Maxim Kammerer

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Maxim Kammerer ( Russian Максим Каммерер ) is a literary figure of the Soviet writer brothers Arkadi and Boris Strugazki . He is the hero of her to Noon Universe belonging to science fiction novels Inhabited Island , Beetle in the Anthill and The waves stifle the wind .

History of the creation of the character: The inhabited island

In 1967 the Strugatzki brothers had considerable problems with censorship in connection with their satirical novels Das Märchen von der Troika and Die Schnecke am Hang and were determined to create a “real Soviet space hero” without censorship problems. In the course of the development of the novel “ The Inhabited Island ”, which was then begun, the one-dimensional censorship-ready hero turned into a differentiated personality. Maxim, who was still youthful and naive at the beginning, ends up stranded as a “free seeker” who searches for foreign civilizations in space, on a planet ruled by a brutal dictatorship and matures after a number of severe setbacks both as a personality and in his political insights.

In various places, however, problems with the censorship emerged. Above all, the censors tried to prevent possible readers from making references to the Soviet present. “The less Russian, the better” was her motto. So a number of people and terms were "Germanized". Even the hero's name fell victim to this circumstance: the main character originally with the good Russian name Maxim Rostislawski ( Максим Ростиславский ) was given a German surname Kammerer . So it came to the ironic result of the intervention of the Soviet censorship that the best known Soviet science fiction hero to this day bears a German name: Maxim Kammerer .

A beetle in the anthill: Maxim Kammerer, the Progressor

In A Beetle in an Anthill , Maxim Kammerer is no longer a youthful "free seeker" wandering through space, but a 40-year-old Progressor whose responsible task is to gently and inconspicuously bring backward civilizations from foreign planets on the path of progress. He is also a member of a commission that is supposed to protect the earth from dangerous research activities as well as from negative interventions by an overpowering supercivilization, the hikers , whose traces have been found without people being able to form a picture of them and their intentions. In this work Maxim Kammerer not only has to solve a quasi detective riddle, but also assert himself against his superior Rudolf Sikorski, who tries to prevent his investigations for good reasons. Far removed from the youthful superhero of the “Inhabited Island”, Maxim Kammerer is a mature man who has to grapple with a difficult moral dilemma: Can an individual's life be destroyed in order to protect humanity?

The waves choke the wind: Maxim Kammerer, head of the security service

In The Waves Choke the Wind , Maxim Kammerer is responsible for his former boss Rudolf Sikorski: He is now head of the security service himself. Boris Strugatzki describes his hero - and everyone else in this last work in the “Maxim-Kammerer Trilogy” - as “aged hopelessly”. A very serene Maxim Kammerer is on the trail of a monstrous threat to humanity as we know it.

The fourth, unwritten, novel

The two authors had already conceived one last novel with Maxim Kammerer when Arkadi's death ended their work together. In this novel, Maxim Kammerer should penetrate the world of the island empire , an extremely socially structured world that should consist of three "circles": the area of ​​"human scum", a "circle" in which people are neither particularly good nor are particularly bad and, ultimately, at the core of the circle of an almost paradisiacal society of cultivated and highly intellectual people. Maxim is surprised to come across this core and tries - as in the Inhabited Island - to bring the idea of ​​a world - his world - closer to the locals, in which everyone lives like the people of the inner circle here and it is the result of the “careful, laborious Work on every single child's soul… ”there is no“ dregs ”cast out. The simple reaction of the local, with whom he is talking, leaves Maxim speechless: “Elegant. A very nice theory. But unfortunately not to be realized in practice ”. Boris Strugatzki himself leaves the interpretation of this end of the Maxim-Kammerer series open and asks: “A kind of summary of a whole worldview. Your obituary. Or her conviction? ”In any case, the character Maxim Kammerer could hardly have strayed further from the original concept of a“ real Soviet space hero ”.

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  1. ↑ Boris Strugatzki: The Maxim-Kammerer Trilogy. Appendix to: Work edition by Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki. Volume 1. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-453-52630-3 , p. 870.
  2. ↑ Erik Simon: Arkadi & Boris Strugatzki: Life and Work. In: Golkonda Gazette 1. ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.4 MB) p. 8. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / golkonda-verlag.de
  3. ↑ Boris Strugatzki: The Maxim-Kammerer Trilogy. Appendix to: Work edition by Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki. Volume 1. 2010, p. 884.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Eric Simon: A future with two ends. Appendix to: Work edition by Arkadi and Boris Strugatzki. Volume 1. 2010, pp. 893-894.

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