Where have you been, robert

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Where have you been, robert is a German youth novel by Hans Magnus Enzensberger . The novel was published by Hanser Verlag in 1998 .

content

The novel's protagonist, 14-year-old Robert, suffers from eye flicker. He experiences a seven-part time travel deeper and deeper into the past:

  • He lands in Novosibirsk in the USSR in 1956, during the Cold War . He finds refuge in a pharmacy, where he meets Olga, who gives him a bed and something to eat. One day the secret police come to Olga's apartment. She thinks he's a spy. Robert is arrested, but manages to escape. He is hiding in a cinema where he is watching a movie.
  • He suddenly lands in Australia, in 1946. There he meets a Jewish family who have emigrated there and experiences his first great love with Caroline.
  • In 1930 Robert landed in his German hometown, where the battle between the National Socialists and the Communists was raging.
  • Robert is in Norway in 1860.
  • In 1702 he was employed as a page by a princess and met a philosopher.
  • After all, at the time of the Thirty Years War (1638) Robert was a member of a band of robbers. He goes to Strasbourg , where he later gets into battle.
  • Robert's journey ends in Amsterdam, where he is doing an apprenticeship as a painter. In doing so, he also had a brilliant idea that would eventually bring him back to his time.

reception

The novel was reviewed by Hubert Spiegel in the FAZ . Spiegel sees the novel as an educational novel in the guise of the historical youth novel. Spiegel perceives the reading as a "wonderful pleasure". For Mathias Schreiber im Spiegel , the historical locations are described as "amazingly vivid and detailed", and the story is conveyed "not in a textbook, but casually, scenically relaxed, entertaining". Not to take the book for young people seriously would be a mistake, because: "Only adult children really understand this book."

Bibliographical information

  • Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Where have you been, Robert? Hanser, Munich and Vienna 1998, ISBN 3-446-19447-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Reichmann: Bock leaps of history. On Hans Magnus Enzensberger's “Puff Pastry of Time” and Alexander Kluge's “Chronicle without Chronology”. (PDF; 1.1 MB) Retrieved April 10, 2013.
  2. ^ Review of fiction: Free riding in short pants. The flying Robert as an apprentice in Hans Magnus Enzensberger's workshop. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. December 1, 1998, No. 279, p. L3.
  3. ^ Mathias Schreiber: The world tour of the poet . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1998, pp. 147 ( online ).