Tales of the unearthly

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Tales of the Unearthly is a story by Anna Seghers from 1970, which appeared in the Collection Weird Encounters in 1972 .

As in the travel encounter , nothing less than the essence of art is illuminated in the text.

content

I.

Germany in the 16th century , Peasants' War : Anna Seghers begins: "... he found that all the glitter came from the only sun they had here." The reader, whose curiosity was aroused by the title, thinks: Again an alien landed with us.

That's true. The aliens are twenty-three of them. Marie, the daughter of the carver , comes along and suggested they meet Michael . The star guest takes the named name and shows the girl in the sky her star. Marie leads Michael into the workshop of her father, the master Matthias. You start a conversation. Michael admires the master's art; his finished and half-finished sculptures. But it's war. Another war, like a thousand earth years ago, when the last delegation from the other star found earth, Michael is surprised.

The other twenty-two tell Michael to return home because of the murders and the spilled blood. Michael stays because of Marie and the altar carving; therefore because of the art that earth humans have; the art, a force that nobody has on the home star. There are only non-artists at home. After all, these rational beings have overcome the incredible distance to the earth star.

During the furious war of aggression, the aliens bring Matthias and Marie out of the danger zone and onto an air island. The strangers can fly.

The war victim Marie dies, but is not completely dead, but flies like angels fly through space, this "single vortex of golden air". Matthias is buried with his daughter.

II

Then the next troop set out for the Earth Star. The Thirty Years War is raging . One of the travelers wants to research what art is. When he landed happily and Katrin asks him his name, he replies "Melchior" because he has just heard that name. Melchior is scolded as a sorcerer for bringing a camera with him. Katrin is considered a witch because she stays with Melchior. There is still war. Another army is advancing. Once again a flying machine saves the life of the alien's wife. Melchior does not understand the devastation. Katrin has the explanation. Catholic and Protestant can never get along in life. The couple are getting married. The skilled craftsman Melchior becomes a well-attended miller, but he gets homesick for his star and dies because nobody answers his message. Katrin gets through life. The daughter marries a farmer. The couple have two daughters and three sons.

III

Once one of the descendants rummaged through the strange heirlooms in the attic and finally held the radio to his ear, with which Melchior wanted to contact his star during his lifetime. The young heir hears a few tones. Then there is rest. Anna Seghers concludes in a fairytale tone: "If the thing has not broken long ago, it will perhaps make itself heard again with the one it has now gotten to."

reception

  • The spacemen from the distant star cannot understand people at all, especially the coexistence of the will to art and the will to destroy observed in the earth's inhabitants.
  • GDR authors - for example Fühmann , Sarah Kirsch , Irmtraud Morgner and Christa Wolf - would have taken the Seghers' articulation articulated in the "Strange Encounters" to heart. For example, Seghers' witch Katrin is conceivable as a model for Morgner's witches. And in the text Legends of the Unearthly , the author longs for the amalgamation of ratio and ars .
  • History is linked with something like science fiction in an attractive way. When he thinks of Matthias, Schrade thinks of Matthias Grünewald . In this weighty little late work, the reader no longer encounters the class warrior Seghers, but the artist with the message: "Great art comes from a deep piety."
  • The earthly sculptor Matthias gives the extraterrestrial intellectual an idea of ​​art.

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Neugebauer: Anna Seghers. Life and work. With illustrations (research assistant: Irmgard Neugebauer, editorial deadline September 20, 1977). 238 pages. Series “Writers of the Present” (Ed. Kurt Böttcher). People and Knowledge, Berlin 1980, without ISBN
  • Ute Brandes: Anna Seghers . Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1992. Volume 117 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”, ISBN 3-7678-0803-X .
  • Andreas Schrade: Anna Seghers . Metzler, Stuttgart 1993 (Metzler Collection, Vol. 275 (Authors)), ISBN 3-476-10275-0 .
  • Sonja Hilzinger: Anna Seghers. With 12 illustrations. Series of Literature Studies. Reclam, Stuttgart 2000, RUB 17623, ISBN 3-15-017623-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 5
  2. ^ Schrade, p. 145, 15. Zvo
  3. ↑ Brandes, p. 85, 11. Zvu and also Schrade, p. 146 above
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 9, 10. Zvu
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 26, 16. Zvo
  6. ↑ Brandes, p. 85, 11. Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 26, 16. Zvo
  8. ↑ Neugebauer, p. 199, 15. Zvu to p. 202, 10. Zvo
  9. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 159, 14th Zvu
  10. ↑ Brandes, pp. 85-86
  11. ^ Schrade, p. 145
  12. ^ Schrade, p. 146, 5th Zvu
  13. ^ Schrade, p. 146, 20. Zvo
  14. ↑ Hilzinger, p. 159, 5. Zvo