Transit (Anna Seghers)

Transit is a novel that Anna Seghers wrote in exile in Mexico in 1941 and 1942 and contains autobiographical elements. It was published in English and Spanish in 1944. The German original version first appeared in the Berliner Zeitung in 1947 and the first German book edition in 1948.

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“Transit” takes place during the Second World War. The first-person narrator , whose name is not known, tells a (mute) listener whom he invites into his favorite pizzeria about his experiences. He's tired of the excitement of war and just wants to tell his story. The narrator himself is German and 27 years old. He fled Germany to France and was interned in a labor camp in Rouen by the French authorities after the war began . After an attack by the Wehrmacht, he fled, joined other refugees and decided to go to friends in Paris in order to escape the Germans who were invading France. But Paris is declared an open city and is soon occupied by the Wehrmacht; he is ashamed of his countrymen. He is warmly welcomed by his friends, the Binnet family, and can live with them.

One day he meets Paul again, a former inmate from the labor camp. He tells that he has to emigrate to America because he wrote a book against Hitler. He asks the narrator to bring a letter to a poet named Weidel, as he himself fears that he will be discovered. The narrator agrees and does not ask about the background. He goes to the hotel Paul mentioned. The hotel owner claims that Weidel has already moved out. The narrator notices that she is hiding something out of fear and gets her to tell him the truth: The morning after he moved in, Weidel was found dead in his room. He committed suicide using poison. The narrator then promises to bring Weidel's suitcase to his relatives, who are also Paul’s friends. The next day, however, Paul does not appear at the agreed meeting point. The narrator opens the suitcase and begins to read the manuscripts inside. Weidel's story is not yet completed, and it immediately casts a spell over the narrator. In addition, he finds a letter in the suitcase from Weidel's wife, who temporarily separated from him and then wanted to emigrate with him to Mexico. The narrator decides to hand the suitcase over to the Mexican consulate so that Weidel's wife can pick it up there. The consul refuses to give her the suitcase; then the narrator keeps it.

He and Binnet's sons leave Paris to escape the National Socialists, who have now completely occupied Paris. They make their way to Binnet's daughter Yvonne, whose husband gets a passport and money for the narrator. Yvonne recommends that he move on to her cousin Georg in Marseilles, and the narrator follows her advice. There he got to know some other emigrants and everyone advised him to emigrate as soon as possible. However, the narrator sees no reason to leave Marseilles ; he likes the city. He tries again to hand in Weidel's suitcase at the Mexican consulate, but due to a misunderstanding, they think he is Weidel himself, who is now asking for an exit permit. The narrator does not clear up the mistake and the consul promises to have the name “Weidel” rewritten to “Seidler”, the name in the narrator's forged passport. Until then, he had a residence permit for Marseille. The narrator therefore moves to the “Rue de la Providence” hotel, but often visits Georg Binnet and his family, with whom he soon becomes friends. Shortly afterwards, he also meets a girl named Nadine, and they become a couple.

His residence permit expires after a month. However, he manages to enforce an extension. In the meantime, however, he was running out of money, and he was also separating from Nadine. He meets Paul again, who complains that he has not been granted a visa and that he has been forced to stay in Marseille. They are talking about Weidel. However, the narrator hides his death and asks Paul to take care of Weidel's departure. Shortly afterwards, the narrator meets Heinz - also a friend from the time of the labor camp. He also wants to emigrate to Mexico. He gives the narrator a forged release certificate from the camp in order to be able to prove to the French authorities that he did not flee from internment but that he was "properly" released. When Binnet's son falls ill, he finds a German doctor for him who also wants to emigrate to Mexico. They talk about visas and transit permits and the narrator longs to go back home. He saw Weidel's wife Marie for the first time in a café by the harbor, but didn't know who she was. She immediately makes a strong impression on him. He's waiting in the same café the next evening to see her again. With success. He meets her almost every evening, but doesn't dare to speak to her. Apparently she's always looking for someone.

On one of these evenings he happened to find out about a ship to Lisbon. He tells the German doctor, with whom he has since become friends, about it and he wants to know more about it immediately. The doctor invites the narrator to dinner, and the woman who is still mysterious to him enters the bar again. To the astonishment of the narrator, the doctor knows them and obviously the two are even a couple. He learns that her name is Marie and that she wants to leave France. Since she has no papers yet and is very hesitant, the doctor, as he confides in the narrator, wants to leave without her, because he is tired of the waiting. The narrator is happy about it, because he feels very drawn to Marie and wants to stay with her in Marseille. He asks who she is looking for and Marie says that she is looking for her husband because he has to confirm her visa. Here it becomes clear to the narrator that the writer Weidel, with whose identity he is in the process of obtaining a visa for Mexico, is Marie's husband. The narrator decides not to tell her about his death yet and to look after her himself after he has sent the doctor away.

The protagonist therefore asks the consulate for travel permission for Marie, who is now “his” wife, and pretends to want to leave the country with her. He still hasn't revealed to her that her husband is dead and that he is posing as this for his visa. He meets Heinz again at the consulate and promises to find a place on the ship for him too. The feeling of otherwise abandoning him gives the narrator a guilty conscience. The narrator and Marie now see each other every day, but he doesn't know whether she's coming because of him or because of the visa he promised her. At their meeting, Marie tells how she met Weidel and how she then left him in Germany with the doctor, because Weidel himself had no time for her. Meanwhile, the narrator helps the doctor to prepare everything for departure so that he can get rid of him as quickly as possible. He is already imagining a future together with Marie when the doctor returns because the cabin seats in "his" ship have been confiscated from evacuated officers. The narrator is very upset that his rival has not left after all and therefore also avoids Marie. Finally he gets a transit for America. However, he is denied transit for Spain because Weidel once wrote an article about mass shootings during the Spanish civil war. However, the narrator is not too disappointed about the refused transit, as he no longer wants to leave anyway.

He continues to avoid Marie, but one day he meets her by chance. Marie asks him to help her. She wants to keep looking for Weidel because the officials at the Mexican consulate, who know the narrator by Weidel's name, have told her that her husband is still in town after all. The narrator tries in vain to talk her out of the eternal search, but keeps the death of Weidel and the appropriation of his identity to himself. Nevertheless, he promises her to find a transit and asks an acquaintance who is friends with the consul to do it for him. The narrator decides to leave with Marie after all. He is still keeping this plan a secret from her, because he still lacks the money to leave.

Then he learns that the doctor wants to travel with Marie himself and the narrator is annoyed that he has not yet received a ship ticket and therefore cannot go with her. Shortly afterwards, he happens to meet an old friend who is ready to give him his ticket if the narrator transfers money from Weidel's account. The narrator agrees, even if he is not yet sure whether he really wants to leave. When he has prepared everything for his departure, he decides to take his chance and try to win Marie over for good. He finally wants to tell her the truth about Weidel and tells her about Weidel's death. Marie still doesn't believe him because she checked with the consulate and found out again that her husband had only recently been there. Now she hopes that he will also be on her ship. The narrator does not try to explain that he has passed himself off as pasture, but feels that in the end he lost to the dead. The fact that Marie persuades herself so compulsively that Weidel is still alive shows the narrator that he would never mean as much to Marie as Weidel. ("The dead man could not be caught. He held on to what was owed him in eternity. He was stronger than me.") He then gives back his hard-earned boat ticket. After Marie's departure, the narrator decides to stay in France for good and takes a job in the country. He is determined to stay with the Binnets and share their fate no matter what. He suggests joining the armed resistance (Résistance) in an emergency.

Later he heard the rumor that the ship with which Marie and the doctor left had sunk.

background

main characters

First-person narrator: The protagonist is nameless. After receiving an abandoned refugee permit, he first took the name Seidler and later that of the writer Weidel. After fleeing a German camp, he lived briefly in Paris, but could not stay there and fled to Marseille, where he finally stayed.

Marie: The wife of the dead writer Weidel firmly believes that her husband is still alive because she has heard that a man named Weidel has appeared in Marseille (who the first-person narrator claims to be). She therefore hesitates to leave for Mexico with a German doctor, her partner. After some confusion, she decides to emigrate with the doctor to Mexico by ship. It remains to be seen whether your ship will arrive safely there or not.

Doctor: Marie's partner wants to leave Marseille with her across the ocean because he wants to take a job in Mexico. His fate is also unclear.

Narrative perspective

The reader is treated as a counterpart, to whom the events are told as a dialogue in a pizzeria. The narrator describes his experiences in Marseille going backwards . Its starting point is a rumor that a ship went down. The chronology of events takes a back seat.

Literary meaning

Transit is a development novel . The leitmotif of the plot is the development of the first-person narrator from a homeless, aimless, wandering refugee to an anti - fascist who feels connected to France and especially to Marseille . The Binnet family plays an important role in this. Transit was highly valued in the 1970s and 1980s and was considered a masterpiece of exile literature during the Nazi era .

Historical background

The action takes place in France in the early 1940s. On September 3, 1939, France declared war on the German Reich. All Germans who were in France thus became “hostile foreigners”, most of whom were interned in camps for precisely this reason, including the first-person narrator in transit .

For the opposition members among them, the rapid approach of the German troops in June 1940 made the situation difficult, as they were still classified as "Germans" by the French, but also had to reckon with being treated by the German occupiers as opponents of National Socialism to become. The Jews among the refugees also faced persecution (i.e., their deportation , and ultimately their murder).

In Vichy France , parts of the population were anti-German, but there were also French who collaborated with the German occupation forces. Marseille was the last “free” overseas port; Nevertheless, many Jews were arrested there (partly during police raids and partly through treason). Anna Seghers addressed this in her novel.

In the novel Transit , Seghers set up a literary monument for the Mexican consulate in Marseille, among other things. Consul General Gilberto Bosques issued visas for Mexico to 40,000 refugees ; at that time this was the most important requirement for fleeing to Mexico. Seghers also traveled to Mexico with such a visa.

Film adaptations

Seghers' novel inspired the German film director Christian Petzold to write the eponymous feature film Transit (2018). But the story is set in the Marseille of the present. Earlier film adaptations are Fluchtweg nach Marseille (FRG 1977, by Ingemo Engström and Gerhard Theuring ), Transit (France 1991, by René Allio ) and others.

literature

• Anna Seghers: Transit . Roman (=  Anna Seghers. Collected Works in Individual Editions . Volume 5 ). 2nd Edition. Construction Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1982, DNB  821045377 .
• Anna Seghers: Transit . 1st, new edition. Structure of the Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-7466-5153-0 , urn : nbn: de: 101: 1-201308089104 ( limited preview in the Google book search - not page-identical with the individual edition).
• Anna Seghers: Transit (=  SZ library . Volume 74 ). Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-86615-524-7 .

Web links

• Anna Seghers in exile: Marseille transit station. In: uni-potsdam.de

See also

• German occupation of France in World War II
• History of the Jews in France # During World War II

Footnotes

1. ↑ p. 90.
2. ↑ Note: Portugal was neutral in World War II.
3. ↑ P. 132: The narrator applies for a US transit.
4. ↑ p. 260: Description of those willing to leave .
5. ↑ p. 269.
6. ↑ See plot.
7. ↑ Christian Kloyber: Austrian Authors in Exile from Mexico 1938 to 1945. (PDF) In: Austrian Literature in Exile since 1933. University of Salzburg, 2002, accessed on December 24, 2013 (see also the author's earlier text: Austrian Authors in Exile in Mexico 1938–1945. A contribution to anti-fascist Austrian exile literature. Vienna 1987, OCLC 258363811 ). 
8. ↑ Transit (2018) in the Internet Movie Database (English).
9. ^ Transit (1977) in the Internet Movie Database (English).
10. ^ Transit (1991) in the Internet Movie Database (English).
11. ↑ ^{a b} Bibliography. B: Films for cinema and television. P. 15. In: anna-seghers.de, accessed on March 1, 2018 (PDF; 253 kB).