Collin

by Stefan Heym

Zwei sterbenskranke Männer haben miteinander gewettet, wer von ihnen seine Krankheit überstehen und den Widersacher überdauern wird. Der eine, Schriftsteller und Staatspreisträger, will überleben, um seine Memoiren zu schreiben und eine alte Schuld zu tilgen, die schwer auf ihm lastet. Der andere, ein Stasifunktionär, will das Erscheinen dieser Memoiren verhindern, weil darin etwas über ihn offenbart würde, was er lieber im Dunkel weiß.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Great-O-Khan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Der Roman "Collin" aus dem Jahr 1979 ist vor allem als historisches Dokument interessant. In vielen Berichten zu dem Text von Stefan Heym stehen die Umstände der Veröffentlichung im Zentrum: Das Buch wurde ohne entsprechende Freigabe der zuständigen DDR-Behörde im Westen veröffentlicht. Stefan Heym wurde deshalb in einem Strafverfahren in der DDR zu 9.000 Mark Geldstrafe verurteilt. Anschließend wurde Stefan Heym aus dem Schriftstellerverband der DDR ausgeschlossen und konnte dort keine Bücher mehr veröffentlichen.

Die literarische Qualität des Romans ist weniger spektakulär. Es ist eine Kritik der Kulturpolitik der 1950er Jahre in der DDR. Viele Figuren sind realen Personen sehr nahe. Allerdings wirkt die Geschichte mit diesen Figuren wenig organisch. Es ist eher eine Versuchsanordnung, die dazu dient, die Kritik in Dialogen und Gedanken zu formulieren. Eine derartig scharfe Kritik hatte es bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt von keinem anderen DDR-Schriftsteller gegeben. Für die Zeit war das sicherlich für viele Leser wichtig. Mir ist die Geschichte zu konstruiert und die Sprache zu distanziert. Es gibt literarisch gelungenere Romane, die sich mit dem Leben und der Politik in der DDR befassen.

[Nadine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5? read 4 uni

[Ruth Fleet · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have finally finished this one! It has seriously thrown my reading challenge off track because it took me so long to get back into the swing of reading German again (plus moving house...) but I am really pleased that I made it. It is a really good read. It starts with the main character, Hans Collin, lying in bed in a specialist hospital in 1970s East Germany, experiencing what he believes to be a heart attack. He is a famous writer in the GDR and is very well connected with the political elite, seemingly because his books portray a macho and heroic vision of what it is to be a communist. Unbeknownst to him, also being admitted is an old acquaintance of his named Urack, who is a senior figure in the Stasi and with whom he fought in the Spanish Civil War. A young doctor, Christine Roth, is treating Collin and realises that he has not had a heart attack but some other kind of nervous attack, which she believes to have been cause by a psychological problem. Collin has been trying to write his memoirs when he experiences the illness and we realise that Collin has to address an incident in the past in order to recover. The incident in question is Collin's betrayal of a former comrade, Havelka, who saved his life in Spain. When Havelka is falsely accused of trying to destabilise the GDR, Collin does not defend him, even though he knows it to be untrue and a fabrication of the political elite. Havelka's wife is also in the same hospital, and the series of meetings (some chance and some very much planned) between these four main characters lead to Collin's reckoning with his past, which is representative of communism itself.

The basis of the story, that all these figures so significant to one another should end up in the same hospital at the same time, is a little far-fetched, but if you can suspend your disbelief then there is loads of really interesting stuff in here. I feel like it is a real front-runner of so many controversial ideas about the ideology and the reality of the GDR. We see three generations in this story: the grandparents in hospital, who are the old communists who have the political credentials and who founded the GDR, but have become corrupted. They mostly live lives that are decadent from power (Collin and his wife live in a big house and have two cars and travel internationally). Then there is the next generation, Christine and Urack's adult grandson, Peter. Peter is completely disaffected by his repressive life in East Germany and, after a brief affair with Christine, ends up fleeing to the west. This bit kind of reminded me of Der geteilte Himmel because Christine goes through all this self-doubt about whether leaving the GDR really means freedom, eventually coming to the conclusion that it does not. And then there is also Christine's little boy, who asks all these innocent questions, exposing painful truths about their lives.

There are two great chapters that really bring home the feeling that the past must be reckoned with, both with Urack and Collin sneaking into each other's rooms. In the first, Urack goes to taunt and threaten Collin, to try and dissuade him from writing his memoirs. Collin has begun to recover, both from his illness and his writer's block, because he realises that the life story he was trying to write was not the truth. When the other senior communists realise this, they are afraid and try to coerce him in different ways into not doing this (also Christine is eventually pushed out of her job because she helped Collin come to this conclusion, rather than following the advice of her boss to 'let sleeping dogs lie'). Urack almost interrogates Collin with a light shining in his face and remarks that Collin is going to die in here, whereas he is getting stronger and will return to power. However, at the end of this scene, Urack discovers that his grandson has fled to the west, and the shock of it ultimately leads to a period of madness and then death. In the second scene, Collin creeps into Urack's room to see if he is really dying and is present while Urack is talking feverishly to a ghost from his own past who, in reality, died many years before. Collin realises that he has triumphed over Urack and that he has to confront the past in order to survive. This echoes the words of Havelka, who said to him in a concentration camp in France that he was a writer and so he needed to live to tell their story. There is something so unheimlich about both scenes, you feel the power dynamic and the vulnerability of the characters and it is really good writing. It also clearly written with an awareness of the power of Holocaust writing, and the idea of bearing witness more generally, as a healing and essential process.

Anyway have written more than I planned to but it was a really interesting book and I would recommend a read if you get chance.

[Kirijath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sehr cooler schreibstil, in der mitte etwas zu langsam erzählt, aber ich werde auf jeden fall noch mehr von dem author versuchen.
zwei größen der ddr in einem krankenhaus, im wettlauf, wer die wahrheit aufdecken oder vertuschen kann...der eine author, der andere ein hohes tier der stasi.
die ehefrauen der beiden sind etwas sehr seltsam mit ihren affären, kids, blabla keine ahnung und die dr. Roth ist eigtl die einzig wirklich nette.
am ende stirbt der author, hat aber vorher seine memoiren fast beendet und versteckt, das manuskript wird von einem freund und ursprünglicher initiator mitgenommen und vmtl veröffentlicht.

[Dan Richter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eines jener Bücher, die zu einer anderen Zeit mal wichtig schienen.