Nikolaikirche (Roman)
Nikolaikirche is a novel by Erich Loest , published in 1995. It mainly takes place in Leipzig and the surrounding area between March 1985 and October 9, 1989. Flashbacks go back to the last years of the Weimar Republic , but mostly deal with the GDR .
content
The focus of the novel, told in episodes from different perspectives, is Alexander (Sascha) Bacher, captain at the Ministry for State Security , and his sister Astrid Protter.
Sascha is firmly committed to the GDR and its surveillance system - he doesn't even hesitate to use his mother as a decoy for her childhood sweetheart Linus Bornowski, a GDR refugee who spent several years as a political prisoner in various GDR prisons and for the occasion visited the GDR again after many years at the Leipziger Messe . Bacher ended his happy relationship with the French professor Claudia Engelmann without hesitation when his superiors asked him to do so, as they found out through spying that Claudia was involved in critical, environmentally committed church circles. Bacher's dedication to service is rewarded with promotion to major.
Astrid works for a city planning agency. She has gradually distanced herself from the GDR and tried to withdraw from the system, for example by taking sick leave on Labor Day or being the only one not to sign a study by her department on the state of schools. Her superior, irritated, recommends a stay in a sanatorium, which she actually begins later after she fell down a slope in a coal mine.
Both siblings are under the influence of their father Albert Bacher, who died in 1984 and who had to flee to the Soviet Union in 1932 because he had murdered a former SA man who was friends in revenge for an insult. During the Second World War he was part of a Soviet partisan unit, to which he had to prove himself again and again as a German: he was responsible for the execution of the prisoners without exception. In the GDR Albert Bacher rose to the rank of general of the People's Police ; He kept the fact that he also worked for the Stasi a secret from his children.
A second group of people are critical church groups, especially the parish of Pastor Reichenbork in Königsau and the Leipzig Nikolaikirche , which is led by Pastor Ohlbaum (a combination of the characters of the two real Pastors Christian Führer and Christoph Wonneberger ). Sascha's main focus is the observation of these circles, which for example offer a forum for those wishing to leave the country or address the taboo demolition of the Leipzig University Church in 1968. He does not notice that his sister Astrid has also joined the demonstrations in the vicinity of the Nikolaikirche. Even when the protests finally take on the dimensions of a popular uprising and the responsible general of the People's Police thinks about using snipers, Sascha has no concerns: "The fight wasn't over, new forms had to be found."
In the novel, the poor economic condition of the GDR is addressed again and again, for example the poor condition of the streets and school toilets, the limited choice of food and drinks in restaurants or the lack of air conditioning in the trains of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
Reviews
Hans-Georg Soldat came to a mixed judgment at the time . The multitude of characters in the novel formed a “biotope that was almost prototypical for the former GDR”. "All in all, a very hackneyed constellation". However, “the small gestures, the literary miniatures” and the differentiated drawing of the system are praised. The many episodes and narrative strands “overloaded the book. There is none of the fundamental, antagonistic conflicts of the former GDR that does not appear somewhere and somehow. "
Siegfried Stadler remarks in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Loest only experienced the period described in the West; accordingly, the subtitle of his review also reads “no guarantee”. Loest makes the GDR society "poorer than it was". The novel simplifies the actual situation, because the "GDR citizens [...] also formed a more complicated general system than Loest staged in his family history." It is criticized that although some contemporary historical documents are included in the novel, "Loest hardly make use of his imagination right ”.
filming
The novel was filmed as a two-part television series in the year it was published . Frank Beyer directed the film .
Footnotes
- ↑ Christian Führer: And we were there. Berlin: List Taschenbuch, 2010. p. 233: "I pointed out that in Pastor Ohlbaum there is also Pastor Wonneberger to a certain extent."
- ↑ Erich Loest: Nikolaikirche. Leipzig: Linden, 1995. p. 515.
- ↑ Hans-Georg Soldat: Leipzig as it really was . In: The time . No. 37 , 1995 ( online [accessed November 3, 2013]).
- ^ Siegfried Stadler: Church sister, Stasi brother. In: FAZ , September 26, 1995, accessed on November 3, 2013.