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Rabenliebe is a novel by the German writer Peter Wawerzinek that was published in August 2010. Previously, an extract had won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2010 . In the autobiographical novel, the author describes his childhood in various children's homes in the GDR , his adoption and the long search for his birth mother .

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The first-person narrator was two years old when his mother left for the “West” in the 1950s and left him in a neglected Rostock apartment. Neighbors find him and his sister, whom he only found out about twelve years later, and deliver them to a home as social orphans . The boy stayed behind and did not speak until after years the language would break out in “Mama” shouts. The birds in the courtyard are closer to him than the people in the home, where he feels constantly examined, assessed and analyzed by professional looks. But there are also the angelic daughters of the home manager, in whose room the boy is allowed to spend the first few years, until the move to another home means expulsion from paradise for him. A cook tries to replace the orphan's mother for a while, but her husband, a bus driver, categorically rejects children. An adoption by a family of craftsmen also fails due to the child's inadequate useful ability.

At the age of ten, the narrator is adopted by a family of teachers whom he has to call "mum" and "dad", but consistently referred to in the novel as "adoptive mother" and "adoptive father". The adoptive mother is inspired by the idea of re-educating the child into a useful member of society and forbids any contact with friends from the home. The boy learns calligraphy and etiquette in the new family, but no security. He only feels connected to his grandmother, who takes a similar, merely tolerated position in the household as he does. With puberty, the narrator begins to revolt and declares Malcolm X to be his idol. He falls in love, but the adoptive mother still has the power to screw up his love affairs for him. Only on her deathbed, when her son has long since grown up, does it dawn on her how little maternal warmth she was able to give to her adopted child.

The thoughts and actions of the adult narrator are increasingly determined by the search for the birth mother. When he was serving on the German border with the NVA , he plans to try to escape to the West German “motherland” in order to track them down, but this was foiled. After the fall of the Wall, he determined the mother's place of residence in Eberbach am Neckar . But he fears the encounter as much as he longs for it and hesitates for a long time. When he finally approaches his mother, there is no closeness between the two strangers. The old woman looks cold and heartless; she gives her son neither the longed-for memories nor a justification for what she did. Only after their children show up does a kind of family get-together take place between the unknown “big brother” and his eight half-siblings. In the end, the narrator accepts motherlessness as part of himself. And he begins a book about his life's theme.

Autobiographical background

Peter Wawerzinek at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2010.

Born as Peter Runkel, Wawerzinek himself was orphaned by his parents in Rostock when they were two years old when they fled to the West. Rescued by the neighbors, he grew up in various children's homes, was eventually adopted and took the surname of the adoptive parents. The theme of his childhood accompanied Wawerzinek through his earlier novels, through Nix (1990), through Moppel Schappik's tattoos (1991) and The Child That I Was (1994). Wawerzinek described: “I can't do anything other than write autobiographically. For me I am the most interesting landscape in which I still come to regions that I do not know. "

Wawerzinek had hesitated for a long time to venture into the subject of his mother, his "own greatest topic, my life topic, my life pain" in a big way. At first he wanted to write a factual report instead of a novel, but then noticed that his memories were stimulated more through senses and feelings than through interviews with contemporary witnesses, so that in the end he decided on the form of the novel. Various messages about neglected and abused children are mounted in the text , whereby Wawerzinek intended to put his fate into perspective, to relate his poetic text to the real world. So it was also a motivation for Wawerzinek to make his own story public, that he hoped to encourage other people affected by his exemplary example.

reception

Rabenliebe evoked a strong and very varied response in the German-language feature pages. The novel reached over 11 weeks at a time placements on the bestseller list of buchreport 21 with the top rank Critics choice of SWR leaderboard placed the novel in October 2010 ranked 4. He was on the shortlist of the German Book Prize 2010 was added.

At the Days of German-Language Literature 2010 , an excerpt from the novel entitled I find you / Rabenliebe won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2010 and the Audience Prize. In the discussion of the jury, Alain Claude Sulzer praised the “maturity” and the “experience” of the text. Hildegard Elisabeth Keller discovered “glow and heartbeat” in the text, which Karin Fleischanderl, however, put under “suspicion of kitsch”. Hubert Winkels judged: "Its crude, hard form makes the text intense", but also complained about the connection between the "heterogeneous moments", whereby Meike Feßmann found the different types of text "linguistically rich and complex".

Edits

Rabenliebe was published by Argon Verlag as an audio book , read by Michael Rotschopf , on 9 CDs (total playing time approx. 8.5 hours) and as a live recording of a reading by the author in excerpts (total playing time 2.5 hours).

The stage version of Rabenliebe , edited by Armin Petras and Felicitas Zürcher , premiered on October 3, 2015 at the Dresden State Theater under the direction of Simon Solberg . The actors were Christine Hoppe , Torsten Ranft , Nele Rosetz , Lea Ruckpaul , Sabine Waibel and Miles Perkin as musician.

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Reviews

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elmar Krekeler: What happens when parents disappear forever . In: Die Welt from July 19, 2010.
  2. ↑ a b Mia Eidlhuber: "I wanted to show them: It works!" In: Der Standard vom 18./19. December 2010.
  3. ↑ a b “Somehow put a spotlight on top” Peter Wawerzinek in conversation with Joachim Scholl. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur from June 28, 2010.
  4. ↑ Britte Heidemann: Peter Wawerzinek: "That should be an encouragement" . In: DerWesten from August 19, 2010.
  5. ↑ Raven love at perlentaucher .
  6. ^ Rabenliebe ( memento from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the bestseller list of buchreport .
  7. ↑ October 2010 edition of the SWR best list (pdf; 124 kB).
  8. ^ Shortlist 2010 ( Memento from December 17, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) of the German Book Prize .
  9. ↑ Jury discussion on I find you / Rabenliebe at the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize 2010 .
  10. ^ "Rabenliebe" radio play by Argon Verlag
  11. ^ "Rabenliebe - Live in the Maxim Gorki Theater" radio play by Argon Verlag
  12. ↑ Raven love. www.staatsschauspiel-dresden.de, archived from the original on September 27, 2015 ; accessed on October 9, 2015 .