Maybe Esther
Maybe Esther. Stories (2014) is a work by Katja Petrowskaja . It tells the story of the genocide of the Jewish population of Kiev by the National Socialists using the story of Esther, who is similar to the grandmother of the author's father. She was abducted from Kiev in 1941 and murdered in the Babyn Yar massacre. Maybe her name was Esther. The focus is on who testifies to the truth of our history and how to tell what one does not know - especially in the language of the “dumb”, which is the literal translation of the term “German” in Russian ( немец in Russian ). The story “Maybe Esther” asks: “How do I know this story in detail? Where did I listen to her? Who whispers stories to us for which there are no witnesses and for what? "
Katja Petrowskaja was awarded the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2013 for her reading of the story “Maybe Esther”, which found its place in the book Maybe Esther at the end of Chapter 5, and for the entire work Maybe Esther 2014 with the Aspekte Literature Prize excellent.
Structure of the plant
- Maybe Esther
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Chapter 1 An exemplary story
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Chapter 2 Pink and the Mute
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Chapter 3 My beautiful Poland
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Chapter 4 In the world of unorganized matter
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Chapter 5 Babiy Yar
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Chapter 6 Deduschka
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- crossing
- thanksgiving
- Photo credit
Content of each story
Thanks to Google
In the first and longest section of this story, the narrator reflects on the train station, which was “recently built in the middle of this city” and from which she begins her travels, even if she would prefer not to “turn around in the wasteland” the station ”,“ which still testifies to the devastation of this city ”, and not in a draughty place. She is just wondering again “about the mercilessness of this welcome” - she sees “the capital letters Bombardier Welcome to Berlin under the arch of the curved roof” - “when an elderly gentleman approached me and asked me about Bombardier” and she answered him there is that it is a musical "that is running successfully in Berlin". Through this conversation, three adults get to know each other. As it turns out, they are taking the same train, the Warszawa Express from Berlin to Poland, and have the same goal - “if the urge to look for something that has disappeared is even allowed to be defined as a goal,” comments the narrator. The older man says that his wife is looking for the world of her grandmother, “who came to the USA from a small Belarusian village near Biała Podlaska”, and of himself he says “I'm a Jew from Tehran”. The narrator ponders: "How should democracy work", when - like a search query on Google - "you only get what you have already searched for, and when you are what you are looking for, so that you never feel alone" and "you come across like-minded people, God googles our ways so that we don't fall out of our joint, I constantly meet people who are looking for the same thing as me, I said."
In the second section she suddenly thinks of the musical Les Misérables , “which actually caused a sensation here years ago” and how “the letters from Bombardier on the arch of the station roof” produce a hall that cannot be avoided.
The third section says that she really Googled: “And this Bombardier who determines our paths recently started the Bombardier YourCity campaign. Fast and safe. ”And that they are now running the train“ with the blessing of Bombardiers ”, a railway construction company, and“ surrounded by curtains and napkins ”with the insignia of WARS , which are“ so old-fashioned and bygone ”“ like Star Wars and other wars Future."
Maybe Esther
In this story of almost 40 sections, the basic tempo is set by the slow movements of the father's babushka, who is called Perhaps Esther here. While the story is told of how Babushka, who could barely walk, obeyed the occupiers' orders and left the house for the first time in months, although the narrator thought she could have been spared because the caretaker did not put her on the requested list of Jewish people The narrator reflects on the conditions and possibilities of her own narration. Episodes from her father's childhood as well as from her own childhood are used for this, for example when the mother read a fairy tale to her and then recounted it. The movement speed of thought Esther is questioned narrative: "She went to them, but how long before this went ? Here everyone follows their own breath. Your walk developed like an epic event "...
Compared to the version that was read at the Bachmann Prize in 2013 and which consists of 43 sections, some section changes have been set differently and the 2014 version consists of 39 sections. The style of the instructions of the German occupiers for the evacuation is on the one hand shortened, on the other hand the following sentence is added: "Bring documents, money and valuables as well as warm clothing, laundry, etc." - and it is added that the instructions were in Russian. The title of the fairy tale is given in three translation steps instead of just two; In the second place the Latin transcription of the Russian title is new: "Кощей Бессмертный, Kostschej Bessmertnyi, Kostschej the Immortal". In the 2014 version, the section marked in italics is no longer included in the (formerly separate) section: “I see the pages of this ficus, which now, in 1941, nod to the rhythm of world events. I owe my life to this ficus. Indirectly. My father - right. "The penultimate section was most heavily reworked and this first sentence was deleted:" In novels, victims and executioners often meet in vacuum, as if they were the only people in the world condemned to fulfill their assigned roles. " Furthermore, the penultimate section no longer contains the passages marked in italics: ... “and neighbors behind the curtains of this densely populated street, a nowhere mentioned, faceless, anonymous mass for the great refugee trains, murders and other mass scenes of times of war and peace. They are the last narrators. ”The first name of the father, Miron, was added to the 2014 version, and the name of the great-grandmother is - instead of occasionally just Esther - now Perhaps Esther throughout.
reception
The text is the “appropriation of a story by later generations” and “a great gift to the German language”, said the jury of the Bachmann Prize 2013 in their laudation with reference to the story “Maybe Esther”.
Reviews (selection)
Youngest first
- Samuel Moser, On the threshold of Mauthausen. Katja Petrowskaja's book “Maybe Esther” , nzz.ch , April 5, 2014
- Ulrich Gutmair, Katja Petrowskaja on memory. I had two grandmothers , taz.de , March 29, 2014
- Helmut Böttiger, Katja Petrowskaja. "We are the last Europeans!" , zeit.de , March 16, 2014
- Ute Büsing, "Maybe Esther" by Katja Petrowskaja , inforadio.de , March 11, 2014
- Sebastian Hammelehle, family story "Maybe Esther": Next stop, Holocaust , spiegel.de , March 11, 2014
- Andrea Gerk, Journey into the Past ( Memento from March 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), ndr.de , March 10, 2014
- Jens Mühling , Ukraine: The writer Katja Petrowskaja. Better completely foreign than half , tagesspiegel.de , March 8, 2014, contains only a brief summary of the work.
Interview about the plant
- Holger Heimann et al., Language 'necessary struggle' for Bachmann winner , Deutsche Welle , July 9, 2013
expenditure
- Maybe Esther. Stories . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-42404-9
Web links
- Katja Petrowskaja: “Maybe Esther” (story) html , pdf
- Author's page for Katja Petrowskaja at the Bachmann Prize with video portrait, reading, discussion, text and jury discussion text
- Review notes at perlentaucher.de by Samuel Moser in Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 5, 2014; Ulrich Gutmair in Die Tageszeitung , March 29, 2014; Helmut Böttiger in Die Zeit , March 13, 2014; Jens Bisky in Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 11, 2014; Cornelia Geissler in Frankfurter Rundschau , March 8, 2014; Jan Wiele in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , March 8, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Days of German-Language Literature 2013: Katja Petrowskaja, jury discussion Bachmann Prize , bachmannpreis.eu , accessed on March 5, 2014
- ↑ Stefan Gmünder, Ingeborg Bachmann Prize to Katja Petrowskaja , Der Standard , July 7, 2013
- ↑ Book cover text by Maybe Esther . Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-518-42404-9
- ↑ a b The story “Maybe Esther” can be read free of charge on the web, html
- ↑ ZDF "aspekte" literature award 2014 for Katja Petrowskaja. "The book is tearing open the Eastern European sky" , Börsenblatt , October 1, 2014
- ↑ Sandra Janke, Powerful, loose and lightly woven , FZA Association for the Promotion of Culture, Art and Science , July 7, 2013