Predatory fishermen in Hellas

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Raubfischer in Hellas is a high-circulation novel by the writer Werner Helwig (1905–1985). It is the first volume of the so-called "Hellas Trilogy".

Greek fishing boat

action

“The author tells the adventurous story of his friend Clemens (di Alfons Hochhauser ), who, tired of civilization, tries to live without a permanent home among farmers, fishermen and smugglers on the Aegean coast. He falls into the hands of a dynamite fisherman who forces him to be a kind of oar slave. Xenophon, as he is called by the Greeks, tries in vain to lead the hunters and even the hunted, who blindly trust the day and their luck, back to a professional fishing. "

History of origin

Helwig, who came from the Nerother Wandervogel , visited the Austrian adventurer Alfons Hochhauser, who lives in Greece, three times between 1935 and 1938. He told him about his life in Pelion and gave him written notes on his departure. His stories formed the basis, which Helwig reworked through his own additions to the novel Raubfischer in Hellas . The novel was published in 1939, but years later it would give rise to protracted disputes over authorship .

expenditure

The book had numerous editions, and the rights migrated in a curious way through an unusually large number of publishers in which editions appeared:

  • Asmus, Leipzig 1939
  • Edition Tauchnitz , Leipzig 1941 (With the note: Only for sale outside the Greater German Reich .)
  • Soldiers Library, Leipzig 1943 (With the note: Only for use within the Wehrmacht .)
  • Front book trade edition for the Wehrmacht. Oslo 1944
  • Asmus, Konstanz / Stuttgart 1951
  • Gutenberg Book Guild , Frankfurt 1952
  • Fischer-Taschenbuch Nr. 51, Frankfurt / Hamburg 1954
  • Eugen Diederichs , Düsseldorf / Cologne 1957
  • German house library, Hamburg 1957
  • Jakob Hegner, Cologne / Olten 1959
  • German book club, Darmstadt 1959
  • Jakob Hegner, Cologne / Olten 1965 (special edition)
  • Herbig, Munich 1972
  • Goldmann-Taschenbuch Nr. 3353, Munich 1975
  • Moewig-Taschenbuch Nr. 2134, Rastatt 1981
  • Reclam , Stuttgart 1991
  • Fischer-Taschenbuch and Fischer E-Book, Frankfurt a. M. 2016

The novel has been translated into Italian (1941: Pescatori di frodo ), French (1942: Braconniers de la mer en Grèce ) and Dutch (1944: Roofvissers ). In August 2013 a translation into Greek by Irini Kyrannos was published under the title Οι Ληστές του Βυθού with a foreword by Dieter Harsch, ISBN 978-618-5067-02-1 . Under the titles Mit Harpune und Dynamit (Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1952) and Xenophon und die Raubfischer (Voggenreiter, Bad Godesberg 1962) two youth book adaptations appeared.

Copyright dispute

When Alfons Hochhauser found out that the book was coming out, he wanted to be part of the publisher's payments. He also disagreed with certain passages in the book. The dispute, initially interrupted by the war, ended in 1959 in Geneva with an out-of-court settlement, but it escalated again when the book was about to be made into a film. An agreement on the film rights could not initially be achieved. A bitter dispute began between the film company, Helwig, Hochhauser and their lawyers about the distribution of income and the content of film history. Since Hochhauser did not want to have his life story processed in the film, the script was rewritten as a pure love story. All names from the predatory fishermen have been changed, including the place names. According to a contract dated December 6, 1960, Hochhauser undertook to recognize Helwig's sole authorship. Both agreed financially. Nevertheless, allegations of plagiarism sometimes emerged later . Hochhauser and Helwig found friends again towards the end of their lives, as evidenced by an intensive correspondence. After Hochhauser's death (1981), Helwig published a very personal necrology .

Effects

filming

In 1959 Horst Hächler filmed the predatory fishermen in Hellas as his second directorial work . His wife Maria Schell played the leading role; other actors were Cliff Robertson and Cameron Mitchell . The film had little to do with the plot of the original novel and was a flop, the film was unanimously (by the press FAZ said the director had no clear idea of the nature of a film ballad) panned .

Trips to Greece by the Bündische Jugend

The novel met with great interest among the Bündische Jugend in the post-war period. He attracted youth groups - following Helwig's footsteps - up to the present day on adventurous exploratory trips to Greece, whose experiences subsequently appeared in their magazines (for example in Das Lagerfeuer und der Eisbrecher ) numerous reports.

Literary evaluation

The novel was assessed and interpreted very differently. It reads like an adventure book, but it is more than this, more than just the representation of a Greece that one would look in vain for in travel guides. One of the guiding principles is the flight from civilization, and this topic shows an almost forward-looking ecological aspect at Helwig. When the novel was published in 1939, it was, along with Ernst Jünger's Auf den Marmorklippen, “one of the most sensational books at the time”. Since it could be understood as a masked statement on the forced regime of the Nazis, it was added to the “books not to be funded” in 1940 and only appeared in prints for the soldiers at the front during the war, probably as a small outlet when looking after the soldiers at the front. Today the author's language, which is often powerfully wordy and provided with mythological images, no longer necessarily seems up to date, although Helwig's sensual art of language is still recognized.

In the thicket of Pelion is the name of the second volume in the Hellas trilogy. The satellite image shows the Pelion peninsula.

The Hellas trilogy

The book Raubfischer in Hellas is regarded as the first volume in the so-called “Hellas Trilogy ”. In 1941, the second volume was published in the thicket of Pelion , in which the protagonist no longer lives on the coast but as a shepherd in the interior of the country. It was only after the war (1953) that the final volume Reise Without Homecoming could come out; it is the description of an alienation between author and book hero, but also a farewell to the image of Greece in the first two novels. Together with a publisher, the trilogy did not appear until the late Reclam paperback edition (1991ff). 25 years later, in 2016, Fischer-Verlag is reissuing the three novels as paperbacks and as e-books.

Quote

“Amazed by the increasing gloom in the group of celebrants, I went out for a moment, let the wind wipe my hot forehead and was unable to bring my suspicions into order. Through the low-lying window, I glanced over the people flickering over fire and light. Again and again I found confirmation of what I had noticed from the start: if I wasn't there, my demeanor changed. "

- Werner Helwig

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Erik Martin: The Greece novels . In: Muschelhaufen , special edition 26A, Viersen 1991, page 5
  2. ↑ Richard Bersch: Pathos and Myth. Studies on Werner Helwig's work with a bio-bibliographical appendix. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-631-44541-5
  3. ↑ Erik Martin: Werner Helwig and Alfons Hochhauser. Friendship and decades of quarrel about the predatory fishermen in Hellas . In: Clams. Annual journal for literature and graphics . Viersen 2000, No. 39/40, ISSN  0085-3593
  4. ↑ Werner Helwig: In memoriam Alfons Hochhauser. Target figure of the novel "Predator in Hellas" . In: Keyword , Heidenheim 1981, No. 3
  5. ^ Special edition Werner Helwig . Clam pile. Viersen 1991 No. No. 26 A, p. 7
  6. ↑ Michael Kohlhase: News from Pelion - the fourth research trip in the footsteps of Werner Helwig . In: newspaper. Journal of the German Freischar . No. 1/2008
  7. ↑ Carsten Würmann: Escape attempts from modernity. Life plans in Werner Helwig's novel “Raubfischer in Hellas” . In: Scope of the individual. Literature in the Weimar Republic and in the “Third Reich” . Weidler book publisher. Berlin 1999. ISBN 3-89693-141-5 . (This volume was also published as issue 30/31 of JUNI. Magazine for literature and politics.)
  8. ↑ Dorota Cygan: Damned to the Outsider - Outsider Stories with Werner Helwig and Sergiusz Piasecki . In: Between the times. Young literature in Germany between 1933 and 1945 . Uta Beiküfner, Hania Siebenpfeiffer (eds.). Pp. 61-81. Berlin 2000. ISBN 3-8311-0309-7
  9. ↑ Günter Schulz: Sensuality of Language. Werner Helwig turns 70 . In: Darmstädter Echo from January 11, 1975
  10. ↑ Expert opinion display . Organ of the Office of Document Management at the Führer’s agent for supervision […] . No. 4, April 1940
  11. ↑ The 1942 edition bore the publisher's note: "Only for sale outside the Greater German Reich"
  12. ↑ Walther Killy (Ed.): Literature Lexicon. Authors and works in German . Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1990, Vol. 5, p. 209
  13. ^ Page 178, Hegner edition 1959

literature

  • Werner Benndorf: Predatory fishermen in Hellas . In: The German word . Berlin 1939. No. 6
  • Ernst von Schenk: Werner Helwig's Hellas novels . In: Swiss Annals . Aarau 1945, No. 2
  • Erik Martin : Predatory fishermen in Hellas . In: Clams . Annual journal for literature . Viersen 1991. Vol. 26 A, ISSN  0085-3593
  • Erik Martin: Werner Helwig's Greek novels . In: the icebreaker . Heidenheim 1988, No. 4, ISSN  0342-1597
  • Erik Martin: Werner Helwig and Alfons Hochhauser. Friendship and decades of quarrel about the “predatory fishermen in Hellas” . In: Clams . Viersen 2000, No. 39/40, ISSN  0085-3593
  • Richard Bersch: Practical teaching analyzes, secondary level II, 7th episode, Werner Helwig: Raubfischer in Hellas, Stuttgart 1991
  • Steffi Granitz: The narrator, the fool and his wife. A journey to the locations of Werner Helwig's wonderful Greek novels . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung from 24./25. August 2002
  • Michael Kohlhase: In the footsteps of Werner Helwig's “Predatory Fishermen in Hellas” . Worksheets 92nd German Freischar, Aachen 2006

Web links