Junges Licht

by Ralf Rothmann

Ralf Rothmann erzählt in der ihm eigenen, eindringlichen Sprache von den letzten Wochen der Kindheit, ihren leisen Schrecken und dem erhellenden Trost: "Wenn du dich für die Freiheit entschieden hast, kann dir gar nichts passieren. Nie."

Genres: Germany, Fiction, German Literature, Novels

240 pages, Hardcover

First published August 9, 2004

About the author

Ralf Rothmann wurde am 10.05.1953 in Schleswig geboren und wuchs im Ruhrgebiet auf. Nach der Volksschule (und einem kurzen Besuch der Handelsschule) machte er eine Maurerlehre, arbeitete mehrere Jahre auf dem Bau und danach in verschiedenen Berufen (unter anderem als Drucker, Krankenpfleger und Koch). Er lebt seit 1976 in Berlin.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was twelve …
… my father didn’t work in shifts in a coal mine, like Julian’s father did,
… my mother didn’t hit me with a wooden spoon for messing up my homework, like Julian’s mother did,
… my friends didn’t demand of me to snatch cigarettes and beer in order to stay in the gang, like Julian’s friends did,
… I didn’t have a crush on a 15-year-old precocious lodger, like Julian had,
… and my little sister –– strike that, I never had a sister,

But still I can relate to Julian–a lot– because …
… I was born around the same time,
… I lived at the same place (not too far away anyway),
… I talked the same language, used some of the same codes,
… and, most of all, this novella contains so much empty space for me to fill in the blanks, it’s almost magical.

Better than expected. So good, in fact, I’m not going to see the film (which had its premiere this month). It can only be worse.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[Thomas Hübner · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.mytwostotinki.com/?p=634

Young Light is the title of a coming-of-age novel by German author Ralf Rothmann. I enjoyed this book very much.

Julian Collien, the 12-year old protagonist, is growing up in the Ruhr region in the mid-1960s. It is the time of the Wirtschaftswunder, the period of reconstruction and economic growth in Western Germany after WWII.

Julian is living with his parents and his little sister Sophie in a mining town. Life and work is organized around the work schedule of the coal mine, where almost all the fathers are working, whereas the women follow the traditional role of mother and housewife.

Everyone is very much living in the present – hardly anyone ever speaks of the past. An old photograph of the then 12-year old father of Julian from 1936 is not the starting point for a discussion of old times, and the seemingly jocular survey of Julian’s sister if her father has killed anyone during the war, is answered with a helpless silence by the father and a verbal outburst by the mother who sends the child to its room. The tattooed numbers under the father’s armpits go not unremarked but are not a subject for further questions.

On the surface the reader has the impression that nothing spectacular is happening within the few weeks that are covered by the story. It is the end of the school year, mother and sister are going on a holiday (there is not enough money for the whole family to enjoy holiday together), the father and Julian stay at home and get along quite well. Julian has some trouble at school: he has problems with mathematics and gets beaten by the teacher (at that time still a “normal” experience) because he was unable to do his homework . In order to avoid the next beating by the teacher, Julian has an idea:

“My mother was hanging up laundry in the garden with Sophie, and I went to the bathroom, locked the door and had a pee. Then I opened the mirror cabinet, the side with my father’s things: a plastic cup, a toothbrush with a wooden handle and squashed bristles, a bottle of Irish Moss aftershave. The razor slightly rusted, but there was a new packet of blades. I pulled one out, carefully unwrapped the waxed paper and sat down at the edge of the bathtub.

Downstairs I could hear Sophie, her gleeful laughter – almost a squeaking – then little Schulz’s mouth organ, and with one edge of the blade I made a cut in the ball of my thumb, only very gently, but even that already hurt. Oron, with the tip of an enemy’s arrow in his leg, had also once operated on himself and hardly batted an eyelid. I was taking fast breaths with my mouth wide open, and kept going over the skin until the edge of the razor blade disappeared into the flesh. Now the line turned red. It was a good four centimeters long, but the blood wasn’t even running over the edge; I clenched my teeth and pressed harder, millimeter by millimeter. But I was already trembling all over, started farting and broke out in sweat. Finally, my fingers grew so tense that I had to stop.

I rinsed my hand under the tap and looked at the ball of my thumb. A nasty scratch, but not a wound. I went to the kitchen, took a match from the box and rubbed the sulphur head about inside the cut until my eyes watered. Then I put a plaster on it, wiped the bathroom floor with toilet paper and told my mother I had fallen over. At night, before going to sleep, I could feel a quiet throbbing under the bandage.

But I didn’t have fever the next morning…”

Without fever, Julian has to go to school and is pretending to have not been able to do his homework in math because of the wound. Unfortunately he didn’t think about it to cut his right hand (he is a right-hander); an almost funny situation – all this cunning and bravery: for nothing. Also Julian’s nervous, chain-smoking mother is beating him frequently and ferociously.

Julian is not particularly close with any of his peers, the snooty Gorny boy, the son of the landlord rubs it frequently into his face that he – contrary to Julian – will attend gymnasium after the summer break. The boys at the Animal Club, an overgrown plot of land that belongs to Pomrehn, an old widower who is friendly to the children but considered as confused by most adults, accept him only when he brings them alcohol and cigarettes; and there are the boys from the Kleekamp gang, the nemesis of the miner’s housing scheme. They always do their best to bring Julian in trouble for things he hasn’t done. Marusha, the 15-year old daughter of the Gorny’s holds a strong attraction for Julian, although he seems just to begin to understand why. Gorny senior, in the meantime, a person who has a kind of creepiness about him from the very beginning of the book, turns out to be a man with pedophile and child molesting tendencies at the least. And the marriage of the parents seems also not to be without serious issues – the nature of the mother’s frequent bouts of illness are never revealed, but they might be a symptom for a failing marriage:

“Not a sound. No one in the bedroom either; the bedspread lay neatly folded on the bed and the metal alarm clock was ticking. A solitary fly scurried across the fridge of the lampshade, and I called again and knocked on the bathroom door. But it had been left ajar. The narrow window was open, and there were nylon stockings lying unwashed in the bath; every time a drop of water fell onto the lightly-coloured heap, it moved. Next to the soap dish lay a little tube of painkillers, slightly squashed; the screw top lay on the floor.

I heard my father coming up the stairs with slow, heavy steps, went onto the balcony and looked out to the garden. ‘Lollypop? Where’s Mum?’

Sophie was sitting alone on the edge of the sandbox. One of her teddies was buried up to its neck, and she looked up. Although the sun was behind her, she covered her eyes with her hand. ‘I’m not hungry.’

My father, who had heard the question, went to the kitchen and looked around. ‘Why? Where would she be?’

I shrugged. ‘Maybe in the cellar. Hanging up the laundry?’ But he didn’t answer. He threw his jacket on the sofa and called her; his voice was strangely muted. The glasses in the cabinet trembled slightly as he walked across the floorboards. In the bathroom he bent down to pick up the lid and screwed it back on the tube of tablets. Then he pushed open the door of the children’s room and placed his hands on his lips. His broad back blocked my view.

‘What’s going on?’ His voice sounded amazed, and I pushed past him. Out room was full of smoke, and my mother, slightly bent forward, was lying in Sophie’s bed. Although she was wearing her quilted dressing gown, she had pulled the cover, the one decorated with toadstools and dwarves, up to her chest, and didn’t look at us. Her head was turned to the wall, her eyes closed, and she was holding an extinguished cigarette between her fingers. There were tears, grey with eyeliner, on Sophie’s pillow.

I bent down over her. ‘What’s the matter? Did you have another colic?’

She sniffed quietly, but didn’t say anything. Her foot, which was poking out of the end of the covers, still had one of the slippers with the plush edging on it. She was wearing her pearl necklace, and I pulled the cigarette butt out from between her fingers and threw it into the bowl on the bedside rug. My father breathed out sharply through his nose and ran his hands through his hair.

‘Shall we call you an ambulance?’ She swallowed hard, again and again, as if she had something stuck in her throat. ‘What’s the point.’ She spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, and hardly moved her mouth. ‘Just let me lie here.’

My father shrugged his shoulders. He turned round and went into the kitchen, and while I took the slippers off her feet and placed them next to the bed I could hear him tinkering with the stove rings and scratching about in the coal scuttle; it was much louder than when she did it. I bent down and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. Her skin felt dull from the spray.

‘Shall I make a hot water bottle?’ She nodded almost invisibly. Her eyelids were trembling, and I turned round to go to the bathroom – and found my father standing in the doorway again. Folds going down over the bridge of his nose. His lips so pale that I could hardly make them out from the rest of his skin, he held the half-thawed packet of spinach in his fist like a brick.

‘Now listen here…’ He went up close to the little bed. ‘If you’re not feeling well, please go to the doctor. And if there’s something wrong with your gall bladder, it’s about time you had an operation. What are hospitals for? I’m getting sick and tired of all this back and forth. When I come out of that hole where I work myself half to death for you all every day, I expect to have something to eat, you understand? Then I bloody well expect to see some food on the table!’

He was speaking more loudly than I had ever heard him speak before, and when he screamed ‘Do you understand me!’ after that, I saw his lower row of teeth, the brown gaps between them. With a kick, he sent the ashtray next to the bed flying into the corner.

But it stayed in one piece, even though it was made of glass. But the five cigarette butts inside it jumped onto the carpet. ‘And now get the hell up! If you can smoke one fag after another, you can make your family something to eat!’”

After the return of the mother and sister from Schleswig (Rothmann’s birthplace), the family is informed that they have to move out by the end of the month – Julian’s father had sex with Marusha and now Gorny is blackmailing them to leave the house.

Whereas most of the novel is told from Julian’s perspective, several short parts of the book are told in third person perspective. These paragraphs describe the work of a coal miner during his shift almost a thousand meters below the ground. While he is entering an area with water ingress, he is preparing a blasting to avoid a catastrophe; in the end it seems that the miner has an accident, possibly a fatal one. But it is left unsolved what exactly happened and who the miner was – although he was looking briefly on his Kienzle watch with the broken glass, exactly the same as Julian’s father is wearing.

What strikes me about the novel is first of all the language. Rothmann avoids the trap in which so many writers of autobiographical novels are falling.

Julian, from whose perspective most of the novel is told, is not looking back with an affectionate, transfigured view. He reports the things as he sees them and in a rather unemotional, almost a bit detached way. Before his mother starts to beat him with the wooden cooking spoon, he turns up the music of the radio a bit because he knows from experience that he will cry and he doesn’t want the Gorny’s downstairs to hear it.

Julian’s world is a quite unkindly one: he cannot remember to have ever embraced or kissed his mother; when he wants to hold his father around his waist while riding on the back seat of his bicycle, his father is reprimanding him. Only with his little sister Sophie who is sometimes a pain in the ass but mostly very cheerful and charming, he is embracing and kissing.

Most other children and almost all adults are aggressive, rude, malicious – with very few exceptions: there is Pomrehn, who behind his rather tattered and disheveled appearance is a kind and even wise person; the catholic priest, who is on the one side rather strict with the children but who tries to talk Julian out of his feeling of guilt when he is confessing his alleged sins; Marusha, who is beside her rather aggressive and provocatively displayed sexuality, talking to Julian as a friend and confidant; and there is a man he sees on TV who is talking so differently from all other people in Julian’s surroundings.

The man is using expressions that resonate well in Julian and that make him want to know who this man, a writer, really is and who is speaking in a serious voice which betrays his soft Cologne accent. Unfortunately for Julian, he will not know the name of the man with the sad eyes and the bulbous nose – not this time that is. But we readers witness an important formative moment in Julian’s life: for the first time he realizes that words can be a means to express important things, feelings, opinions that matter. And Heinrich Böll, the unnamed writer that is so easy to recognize from Rothmann’s description, is the one who made this happen.

Since we can assume that Rothmann is describing his own childhood and the end of it in Julian’s story, we can understand what an impact this moment possibly had on the author. Rothmann worked as a mason, driver, cook and in various other jobs before he started his career as a writer. Among the many literary awards he received, is ironically also the Heinrich Böll Award of the City of Cologne.

What I also have to praise is that Rothmann is an intelligent and conscious narrator. He is a few years older than me but I also grew up in a coal mining town in Germany that resembles very much the unnamed place of Julian’s childhood. When I read the book, it was sometimes almost as if I have a flashback to my own childhood, so precise to the last detail is Rothmann’s book when he describes the catholic, proletarian and petty bourgeois milieu of the coal miners of the Ruhr (or in my case: Saar) region,

In the end we see Julian preparing to move to a new place with his family. He has lost a few illusions about his parents, his peers, about adults and maybe life in general. But he will keep the picture of the writer in his mind and will try to find out more about him in the library one day. And he will also remember the words of Pomrehn, who once said to him:

“When you have chosen freedom, nothing can ever happen to you. Never. “

Young Light is one of the best coming-of-age novels I ever read.

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auf den ersten Blick geht es um die Mühen und Leiden einer Arbeiterfamilie im Ruhrpott aus der Sicht des zwölfjährigen Julian. Die Erzählung ist unterbrochen von kurzen Berichten über einen Mann, er sich unter Tage mit unklarem Ziel vorangräbt. In einem der ersten dieser Berichte lesen wir:

In die noch unberührte, schwarzglänzende Schicht hatte sich ein Skelett eingedrückt, ein Vogel wohl, nicht größer als eine Kinderhand und mit einem verdrehten Flügel. Statt eines Schnabels hatte das Wesen jedoch einen spitz zulaufenden Kiefer, der sich so deutlich abzeichnete auf dem schwarzen Grund, daß man die winzigen Zähnchen erkannte, jedenfalls einen Augenblick lang.

Der Vogel wird zum Leitmotiv, und später lernen wir, warum, im Dialog zwischen Julian und seiner Schwester:

»Ich hab eine schöne Seele.«
»Du? Wer sagt das?«
»Oles Mutter. Jawohl.«
»Kann man sowas sehen? Was ist denn überhaupt eine Seele.«
»Mein lieber Junge, sei nicht so dumm, ja? Das weiß doch jeder. Seele ist, warum ein Vogel singt.

Trotz etlicher tragischer Ereignisse endet das Buch seltsam hoffnungsvoll und greift das Motiv des Vogelabdrucks vom Anfang wieder auf:

Ein wenig Licht brach durch, Staub tanzte in den Strahlen, und plötzlich waren die Vögel, all die Meisen, Gimpel und Pirole, wieder da. Hauchzart und grau, wie ein Wasserzeichen an der Wand.

[Lesereien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Junges Licht is a coming-of-age story that captures the essence of childhood and of growing up in the Ruhr Area of the 60s. The novel is authentic in its portrayal of the behaviour and ways of thinking of the miners and their families. It gives a voice to those that are rarely heard in literature and it can therefore certainly be described as a case study of a social environment, of a region and its community.
Themes that loom large are violence, bleakness, poverty, precarity and hopelessness. But since the world is perceived through the eyes of a child/an adolescent, there’s also a sense of hope and of freedom for the new generation that is growing up.
Ralf Rothmann’s novels are written in a clear language. They are rich in atmosphere, moving and touching. I can highly recommend them.

[Ratatouille · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because it is a German novel the review will be in German as well.

Der Roman, der sich um das Leben einer Arbeiterfamilie aus dem Ruhrgebiet dreht, wird aus Sicht des Sohnes der Familie erzählt. Dabei erfährt der Leser einiges über das Leben im 'Pott' in den 60er Jahren, über den Schulalltag und die Freizet der Jugendlichen, sowie über das Familienleben zu dieser Zeit. Aber es gibt auch Geheimnisse und schreckliche Ereignisse und zudem einen mysterösen Unfall im Bergwerk. Zudem äußerst erbaulich geschrieben.

[Booklunatic · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 Sterne

Irgendwie nicht meins. Ich hatte schon viel Gutes über Rothmann gehört und bleibe nun etwas ratlos zurück. Ich habe absolut nichts gegen Geschichten, in denen wenig passiert, aber dann muss mich die Sprache begeistern können und das hat sie nicht getan. Schade.

[Mars · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Yasemin Salihoglu Karagul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sevdim. Sade bir dil, rahat okunuyor. Julian ile ilgili kısımlarda üzüldüm doğrusu. Bir tarafta madencinin ailesinin yaşadıkları, diğer tarafta madencinin ocakta yaşadıkları. Zor hayatlar...

[nijatS · Rating 4 out of 5]

[11.08.2023]

Kitabı gah sevdim, gah da sevə bilmədim. Kitab 12 yaşlı Yulianın yay fəslinin ilk bir-neçə həftəsini çevrələyən gündəlik həyatından danışır. Bununla yanaşı süjet bir şaxtaçının şaxtadakı işindən bəhs edilərək bir-neçə səhifəlik kəsilir. Artıq ortalarda bu iki süjet xəttini yaxşıca əlaqələndirirsiniz.

Yulian bu bir-neçə həftə ərzində artıq yetkinliyə addım atır. Yaramaz uşaqların arasına girməyə çalışır, ancaq yenə də kənarda qalır. Zorbalığa məruz qalır, heyvan klubları dağıdılır. Ailəsinin - baxmayaraq ki, dolanışıqları digər qonşulardan xeyli yaxşıdır - maddi vəziyyəti, ətrafdakı insanların öz heyində aqressiv, həvəssiz münasibətləri, anasının mental vəziyyəti... Yulian bundan xeyli fərqlənirdi, elə bacısı Sofi də. Axı o uşaq idi.

Bu hadisələr uşağın tamamilə hissləri ilə oynayır. O özü ilə bacara bilmir bir yerdən sonra.

Yulian məsumdur. Xasiyyət baxımından. Axı o atasına görə tövbə etməyə də hazır idi. Onun yaşadıqları, gördükləri məni bir yerdən sonra onun halına məyus etdi. Yulian yetkin problemlərilə və seksuallıqla təkbaşına tanış olur. Maruşanın otağından gələn iniltilər, Konrad Qorninin Yulinin qabağında cırıq jurnal kağızına baxıb cibində eşələnməsi, çimərlikdəki cütlüklərin onun gözü qabağında öpüşmələri, Qorninin Yuliana nəzərləri, axşam evinə girmək cəhdi, atasının Maruşanın otağından lüt şəkildə çıxması... Bunlar xeyli təsir etdi.

Ancaq kitabdan bir dərs çıxara bilmədim. Süjet xəttinin zirvəyə çatdığı bir hissə yox idi mənə görə. Amma axıcı kitab idi.

[Manuel Monge · Rating 1 out of 5]

Julian es un chico de trece años. Es temeroso, carece de espíritu, se deja maltratar por su madre y le huye a la tentación sexual de una vecina de quince años a la que todos los adultos quieren "enamorar". Su madre, que padece de ansiedad, decide irse a pasar el verano con sus padres, llevándose a Sophie, la hermana menor de Julian. Julian se queda con su padre, un minero como todos los hombres adultos que viven en el pueblo donde transcurre la historia. Pero la historia casi no transcurre. En más de doscientas páginas, Rothman aburre al lector con descripciones interminables, enormemente detalladas, propias de la literatura de fines de 1800, y una falta de acción que llega a desesperar. La historia es lenta, aletargada y sin una acción que ayude a hacerla avanzar. Son un cúmulo de situaciones en las que Julian se ve inmerso, pero la fórmula de inicio, conflicto y desenlace es vaga, casi inexistente. Hasta aquí no más. No pienso gastar muchas más líneas en un libro tan soso, aburrido e irrelevante como éste.

[Hadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Uni Read

Ich will nicht ganz unfair sein und gebe dem Buch deswegen zwei Sterne.
Dennoch muss ich sagen, dass ich mit Ralf Rothmann nicht warm werde (schon alleine, weil er seine problematischen Formulierungen in Büchern mit „ja, war damals so“ abstempelt). Ich mag seinen Schreibstil einfach nicht.
In Junges Licht geht es um den 12-jährigen Julian, welcher in einer Arbeiterfamilie im Ruhrgebiet aufwächst. Die Inhalte können nicht relativiert werden und sind durchaus wichtig zu erzählen!!! Jedoch fehlt mir Einordnung und Reflexion. Schließlich wurde dieses Buch nicht in den 60ern geschrieben, sondern in der heutigen Zeit.

[Mariele · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't want to be unfair, but the author and I don't seem to have any common ground. Apparently, he writes book after book about life in the Ruhr region, preferably set in the 1950s / 60s. I'm neither of that generation nor from that part of the world. Also, I've read too many books with annoying child narrators lately (Julian seems to be a nice kid, though, and he isn't the worst narrator). This novel did nothing for me. The story's grand finale was disappointing. So the dad falls for the Lolita neighbour, and the family is kicked out of their apartment. It was very meh.

[León Álamos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una historia en apariencia común, que esconde un prodigio narrativo o un minucioso trabajo de edición. Se destacan los contrastes de las difíciles faenas mineras con la sencilla vida hogareña y de barrio, en la voz distanciada y temerosa de Julian, su protagonista de 12 años. Late un verano y laten los cuerpos, flota un Eros de manera sutil en todo el texto. Retrato de época y lucha contra el olvido.

[Pol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un libro con una historia sencilla, sobre un niño, que vive en un entorno humilde. No pasan grandes aventuras pero Rothmann tiene la virtud de pintar el costumbrismo en un lienzo literario como solo los grandes autores saben hacer. Lo hace con una prosa muy precisa, que prescinde de la altivez y erudición. Es un buen libro que se lee en poco días pero el buen sabor que te deja dura semanas.

[Eva María · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es algo así como la segunda parte de morir en primavera. Una generación después de la guerra. Los hijos de los que combatieron. La vida que les tocó a los que sobrevivieron y el paso de la infancia a la edad adulta. Las limitadas perspectivas de futuro en una zona eminentemente minera. Muy buen narrado. Otro título hermoso. Me encanta Ralph Rothman.

[HediBähren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ein 12jähriger Junge lebt mit seiner Schwester und den Eltern in einer Wohnung, der Vater ist Bergmann, die Mutter kränklich und ziemlich gewalttätig gegenüber ihrem Sohn, oft grundlos. Später erfährt der Junge, dass sein Vater mit der minderjährigen Tochter des Vermieters schläft und ist ziemlich verstört. Sie müssen ausziehen.

[jm · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the evocative way Rothmann depicted WWII in Im Frühling sterben, and here he does the same thing for the Ruhr area in the 60's - the book does a wonderful job of conveying what those times were like and free several intriguing characters in the process.

[Angie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This beautiful coming-of-age novel follows the life of an adolescent boy as his “young light” is projected upon a backdrop of unexpected darkness emanating from his father’s coal mines, his beatings by his mother, his landlord’s lascivious glances, and just confusing adolescent times.

[Milan Kovačević · Rating 5 out of 5]

Die Beschreibung des Lebens einer gewöhnlichen Familie führt uns zu eine sehr interessanten Situation, in der unser Hauptfigur ihre letzte Woche in Wohnung verbringt, bevor Ihre Familie umziehen werden muss.

[Martin Hannig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Großartiger coming of age Roman. Ein must read für alle Kinder des Ruhrpotts!!!