Berlin politics in Christoph Peters’ novel “Der Sandkasten”. criticism – Muricas News
Berlin politics in Christoph Peters’ novel “Der Sandkasten”. criticism – Muricas News
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“Laber rhubarb,” Kurt Siebenstädter says to himself when he thinks about it. About himself, in regards to the fixed gossip round him that he himself helps to provide each day; about his operate within the large enterprise of opinions, during which he's thought of or at the least was thought of a important voice, whereby it was at all times clear to him that the system itself has at all times thought of and absorbed the criticism. “Laber Rhubarber”, and this traditional Eighties phrase that haunts Siebenstädter, additionally exhibits what sort of particular person he's – a person simply over 50, formed by the zeitgeist of a hedonistic period. A discontinued mannequin that appears on with out understanding how phrases are reinterpreted, how a skeptic out of the blue turns into suspicious, and the way an satirically distanced perspective in direction of issues is interpreted because the exhausted pose of a privileged, unreserved reactionary.
However Kurt Siebenschlafer is just not but within the heart of energy, however he's very shut. His morning present on Germany’s most influential radio station has earned him a repute as a cruel conversationalist; that of a person who is aware of no mercy, makes no distinctions and believes in nothing besides that the media mustn't get up, however be disagreeable. “The Sandbox” is Christoph Peter’s tenth novel. The author, who was born on the Decrease Rhine and lives in Berlin, has at all times discovered it palpable pleasure to interrupt with genres. His repertoire ranges from adolescence novels to comic-like style tales with the pace of Japanese motion movies. Peters has now written to the current and its political moods, now not works retrospectively however straight, and since he's a particularly intelligent writer, he is aware of the traps he may run into. That's the reason he has made these traps his topic with excellent sophistication.
A stream of reports runs alongside the plot in a calculatedly annoying method
“Der Sandkasten” takes place over two days in Berlin, November ninth and tenth, 2020, Corona time, lockdown, and is, amongst different issues, a roman a clef. Christian Linder, Wolfgang Kubicki, Jens Spahn or Karl Lauterbach all have concise appearances, even when not below their actual names, as a result of Peters attaches nice significance to leaving house for fiction: he is a wonderful observer, who in a couple of traces describes what's attribute of those public figures (“the prototype of an outdated technology of politicians, unscrupulous, grasping for energy, sexist: the grasp joke incarnate”), however just like the protagonist Kurt Siebenstädter, they solely stand as ciphers for an idle firm, a machine for sustaining energy in the midst of an artificially shut down nation .
Initially, this isn't an unique strategy, however Christoph Peters is a author who at all times is aware of precisely what he needs and in addition has the required literary means at his disposal. On the one hand, he makes use of Wolfgang Koeppen as a supply and his 1953 novel “Das Treibhaus” as a backdrop to current analogies and uncover buildings within the political institution, which is surprisingly not often described in up to date German literature.
Ulf Erdmann Ziegler’s sensible novel “One other Epoch”, printed final yr, is an exception on this regard. Then again, Peters stylistically refers again to classical modernism, to the massive metropolis novels of the early twentieth century, jumps in views, makes use of collage and montage methods, creates a stream of reports snippets, key phrases, headlines; Donald Trump, the lateral thinkers, the accusers and the rabble-rousers – all of this runs continually alongside in a calculated, annoying, italicized strand, whereas Kurt Siebenstädter, noticed from the half-distance of the third particular person, seems at what lies behind him and fears that what may nonetheless come – his private crash.
Peters turns Koeppen’s greenhouse in Bonn right into a sandbox in Berlin. A metropolis constructed on Brandenburg sand. Siebenstädter is a toddler of the Decrease Rhine province; that issues as a result of he by no means removed the petty bourgeois view of these up there. Siebenstädter is a pointy rhetorician who's out of the blue accused of misusing his expertise and letting people who find themselves on the incorrect aspect have their say on his present too typically. Even his spouse, who's 13 years his junior, and his pubescent daughter now contemplate him, who as a younger man sympathized with the left-wing anarcho scene, to be an age-conservative sack who now not matches into delicate instances.
Siebenstädter himself has the impression that “an obscure neomoralism is spreading, no much less bigoted than the sour-pietistic inhibitions of the post-war years.” This sense, the impression that the die-hard is celebrating a renaissance within the guise of progress, leads on the one hand on to the entrance traces of the current, however on the similar time kinds the bridge to Koeppen’s “greenhouse”. Koeppen’s younger Bonn Republic and Peters’ not but very previous Berlin Republic are equally in a state of excited exhaustion and free-wheeling intrigues and energy video games.
Christoph Peters achieves one thing in “Der Sandkasten” that can not be valued extremely sufficient: he exhibits this ambiance in all its ambivalences, reveals attitudes, seems on the world by the filter of Siebenstadter’s life expertise and idiosyncrasies, with out changing into denunciatory . Past that, Peters stays extremely entertaining on the plot degree, proper all the way down to an early-morning showdown within the type of an interview with the Minister of Well being during which Siebenstadter turns into, to say the least, abusive even by his requirements.
Anybody who needs to be malicious may dismiss Peter’s stock of a purposeful elite, shaken by the pandemic and surrounded by discourse, as a larmoyant mid-life disaster novel. However Peters has impregnated his ebook towards this accusation by continually interested by it. Like Wolfgang Koeppen, Peters prefaced his novel with a quote from the poet Novalis and the British diplomat Harold Nicolson, thus creating an echo chamber. “The method of historical past is a burning,” says Novalis. On the finish of “The Greenhouse” MP Keetenheuve turns into “fully ineffective, he was a burden to himself”. He falls off a bridge. In “The Sandbox”, Siebenstädter additionally stands on the bridge within the closing scene and appears into the water.
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