Illusions

by Ruth Rehmann, Rob Madole (Translator), Megan Nolan (Introduction)

‘The rediscovery of this lost classic will shift perceptions of German literature in the English speaking world. Mercurial, seductive, smart and startling.’ – Megan Nolan

Four office workers, one unforgettable weekend – this shimmering lost German classic unveils the hidden lives inside every employee.

Welcome to the Wellis Corporation. Twenty-three storeys of shimmering glass cubicles, rattling typewriters, spiraling corridors: a corporate kingdom with its own neon light.

Across the glittering panes, the acrobatic window cleaner swoops and dives, or pauses, still as a gargoyle, seeing things that nobody else sees.

Over one weekend, we follow four employees into their private worlds. An ageing secretary; a translator in a mid-life-crisis; a once-glamorous typist; and a lovelorn trainee.

Together, they reveal the illusions we live by – in the workplace, in the home and in our own mind’s eye.

Lost for decades since it was first published in Germany in 1959, introduced by Megan Nolan and in a hypnotic new translation by Rob Madole, this crystalline debut novel by a pioneering female writer rewrites German literary history.

Genres: Germany, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Ruth Rehmann (June 1, 1922 – January 29, 2016) was a German writer.

Rehmann was born in Siegburg, the daughter of a local pastor. She studied in Hamburg with the aim of becoming a translator; and then she studied art history, German literature and music. During the 1950s, she worked as a violinist, as a teacher[3] and as a press secretary at the American and Indian embassies. In 1983, Rehmann ran as a Green Party candidate for a seat in the Bundestag.

In 1959, Rehmann published her first novel Illusions (Illusionen). She had attracted much attention when she read a chapter from that book at the Group 47 conference in 1958. Her second novel The People in the Valley (Die Leute im Tal) won first prize in a literature contest. Later novels include:

The Man in the Pulpit (Der Mann auf der Kanzel) (1979)

Farewell from the master class (Abschied von der Meisterklasse) (1985)

The Woman from Schwaig Farm (Die Schwaigerin) (1987)

She has also written several radio plays and some short stories.

(from WIkipedia)

Reviews

[Hannah]

Wollte mal was von einer eher unbekannteren Autorin der Gruppe 47 lesen und wurde nicht enttäuscht. Wunderschöne Wortwahl und Situationsbeschreibungen. Die auch nicht altern. Gleichzeitig kind of Kapitalismuskritik.
Von Ruth Rehmann würde ich mehr lesen wollen. Auch wenn mir die einzelnen Geschichten manchmal zu abstrakt waren und ich nicht zwischen Realität und Traum unterscheiden konnte, was eventuell auch so gewollt war.

[Harriet Shone]

Just bleak enough for my Greek beach holiday, I thoroughly enjoyed the quiet madness of these characters and their meaningless lives.

[Leah]

Saturday morning, and four colleagues are watching the clock tick towards the beginning of the weekend. They are in a tall, glass building in Berlin, in the late 1950s, employed by a company so large it is soulless – tiny cogs working towards an end so distant it seems almost irrelevant. They are very different people with no interests in common, and are not friends, but they have that kind of intimacy that comes from occupying the same small space five and a half days a week. Over the course of their short weekend, we will learn about their hopes and dreams, their failures and disappointments, and will come to see that the office offers each an illusion of security, of human contact, of purpose, of their own worth. Or perhaps we will see those illusions destroyed…

First published in 1959 to critical but not popular acclaim, the book has been largely forgotten for decades. Now it has been republished in a new translation by Rob Madole, and is being described as a ‘lost classic’, which, I must admit, feels like quite an oxymoron to me.

The story swings from character to character and back again, and drifts through their memories while they go about their weekend, so that it can often be difficult to distinguish past from present. That vagueness is amplified by the fact that it is not always clear if what we are reading are real memories or fantasies of what the characters wish had happened to them. Combine that with the stream-of-consciousness style of never-ending sentences and paragraphs that run on for pages, and I found it so hard to get into and, quite frankly, so depressing that I came within an inch of abandoning it around a third of the way through.

However, when I dashed off my dismissive abandonment ‘review’, I found I was adding in lots of ‘admittedlys’ – admittedly, the picture she draws of the soulless office environment is wonderfully accurate and insightful; admittedly, the writing, though difficult, is great, and enhanced by an excellent translation; admittedly, the four characters are beautifully drawn and their stories intrigued me. So I told myself to get a grip, embrace the style rather than carp about it, and struggle on. And I’m very glad I did.

And suddenly the Wellis headquarters emerged from a gap between two buildings, glowing glassily, filling the sky with a bluish light – neon daylight in a human night. He approached it, ran a finger over its stone base. “You’re not sleeping,” he said. “You’ve got them all on a wire, hanging by your invisible strings. Funny little kites that you let flutter off on Saturdays to have their fun, but the string’s running with them the whole time, and in the middle of the fun you yank it tight, you say, “Come back!” and you reel in your dancing little kites…

Frau Schramm is the senior member of the small team. Widowed during WWI just two years into her marriage, she lives a solitary life and has dedicated herself to the Wellis Corporation and the bosses she reveres. She has just been told by her current revered boss that the company intends to ‘let her go’. Her weekend begins with her in a state of disbelief, and we see the impact on her as realisation of all this will mean begins to sink in. The shattering truth is that all along she has been a small cog, easily replaceable, and now the company wants someone younger with more up-to-date skills. She wanders back through her memories, letting us glimpse regrets she had buried so deeply she had ceased to be aware of them. It is a heartbreaking portrayal, made more so by the fact that it’s so entirely believable.

She is to be replaced by the younger Fräulein Carmen Viol, though Carmen doesn’t yet know this. Fortyish and good-looking, she values herself in terms of her ability to attract men, but as she ages, that doesn’t happen as much as it used to. Anxious, one might almost say desperate, she feels she has to keep up a facade to her colleagues of an exciting romantic life outside work – dates that give her the opportunity to wear one of her four most precious frocks, each of which has its own set of memories attached. This weekend, as she waits for a date who doesn’t show up, she drifts back through some of those memories, and a picture develops of a woman who has always wanted love but has only attracted lust. Tragic and again believable, but there is also some mild humour in her story, and she is not beyond all hope yet.

And now this dress is used up, it no longer gives out any light or warmth. A shivering shoulder shimmy makes it fall to her ankles. Impersonally, she takes a step out of the snake skin of the abandoned role and into the abyss of the grand interval between acts.

Paul Westermann is the only man in the team. In his late twenties or thereabouts, he is well-educated, and has been hired on probation as a translator. But he finds that modern business language is a very different thing to the language of the beloved classic literature he learned in university, so he’s struggling. He has a wife and a baby, and his wife asks him every day if his job has been made permanent yet. He feels trapped, stifled, so that when a friend from his youth reappears with an aura of exciting adventures around him, Paul feels a longing to escape from his life.

Lastly, there is the youngster of the team – Therese Pfeiffer. Despite her youth, she has already been married and is now separated because she had an affair. She longs to be part of the bohemian crowd she fringes, but doesn’t quite fit in. She longs for a family, but her own family turfed her out when they learned of her affair, siding with her husband. She longs for someone to take care of her – she is very young – but the one man who wants to also restricts her, trying hard to turn her into something she’s not. She has a self-destructive streak, but one feels she has a whole life yet in which she may work out who she is and what she wants.

The introduction suggests the book shows how fascism can arise, but I must say I didn’t see that at all. For me, it is simply four excellent character portraits set in an entirely realistic setting of a city still recovering from war and a corporation that becomes part prison, part haven for its employees even though they are merely replaceable parts in its giant machine. And frankly, that’s quite profound enough without having to stretch for more. One that reminded me that sometimes pushing on is worthwhile.

NB This book was provided for review by Faber and Faber via NetGalley.

www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com

[Shari]

In this quietly devastating book, first published in German in 1959, we follow four employees at a German corporation. They're all at different stages of life and have different backgrounds. They're not particularly friendly with one another, don't really know one another, often misunderstand each other, and are, in some cases, envious of the others. They all work in one small area, which can sometimes create tension. The window cleaner observes them from outside and takes an interest in a couple of them. Frau Schramm has devoted her life to the corporation and it's pretty much what she lives for, but she's aging and although she pushes the reality from her awareness, her working life won't continue on forever. What then? Fraulein Viol is also no longer young, but trying desperately to hide every sign of aging. She's still looking for love, which has been elusive. Therese, the young trainee, makes Fraulein Viol uncomfortable because she's young, attractive, and seemingly with her whole life ahead of her. But Therese is searching too--for what, she has no idea. She is reckless and looking for both excitement and a place/group to belong. Paul, the lone male of the group, is a failed academic who has been hired to translate documents into French. He's not very good at this in a business context and he resents having to do this work, being more comfortable in what he sees as the higher realm of literature. His job performance makes his position precarious. One Saturday at midday, their weekends begin and they leave the building to spend a day and a half without the demands of work. This time they have to fill, with no work distractions, quickly becomes difficult for all of them, each in their own way. The book takes place over this day and a half as we alternate between their stories and their lives change.

This is an excellent book. It is set at a particular time and place, but in some ways, it is timeless. The quiet desperation with which these people face the weekend is so beautifully communicated--I could feel it with each of these characters. The inability to relax and enjoy the time they have, the overthinking, the attempts to manipulate, all illustrate the pain and lack of self awareness these characters are living with. The window cleaner, observing from the other side of the glass, is often not even noticed by these people, but he seems to understand more about them than they do themselves. There would be some sort of dissonance in that time and place, I suppose, so soon after Germany's defeat in the war and the attempts to either bury or come to grips with what the country was in the not-so-distant past. It's not stated what specific year the book is set in, and the war is mentioned in passing a few times, but since it was published in 1959, it would have had an impact on the author and, by extension, the characters. However, I've known people with the same sorts of issues and I wasn't even born when the book was written, so I would say the book goes beyond a particular time and place and describes very human struggles. I had never read anything by this author before, but after having read this, I'd love to read more. Her writing is gorgeous. This is a book I highly recommend. It was a 5-star read for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital review copy.

[Dima]

The story is set in a large German city in the 1950s, where four office workers begin their weekend, each trying to escape their day-to-day lives and building illusions to sustain their fantasies, only to return to the office on Monday morning. Each protagonist is unhappy with their place in life in a different way, and struggles, ultimately futilely, to free themselves from the constraints around them.

Paul is a man in his thirties doing a job he feels no passion for and where he is scarcely appreciated. He feels constrained by family life and dreams of the life he might have lived, only to realise that his choices are limited and there is very little he can actually do.

Frau Schramm is approaching retirement, having dedicated most of her life to the company, only to realise that she has almost nothing outside it. When circumstances finally force her to confront this, she suffers a profound crisis of meaning.

Therese is a young typist trying to understand who she is, but struggling with romantic entanglements and living in a fantasy world far removed from her everyday existence.

Finally, Carmen Viola is an attractive but no longer young woman, torn between various romantic relationships and trying unsuccessfully to build a life for herself outside work.

The book has a distinctly nihilistic quality, showing how modern life can become a trap, with work and the workplace functioning almost as a prison cell that makes the very idea of true freedom difficult to contemplate. In this respect, the novel excels. It conveys the futility of hope with remarkable economy and emotional force.

I cannot say I particularly liked the writing, however. Some parts felt tedious, and the style (with the narrative shifting between the perspectives of the four protagonists) is probably simply not to my taste.

Either way, I recommend the book wholeheartedly. Nearly seventy years after publication, it has lost remarkably little of its relevance.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

[Trevelyanwright]

Written in 1959, this take-down of the hollowness at the heart of the German post-war economic miracle takes no prisoners. Over one weekend, starting on Saturday morning - the full weekend was not yet universal - Ruth Rehmann puts four employees of the Wellis corporation under the microscope. Paul is a translator, his dreams of academia already dust as he works on sales brochures and business letters, tied down with a wife and young child. Therese, the youngest, is already drifting through life sustained by an ever-changing cast of friends and lovers. Carmen Viola, a thirty something, is caught between committing fully to corporate life and escape. And Frau Schumann, perhaps Rehmann’s most fully realised character, is a sixty something secretary who has given her entire life to the corporation, embodied in her fretting over the health and calendar of The Boss.

Over the course of this weekend we observe their thoughts and routines in prose veering on the stream of consciousness at times. Carmen is haunted by a Mediterranean holiday affair, Paul has an absurd ambition to join the French foreign legion. We follow Therese through a series of bars and Frau Schumann through a weekend entirely absent of joy or diversion, marking the time until the real world begins again on Monday morning.

Detail and observation pile up, at times making this a dense read, as Rehmann strips all the characters one by one of their illusions. Her themes - how the submissive corporate culture that enabled the Nazis has survived intact, and how a collective amnesia settled on society that put all that unpleasantness behind itself for the forward march of economic progress - are brilliantly brought out through the actions of the four characters. In the novel’s central confrontation one of the characters is gaslit over the thought of not working. Don’t you have a ‘private reservoir’ of travel plans, hobbies and interests she is asked? No comes the answer. The company has asked for everything and life outside it is unthinkable.

Advance copy provided by Netgalley in return for an honest review.

[Ellis Crane]

This is an ambitious book following four characters who share an office over a single weekend in an unnamed West German city. Written in 1959 it is being reissued by Faber. Although the introduction to the new edition considers the book as a meditation on how people's desire for direction gives way to fascism, I read it as more of an exploration of somewhat aimless unhappy people.

It is written in a free indirect style with very long sentences and thoughts that run into each other so that although the action is set over a couple of days it feels longer than this and quite detached from any material reality (it is not at all grounded and often I wondered if what was happening was imagined or real).

Each chapter follows one of the characters, but frankly they are all much the same, neurotic and unhappy, despite their very different ages and positions and genders, so that it's not immediately obvious from the voice which character is which (quite a large flaw given the style of the novel, but obviously four different streams of consciousness is an enormous craft challenge). An omniscient window cleaner tops and tails the novel to no great effect.

I found it quite difficult to read, partly the prose is more involved than most contemporary novels and took some getting used to, but partly the characters didn't really change or grow or realise much about themselves. They all hint at self-knowledge and seek to push it to the background, which is interesting, but for me - maybe not for everyone - quite frustrating. The implication that each of the characters needs to be more accepting of circumstances and find pleasure in their daily lives is unsaid and might be my own over interpretation of what is going on - the ambiguity could be deliberate, it could just be that there is no there, there.

An interesting book, I didn't think it was as clever or insightful as it's supposed to be, sorry.

[Katrina]

3.5

Illusions by Ruth Rehmann follows the individual lives of four co-workers during a weekend: Paul, a man who feels trapped by his family and finds himself yearning for a friendship from his past; Carmen, a woman slowly leaving the prime of her life, continually changing her appearance, and constantly unsatisfied with her lot in life; Therese, a flighty, young typist whose life has already been turned upside down by heartache; and Frau Schramm, an older secretary who has pledged her life's meaning to the company that employs her.

Each of the characters leaves the office on Saturday teetering on the brink of disastrous inner turmoil, each one suffering from loneliness, misery, and despair.

What struck me while reading this book was how well it had aged. Published in 1959, the writing, as well as the translation, reads like it could have been written in the last few years. The themes were timeless, and the rerelease of this novel was certainly a timely one.

Written in the early postwar period, the novel is full of allusions to fascism, each rooted in a character's desperate and exhausted need for someone else to take control of their existence.

Illusions was not an easy read, and it's written in a way that requires close attention. Rehmann doesn't skimp on details but doesn't over-explain or get bogged down either. The story is quietly devastating, offering the reader little in the way of reprieve.

I was surprised to learn that this novel was mostly overlooked upon its initial publication and then mostly forgotten. Hopefully, this rerelease will change that. Illusions deserves to find a readership.

Recommended.

With thanks to Faber and Faber for the ARC.

[Katy Kelly]

Some great writing but not my cup of tea.

Caught my eye, I like to try older books and translated works from other countries. The plot sounded intriguing - it's set over the course of a weekend, which in Germany is just 1.5 days. In one office and organisation, we follow four individuals about to start their weekend break from work.

The older woman who's been there for decades and lives to work. The middle-aged woman just starting to lose her looks. The young women with everything ahead of her and lack of direction. The man who's just become a dad and is in the job after his chosen profession didn't pan out.

Readers flit from one to the other, with the office window cleaner observing some events, and the perspectives of each on city life, of a post-war German city world, of different societal values and expectations giving some valuable insight in the 2020s.

I found this quite slow, though I did appreciate some very lovely writing in there, some wonderful descriptions and heartfelt emotions. It dragged for me though, didn't come together or conclude really, I feel I wasn't really appreciating this as much as I would have wanted to.

Some characters had more time with us than others, and sometimes I wasn't actually sure who we were following. As a translation, the language didn't jar, it flowed very well, but it felt quite dry and was at times hard to read. So I'm conflicted.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

[Mandy]

Illusions is a 1959 German novel that feels surprisingly contemporary. Over one weekend, Rehmann follows four office workers whose apparently ordinary lives gradually unravel as their private hopes, disappointments and secrets are revealed. I enjoyed the contrast between the impersonal, glass-and-concrete corporate world and the complicated inner lives of the characters. The book is especially perceptive about women and work, showing how much identity can become tied up with a job, relationships and the expectations of society. The writing is observant and psychologically sharp, and I was struck by how modern some of the themes feel: dissatisfaction with work, loneliness, the desire to escape and the gap between the life we imagine and the life we actually have. The fragmented narrative, slow pace and stream of consciousness style however prevented me from fully engaging with the characters and although it’s an impressive and unusual novel, and one that deserves to be rediscovered, I can’t say that I particularly enjoyed it.

[Lara Reading Wild]

Despite being written in 1959, Illusions feels timeless. The stream of consciousness style writing is immersive in a way that allows the reader to see past the facade each character creates; their illusion, if you will.

In an effort to avoid spoiling anything, I’ll be vague here, but the title is well-chosen. The author examined illusions on a micro and macro level to beg the question, what is actually real and what makes it real? While the specific situation of each character may not be relatable, the narrative as a whole is entirely relevant; from lies we tell ourselves to societal institutions we uphold simply because that’s what we’ve always done.

I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.

[Fiona Smith]

Germany 1959, or Britain 2026? Does it matter? This is a timeless tale of four colleagues locked in a misery of their own, equally troubled, equally alone.

The writing is beautiful and meandering, leading us through dreams and memories, mixing up the past and the future through different devices for each character. It's an effective tool: we understand how the present came to be and the cyclical nature of life, hope and loss. Not a light read, but definitely worth reading.

[Gary Homewood]

Framing device of a mid century office block and 4 office workers over a weekend, wary of each other, leading lives of quiet desperation. Cinematic, poetically detailing each restless consciousness through its hopes and fears and dreams. Striking imagery and motifs, artfully structured descriptions, individualism vs collectivism, hierarchies of power and feminism, an astringent melancholy.

"How did anyone survive a Sunday without a rendezvous?"

[Craig Scott]

It happens. Sometimes a book just doesn’t land well. It’s not the book, it’s the reader. Illusions was such a book for me.
The story delves into the lives of four people over one weekend in a Germany experiencing its post-war economic resurgence. Sharing a glass and steel-clad office on the 13th of 23 floors comprising similar glass and steel-clad offices are four corporate employees, three women, one man. Each has formed a perception of the others through the time they spend working in close proximity.
Gertrud Schramm is 63, a devoted company woman who lives to work rather than works to live. Carmen Viol’s beauty is beginning to fade and with it her self-confidence as she lapses into bouts of nervous melancholy. Trainee Therese Pfeiffer’s coltish but sleepy-eyed good looks are a constant reminder to Carmen of bygone days. And husband and father, Paul Westermann, flounders with his translation duties as he hankers after a life less encumbered by domesticity. Four different characters. Each with their own notions, aspirations and yes, illusions, about the weekend ahead of them and their lives beyond.
The writing is undoubtedly stylish and enveloping, but it utilises streams of consciousness liberally, flitting between the protagonists’ present, past and future and I struggled at times to delineate between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’. Perhaps that was deliberate on the part of the author, but for me it made for a disconcerting reading experience. I usually enjoy downbeat books and I’m comfortable with an absence of uplifting interludes, but I found this one somewhat deflating as the quartet lacked any redeeming charisma that might have elicited my empathy.
My sincere thanks though to Faber Books for the opportunity to read this Faber Editions book. I can only apologise for failing to attune myself to it!
And please don’t let me put you off reading Illusions. Expressing a totally contrary viewpoint to mine, Megan Nolan has described it as ‘Mercurial, seductive, smart and startling.’ So what do I know?!
Illusions was originally published in 1959. This new UK edition, translated by Rob Madole, was released this week.