Zipper and his father

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Zipper and his father is a novel by Joseph Roth , dedicated to Benno Reifenberg , which was published by Kurt Wolff in Munich in 1928 .

In his report , the first-person narrator shares episodes from the lives of the two Zippers . It is true that old Zipper did everything wrong in life, but he filled the days of the narrator , much more - he was sometimes a father to the fatherless. The narrator and his school friend Arnold Zipper have become indifferent as they returned from the war .

time and place

The novel is set in Vienna and also in Berlin and in Monte Carlo in the first quarter of the 20th century .

action

The Zippers, small citizens , live in narrow rooms with thin walls in Vienna . The old Zipper, carpenter's son, a music lover, despises the emperor , believes only in reason , in fate , wants to raise his sons Arnold and Caesar to be geniuses and wants to make people out of them. That fails completely with Caesar. Only Arnold, who is also not a genius, but tender, kind-hearted and shy , becomes, with a high level of training, a tolerable solo violinist , who can later only be used in the music café . Before that, Arnold studied law and the first-person narrator studied philosophy . The old Zipper himself runs a paper business on commission , albeit quite unsuccessfully . Zipper takes care of everything possible, just not the essentials in his job. After all, he has to rent a room in his apartment in order to survive reasonably.

When the heir to the throne is shot in Sarajevo , Zipper enthusiastically sends the two sons to war. For the first time, the first-person narrator, who is omnipresent in the corner of the Zippers sofa as Arnold's childhood friend, experiences how Fanny Zipper, subjugated by the old Zipper, rebels against the rattling of the saber: You can always agree on goodwill . After two months at the front, Caesar Zipper loses his left leg, comes home, ends up in the madhouse cell of the madhouse and dies of delirium . The old Zipper is getting gray hair and has only one question: When will this war be over? . The old man wants to see his son Arnold again . Arnold's answer from the field: We are waiting for death .

The war stops. The dual monarchy falls apart. Arnold returns home looking for work. The old Zipper gives the son a job in the Treasury. Arnold is not a good desk worker and quits. He has a love of the theater from his father . Arnold marries his childhood friend, the aspiring actress Fräulein Erna Wilder . The marriage is unhappy. Erna, rather mediocre, gets an engagement at this and that provincial stage . Arnold follows his wife closely. In Berlin, Erna becomes a film star and lives, separated from Arnold, in a luxury villa near Potsdam with women. Arnold is only allowed to visit the nicer half of his wife once a week. He has a job as a film editor at a lunchtime newspaper and works there incessantly with his modest means on the career of his wife, whom he adores, whom he does not allow anything to happen. Erna cheats, falls while riding and becomes impoverished. Arnold earns small profits in Monte Carlo. The couple lives from it. Erna limps to her feet and gets a role in Hollywood . Arnold, meanwhile a real musician , ends up as a music clown in a variety theater . His face has a dog-like sadness . Arnold plays the fool . During the appearances with a clever fool , Arnold's face got roughly twenty thousand slaps .

The first-person narrator Joseph Roth returns to his Vienna, wants to visit old Zipper and is just getting ready for the funeral. Frau Zipper, at the grave, doesn't cry. She has long since shed all her tears , thinks the narrator. Arnold is absent from his father's funeral.

words and phrases

  • ... a strict woman with a face like the root of a tree, bulbous, black
  • this world over which death is poured every hour like snow in winter

shape

The novel captivates at the beginning and across large sections of the text due to its particular simplicity and purity. The end of the novel, however, reveals a weakness of form: intelligent psychologizing tires. The bringing in of the Deus ex Machina Eduard P. as well as the all-explanatory messenger report of this shrewd talker seem forced and alienating.

The novel is nevertheless a historical document that is worth preserving . The initial enthusiasm of the petty bourgeoisie for the First World War is conceivably evoked and can be seen as a cabinet piece of Austrian gallows humor concerning the fall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy . The elaborate and precise description of the two zippers, two weak people, is permeated with forgiving, admirable and deeply touching human love.

reception

  • Nürnberger quotes a contemporary critic: Joseph Roth succeeded in designing people from the past. The shaping of the transitional and post-war man. The bourgeois world before and during the war .
  • Remembering as a struggle against forgetting determines Steierwald's view of the novel.
  • Sternburg criticizes a lack of action and a lack of clarity.
  • Kiesel discusses the depiction of the generation conflict against the end of the novel: The sons, sent to war by their fathers, return to their fathers 'half dead' after the end of the war. The latter still dominate as ever.

literature

source

Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. Hackert p. 594
  2. Hackert p. 600
  3. Hackert pp. 559-607
  4. Hackert p. 599
  5. Nürnberger p. 74
  6. Steierwald pp. 131, 170
  7. Sternburg, p. 344 middle
  8. Kiesel, p. 96 below