My name is Eugene

The title of this article is ambiguous. Further meanings are listed under Mein Name ist Eugen (disambiguation) .

My name is Eugen is a Swiss book for young people - a classic by the Bernese pastor and community politician Klaus Schädelin from 1955.

Emergence

Under his boy scout name “Gockel”, Schädelin occasionally published his Gockel stories under the name “Die von Schicksalhörüfte” in the “Hallo” bulletin of his department, the Pathic Corps Patria . His father, the minster pastor and theology professor Albert Schädelin , showed them to Otto Salomon , the head of the then Zwingli publishing house in Zurich, in 1954 . This persuaded skull to publish his stories as a book. At the end of May 1955 he submitted the typescript, at that time still under the name Wrigley , next to Eugen the main character of the book.

The book was published for the Christmas sale in 1955, now under the title Mein Name ist Eugen . The first edition was already sold out at the beginning of December, and a second of 5000 copies was quickly reprinted.

The book was illustrated by the art historian Rudolf Schnyder (1931–2015, head of the ceramics department at the Swiss National Museum in Zurich, associate professor at the University of Zurich). Rudolf Schnyder lived as a student as a subtenant in Skullin's rectory and was asked by him to illustrate the book.

content

The action begins in Bern , where the first-person narrators Eugen Pfister, Franz “Wrigley” Stalder, Eduard and Bäschteli concoct all sorts of pranks. Eugen and Wrigley live on Herrengasse in the old town of Bern , where skull also lived. Wrigley is modeled on the future German President Richard von Weizsäcker , who attended the Kirchenfeld grammar school together with Klaus Schädelin . Again and again the narrator drifts away from the actual story in order to tell an adventure from earlier times with "And it came like this:" . Individual scenes take place in existing places, for example at the World Telegraph Monument or in the Historical Museum in Bern .

Then the action shifts to the canton of Ticino , where the four friends take part in a scout camp. After differences with the warehouse manager, they set off on their bikes to Zurich to visit Fritz Bühler , the former king of the rascals. After numerous difficulties they find him too, but are caught by the police and sent back to Bern. Eugen's story ends in the middle of a sentence, supposedly because his teacher discovered the manuscript on his desk.

The language consciously imitates the school essay style of a twelve-year-old and is peppered with helvetisms .

reception

The reactions to Mein Name ist Eugen were divided. One of the first numerous enthusiastic readers of the book was Skullin's former teacher, the theologian Karl Barth . The Swiss teachers' newspaper, on the other hand, warned in August 1956 under the title “On the border with kitsch and trash” of the pernicious influence on young people and resolutely rejected it.

expenditure

Within a decade, the book sold 54,000 times, making it the best-selling Swiss children's book after Johanna Spyris Heidi . The book has now reached its 32nd edition (231,000).

In order to make the book easier to understand for readers from Germany, a glossary was added in later editions in which Swiss or Bern German expressions are explained. Occasionally dialect expressions were also Germanised in the text: While Bäschteli was still called "Höseler" in the first editions, he was later called "Milchkind".

• My name is Eugene . TVZ, Zurich 30. A. 2009, ISBN 978-3-290-11470-1

Processing

• A first audio book edition, read by Ueli Beck , was published in 1982 as MC by Theologische Verlag Zürich: My name is Eugen . Four episodes, read by Ueli Beck and with music by Emil Moser . 1 audio CD . Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-290-17350-X
• A second (complete) audio book edition, read by Bruno Kaspar, was published by TVZ in 2005: My name is Eugen . Reading. 4 audio CDs, 240 min., Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-290-17389-5
• In 1999, Mein Name ist Eugen was published in Latvian by Spriditis Verlag, Riga, under the title Mani sauc Eižens .
• In 2004, the book was filmed under the title Mein Name ist Eugen (film) .
• In 2016 Mein Name ist Eugen (The Musical) premiered in the Maag Music Hall in Zurich

literature

• Comment from Mischa Gallati in "kids + media"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fredi Lerch, Zurich (WoZ in Rotpunktverlag) 1995, 175-186. , With both feet in the ground online , as of January 28, 2019
2. ↑ Such a youth is difficult buchplanet.ch, February 11, 2014
3. ↑ Librikon.de ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2013 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. 
4. ↑ According to the publisher's information ( http://www.tvz-verlag.ch/ )