Strogany and the missing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Strogany and the Missing is a historical detective novel by Adam Kuckhoff and Peter Tarin (pseudonym of Edwin Tietjens ), which was first published in 1940 as a serial in the Kölnische Zeitung and was finally published in 1941 as a book by the Berlin Universitas Verlag. Adam Kuckhoff was one of the leading figures in the Rote Kapelle resistance group , and his co-author Edwin Tietjens was also active in the group's environment. The novel can also be interpreted as an act of resistance: Kuckhoff and Tietjens used the novel about the Petersburg private investigator Sergej Pawlowitsch Strogany, which was set up around 1909/1910 in the Russian Empire, to hide numerous time-critical passages in the text.

content

In the winter of 1909/1910, the aristocratic amateur detective Sergej Pavlovich Strogany advised the Petersburg police on a major criminal case, the eponymous "Missing Person's Cause". H. the "inexplicable disappearance of a number of members of the first social circles". While the criminal police assume nihilistic assassinations (the so-called “political theory”), while Strogany's friend Wassja Morosoff believes in supernatural phenomena (“dematerialization”), the amateur investigator himself remains open to other - even more banal - possibilities. "As long as I don't know anything, to consider any solution possible - that's my only theory," Strogany formulates, apparently trained on the great role model Sherlock Holmes ("When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth" ). In the case of the missing, this method ultimately leads to the buried corpses of crime victims who have fallen victim to simple robberies.

Time criticism

Kuckhoff's detective novel not only revolves around a case that appears strange in the mirror of contemporary history - the disappearance of people without a trace in the middle of war and the Holocaust - it also contains numerous narrative details that drew contemporary readers' attention. For example, in a lonely forest hut behind a double wall, "forbidden books" with anarchist content are discovered, numerous people at the center of the novel belong to a (former) resistance group, and it is vividly demonstrated and discussed how the Russian newspapers circumvent police censorship. Many statements by narrators and novelists can also be understood as time-critical:

• “Even the bloodiest sensation becomes dulled when it becomes commonplace,” says Strogany and the Missing at the beginning of the series in relation to the attacks carried out by “revolutionary rebels”.

• “It is customary to judge injustices mildly as long as they are not disadvantageous to you,” says Strogany elsewhere.

• "I am convinced that people are just as responsible for what they allow to happen as they are for what they do," said Pljuschkin, who saves Strogany from a bear attack with a well-aimed shot.

• “All of this has to collapse one day, and the sooner the better,” postulates Strogany's friend Maria Ivanovna with regard to the cruelty and social injustice of the Tsarist empire. (etc.)

Kuckhoff even discloses his method in the preface to the first edition of Strogany and the Missing People. There it says: “The reader's wish to be entertained with good care is legitimate. And it accommodates the wish of the poetically responsible author to say things from the treasure trove of his experiences that can only be said if you let yourself go more freely. The main thing remains that in the end the reader keeps something in his hand that allows him to understand a bit more of reality, both as a whole and in detail. "

Text output

  • Adam Kuckhoff, Peter Tarin: Strogany and the Missing. Detective novel . Universitas-Verlag, Berlin 1941 (first edition).
  • Adam Kuckhoff, Peter Tarin: Strogany and the missing. Detective novel . ebooknews press Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-944953-43-4 (new edition with afterword)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Oelze, The feature section of the Kölnische Zeitung in the Third Reich, Stuttgart 1990, p. 98.
  2. ↑ Shareen Blair Brysac: Resisting Hitler: Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 272.