Moni's year
Monis Jahr is a novel by Kirsten Boie about the life of three generations in Hamburg after the war. The plot covers the period from New Year's Eve 1955 to New Year's Eve 1956. The book was published in 2003 by Oetinger Verlag in Hamburg.
content
Ten-year-old Monika Schleier lives with her mother and her paternal grandmother in simple circumstances in Hamburg. The mother, who was pregnant as a young girl by a soldier, whom they then by war ceremony married, her husband has never seen a night of love again after this; he is missing in Russia . But her mother-in-law does not want the son to be declared dead, which means that no widow's or orphan's pension is paid either. Mother Schleier works in a shoe polish factory, Monika's grandmother cleans in a hospital. When Monika passed the entrance examination for high school , she felt ashamed in front of her new friend Heike, a doctor's daughter, and claimed that her grandmother was a nurse. After this lie came to light, Heike cuts Monika and also persuades the classmates to exclude Monika. This phase lasts for weeks or months and is very stressful for the girl.
There is another conflict within the family: Monika's mother, now 29, no longer believes that her husband will return and does not want to miss her whole life. When she starts going out with the engineer Helmut, there is a violent argument with her mother-in-law. Monika, who loves mother and grandmother in equal measure and who grew up knowing that her missing father cannot simply be relegated to the realm of the dead as long as one does not know for sure about his whereabouts, is also very unhappy about that. At the same time, she learns from her friends and schoolmates what problems can arise if a father who stayed away for a long time returns home from captivity or if a mother marries a new partner. She cannot really wish for either one or the other.
The year 1955 brought numerous changes for Monika: Her best friend Harald, child of an East Prussian refugee family, emigrated to Australia with her parents and sister because the parents had given up hope of a life beyond the Nissen huts and the humiliation in Germany. Before that, however, she and Harald and his father let her take her first look at a television set and witness the visit of Empress Soraya to Germany. When Konrad Adenauer succeeds in getting the last surviving prisoners of war returned from Russia , the grandmother goes to the Friedland reception center to get news about her son. Only then do her eyes open and she accepts the fact that her son is in all probability long dead.
Helmut, the friend of Monika's mother, proves to be sensitive enough to gradually establish contact with the girl and, after Grandmother Schleier has realized that her daughter-in-law is most likely widowed, to reconcile with her too. He plans to marry Mrs. Schleier, buys a Goggomobil and a condominium under construction, and will be a new father to Monika and her mother during the economic miracle .
reception
“The book has been announced for young people and adults, and one can only hope that the former will overcome the usual inhibitions and get to know these Moni despite their uninteresting age; and thus also herself a little better, and her parents and grandparents, and our country as it was when the war was not so long ago, ”writes Monika Osberghaus in her review of the book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine . She praises the lively atmosphere of the work, which depicts the mood and living conditions of the 1950s in Germany from the child's point of view so directly and not at all smelly.
Other critics, such as Andrea Duphorn, judge similarly: “Kirsten Boie, born in 1950, succeeds with“ Monis Jahr ”a fine mood picture of those years marked by thrift, diligence and hope, in which instead of cornflakes and Nutella there was oatmeal soup and cod liver oil for breakfast “, She writes on the homepage of the Swiss Institute for Children's and Youth Media.
Elisabeth Simon-Pätzold points to the discrepancy between the historical events that form the background of Monika Schleier's life situation and the helpless reactions of the little people among whom she lives. It is impossible for a child to find their way through this dichotomy of radical threats to life through politics and the apolitical attitude of their caregivers, impossible to understand the change in values that characterized that time on their own. But Monika is smart enough and goes to high school. One day she will understand the interrelationships and learn her lessons from it: “She will find answers to her questions much later. It's good that she goes to high school, that she has the chance to get an education and orientation. This book is very interesting for all people who have experienced this time [sic!] And when they have experienced it at Moni's eye level, they will be reminded of innumerable details that are painful and yet also attractive and often funny. For today's children from around 12 years of age, this book can also be very interesting, because told from Moni's perspective, it opens up a completely different childhood than girls of the same age experience today. "
expenditure
- Kirsten Boie, Monis Jahr , Oetinger 2003, ISBN 3-7891-3153-9