Wenn wir alle gut wären

by Irmgard Keun

Rare book

Genres: German Literature

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Irmgard Keun (1905 – 1982) was a German novelist. She is noted for her portrayals of the life of women in the Weimar Republic as well as the early years of the Nazi Germany era. She was born into an affluent family and was given the autonomy to explore her passions. After her attempts at acting ended at the age of 16, Keun began working as a writer after years of working in Hamburg and Greifswald. Her books were eventually banned by Nazi authorities but gained recognition during the final years of her life.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Irmgard Keun becomes an unruly friend if you stay with her long enough.

Staying with her means following the small inaccuracies in her memory and in the recollection of her nomadic, modern life, and it means tracing the 20th century in all its tragedy and satire through her works from the Weimar Republic over Nazi Germany, over the exile years and finally to her post-war life in a bomb-damaged house without a proper roof in Köln.

Her novels are modern and honest and fresh in every sense of the word, and by reading her shorter fiction, her memoirs of emigration, her sad poetry and her letters (all of which are collected in one volume here), the major works receive a background full of meaning and heartfelt anger and hatred for the stupidity, lies and evil of her times.

When Irmgard Keun describes her friends in exile, she sees them in their levels of despair. She sees Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth and Kurt Tucholsky break under the unbearable times they witness. She sees Heinrich and Thomas Mann writing historical fiction as a result of having lost their natural habitat and linguistic environment, where they used to be able to produce contemporary fiction with sharp social observations. And she gives them credit for still producing the best prose that German fiction has to offer.

She sees herself unable to adjust to the world that tries to "rebuild" after the disastrous collapse at the end of the war, and she slowly loses hope that she will be able to be honestly active as a writer while surrounded by former Nazis that engage in a mysterious religious awakening and turn to Catholicism for redemption and guilt-free self-pity. She becomes lonely because being with people who are uninterested in intellectual debate is worse than loneliness: it is isolation.

Irmgard Keun makes so much sense. How else could she have been, given she was so desperately intelligent and full of life and curiosity at a time when that was barely allowed if you were a rich man in a free country? And she was a poor woman in a dictatorship!

Her short stories and poems and letters and memoirs fill the gaps that her novels left out...

Recommended to anyone who wants to hear a voice that dared to speak!

[Luisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicht das Beste ihrer Bücher (an das kunstseidene mädchen kommt leider wenig ran), und ein wilder mix aus kurzgeschichten, anekdotischen bemerkungen, gedichten und autobiografischem. wirkte ein wenig wie das man versucht hat (als verleger*innen) noch den letzten rest von keun brauchbar zu machen. viele tippfehler drin, wo ich mich fragte, ob es am end einfach vom papier in den druck ging (wäre spannend). einige der geschichten sind wie gedankenspiele, bspw, wenn männer sich selbst ausgerottet hätten und man von einem tag auf den anderen einfach perfekt aussehen würde. you can’t get the brat out of keun. die briefe und das autobiografische fand ich aus der historischen perspektive ganz spannend, wie keun die „entnazifizierungsprozesse“ wahrnahm, guess what she took it mit einer großen portion sarkasmus, und es zeigte sich auch, dass sie einfach ihren witz nicht verlor trotz allem. wer an keun interessiert ist, würde empfehlen!

[Pascale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like "Child of All Nations", this story is told from the point of view of a pert and precocious girl on the cusp of adolescence. Unfortunately, the vignettes in this book are just cute, and the frantic series of pranks and punishments doesn't add up to much.

[canismajor · Rating 4 out of 5]

C’est un livre qui m’a plu, même si j’ai trouvé ça parfois compliqué de s’accrocher à la pensée toujours en mouvement d’une petite fille.

[Ralf Papendick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Der autobiografische Teil ist sehr gut. Und hervorragend sind die Briefe an Hermann Kesten. Der Rest ist Füllmaterial.