Star of the unborn
Star of the unborn. A travel novel is a 1946 science fiction novel by the Austrian author Franz Werfel . It is his last work and wasn't published until a year after his death. In it, Werfel describes the protagonist F. W.'s journey through time into the future.
Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy , which, like Star of the Unborn, is divided into three parts, is considered the model of the novel .
content
F. W. is invited as a guest into the future 100,000 years away by his friend B. H., who has died but has been reborn. He spends three days in this futuristic world, a utopia in which disease, greed, envy, work or nationality no longer exist. The book is divided into these three days.
Together with his friend, F. W. travels through this world as a special guest from the past by means of a so-called mentelebol, a travel puzzle that does not convey the traveler to the destination but the destination to the traveler. He gets to know the world that Werfel describes as "astromental" and its achievements as well as its most important inhabitants and describes his experiences and findings, for example that the only religions that have survived the millennia are Judaism and Catholicism and only these exist.
Everyday life, culture, politics, technology and religion of this carefree, futuristic society are reflected by the protagonist on the present and compared with it before he is finally transported back to the present and ends his journey.
Specifically, but not only in the third section of the book, the content is of a philosophical nature. For example, the questions are discussed whether a utopian society can ever exist without any conflict or whether people can act ideally and learn from their mistakes.
F. W. also reports on the situation in Germany after 1945:
“Between World War Two and Three, the Germans pushed themselves to the forefront of humanity and goodness. The use of the word 'humanity drudgery' cost forty-eight hours of detention or a correspondingly large sum of money. Most of the Germans also took what they understood by humanity and kindness extremely seriously. They had longed to be popular for centuries. Humanity and kindness now seemed to them the best way to reach this goal. In fact, they found it far more convenient than heroism and racialism. [...] You were the inventor of the ungrateful ethic of 'selfless intrusiveness'. To recuperate, the educated brownies gave philosophical lectures at adult education centers, in Protestant churches and even in reform synagogues, their monotonous subject always being devoted to the brotherly duty of man. You couldn't do without duty , as the basic German conception of life consisted of 'worshiping the unpleasant'. In a word, they were real sheep in sheep's clothing. But since they themselves this were frantically, it believed them no, and they were considered wolves. "
background
The sole existence of Judaism and Catholicism in the futuristic, utopian world can be traced back to the fact that Werfel was a Jew who converted to Catholicism and that these two religions shaped his life.
literature
- Silvia Rode: Franz Werfel's star of the unborn. Utopia as a fictional genre discourse and history of ideas , Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 978-3-88099-400-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Franz Werfel: Star of the unborn. opus5 interactive medien gmbh, accessed on May 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Star of the Unborn, Chapter 9 in the Gutenberg-DE project
- ↑ Koller, Olga: Judaism and Christianity in the life and work of Franz Werfels. January 1, 2009, accessed May 14, 2017 .