Tschick (novel)

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Nomination for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize (Category: Fiction ), Tschick , 2011

Tschick is a youth novel by Wolfgang Herrndorf published by Rowohlt Verlag in 2010 .

It is about the unusual friendship between a 14-year-old from a middle-class background and a young repatriate from Russia . The work was awarded the German Youth Literature Prize and the Clemens Brentano Prize in 2011 and the Hans Fallada Prize in 2012. The book, which was published in over 25 countries, had sold over 2 million copies in Germany alone by September 2016.

intention

When asked why he wrote a youth novel with “Tschick”, Wolfgang Herrndorf answered in an interview with the FAZ:

“Around 2004 I read the books from my childhood and youth again, ' Lord of the Flies ', ' Huckleberry Finn ', ' Arthur Gordon Pym ', ' Spades Travels to America ' and so on. To find out whether they were really as good as I remembered them, but also to see what kind of person I was when I was twelve. And in doing so, I discovered that all of my favorite books had three things in common: quick elimination of adult caregivers, long journeys, great water. I was thinking about how these three things could be put into a halfway realistic youth novel. Taking the raft down the Elbe seemed ridiculous to me; in the Federal Republic of the twenty-first century as an outlier on a ship: Quark. The only thing that occurred to me was the car. Two boys steal a car. There was no water, but I had the plot in my head in a few minutes. "

- In conversation: Wolfgang Herrndorf, FAZ from January 31, 2011

action

A Lada Niva is the vehicle of the two main characters.

Maik Klingenberg, 14 years old and from a wealthy but broken home in Marzahn , a district of East Berlin, is an outsider in his class. Therefore, at the beginning of the summer holidays, he is not invited to the birthday of the classy beauty Tatjana Cosic, with whom he is secretly in love. It's just considered too boring. One of the few times he stands out in his class is the moment when he reads his essay in German class, in which he talks about his alcoholic mother with astonishing but loving candor . The teacher is horrified, the class laughs and has been calling him psycho ever since . Nobody understands how you can write about your mother in such an unvarnished way.

The new classmate Tschick (actually Andrej Tschichatschow), a taciturn Russian repatriate who now and then shows up to class drunk, is an outsider . And he too is excluded from Tatjana's birthday party. Maik, who hopes to be invited to the end, draws a Beyoncé poster from a magazine as a present for Tatjana with painstaking work in pencil . But the last day of school comes without anything happening. On top of that it is clear that Maik's mother's again rehab wants to use the time needs and his father to go with his young assistant on vacation. Maik will have to spend the summer holidays alone. Tschick suddenly appears in front of the front door with a stolen, rickety, light blue Lada Niva . Tschick suggests that Maik go to his grandfather in Wallachia . Although neither of them know exactly where it is, Maik agrees after a moment's hesitation, and a journey into the unknown begins. First, however, the two drive up to Tatjana's birthday party, and Maik, encouraged by Tschick, hands her the present before they accelerate again and leave the astonished party guests in the rearview mirror.

They didn't take maps with them, so they soon get lost somewhere in the forest and finally end up in a small village with a consumer-critical mother with five children who not only have an excellent general education , but also guests at their delicious organic lunch participate in the garden. On their further odyssey back and forth through the wild east of Germany, they later meet the boyish Isa Schmidt, a girl of the same age who is not only to them , when they are looking for a hose at a garbage dump to draw gas from other cars for their Lada shows where to find what you are looking for, but also how to deal with it. Isa wants to go to Prague to visit her half-sister there, and now, although completely filthy and so badly smelly that the boys can hardly stand it, they have to be taken along by the two of them.

When they arrive at a reservoir, they throw Isa into the water without further ado so that she can wash and get rid of her stench. She frankly throws away her old clothes, cleans herself thoroughly and then puts on a few of Maik's clothes. When he is supposed to cut her hair, he not only discovers her shapely bare torso, but also that his old love for Tatiana is gradually beginning to fade. The next morning the three decide to climb the next mountain. On the summit you can enjoy the wonderful nature and romantic atmosphere. They find a wooden hut and Tschick carves their initials into the wood, whereupon they vow to meet up there again in exactly 50 years.

When they get off and a tour bus stops in the parking lot, Isa thinks she can get to Prague better by bus than with the old Lada. She borrows the necessary fare of € 30 from Maik and lets the two of them go on alone. You land at the crater of a huge lignite mining area and meet the last remaining, apparently senile resident, Horst Fricke, who greets you with his air rifle, but then invites you for a lemonade and tells you about his tragic losses (e.g. his love) and traumatic experiences in the concentration camp and on the Eastern Front. To say goodbye, he forces a mysterious, small bottle with an allegedly life-saving liquid that should only be used in an extreme emergency. As the two of them sit in the car, Tschick opens the bottle with the liquid, which turns out to be smelly. That's why Tschick throws them out of the Lada's window without further ado. When they can finally continue their journey on small back roads, they suddenly discover the motorway next to them from a hill. When trying to get onto the motorway from the slope, they roll over several times and their Lada stays with the wheels up. A speech therapist who happened to pass by in her 5 Series BMW and dropped her fire extinguisher on Tschick's foot while trying to provide help , seriously injuring him, took her to the nearest hospital, where Tschick was given a leg in plaster . From the hospital room window, the two of them watch as a tow truck pulls their Lada back up, which is lying in a field directly opposite the hospital, but then leaves it and drives away. Once again determined to flee, the two drag themselves over to their junk-old vehicle. Since Tschick can no longer drive with his leg in plaster, Maik now has to take the wheel. Tschick gives him the necessary technical instructions. In addition, he reveals to his friend that he is gay , but that Maik is not his type. Her journey soon ends in a dangerous rear-end collision, as the driver of a cattle transport does not want to let her overtake, skids, tips over and remains lying across the road. After a thorough interrogation at the police station, there is a court hearing in which Maik - contrary to his father's advice underlaid with threats - admits his involvement blatantly, but Tschick takes all the "guilt" on himself. Maik is sentenced to perform a charitable work , Tschick to remain in the home to which he was taken after her trip.

The novel ends when school starts again and takes up its initial motifs: 1) The beautiful Tatjana suddenly becomes interested in Maik's adventure and with her interest ensures that his story reaches the entire class in short form. 2) Isa writes him a letter and wants to visit him soon in Berlin, bring back the borrowed money and make up for the missed kisses. 3) Maik's abusive father has left the family for good. Most importantly: 4) Tschick's four-week ban on contact will soon expire and Maik will soon be able to visit him at the home. It doesn't bother him that his mother, still addicted to alcohol, is in the process of sinking all of her furniture into the hotel's own swimming pool. On the contrary, mother and son go into hiding together, crouch on the bottom of the pool, hold their breath, look up and are happy about the two police officers alerted by the neighbors, who lean helplessly over the bubbling water surface.

Characters

Maik Klingenberg

Maik Klingenberg is one of the protagonists and narrators of the youth and adventure novel "Tschick". He is a fourteen-year-old boy who lives wealthy with his parents in a villa in Berlin-Marzahn . His mother is an alcoholic and occasionally has to go to a rehab clinic, which is euphemistically called a “beauty farm”. Despite his mother's difficult situation, he loves her. His father, Josef Klingenberg, lost his fortune as a senior building contractor due to animal welfare organizations and then distanced himself from his family. Maik attends the Hagecius-Gymnasium in Berlin , but does not find the right friends due to his unpopularity. This is reflected in his nickname "Psycho". He describes himself as "the greatest bore and coward". Later it turns out that Paul and Tschick are friends, Paul can be seen as a former friend. In order to gain popularity and reputation with his classmates and especially with the girls, he relies on his talent in high jump. His great love Tatjana is the focus here. Another talent Maik has is drawing. He decides to paint a picture of Beyoncé and to give it to Tatjana at her upcoming birthday party, to which he was not invited himself. This shows Maik's interest in Tatjana. Tatiana is not his only love, however. Later in the book, Maik meets a girl named Isa, who develops into a true friend. When Isa wants to get closer to him physically, Maik shyly refuses. This underlines Maik's shyness. Nevertheless, he loves Isa and has to choose between Isa and Tatjana.

Maik has developed over the course of the story from a rather reserved boy, who is not popular in his class, to a more active boy who shows his self-confidence to the outside world. Getting to know Tschick contributed significantly to this.

shape

The plot is told from Maik's perspective and begins at the police station, which anticipates the end of the journey together. Herrndorf lets his protagonists tell the adventurous way there in a long flashback and in the manner of a road movie , the episodes of which last about a week.

Reviews

“Herrndorf manages with wonderfully balanced, simple language that unobtrusively alludes to a really copied youth jargon, but does not copy it naturalistically, to turn his world into oblique and make it appear as young as his protagonists. […] A summary that Maik, the first-person narrator, draws towards the end is: 'The world is bad, and people are bad too. Don't trust anyone, don't go with strangers and so on. My parents told me that, my teachers told me, and the television told me that too. If you watched the news: Man is bad. If you watched Spiegel TV: People are bad. And maybe that was true, and the person was 99 percent bad. But the strange thing was that Tschick and I almost exclusively encountered the one percent on our trip that wasn't bad. '"

- Süddeutsche Zeitung

“What is most astonishing is how Wolfgang Herrndorf can look his heroes in the mouth, how he speaks their language: that of two adolescents [...] without ever being intrusive or embarrassing. The dialogues are right, Maik is the convincingly young narrator, whom the author never gets in the way with his knowledge and experience. 'Authentic' would be the right word if it didn't hide the fact that Herrndorf is a great stylist and anyway a brilliant fabric designer. "

- The time

"[Herrndorf] has [...] the rare gift of being able to convey the reality of foreign worlds easily, quickly, but above all delicately, with authentic, raw figure language, with youthful slang and tight vocabulary."

- Ulrich Seidler : Berliner Zeitung

Edits

  • Tschick was published by Argon Verlag as an audio book , read by Hanno Koffler , on 4 CDs (total playing time approx. 5 hours) and as a radio play version by NDR on 2 CDs, directed by Iris Drögekamp (total playing time 84 minutes).
  • The stage version by Tschick , edited by Robert Koall , premiered on November 19, 2011 at the Dresden State Theater in the Small House under the direction of Jan Gehler and is still in the repertoire today. The actors are Benjamin Pauquet, Sebastian Wendelin and Lea Ruckpaul .
  • In the 2012/2013 season Tschick was the most played piece on all German theaters with 764 performances. 99,000 visitors came to 29 productions.
  • In 2013 Tschick was published in the Fun am Reading Verlag in Simple Language (broadcast by Andreas Lindemann). Wolfgang Herrndorf had personally campaigned for this processing shortly before his death.
  • In 2014, as a sequel to Tschick, a fragment of a novel by Wolfgang Herrndorf was published posthumously:
Pictures of your great love : An unfinished novel. Edited by Marcus Gärtner and Kathrin Passig . Rowohlt, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-87134-791-7 .

expenditure

literature

  • Eva-Maria Scholz: Tschick by Wolfgang Herrndorf: Reading key with table of contents, interpretation, examination tasks with solutions, learning glossary. (Reclam reading key XL). Philipp Reclam jun., Ditzingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-15-015478-6 .
  • Wolfgang Pütz: Wolfgang Herrndorf, Tschick (= Klett learning training ), PONS, Stuttgart 2016 ISBN 978-3-12-923102-9 .
  • Thomas Möbius: Tschick by Wolfgang Herrndorf. Text analysis and interpretation with detailed table of contents and Abitur exercises with solutions . King's Explanations 493, Bange, Hollfeld 2014, ISBN 978-3-8044-2008-3 .
  • Boris Hoge-Benteler: Metaconstruction. On the possibilities of dealing with 'problematic' depictions of Russia / Russia in the latest German narrative literature using the example of Wolfgang Herrndorf's novel “Tschick”. In: Kjl & m - research, school, library , 67 (2015) 2, pp. 33–42.
  • Hans-Jürgen van der Gieth: Wolfgang Herrndorf: "Tschick", novel , BVK literature project, Kempen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86740-369-6 .
  • Elinor Matt: Wolfgang Herrndorf, "Tschick" , student workbook and teacher booklet, Krapp & Gutknecht, Rot an der Rot 2012, ISBN 978-3-941206-46-5 / ISBN 978-3-941206-47-2 .
  • Manja Vorbeck-Heyn, Marcus Schotte: Wolfgang Herrndorf. Tschick. Teacher's manual. Ernst Klett Sprachen, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-12-666930-6 ; expanded new edition 2015, ISBN 978-3-12-666931-3 .

College work

  • Stefan Born: General literary adolescent novels: Studies on Herrndorf, Regener, Strunk, Kehlmann and others Winter, Heidelberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-8253-6407-6 (Dissertation Mainz 2014, 338 pages).
  • Klaus Maiwald: Literary quality and (re-) construction of social realities in recent German children's and youth literature: illustrated in novels by A. Steinhöfel, M. Wildner and W. Herrndorf full text online (PDF, free of charge, 18 pages, 229 KB) .

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Best-seller film adaptation “Tschick” meets the attitude to life of the novel , Berliner Zeitung from September 11, 2016.
  2. ↑ FAZ from January 31, 2011 - In conversation: Wolfgang Herrndorf, “When did it do 'Tschick', Herr Herrndorf?” , Accessed on August 11, 2015
  3. ^ Review in the Süddeutsche Zeitung
  4. ↑ Review in Die Zeit
  5. ↑ Ulrich Seidler: Building manure on a grand scale. A wild, gentle journey through puberty: “Tschick” by Wolfgang Herrndorf . In: Berliner Zeitung . No. 252/2010 , October 28, 2010, books, pp. 32 .
  6. ^ "Tschick" radio play by Argon Verlag
  7. ↑ “It's just a pleasure to listen to Hanno Koffler. Not only the Maik Klingenberg spoken by him sounds young and natural, Tschick also appears lively. Both the Berlin dialect in Maik and an exaggerated Russian accent in Tschick are missing, which in no way harms the authenticity of the teenagers portrayed. ”- Quoted from the content and review on booklove.de
  8. ↑ The performance rights are held by Rowohlt-Verlag. See “Tschick” play published by Rowohlt Theater Verlag
  9. ↑ Tschick based on the novel by Wolfgang Herrndorf. (No longer available online.) Dresden State Theater , archived from the original on February 17, 2016 ; accessed on February 17, 2016 .
  10. ↑ Wolfgang Herrndorf's bestseller: “Tschick”, the most played piece on German stages. www.spiegel.de, September 8, 2014, accessed on September 9, 2014 .
  11. ↑ Christine Schuster: A novel in simple language - "Tschick" for inexperienced readers | Reading in Germany. Retrieved October 19, 2018 .
  12. ^ Sabine Kruber: Tschick. Retrieved October 19, 2018 .
  13. ↑ http://www.stern.de/kultur/film/tschick-von-wolfgang-herrndorf--fatih-akin-verfilmt-den-bestseller-6459100.html
  14. ↑ Celebrated Road Opera - Opera "Tschick" in Hagen . Frankfurter Neue Presse, March 19, 2017 , accessed on April 21, 2017