Fuses (novel)

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Fuse is the first novel by songwriter Franz Josef Degenhardt , published in 1973 . Unmistakably in Schwelm , the town where he was born and when he was born, in the southern Ruhr area and declared to be in the war years from 1943 to 1945, he describes the everyday life and adventures of some 13-year-old working-class children who, in their often delightful way, engaged in the resistance struggle against the fascist regime participate. For the literary critic Heinz Ludwig Arnold , these episodes read "with the same excitement and the same pleasure as Mark Twain's stories about Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer." Degenhardt's first work achieved considerable sales success.

content

The lower town children Fänä Spormann, Viehmann Ronsdorf, Tünnemann Niehus, Zünder Krach and Sugga Trietsch like to plot their pranks while they crouch on Meurisch's wall opposite the entrance to the canister and barrel factory, which is also connected to a forced labor camp . Mostly they act with approval or at least with grudging tolerance on the part of the communist or social democratic adult activists they are very familiar with. When they secretly plunder armed forces, blow up freight wagons, smuggle persecuted fathers or pianists out of town or deliver messages, they are only following in the footsteps of their fathers, who are either at the front or in the concentration camp . They are spared school: bombed. They know how to dismantle pistols and are already routinely talking about Schabau , who has to replace the rare beer. Against the constantly growling stomachs, the meat of a milk cart horse stolen by others may be organized. Usually the boys and one girl (Sugga) know how to combine the useful with the pleasant around the undisputed leader Fänä. The head of the local Hitler Youth group, Berti Bischoff, is spoiled by a lesson that takes advantage of his passion for football games and the shortage of real leather balls. Lured by the bait, Berti rushes out of the house, runs up from afar - and kicks an iron ball painted first-class with yellow and black (for the seams) on the lawn. When he collapsed with the scream of a “stabbed young bull”, Viehmann Ronsdorf commented “nana, a Hitler Youth doesn't cry.” Berti's foot was cast in plaster, which meant the march was finished. The novel ends with the arrival of the Americans and the return of Heini Spormann, Fänä's father, who would have preferred the Red Army .

style

Degenhardt tells his debut in 25 self-contained episodes, mainly from the perspective of Fänä Spormann. For the mirror he does this "unstyled, relaxed and always jargon-safe". Outside the jargon, Degenhardt's language is sparse and not very pictorial. Arnold is likely to have felt the same way when he politely remarked that the author was “not a refined esthetician” and that his characters “did not value different language treatment”. In fact, the characters - whether children or adults - are mostly interchangeable. They have no inner workings and hardly any contours. This also applies to the way they appear and even how they appear. An exception can be found towards the end of the book when Niehus / Fuchs' wedding celebration is described. Here he has Fänä “look at” all the people present and describe them one after the other (“like a decent worker”) over a whole page. Even with descriptions of the scenes, such as apartments, alleys, grottos in the nearby mountain, Degenhardt is not very generous. This is at the expense of the clarity and the atmosphere. Arnold still considers Degenhardt's “characterization of the milieu” to be successful.

Ideological

Degenhardt writes blatantly partisan. Nonetheless, the Spiegel confirms that he has "without nostalgic transfiguration, but rather bizarre and, mostly, realistic" pointed out the existence of anti-Nazi resistance by the "common people": "a case that is rare in the literature of the Federal Republic." Thälmann and Stalin adore "pubescent young partisans" . The Soviet alliance policy is criticized mildly at best, the KPD in no way questioned. The young Father Clemens wins the gang's trust and respect because he behaves “like a decent worker”. If bickering and meanness are touched, they are assigned to the “petty-bourgeois elements” of the working-class district - unless they are “traitors”. This feature of the novel is more committed to idyll than realism.

Women, feelings

With regard to the role of women, Degenhardt proceeds in a contradictory manner. On the one hand, he rightly highlights the bravery and the merits of proletarian mothers, who were largely deprived of male support. With Grandma Berta Niehus, who is getting a wild boar for the belated wedding, he almost manages a Johanna der Schlachthöfe enthroned in a wheelchair. On the other hand, he only assigns one colleague to his gang, Sugga Trietsch, but she is not allowed to play more than the fifth wheel on the car. Sugga always has to be content with subordinate tasks. She actually only becomes important - the classic case - because she is the bride of the gang leader. The love affair between Sugga and Fänä seems very clear. Feelings don't seem to be involved even when the two of them are kissing or kissing. The basic attitude of these war children is generally a stoic pragmatism that not every reader will believe. You never see them quarreling, dreaming, languishing, disturbed, maddened or silly.

effect

The first edition of Degenhardt's debut novel already met with great reader interest and in 1973 it was featured in the renowned Spiegel bestseller list for several months. Between 1973 and 2006 the fuses were published by several publishers, some in numerous editions, and also in three translations (Finnish, Czech, Danish). Rowohlt alone has so far (2010) printed almost 100,000 copies of the book.

The WDR filmed it in 1974 under the direction of Reinhard Hauff , the script was written by Franz Josef Degenhardt and Burkhard Driest . On the occasion of the first broadcast, the writer Hermann Peter Piwitt drew a comparison with the tin drum and described Degenhardt's childlike heroes as equal to the figure of Oskar Matzerath. In contrast, Die Zeit criticized the often poor implementation of the book. For “Degenhardt's conversational tone” there is “no optical equivalent”. There is "a lack of justification for many actions, of understandable motivation."

In 1976 the text was published as a serial in the Soviet magazine Foreign Literature . According to Spiegel , this Russian translation was heavily censored.

expenditure

German speaking
Foreign language
  • Sytytyslanka. translated into Finnish by Aarno Peromies. Gummerus, Jyväskylä 1974, ISBN 951-20-0888-2 .
  • Doutnák. translated into Czech by Zdeněk Frýbort. Svoboda, Prague 1977, DNB 368911691 .
  • Partisans uden fædre. translated into Danish by Poul Lyk Sørensen. Haase, Copenhagen 1994, ISBN 87-559-0979-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Pressed and shrewd - solidarity in the lower town . In: The time . No. 16/73, literature supplement p. 12.
  2. ^ Fuses in the edition of the Gutenberg Book Guild 1975, p. 94.
  3. ↑ a b c Tom Sawyer in the pot . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1973, p. 131 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Fuses p. 159, quotation in brackets p. 87.
  5. ↑ Fuses, p. 148.
  6. ↑ Fuses, p. 87.
  7. ↑ Most recently in fiction . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1973, p. 104 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Tiny victories in the environment of fear . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1974, pp. 118 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Didactic piece without a singer . In: The time . No. 38/1974.
  10. ↑ Mighty Powers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1977, pp. 207 ( online ).