Alexander Osang: „Die Leben der Elena Silber“

S. Fischer, 2019, 617 S.

Der Roman beschreibt die bewegte Lebensgeschichte von Elena Silber, im vorrevolutionären Russland geboren und kurz vor Ende des Sozialismus in der DDR gestorben, sowie die Versuche ihres Enkels Konstantin Stein, die ungelösten Fragen in ihrer und seiner Familiengeschichte aufzuklären. Elena Silber wird Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts geboren; ihr Vater, Anhänger der Sozialisten, wird 1905 von einem reaktionären Mob getötet. Damit beginnt eine Geschichte von Vertreibung, Flucht und Suche nach besseren Lebensmöglichkeiten. Elena heiratet einen deutschen Ingenieur und landet dadurch in NS-Deutschland; nach dem Krieg bleibt sie in Berlin hängen, wo sie 1982 stirbt. Ihr Enkel Konstantin, Anfang vierzig, geschieden, Filmemacher, wird von seiner dominanten Mutter (einer von Elenas fünf Töchtern) dazu bewegt, Elenas Lebensgeschichte zu erforschen, in dem es ungelöste Widersprüche gibt, besonders um das Verschwinden ihres Mannes nach Kriegsende. Laut Klappentext wurde der Roman von der Familiengeschichte seines Verfassers inspiriert.

Der Roman wird mit vielen Rückblenden mal aus der Sicht Elenas, mal aus der Sicht Konstantins erzählt. Abgesehen von den Rückblenden ist der Erzählstil geradlinig und gut lesbar. An vielen Stellen, besonders wenn aus der Sicht von Konstantin geschrieben, wird sie vom Dialog vorangetrieben. Die Stellen aus Elenas Sicht wirken oft distanziert, wie angelesen, und Elenas Persönlichkeit bleibt fern und verschwommen. Das trifft vor allem auf die Stellen zu, die ihr Leben in Russland beschreiben, während ihr Leben in Schlesien kurz vor und nach Kriegsende und die Jahre in Berlin lebendiger beschrieben ist, so, als wenn die größere geografische Nähe auch eine größere Nähe zur Person bewirkt. Konstantin dagegen und seine Welt gewinnen ein sehr viel klareres Profil; man merkt, dass der Verfasser die Welt, die er beschreibt – Konstantins Kindheit, die dominante Mutter, die Demenz des Vaters, die Beziehung zum Sohn aus der geschiedenen Ehe, die verschiedenen Ostberliner Milieus, in denen Konstantin sich bewegt – gut kennt.

Insgesamt ein gut lesbares Buch. Die russischen Elemente bieten eine gewisse Exotik, aber wirken oberflächlich auf jemanden, der eine gewisse Vertrautheit mit Russland mitbringt. Interessanter ist es als Teil eines großen Mosaiks, als ein weiterer Blick auf vertraute Fragen – was bedeutet Familie, wie gehen Menschen mit Beziehungen um, in welchen Formen suchen sie nach Nähe und Distanz, nach Liebe, Anerkennung, wo ist Heimat, was für Geschichten erzählen sie sich selbst und anderen. Dieser Roman ist ein weiteres Steinchen in diesem Mosaik, und dabei ein unterhaltsames, auch wenn nie wirklich aufgeklärt wird, was aus den verschwundenen Männern in der Familie der Silbers geworden ist.

Norbert Wolf "Malerei Verstehen"

This is a re-posting of my Goodreads Review. The review is in German - I assume most pepople interested in a German introduction to painting are more likely to read German than English.
Это - краткая рецензия немецкой  книги - введения в живопись. Так как я предполагаю, что человек, заинтересованный читать такую книгу, знает немецкий язык, данная рецензия - на немецком. 
Das Buch ist eine Einführung in die Malerei, nach Sachgebieten geordnet (Farben, Farbe contra Zeichnung, Prozess des Malens, Gliederung der Bildfläche, Malerei und Raum, Bildgattungen, Malerei und Gesellschaft, Malerei zwischen Illustration und Abstraktion). Leider werden viele Themen nur sehr kurz angerissen (z. B. Farben, Maltechniken) - der Autor zählt ein paar Schlagworte auf, ohne zu erklären, was sie bedeuten. Es enthält auch zu wenig Illustrationen -  so wird eine Wandmalerei von Matisse über zwei Seiten hinweg diskutiert, aber es gibt keine Abbildung im Buch.
Teilweise sind zwar Illustrationen vorhanden, so werden z. B. die Fresken Giottos in der Arenakapelle in der Gesamtansicht gezeigt (Abbildung Nr. 15), so dass sehr schön die Einordnung der Fresken in den Raum zu erkennen ist. Aber Wolf diskutiert auf S. 89 auch die Komposition eines Ausschnitts aus dem Fresko, der auf der Abbildung nicht erkennbar ist.
Manche Themen, wie "Malerei und Gesellschaft", leiden weniger darunter. Aber um den Anspruch des Buchs zu erfüllen (Klappentext: "Ob Kunstkritik, Vernissage oder Museumsbesuch: Mit 'Malerei Verstehen' ist man immer gut vorbereitet"), wären detailliertere Erläuterungen und mehr anschauliche Illustrationen notwendig gewesen.

Kitchens by the Dozen

When I was a boy, "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "Belles on their Toes" (In German: "Im Dutzend billiger" und "Aus Kindern werden Leute") were among my favourite books. I liked these memoirs of living in a large, "rationally organised" family, which to me, at that age, seemed to be extremely funny and attractive at the same time. I was vaguely aware that the Gilbreths were supposed to be real people, not inventions of a fiction author's imagination, but somehow I'd never expected for information about them to show up in the real world. So it was a pleasant surprise to find this article in Slate about Lilian Gilbreth's contribution to modern home kitchen organisation. It's a bit like finding out that, say, Sindbad was a really existing merchant adventurer who plied the seas at the times of Harun Al-Rashid.

Hobbes's God

Last week's Economist published a review of "the first critical edition of Hobbes’s “Leviathan”". Even though Hobbes

destroyed many of his private papers, which is one reason why the life and work of Hobbes has long been such a tricky subject for scholars,

it's astonishing that it took so long. I liked this nugget:

Above all, though, it was Hobbes’s scientific materialism that rendered him an anathema. Like Descartes, and other devotees of the “new philosophy” pioneered by Galileo, Hobbes regarded nature as a machine. But he took this idea further than anyone else and maintained that absolutely everything is physical. There are no immaterial spirits: man’s immortality begins with the resurrection of his body. And God himself is a physical being. This is what made Hobbes an “atheist” to practically everyone except himself. For most of history an “atheist” was a man who worshipped the wrong God, not no God at all; a physical God, as imagined by Hobbes, was not really God. Hobbes’s idea is one of the rarest heresies in the history of Christianity. Some have claimed that Tertullian, one of the Latin Fathers of the Church, believed it. But the idea was abhorrent to all denominations until the 19th century, when the new American religion of Mormonism adopted it. Like Hobbes, Mormons maintain that the Bible means what it says in the passages that describe man as made in God’s image. If Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in next month’s American presidential election, believes the scriptures of his own religion, he accepts that God the Father “has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s”—the very belief which caused Hobbes to be vilified for centuries.

Now, whatever official theologies say, the image of a god with a human form has always been a feature of Christian popular belief (the father-figure with the beard). Interesting to see this view to be held at least by one great philosopher and by one major religion.

Die Vermessenheit der Vermessung (A note on Kehlmann "Measuring the World")

Ein weiteres Weihnachtsgeschenk war Daniel Kehlmanns "Die Vermessung der Welt". Es gibt dazu genug im Internet (z. B. diese Besprechung und dieses Interview), also nur eine kurze Bemerkung - das Buch lässt sich gut lesen und ist intelligent geschrieben, aber es ist mit Vorsicht zu geniessen, da es historisch falsche Behauptungen enthält und die Hauptprotagonisten - Gauß und Alexander v. Humboldt - zu Karikaturen verzerrt.

If you come across Daniel Kehlmann's "Measuring the world" (I got it as a Christmas present), enjoy reading it, but if you're interested in Gauss or Humboldt, better read a biography - the characters are distorted to illustrate points about life, knowledge, and Germanness Kehlmann wants to make, and for that reason he also takes liberties with the facts.

Having read "The Reader"

I put the book on my Christmas wish list, and Santa acted accordingly. So now I know I was wrong as well - the real reason why Michael isn't able to build lasting relationships with women is simply that he cannot get over Hanna, even after he finds out what she has done. In the book, he not only doesn't turn down one-night stands, he even marries and has a daughter, but the marriage ends in divorce for the simple reason that his wife cannot compete with his memories of Hanna, a problem shared by all the girl friends he has afterwards. There is guilt and agonising, as well as phases of total emotional numbness, after Michael discovers Hanna's past, but the book is never as simple as "I can't have any woman any more because I slept with a Nazi". I cannot tell whether the film or its reviewer are guilty of this over-simplification, but it doesn't do justice to the book. In any case, I recommend reading it.

Lawrence

I'll start reading "Seven pillars of wisdom" now.
As "Lawrence of Arabia" is one of my favourite films of all times, I wanted to note that down, before I write anything stupid under the influence of that book (the edition I'm reading has an introduction by one Angus Calder quoting modernist literature and trench warfare guilt - sheesh, couldn't you just say that Lawrence was a great bastard who had fun doing desert warfare?)

Review of Evgenij Primakov, "Konfidendencial'no: Blizhnij Vostok na scene i za kulisami"

In different roles - as journalist, intelligence agent, and on diplomatic missions for the Soviet Union, as foreign minister and prime minister for the Russian Federation -, Evgenij Primakov has observed and participated in shaping Middle East politics over forty years. In the reviewed book, the title of which in translation means "Confidential: The Middle East on stage and behind the scenes", the author shares some of this experience with the reader.
It is not a history of the Middle East or of individual problems. The book is a collection of sketches on factors, problems, players, and events, like Arab Socialist Nationalism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet and American strategies in the region, the Lebanese Civil war, Arafat, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Kurds, nuclear weapons in the region.
None of these sketches aspire to present a full picture. Besides giving a short historical background, they heavily concentrate on the diplomatic background, especially the backdrop of the US-Soviet rivalry, on the Soviet involvement and positions in individual countries and conflicts, and on the activities of the author. Quite often the author skips a decade or two during which he was not involved and finishes the sketch with an assessment of the current situation, which therefore frequently comes a bit out of the blue, as readers must understand what happened in the meantime from a few sentences or supplement it from their own knowledge of the events.
As anybody who has observed Primakov would expect, the author shows all signs of having grown up and lived in the USSR as a loyal citizen. His terminology is still communist - he uses terms like "left deviation" or "petty-bourgeois revolutionary" without irony, "progressive" means "communist" or "socialist", Arab countries are labelled democracies if the local communist party is in power or at least allowed to be active.
But his communism seems more a case of habit than of ideological conviction. Overall, Primakov is a pragmatist who serves his country - first the USSR, now Russia. In this, he has made the transition to post-communist derzhavnik like many other Russians of his generation.
For that reason, one shouldn't expect too many surprises in this book. The author is still sometimes employed in diplomatic missions in the Middle East, and therefore he is not writing anything that could harm Russia's position in the region. A few bureaucratic scores are settled in the book, e.g. with a circle of people around Podgornyj, who didn't want to recognise that Sadat was turning Egypt from a Soviet client into an American client, but that considers cases at least thirty years ago that have no bearing on contemporary positions any more. Primakov also criticises those in the Soviet Union that wanted to work with the local communist parties to set up local client regimes; again, as the Arab communist parties were a failure almost everywhere, as no Communist regime was ever successfully established except in Southern Yemen, and as the communists were rivals to the Socialist Nationalists that became the usual allies of the USSR in the Arab world, this is not a terribly surprising or controversial point.
As I'm not a specialist on Middle East or on Soviet politics, it is hard for me to assess how much in this book is really new. The materials on the secret diplomatic contacts between the USSR and Israel in the seventies, when officially no diplomatic relations existed between these countries, seem certainly interesting, especially as Primakov, being the emissary, speaks from first-hand experience. At least for me the author's assessment of the Yom Kippur war - that Sadat was goaded into it by the Americans who wanted to improve his position in preparation for the later separate peace with Israel (and who were not amused when the Israelis tripped up their scheme by winning again) - was something I hadn't heard of before, which probably only shows how little I've read on that topic. Primakov's assessment of Saddam Hussein - that he believed until the last moments of his life that the Americans only wanted to teach him lessons, but would always leave him in (or, after his fall, put him back into) power because they needed a strong Iraq led by him as a counterweight to Iran - would explain a lot about his constant brinkmanship, and also would show how far from reality his mind had strayed. On the level of personalities, I was surprised about his positive assessment of Binyamin Netanyahu and his negative assessment of Shimon Peres, as this is the opposite one would have expected from a Soviet / Russian diplomat based on their political positions.
The book is interesting on several levels. It allows some insights into the debates going on inside Soviet foreign policy circles in the sixties to eighties. It shows the continuities between the Soviet and the Russian foreign policy approach in the Middle East. And there are many small stories and anecdotes from Primakov's personal experience that make the book more than a dry political treatise.

---
Евгений Примаков, "Конфиденциально: Ближний Восток на сцене и за кулисами", Москва, "Российская Газета", 2006