Delfzijl. Simenon's boat Ostrogoth was anchored here in September 1929 to have it caulked while the author passed the time in a café. Looking back, he described: “Did I drink one, two or even three small genever with a dash of bitter? In any case, after an hour, a little sleepy, I gradually saw the powerful, immobile stature of a man who seemed to make a real inspector for me. ”In fact, Simenon researchers later found out that Simenon was actually a novel with a minor character called Maigret had written, but the first real Maigret novel Maigret and Pietr the Latvian came into being months later. Nevertheless, legend has it that the city of Delfzijl had a life-size Maigret statue erected, which was created by the Dutch artist Pieter d'Hont. At the unveiling on September 3, 1966, four actors were present in addition to the author who had played the commissioner in films or television series: Rupert Davies , Heinz Rühmann , Gino Cervi and Jan Teulings.

In addition to Maigret and the crime in Holland , several other works by Simenon are set in whole or in part in Holland: Maigret and the Nahour case , The murderer and The man who watched the trains . In the latter, too, a non-Maigret novel, the main character is called Popinga, a name that Simenon borrowed from a policeman he had met in the Netherlands. Some of the scenes from Maigret and the crime in Holland can still be found today in Delfzijl, the Amsterdiep canal of the book is actually called Damsterdiep, the island of Workum is Borkum . In retrospect, Simenon himself was of the opinion that the locations and characters in the novel were so close to reality that he could not return to the town of Delfzijl after publication.

interpretation

Tilman Spreckelsen Delfzijl describes it as “neat up to total boredom” , as Simenon demonstrates in Maigret and the crime in Holland , a boredom that is personified by the “well-behaved Wienand family”, which is “simply too boring” even for the author, to trust her to murder. Peter Foord refers to the Protestant ethic , which is responsible for the tension in the place and which turns out to be the crux of the crime. According to Roddy Campbell, the novel revolves around the conflict between the solid, conformist life of the city's citizens and living out the personal needs of individuals. The conflict also played a major role in Simenon's vita, the Popinga couple reminded Campbell of Simenon's parents and their petty-bourgeois environment in Brussels , from which the author broke out to lead a free life in Paris . The different lifestyles are expressed in the juxtaposition of the Dutch and French mentality, with figures like Beetje and Popinga crossing this line. Maigret and the crime in Holland is one of the first novels in which Simenon raises the subject of the escape from the ancestral milieu, which can be found in numerous later works, such as in The Flight of Monsieur Monde . In the end, the runaway Beetje became a respectable representative of the bourgeoisie .

For Frank Böhmert , Beetje, the “girl with the cow”, with whom Maigret has to prove himself in the first chapter as the obstetrician of a calf, is a “magnificent figure”. Stanley G. Eskin sees in the "apparently lively and unspoilt peasant girl" the prototype of a cynical femme fatale and a vamp who makes men like their naive peers dependent on themselves. In the early phase of the series, Tilman Spreckelsen discovers an accumulation of novels in which it is always the “bad women” who “destroy good men with their sensuality”. The topic can be found both in the predecessor Maigret's Night at the Crossroads and in the successor Maigret at the Newfoundland Drivers' Meeting . In any case, for Tim Morris there is an atmosphere of misogyny throughout the novel . Maigret is angry with Beetje, to whom all men, including the inspector, are drawn, he is angry with the men who succumb to the girl's sexual miasm , and he is angry with the other women who are ugly, faded and jealous .

The harshness that Maigret shows in the novel is, according to Peter Foord, also a result of the subliminal hostility that the inspector meets when he interferes in the affair of a strange city and country. His initial inactivity makes him look like a grossly overestimated intruder from Paris in the eyes of the locals, when in reality the activity takes place in his head. In an interview with Duclos, Maigret decidedly opposes scientific criminology . Elsewhere he proclaims his maxim “I never draw conclusions”, which in Maigret's whistle even intensifies to “I never think about it”. Instead, the novel emphasizes Maigret's humanity, compassion and empathy, which allows him to relive the crime through the eyes of the murderer. It says: "Maybe he was never more human than now". The final scene, in which all those involved reconstruct the crime under the direction of the inspector, is, according to Peter Foord, a recourse to set pieces from classic detective novels. Tim Morris feels reminded of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot . The resolution leaves Maigret unsatisfied: the murder is psychologically understandable and arouses pity for the perpetrator. The reader and the commissioner have the inkling that the crime would have been better left unsolved. When Maigret learns about the suicide of the guilty party, he lets his anger run wild.

reception

Roddy Campbell identified Maigret and the crime in Holland as his personal favorite among the early Maigret novels. It is a good detective story that combines many typical elements of the genre: from the large number of suspects, the clues and red pegs to the reconstruction of the crime in the presence of all those involved. But the novel goes beyond that and enters the realms of psychology and sociology with sprinkles of humor, social satire and real human compassion. In contrast, Tim Morris called the novel one of the author's "more obscure" works. Simenon's hasty writing shows itself in the incoherence of various elements of the plot and some scenes that have not been completed.

The Spectator read "one of the inspector's quieter adventures". The bleak plot reveals Simenon's descriptive and narrative abilities. Landscapes and figures are closely observed and captured in a lively manner, so that one feels as if one has “spent some time in the narrow-minded little town with its canals and its social inhibitions”. Tilman Spreckelsen praised: "The way Simenon creates a multifaceted panorama of the city and its inhabitants on 165 pages has something to offer." "Imposing, concise, with tender calm," said Frank Böhmert, who wrote the novel, individual scenes of which remained in his memory. as if they came from a feature film: "This little thriller is so powerfully written."

The New York Times Saturday Review of Book and Art saw Maigret and the Crime in Holland, as well as Maigret and the Spy, “excellent examples of the work of Georges Simenon, who, for the speed with which he ejects his detective stories, the French Edgar Wallace The similarity ends there, however, because Simenon does not rely on fast-paced action and exciting effects like his English colleague: "His commissioner Maigret is pretty much the quietest detective known in literature, but he is nonetheless effective. “For Kirkus Reviews , the“ yarn ”of the novels was“ fast-paced and easy to read ”:“ Maigret promises to become a recognized classic within a short time ”.

The novel was filmed twice. In 1976, Jean Richard played Commissioner Maigret in the French TV series Les Enquêtes du Commissaire Maigret. Twenty years later, the French television series with Bruno Cremer moved the action to Finland .

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: Un crime en Hollande. Fayard, Paris 1931 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in Holland. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1960.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret in Holland. Translation: Hansjürgen Wille and Barbara Klau. Heyne, Munich 1966.
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the crime in Holland. Translation: Renate Nickel. Diogenes, Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-257-20809-X .
  • Georges Simenon: Maigret and the crime in Holland. Complete Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 8. Translation: Renate Nickel. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23808-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Un crime en Hollande in the Simenon bibliography by Yves Martina.
  2. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions. In: Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , pp. 76-77.
  3. ↑ Georges Simenon on the birth of the figure of Commissioner Maigret . In: Georges Simenon: Maigret and Pietr the Lette . All Maigret novels in 75 volumes, volume 1. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23801-3 , p. 191.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Maigret of the Month: Un Crime en Hollande (A Crime in Holland) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  5. ↑ The Maigret Statue at Delfzijl on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  6. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 29.
  7. ↑ Baudouin Bollaert: Simenon au Cap Nord (1) . In: Le Figaro of July 26, 2001.
  8. ^ Maigret in Delfzijl on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  9. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , pp. 268-269.
  10. ^ A b Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 8: The crime in Holland . On FAZ.net from May 30, 2008.
  11. ↑ a b Georges Simenon, Maigret und das Verbrechen in Holland (F 1931)  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / frankboehmert.blogspot.de   in Frank Böhmert's blog .
  12. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , pp. 164-165.
  13. ^ Tilman Spreckelsen: Maigret Marathon 9: The meeting of the Newfoundland riders . On FAZ.net from June 6, 2008.
  14. ↑ Maigret of the Month: Au Rendez-vous des Terre-Neuvas (The Sailors' Rendez-vous) on Steve Trussel's Maigret page.
  15. ↑ a b c Tim Morris: lection: un crime en hollande on the website of the University of Texas at Arlington .
  16. ^ New York Times Saturday Review of Book and Art Volume 2, 1940, pp. Lxxxix.
  17. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 , p. 33.
  18. ^ Fenton Bresler: Georges Simenon. In search of the "naked" person . Ernst Kabel, Hamburg 1985, ISBN 3-921909-93-7 , p. 128.
  19. ↑ Georges Simenon: Maigret and the crime in Holland. Diogenes, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-257-23808-2 , p. 144.
  20. ^ Armin Arnold, Josef Schmidt (Ed.): Reclams Kriminalromanführer . Reclam, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-15-010279-0 , p. 311.
  21. ^ "A Crime in Holland, recounts one of the Inspector's quieter adventures, but the very drabness of the story serves to bring out Monsieur Simenon's descriptive and narrative gifts. Once again the landscape and figures are clearly observed and vividly set down: one feels one has spent a considerable time in this smug little town with its canals and its social self-consciousness. ”Quoted from: The Spectator , Volume 164, 1940, p 696.
  22. ^ "These two stories are excellent examples of the work of Georges Simenon, who has been called the French Edgar Wallace, because of the rapidity with which he turns out his detective tales. […] His Inspector Maigret is about the calmest detective known to fiction, but he is none the less effective for all that. ”Quoted from: New York Times Saturday Review of Book and Art Volume 2, 1940, p. Lxxxix.
  23. ^ "Maigret promises to become an accepted classic in short order. The yarns are well-paced and good reading. ”Quoted from: Maigret abroad on Kirkus Reviews .
  24. ↑ Maigret Films & TV on Steve Trussel's website.