After midnight

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After midnight , Irmgard Keun's first novel in exile is . It was published by Querido in Amsterdam in 1937 .

overview

During the National Socialist dictatorship around 1936 , the main plot takes place on two days in Frankfurt am Main , with the focus on Hitler's appearance on Opernplatz and Liska's festival. For the narrator , 19-year-old Susanne Moder, known as Sanna, and her politically committed friends and acquaintances, it is a time of upheaval and decisions for a life that has been adapted to the regime or for emigration from Germany.

prehistory

The protagonist looks back on her childhood, which she spends as a landlord's daughter in the Moselle village of Lappesheim, in inserted passages. At the age of 16, after the death of her mother, she came to her aunt, Aunt Adelheid, in Cologne and served customers in their shop (Chapters 1, 3). Her slowly developing relationship with her inconspicuous, reserved cousin Franz, who is employed by a lawyer as a scribe, and the marriage plans and the resulting jealousy of the mother for the girlfriend increase the already existing tension and personal antipathy ("Then I liked him, because Aunt Adelheid didn't like him. "). This situation escalated after two years when the aunt, a member of the Nazi women's union and caretaker , used a harmless remark by Sanna about the screaming and sweating speakers Göring and Hitler to report them to the secret police , whereupon the niece was temporarily arrested, interrogated, but is released again because the young judge classifies the young people's remarks as a minor case and interprets their crying as remorse. In the Presidium, Sanna experiences how family and neighborhood disputes and business competition are politicized in order to gain advantages (Chapter 4). For example, “mothers show their daughters-in-law, daughters their fathers-in-law, brothers their sisters” and “sisters their brothers”. This will teach her to be more careful. Every careless sentence can become a trap: “The bad thing is that I don't understand what's going on, I've only gradually figured out what to watch out for.” When leaving town, she remembers on the train to the saying of her nice neighbor, Mrs. Grautisch: "dat janze people are sitting in a concentration camp, only the government is running freely".

Sanna's development in Frankfurt

The protagonist has been living with her 17-year-old half-brother Alois in his expensive Frankfurt apartment in a house on Bockenheimer Landstrasse for a year. She helps his eccentric wife Liska in the household and with her handicrafts, which are sold in the business of her friend Gerti's parents in the best part of town. She accompanies the sister-in-law and Gerti z. For example, in the café on Rossmarkt, in front of which there is no sign saying "Jews undesirable" and where they hope to meet Gerti's friend Dieter Aaron, or while shopping in Goethestrasse and on the Zeil.

The narrator is essentially an observer and listener on the two days in Frankfurt. She made her life decision and with it the consequences of the fate of her friends and interlocutors at the end of the novel, when Franz flees to her in Frankfurt. Together with his friend Paul, who sympathizes with communist ideas, he wanted to open a cigarette shop in Cologne, but was charged by the competitor Willi Schleimann for allegedly anti-fascist propaganda and sentenced to three months of protective custody . During the interrogation, the judge interpreted all of his statements against him: "It is absolutely impossible for a person in Germany to know: what he should be, what he should want, what he should say." After his release, the shop interior was destroyed and he chokes or strangles, as he suspects, the informer. After Franz's story about Paul who disappeared without a trace after the trial, Sanna remembers a tram ride in Cologne past the " Klingelpütz , [the] evil prison", where she heard the cries of the convicted communists before their execution.

Discrimination against Jews

The two days in Frankfurt, which are at the center of the novel, outline the social situation. Through her experiences in Cologne, Sanna constantly feels the fear of unconsciously saying something wrong and of being arrested by the Gestapo. Above all, she sees her careless and talkative friends who are drunk and in constant danger during the long evenings and nights in the Henninger Brewery near the Opernplatz or in a bar on Goethestrasse, in Bogener's wine taverns .

In Frankfurt the protagonist (Chapter 1) experiences the increasing socio-political repression of those in power and their organs. Because of her love for the “half-Jew” Dieter Aaron, the son of an export trader who viewed National Socialism with understanding, Gerti comes into conflict with the racial laws : “They just live and make shaky air and don't think about what should become of them. Gerti thinks God will help, and God is male. The Dieter thinks alternately what his mother thinks and what Gerti thinks. […] Maybe the two wouldn't love each other like that if they were allowed to ”. Gerti's parents are afraid of being insulted as "Jewish servants" and accused of racial disgrace , and want to persuade the daughter to connect with the courting SA man Kurt Pielmann, an Aryan whose father they are financially dependent on, as he is in invested in their shop. Sanna advises her to put the suitor off with this: "[s] she is not yet mature enough to be the partner of a National Socialist man and old fighter, but she wants to train herself to do so."

Algin's circle of friends also includes Jewish business people and doctors. They are withdrawing more and more from the public and from the few cafés that are still accessible to them. While father Aaron can continue to do his business and live as usual, his son Dieter is no longer allowed to work in a chemical factory (Chapter 1). Doctor Breslauer is forbidden to operate in Germany. That is why he will emigrate to North America via Rotterdam in the next few days, receive American citizenship and become chief physician of a clinic there. He has already invested the majority of his assets abroad (Chapter 5). The journalist Heini does not feel sorry for him, but for his “thousand fellow emigrants who are poor. May it be Aryans or Jews road workers or scholars ”. Because “home [be] there, where one is treated well.” In the last part of the 6th chapter the author parodies the racial theory with the grotesque appearance of the “Strikermann [s]”: He believes Jews by the discontinuous zodiac sign and with his divining rod to be able to recognize and demonstrate his method to Breslauer. He defines him as an Aryan.

Hitler's appearance on Opernplatz

The highlight of the city's public image on the first day of the novel is the appearance of Adolf Hitler on Opernplatz, which Sanna and Gerti are watching from the balcony of Café Esplanade: the approach of the motorcade “soft and hasty like flying down feathers. And so beautiful! ". She calculates that her Franz “would live another hundred years and work from morning to evening - if he always had work - and for a hundred years would not drink or smoke a bit and do nothing but save, save, save - then he could do a hundred years still not buy a car like this. ”The convoy had already announced itself beforehand:“ Calls swelled from afar: Heil Hitler, the crowds came closer and closer - now he climbed up to our balcony - broad, hoarse and a little tired. And slowly a car drove by, in it the Führer stood like the Carnival prince in a carnival suit. But he wasn't as funny and happy as the Prince Carnival and didn't throw candies or bouquets either, just raised his empty hand. " This symbolic, foreboding scene is contrasted with “a light blue ball” that “[rolls] out of the dark rows”. It is the five-year-old Bertchen Silias who was selected as the “row breaker” to present a huge bouquet of lilacs imported from Nice, but is overlooked by the guide rushing past. He now hurries between the rows of soldiers with flashing steel helmets carrying torches to the other rulers on the balcony of the opera house to show himself to the people. In Henninger-Bräu (chap. 2), Sanna then experiences how the severely cold child in front of its proud parents, in the midst of SA and SS people, reads the rehearsed poem »I am a German girl / and future German one as a substitute for the missed appearance Little mother / and bring you, O Führer my / from German districts Blümelein ... «again and again like a re-wound music box until it collapses dead on the table.

Writing ban

Sanna's brother Alois Moder, with the stage name Algin, was a successful socially critical journalist and writer during the time of the Weimar Republic and was able to live an elaborate lifestyle with elegant clothes and for himself and his beautiful, tall wife Liska, who admired him as a "poetical god" finance a representative, elegantly furnished apartment. After the change of government, his filmed novel "Shadows Without Sun" was blacklisted because of its corrosive tendency and finally burned . He now earns much less than before and is faced with the decision between giving up his profession or adapting to the desired linear literature. He tends towards the second direction and "has recently been expressing himself as a poet about nature and his love of homeland, which is close to nature", because he was warned by the Reichsschrifttumskammer that a new "cleansing operation should take place among the writers, in which algin is likely to be sifted out becomes.". He is in a quandary: If he writes a Führer poem or a National Socialist novel, the National Socialist writers may get angry because only "old fighters" are entitled to it. "But if he is not writing a National Socialist novel, he is undesirable."

Algin's friend, the 40-year-old journalist Heini, is the central figure in the last two chapters of the novel (Chapters 6 and 7), in which he consistently takes the position of the resistance. Because of his critical attitude towards the system, he can hardly write any more articles. He came to the city six months ago and lives “in the most depressing neighborhood in Frankfurt. In a dull, musty gray street behind the train station. ”In contrast to the indecisive Algin, z. B. when visiting restaurants in long tirades his opinion. He accuses his friend (Chapter 6) of making “ridiculous concessions”. He had “written against [a] feeling, against [a] conscience” and was “in a poor man of letters, because a writer who is afraid [is] not a writer.” He gives him that Advice: "Where criticism is no longer possible, you have to be silent. [...] Kill yourself or learn to play the harp and make music of the spheres". His analysis of the situation is bleak. He sarcastically explains to Manderscheid, the former liberal people's party and head of the advertising department of a newspaper, who collected for winter aid that day : “We are living in the time of the great German denunciation movement. Everyone has to guard everyone, everyone has power over everyone. […] The noblest instincts of the German people are awakened and carefully cultivated. "

Farewells

Parallel to his literary conscience, Algin's marriage is also in crisis. He hardly cares about his wife anymore, but is looked after by her 30-year-old friend with the descriptive name Betty Raff, whose stick of reconciliation often intensifies the conflicts through her clumsy, counteracting, often not selfless method. Since, like Sanna, she has been living with the Moders for a year, she advises both Algin and Liska, whose unhappy love for Heini, who is concerned with himself and the political situation (chapters 5 and 7), is not reciprocated, which makes her ever bigger Incites efforts to be noticed by him through sophisticated clothes and to adapt to his arbitrary, frequently changing remarks about his ideal image of a woman (light or dark voice, large or small breast, pink or pale skin color, nurse, mother, etc.): “Again and again she is put together in a different way, like an elaborate mosaic that she thinks the Heini might like. [...] How can you know what Heini really likes, because he doesn't seem to like anything. ”When looking for her role as a woman, she sometimes pretends to be sick (“ She is never as healthy as when she is sick . ") And talks to her friends who visit her in bed only about" men and love. "

In chapter 7, the heterogeneous circle of friends meets at Liska's party in her apartment. Heini instructs the exuberant guests: »This society is a society of convicts [...] All are nice, good bourgeois people, but according to the new German laws or the National Socialist feeling, they should all be locked up. They owe them to a coincidence that they roam freely here. Shortly before midnight he shoots himself. The new day opens up many changes: Breslauer emigrates. Liska will part with Algin and he will marry Betty, who admires his new direction as a poet like Liska did before. Sanna and Franz leave Frankfurt after midnight, "[u] m one o'clock", by train and cross the border to Holland. In Rotterdam she is hoping for the help of another emigrant from Wroclaw.

Historical background

The novel's action reflects the era of National Socialism in Germany after the installation of the racial laws in 1935. The rule of the Nazi Party has stabilized, the political opponents are arrested and under control and most clubs and associations into line . The media act as the mouthpiece of the propaganda and spread the National Socialist ideology. Any criticism, e.g. B. the journalist Heini or the poet Algin, is suppressed. More and more people are becoming members of the party or its paramilitary organs SA or SS, hoist the swastika flag on festive days and get involved in actions. So Mr. Manderscheid collects for hours for winter relief and the SA man Kurt Pielmann tries to indoctrinate his audience.

One focus of the novel is the increasing discrimination against Jews, who were dismissed from civil service as early as 1933 by the Aryan paragraph and, classified into full Jews and Jewish mixed race , are increasingly separated from non-Jews and pushed out of the public eye. With the help of photos, posters warn urgently of the consequences of “racial mixing”. However, as the example of the doctor Breslauer shows, emigration was still possible during this period. Most Germans are publicly silent about these events.

Narrative form

The action is presented from the perspective and in the colloquial language of a 16 or 19 year old. The first-person narrator Sanna often does not understand the content of the speeches of the party people and intellectual friends of her brother and their ideological background, but the author lets her observe the behavior of people in everyday life and their expressions with the childlike, uneducated gaze of a country girl, reproduce their expressions and comment, sometimes supplemented by witty and ironic remarks by a woman with life experience. These stylistic inconsistencies have a comical effect on the reader, especially when they alienate and expose the phrases and grotesque contradictions of Hitler's supporters and the selfish attempts at reorientation of many citizens.

As an attentive listener and observer, Sanna characterizes and parodies the behaviors e.g. B. Liskas, Gertis or Bettys and there, v. a. in the coffeehouse scenes, conversations about the political situation in direct speech again. The last two chapters (Chapters 6 and 7) thus form a forum for Heini's system criticism monologues, and the journalist appears as a consistent counter-figure to the poet Algin through his suicide. Liska and Betty are the appropriate women. The tragedy of these relationships, supplemented by the unhappy relationship between Gertis and Dieter Aarons, is contrasted with the escape of the couple Sanna and Franz as a hopeful aspect.

The author repeatedly condenses the plot in symbolic contrasts: Hitler with the empty hand and the instrumentalized Bertchen Silias with the wrong bouquet or the striker's failed identification of Jews . through divining rod and horoscope (Chapter 6) and the bizarre fraternization of Nazi and Jew that followed. Likewise, the exuberantly singing and dancing guests at the party face Liska's unfulfilled love for Heini and his suicide, which reflects the downfall of their political dreams. All of this takes place on the first floor, while Franz, wanted for an attack on an SA man, is hidden in the cellar and waits to escape with Sanna. The tragic decisions before midnight contrast with the hope of the new day after midnight.

reception

  • "Sanna appears as a reporter of the National Socialist present."
  • "The narrative technique sheds light on the absurdity of the Nazi regime."

Dramatizations

Stage versions

  • After midnight . Book: Yaak Karsunke for the municipal theaters of Osnabrück, 1982
  • After midnight . Book: Yaak Karsunke. Direction: Goswin Moniac, actors: Monika Müller, Jörg Schröder. Frankfurt, 1988

filming

Web links

literature

plant
  • Irmgard Keun: After midnight . Novel. Querido, Amsterdam 1937.
  • Irmgard Keun: After midnight . Novel. In: List-Taschenbuch . 1st edition. tape 60151 . Ullstein-Taschenbuchverlag , Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-548-60151-0 .
  • Irmgard Keun: After midnight . Novel, with materials, including the conversation with Klaus Antes: Irmgard Keun - about her life and work (from page 140). Klett, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-12-351380-7 ( license Classen, Düsseldorf 1980).
Secondary literature
  • Gero von Wilpert (Ed.): Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . Biographical and bibliographical concise dictionary based on authors and anonymous works. 4th, completely revised edition. Kröner , Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , pp. 331 .
  • Gesche Blume: Irmgard Keun. Writing in a game with modernity . In: Dorothee Kimmich, Walter Schmitz, Detlev Schöttker, Marek Zybura (eds.): Work on modern German literature . tape 23 . Thelem bei web, Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-937672-38-9 (also dissertation at the Technical University of Dresden 2004).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Keun, Irmgard: After midnight. Ullstein, Berlin 2004, p. 66. ISBN 978-3-548-60151-9 . This edition is quoted.
  2. ↑ Keun, p. 85.
  3. ↑ Keun, p. 99.
  4. ↑ Keun, p. 21.
  5. ↑ Keun, p. 23.
  6. ↑ Keun, p. 174.
  7. ↑ Keun, p. 184.
  8. ↑ Keun, pp. 26, 27.
  9. ↑ Keun, p. 23.
  10. ↑ Keun, p. 32.
  11. ↑ Keun, p. 113 f.
  12. ↑ Keun, p. 114.
  13. ↑ Keun, p. 134 ff.
  14. ↑ Keun, p. 27 ff.
  15. ↑ Keun, p. 34.
  16. ↑ Keun, p. 35.
  17. ↑ Keun, p. 35.
  18. ↑ Keun, p. 35.
  19. ↑ Keun, p. 54.
  20. ↑ Keun, p. 21.
  21. ↑ Keun, p. 125.
  22. ↑ Keun, p. 129.
  23. ↑ Keun, p. 129.
  24. ↑ Keun, p. 132.
  25. ↑ Keun, p. 130.
  26. ↑ Keun, p. 130.
  27. ↑ Keun, p. 130 f.
  28. ↑ Keun, p. 133.
  29. ↑ Keun, p. 117.
  30. ↑ Keun, p. 124.
  31. ↑ Keun, p. 122 f.
  32. ↑ Keun, p. 188.
  33. ↑ Blume p. 179
  34. ↑ Blume p. 128