Maneuvers in autumn
Maneuver in autumn (subtitle: The life of the good German Heinrich Emanuel Schütze ) is a satirical war and society novel by Heinz G. Konsalik from 1967 , which deals with militarism in Germany and its effects on society. According to the author's own statements, Maneuver fell well short of sales expectations in the autumn and was therefore considered one of the less successful books from the Konsalik series for a long time. It was not until 1978/79, when the "Allgemeine Konsalik-Welle" began, that this title also reached a circulation of 0.4 million copies. The “most poisonous book since Hermann Hesse” contains the life story of the professional soldier Heinrich Emanuel Schütze, who wants to stand on the general hill once in his life and risks everything for it.
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Blurb
“Dedicated with anxiety to all Germans who have not yet learned anything from two world wars, two currency devaluations, two total collapses and over 50 million war dead. It tells the life of the "good" German Heinrich Emanuel Schütze, the résumé of a professional soldier - from ensign in the imperial army in 1913 to retired lieutenant colonel in the greater German armed forces and textile supplier to the new armed forces. The story of a man who serves his fatherland in good faith and who has learned nothing in fifty years because his ideals and views have not changed. "
action
Heinrich Emanuel Schütze is also involved in this year's autumn maneuver, the imperial maneuver, in Trottowitz in Lower Silesia as a volunteer in the rank of ensign . His superior, Captain Stroy, has given him the prospect that if the maneuver is successfully completed, he will be promoted to the post of lieutenant . The maneuver takes place in front of a large audience: Kaiser Wilhelm II , King August of Saxony , King Constantine of Greece stand on the Feldherrenhügel, as well as the Prussian War Minister Erich von Falkenhayn and Chief of Staff General Colonel Helmuth von Moltke . In an unconventional counterattack, the Silesian grenadiers under Ensign Schütze hit back the emperor's blue troops, the Berlin Queen Augusta Guard Grenadier Regiment No. 4 , and thus duped the head of state of the German Empire. The regimental commander, Colonel von Fehrenberg, was appalled, relieved the gunner of his command and handed it over to his rival, Lieutenant Petermann. While his comrades assume that Schütze, the "Kaiserschreck", ruined both his military and his social career for all time with this faux pas, the Kaiser is amused by this "hussar piece" and has Schütze promoted to lieutenant.
Heinrich Emanuel visits Baron von Perritz on his aristocratic estate and asks formally for his daughter's hand. For him this would mean the long-awaited social advancement. This is brusquely rejected. The baron humiliates the "Kaiserschreck" and wants to prevent his daughter's social decline at all costs. In his opinion, a lieutenant's salary would by no means be sufficient to finance the befitting lifestyle of a baroness. Should the wedding nevertheless take place against his will, he announces that he would disinherit his daughter so that she would in no case receive the dowry . Protective self-esteem collapses completely. Only through mediation and "business initiation" by the family patriarch Eberhard Sulzmann, a wealthy Breslau butcher master, does the connection come about as a kind of business relationship, despite initial resistance. Sulzmann is given the title of commercial councilor for this . At Christmas 1913 , Lieutenant Heinrich Emanuel Schütze married his Amelia von Perritz and began to set up his own household.
On 15 January 1915 he is the East Prussian Goldap the 3rd Company of the Infantry Regiment Graf Dönhoff, Ostpreußisches Regiment. 44 is added. Heinrich and his wife arrive there in the middle of a devastating snowstorm and the lieutenant is greeted coldly by his captain. While his unit carries out a winter exercise in the Seesker heights , the world is on the eve of the First World War . The 2nd Russian Army is concentrated around Mlawa and other units are concentrated on the border with Masuria .
On July 28, 1914 , the German Reich entered the First World War. The mobilization will be a celebrated major event, which at the beginning still has the character of a folk festival and is carried forward with great enthusiasm. Schütze is transferred to the Western Front and experiences the death of people for the first time in March 1915 during the winter battle in Champagne . Schütz's unit serves 24 dead. On March 20, 1915, Schütze was appointed first lieutenant and received EK II .
Grandfather Sulzmann becomes an army supplier for canned meat. Amelia has to flee Masuria after the Russians break in and returns to her father's estate in Trottowitz. Meanwhile, Sagittarius is captured by a group of franc shooters . He constantly expects to be shot when someone tells him that they want an exchange with Charles Bollet. Schütze is a Prussian officer and a "good German", so people are reluctant to enter into this trade. After Schütze was triggered, he was allowed to cure his frostbite on an outpatient basis in his home town of Breslau. He uses his free time with tactical exercises on the sandpit.
Then Olt has to. Schützen back to the front and in October 1915 became city commander of the small town of Soustelle in the Vosges . Amelia has meanwhile become pregnant. She wants a girl who doesn't have to go to war. The imperial army had meanwhile suffered enormous losses in the battle of Loretto , in the Artois and in Flanders . One night Bollet gets in with him. The Franktiradeur who owes his life to him. He invites him to his home, where, after a good meal and plenty of wine, there is a staged seduction by Bollet's daughter Jeanette. With that, Bollet has him in hand, accuses him of raping his daughter and demands that he pull the strips off if his men raid a supply train. Heinrich Emanuel and Jeanette experienced a new passion and Jeanette even fell in love with the German. However, during a home vacation, Sagittarius feels morally very bad that he cheated on his wife. Jeanette Bollet, who was beaten up by her father with an ox pizzle because of her love for the enemy , became a cleaning assistant in the commandant's office after Schütz's return to France on January 10, 1916 . Jeanette becomes Heinrich Emanuel's mistress and experiences with him a wild and unbridled intoxication of passion, which the two experience like a rebirth of life.
Due to the heavy loss of personnel, Schütze was no longer employed in the military service , but instead at the front, which urgently needed fresh troop leaders. Schützes division is kept ready on the slopes of the Côtes Lorraine on the Meuse in order to be able to intervene as a reserve in the Battle of Verdun . His son Christian-Siegbert was born in May 1917. Oberleutnant Schütze serves in a combat control center about 12 kilometers from the front and processes the loss lists and the personnel requirement lists.
After 1.8 million war dead, the German Reich has bled to death. Oberleutnant Schütze is scattered by his unit, has to fight for his life in a kind of tank destruction squad and brings an important detector bag to the army corps. Then he is promoted directly to captain by a general and receives EK I and the Hohenzollern Order for his bravery . In the event of an enemy artillery attack, the rear guard of the corps is destroyed, only riflemen survive. In March 1918 he was wounded in Flanders . His last war assignment was as a site commander in Belgium . Then the First World War ends in terrible chaos with the collapse of the old order. Soldiers' councils take command and sometimes take revenge among the officers. Schütze is also beaten up for not wanting to hand over secret files. On November 21, 1918, he and his troops passed the Rhine and were ordered to report to Munster .
He finds himself in a world that he no longer understands. He is therefore looking for a connection to the volunteer corps who want to restore the old order by force. During a short-term temporary job in his grandfather Sulzmann's large company, the spirited maid Duscha makes advances for him, which he brusquely refuses. He bridged the post-war period as an area representative of the Vereinigte Margarinewerke GmbH in Cologne . The future of people's nutrition lies in margarine, if you want them to be believed. Besides him, 27 other former officers work in the outskirts. In September 1919 Amelia gave birth to the second child: Giselher-Wolfram.
In March 1920 the Schütze family moved to the Mauriziuswall in Cologne and Heinrich Emanuel began working as a representative. The distribution of the margarine brand “Morgenröte” involves a lot of leg work and customer visits. Captain a. D. Schütze takes a strategic approach to customer acquisition, just as he learned in his tactics training. This also includes the proletariat, which is ruled by communism. One of his customers, Erna Sülke, is in financial difficulties and wants to pay him off her debts in "kind". There is a piquant scene between Heinrich Emanuel and the naked Erna, in which he has his hand on her breasts. She staged the whole thing to play rape for her husband. The whole house is upset about this "libertine" and wants to lynch him. Sagittarius can only escape with great difficulty.
There are always arguments between him and his wife. After the traumatic world war experience, she became an absolute pacifist , which is in complete contrast to her husband's fanatical bellicism . She definitely doesn't want her sons to be like that too. In spite of it, Schütze joined the "Home Federation of Former Soldiers" warrior association in September 1920. An environment where he is understood and feels comfortable.
In 1922 , Germany suffered from hyperinflation and Schütz's mother committed suicide after losing all of her savings. The tensions of the Weimar Republic and the increasingly sharp clashes between National Socialists and Communists are also discharging in the schoolyard. Christian-Siegbert suffers a lot as he is repeatedly beaten up by members of the communist youth . Heinrich Emanuel asks his wife to write a letter to her uncle Eberhard, a major general in military district VI near Münster , and to ask that her husband Heinrich Emanuel be used. She only complies with his request with the greatest of overcoming. In the meantime, Schütze is writing a “factual report” with the title “The German Army as the carrier of the state idea” , which is very popular with the military.
On 23. June 1923 their daughter Uta-Sieglinde is born and Heinrich Emanuel is transferred to the Army. He received a post as company commander of the 14th company of the 18th infantry regiment in Detmold . Schütze followed the events of the Hitler-Ludendorff putsch on November 9, 1923 in front of the Feldherrnhalle with great interest . There are always violent disputes with his wife, as she repeatedly destroys Christian-Siegbert's war toy despite sharp protests from his father. A friendship developed between Christian-Siegbert and the son of the Detmold NSDAP district group leader Hugo Nüssling. Despite being beaten, the father cannot drive them out.
In winter, the boys Christian-Siegbert, Hugo Nüssling and Ewald Schwarz ice-skate on the Detmold castle pond . Christian-Siegbert collapses on the ice and almost drowns if the other two didn't save him. Heinrich Emanuel Schütze wants to show his appreciation and buys war toys. While Anton Schwarz refuses the gift, he is much more welcome in the Nüssling house. Hugo Nüssling gives him Mein Kampf from Adolf Hitler as a farewell gift .
In 1929 the Schütze family moved to Berlin . The captain gets a post at a war school. The big city of Berlin scares them. When they arrive at the Charlottenburg train station, the father of the family is beaten up by Red Front fighters. The next day a newspaper headlined: “Red mob attacked Reichswehr captain. What is the government doing? ”It is a traumatic experience from which he does not recover for a long time. Heinrich Emanuel Schütze has been instructed to fight extremist ideas from the left and the right. On the bulletin board instead of the roster, he repeatedly discovered a newspaper clipping from the Völkischer Beobachter , which strangers had pinned on there in a provocative way. Schütze lies in wait in the toilet and catches two lieutenants, graduates of the officers' riding school, who are responsible for the anti-constitutional action. The National Socialists let their anger out on the three Sagittarius children, who are now beaten almost every day. The SA storm also made life difficult for the Sagittarius. The school management reacts and transfers shooters to the division dressing room, which means a catastrophic descent for the officer who would have loved to see himself on the general staff .
Heinrich Emanuel Schütze is about to kill himself with his service pistol when a stone flies through the window. It is SA storm soldiers who riot in front of his house. Sagittarius decides to go on living, to stay defensive and to fight his enemies. A court hearing against the fascist lieutenants takes place in Leipzig , and Schütze has to testify as a witness. There is a charismatic encounter with Adolf Hitler, who is also present. His hatred of Hitler turns into increasing admiration.
The Schütze family spends three months at Gut Perritzau in Silesia. The estate is currently home to many Polish farm workers who pose problems. Heinrich Emanuel therefore had the idea of initiating a reform of agricultural workers. Military appeals to homes and appliances play an important role. Wanda Schimansky tries to seduce Sagittarius away from it and lock herself in with him. [The reader does not find out what the two do, however.] From now on, Schütze avoids any contact with the Polish rural population. He writes his second book The Attack as a Tee , while in the officer corps of the Reichswehr the Republicans and the National Socialists face each other. Heinrich Emanuel forbids his son Christian-Siegbert to join the Hitler Youth because the son of a Reichswehr officer has to be apolitical. However, against his father's wishes, he still takes part in the HJ's comradeship evenings.
Schütze made another leap up the career ladder by becoming a consultant in the equipment department. On the thirtieth January 1933 that begins to power and Hitler Chancellor . Sagittarius enthusiastically takes part in the torchlight parades of his followers. A little later he published a second defense technology study: "The possibility of landing on the British Isles" . A promotion to the staff service is initially ruled out, however, as a General Müller from the Reichswehr officer personnel office has not forgotten Schütze's initial resistance to National Socialism. On the day when he wanted to submit his resignation to General Müller, he informed him that the Fuehrer had read his study and declared it a secret army. He and his family are forced to join the party as one. The two sons are finally happy about the long-awaited entry into the Hitler Youth , Uta-Sieglinde, Jungmädel and Amelia, against her deepest conviction, become a member of the Nazi women's association .
In 1934 there was the Röhm putsch and the violent elimination of the entire SA leadership. Eberhard von Perritz also seems to be involved. With the introduction of general conscription , riflemen can finally return to military service. During the occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938 , there was a sharp argument with SS- Sturmbannführer Gunter Harris. Schütze refuses to secure the transport of socialists and communists. He then beats the SS officer. An ugly and inhuman scene with captured civilians ensues, which Sagittarius is deeply touching. Protective behavior ( because of corrosive activity and damage to the German reputation ) is reported to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler , signed by SS- Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich .
The next day, an SS commando stormed the Schützes apartment in Grunewald . They harass Amelia, molest Uta-Sieglinde in an immoral way and beat Christian-Siegbert to hospital maturity. They also steal a letter from Eberhard v. Perritz. Heinrich Emanuel, who is meanwhile in Eger , is beside himself, but cannot do anything. In the Sudetenland, he saves a family who are running for their lives from a murderous SA pack. His worldview is deeply shaken. Christian-Siegbert did his Abitur and then voluntarily as an officer applicant in the Wehrmacht, which is no longer subordinate to the Prussian Reich Ministry of War but to the High Command of the Wehrmacht . The more subtle Giselher-Wolfram, on the other hand, wants to become a journalist , which horrifies his father. On November 9, 1938 , the Schütze family experienced the Reichskristallnacht in Wilmersdorfer Strasse and was deeply traumatized as a result. However, they can cause Dr. Bernstein, a Jewish doctor from the neighborhood, is spared it for the time being. On May 1, 1939, Schütze was transferred to Rummelsburg in Western Pomerania . After the secret mobilization and the preparations for war, Schütze agrees with the politics of the Third Reich again. The attack on Poland was a quick blitzkrieg . The losses are relatively small. However, Schützes 1st platoon leader fell in combat.
The shooter must attend a court martial as an assessor. It is about four murdered Polish professors whose skulls were smashed in by SS men. The accused are sentenced and are to be shot the next day. Then a document is presented by the Fuehrer's headquarters and the two murderers must be released with immediate effect. Schützen desperate for the new German order. Christian-Siegbert is wounded on the last day of the attack on Poland and receives the black wound badge. His father is very proud of him. Fall yellow begins a year later in the spring . This too will be a quick victory. Another encounter between Sagittarius and Dr. Landwehr. Schützen is promoted to major . During a ride, Heinrich Emanuel has an exchange of fire with a Frenchman, whom he injured with a thigh shot. In the following conversation it comes to the great shock for both that it is Pierre Bollet and that the young man is Schütze's illegitimate son . Pierre reacts aggressively because he doesn't want a German father out of deep dislike. The two separate again. The father does not learn that his son will later die as a slave laborer.
On 22. June 1941 the starting Operation Barbarossa . Lieutenant Christian-Siegbert Schütze takes part in the campaign and writes field post letters to his parents . Giselher-Wolfram does the same. However, in contrast to his older brother, he writes of a terrible fear of death . Then falls Christian-Siegbert in Białystok by an explosive projectile, which tears open his chest. This news caused severe nervous fever in Amelia and Heinrich Emanuel had to hand in home leave for family reasons . Then he, who felt a strong hatred of the Russians after the death of his son, had to return to the Eastern Front to lead a battalion in the double battle near Vyazma and Bryansk . During Operation Typhoon , Sagittarius suffered frostbite and had to have two toes amputated. After a stay in Borissow , he can return to Germany. Giselher-Wolfram also comes to a hospital near Neuruppin after being wounded by a machine gun salvo . For him the war is over. He wants to study journalism against his father's express wishes .
Baron von Perritz dies. His will, which Amelia favors, may not be paid out because he was politically active. Heinrich Emanuel Schütze gets a new assignment in France at the General Command of the 15th Army under Colonel General von Salmuth . Dr. Landwehr takes him to a group of conspiratorial officers associated with the July 20th Movement . Schütze has now been promoted to lieutenant colonel and is joining the crew as coordinator for supplies to Paris. It is a comfortable life far from the mass extinction in Stalingrad and Monte Cassino . After the attack on Hitler and the alarm, the rifle is supposed to arrest men in the SD staff at the commandant's office and bring them to the French commander . The attack fails and there is a wave of arrests and executions. Including General a. D. Eberhard v. Perritz. SS-Standartenführer Ehrenbach and SS-Sturmbannführer Harris take shooters under house arrest . Then he was interrogated in the HQ of the Paris SD and was scared to death that he could be executed every day. However, his guilt cannot be proven and Sagittarius is set free. You don't see him as a political activist, just a man blindly obeying orders.
The Americans land in Normandy in 1944 and the Eastern Front collapses. Amelia and Uta-Sieglinde, fleeing from the Russians, have to evacuate Rummelsburg , flee first to Berlin and then to Schleswig-Holstein . Heinrich Emanuel and his troops are intercepted on the Rhine and deployed in the Ruhr basin under the command of Field Marshal Model . On May 23, 1945, Schütze went into captivity with the Dönitz government and was "reeducated". He made a name for himself with his series of lectures on the events of July 20th. He was released in February 1946 , after which he returned to Detmold . He is taken back to Anton Schwarz's household and works as a warehouse clerk in his winding shop. He has his wife and children searched through the Red Cross . The other members of the Schütze family live in a small box in a gym as a reception center for refugees under dire humanitarian conditions. By a lucky coincidence, the family is reunited and they find each other.
Heinrich Emanuel gets a job as a representative for laundry rammers in Frankfurt . They are laundry rammers made from used steel helmets . When he sold used field kitchens on the black market , Schütze made a fortune. With the earned capital of DM 85,500, - he founds a textile trading company. After the currency reform of 1948 , the Schütze family achieved further prosperity and bought a magnificent property near Bad Soden am Taunus . Tensions developed with his father when in 1951 Giselher wanted to marry the Briton Ellen Vickers and Uta-Sieglinde took a pacifist, engineer Walter Bolz, as her fiancé. Over time these will be overcome. The Bundeswehr is founded and Schütze supplies them with 30,000 pairs of woolen socks. At the end Heinrich Emanuel receives an invitation from the ministry to take part in an autumn maneuver and is allowed to fulfill his dream like a real general staff officer on a field mound to be able to observe the events through the telescopic sight .
main characters
- Heinrich Emanuel Schütze: protagonist and professional officer from Breslau
- Eberhard Sulzmann: Heinrich's maternal grandfather, head of the family
- Captain Stroy: Schützes superior at the beginning of his career
- Amelia von Perritz: daughter of the Baron von Perritz auf Perritzau
- Freiherr von Perritz: her father
- Eberhard von Perritz: Amelia's uncle
- Christian-Siegbert (†), Giselher-Wolfram, Uta-Sieglinde and Fritz: Heinrich Emanuels and Amelia's children
- Dr. Landwehr: Medical officer, whom Sagittarius met again and again in his life
linguistic style
“There was a drummer and a wind player on the market square in Trottowitz. They stood there at attention. Hollow back, chest out, buttocks pushed out, and drummed and blew in the early morning. "
Historical context
Autumn maneuvers encompass large parts of Germany's military history. Starting with the Imperial Era (1913/1914), the First World War (1914–1918), the Weimar Republic (1919–1932), the Nazi era (1933–1939), the Second World War (1939–1945) and the post-war period ( 1945–1963) with the rearmament and establishment of the Bundeswehr .
Reviews
Maneuvers in autumn , which was originally intended to have the subtitle “History of the public soul under Wilhelm II”, occupies a special position in Konsalik's oeuvre, according to Harder. It contained in an almost epic form of twenty chapters a very long story arc beginning in 1913 and ending in the 1960s during the time of the Bundeswehr. The title is also not a typical book about the world wars, but it has a very specific view of the cause of the First World War.
There are certain parallels to Heinrich Mann : Der Untertan (1914) and Konsalik maneuvers in autumn . Similar to Mann, Konsalik describes a “type of imperialist subject, the chauvinist without shared responsibility, the worshiper of power disappearing in the crowd, the believer in authority against their better judgment and political self-caste.” Both figures exemplify a patriarchal family structure in which women and children meet have to be unconditionally subordinate. The love life of the two is divided into an official and an unofficial one. The wife as the honorable keeper of the domestic hearth and, on the other hand, the gain in sexual pleasure with loved ones such as B. Jeanette Bollet. The old German principle of “being allowed to command” and “having to obey” runs through the entire book. Lost wars are associated with a general loss of meaning. The protagonist and satirical antihero Heinrich Emanuel Schütze is characterized by his own statement: "He hated the communists ... he was afraid of the Nazis."
Text output
- Heinz G. Konsalik: maneuvers in autumn . Original edition. Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1967, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 .
- Heinz G. Konsalik: maneuvers in autumn . License issue. Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 .
Notes and individual references
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Matthias Harder: Experience war. To depict the Second World War in the novels by Heinz G. Konsalik. With a bibliography of the author's German-language publications (1953–1996) . (= Epistemata, literary studies series 232). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1565-7 .
- ^ Quote from the table of contents by Heinz G. Konsalik: Maneuver in autumn .
- ↑ Autumn maneuvers . Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1967, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 .
- ^ Infantry Regiment "Graf Dönhoff" (7th East Prussian) No. 44 (1860 as "4th Combined Infantry Regiment") after the army was expanded under Albrecht von Roon
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: Maneuvers in autumn . License issue. Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 , p. 53.
- ↑ Konsalik mentions a disreputable residential area in the old town, south of Hahnenstraße around Thieboldsgasse, Fleischmengergasse, Großer and Kleiner Greeksmarkt, Kaigasse and Nechelsgasse
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: Maneuvers in autumn . License issue. Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 , p. 133.
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: Maneuvers in autumn . License issue. Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 , p. 181.
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: Maneuvers in autumn . License issue. Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 .
- ^ Heinz G. Konsalik: Maneuvers in autumn . License issue. Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-442-03653-0 , p. 149.