Siegfried (novel)
Siegfried: a black idyll (original edition: Siegfried: een zwarte idylle ) is a novel by Harry Mulisch . 2001 he has appeared in the publishing house "De Bezige Bij" in the Netherlands . A German translation by Gregor Seferens was published by Hanser Verlag in 2001 . The subject of the book is Adolf Hitler as absolute nothing in an attempt to comprehend him.
action
1999. The famous Dutch writer Rudolf Herter (the alter ego of Harry Mulisch) is at the invitation of the Dutch embassy in Vienna for his book “The Invention of Love”. After arriving by plane, he gave an interview for Austrian television that same evening . Although Herter thinks he knows exactly what to say, the conversation takes an unexpected turn. In conversation, Herter gets new ideas for an essay about Hitler - someone who has long fascinated him. He says that hundreds of thousands of studies have already been made about Hitler, but that only made him more incomprehensible.
Herter wants to take a different approach. But he does not succeed in working out his ideas until the next day after lunch with the ambassador at the end of a reading an elderly couple approaches him. You saw him on TV and believe you can help him with his plan. Herter speaks to them the following day in their old people's home in Vienna. After Herter promised them that they would have nothing to do with their story as long as they were alive, they told him that they were the former servants of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun in Hitler's Berghof Alpine villa . Herter is surprised, but his surprise is even greater when Ullrich and Julia Falk tell him that Hitler had a son by Eva Braun. Since Hitler did not want to lose his supporters among German women, it was decided that the Falk couple should raise the child. After his birth, the child was named Siegfried Falk instead of Siegfried Hitler.
When the war ends, Ullrich is forced to murder Siegfried. After they were forced to leave the Berghof, the Falk couple worked for some time in the household of the "Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands" Arthur Seyß-Inquart before they returned to Vienna.
When Herter heard her story, he returned to his hotel room hysterical. His assistant Maria worries about him, but he doesn't care. After recording his philosophical ideas about Hitler on his dictaphone , he dies of a heart attack. The last words that Maria hears while listening to the device are. He ... he ... he 's here. These were the words Hitler had said when he was found panicking in his room in the middle of the night.
Herter's theory
The philosophical ideas that Herter utters in a monologue at the end of the book are the most important part of the book. They form the theory that Herter wanted to explain after the recorded interview. The theory consists in large part of connections between Nietzsche and Hitler. Some important points are:
- According to Herter, Nietzsche's decline into madness corresponds to the development of Hitler's fetus .
- Both Nietzsche and Hitler were 56 years old.
- Nietzsche lets the prophet Zarathustra in his novel Also Spoke Zarathustra declaim many difficult-to-interpret statements, some of which can safely be interpreted as predictions of the Second World War .
Awards for the novel Siegfried
- 2003: De Inktaap
- 2007: Prix Européen des Jeunes Lecteurs
expenditure
- First edition: Siegfried: een zwarte idylle. Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 2001, ISBN 90-234-6215-7 .
- Translation: Siegfried: a black idyll. From the Dutch by Gregor Seferens. Hanser, Munich and Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-446-20090-8 .
- Paperback: Siegfried: a black idyll. From the Dutch by Gregor Seferens. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2003 (paperback), ISBN 3-499-23296-0 .