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Two Views
Uwe Johnson (20 July 1934 22 February 1984) was a German writer, editor, and scholar.
Two Views, (Zwei Ansichten, 1965) is a novel about the partition of Berlin in 1961. The strory is told through two characters, Dietbert and Beate who have embarked on a sort of affair but whose homes are on opposite sides of the divide. The chapters alternate the points of view of the two characters as events unfold. The style is cool and objective and has been compared to the French nouveau roman. Johnson is a writer of great elegance and concision, and wields a finely-honed and devastating irony. The novel transmits an intense feel for the time and place.
The 1966 edition does not name the translator - quite likely it was a spook, possibly Paul Christopher.
Two Views, (Zwei Ansichten, 1965) is a novel about the partition of Berlin in 1961. The strory is told through two characters, Dietbert and Beate who have embarked on a sort of affair but whose homes are on opposite sides of the divide. The chapters alternate the points of view of the two characters as events unfold. The style is cool and objective and has been compared to the French nouveau roman. Johnson is a writer of great elegance and concision, and wields a finely-honed and devastating irony. The novel transmits an intense feel for the time and place.
The 1966 edition does not name the translator - quite likely it was a spook, possibly Paul Christopher.
183 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
Uwe Johnson
102 books63 followersUwe Johnson was a German writer, editor, and scholar.
Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania (now Kamień Pomorski, Poland). His father was a Swedish-descent peasant from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pommern. At the end of World War II in 1945, he fled with his family to Anklam (West Pomerania); his father died in a Soviet internment camp (Fünfeichen). The family eventually settled in Güstrow, where he attended John-Brinckman-Oberschule 1948–1952. He went on to study German philology, first in Rostock (1952–54), then in Leipzig (1954–56). His Diplomarbeit (final thesis) was on Ernst Barlach. Due to his lack of political support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the University on 17 June 1953 but was later reinstated.
Beginning in 1953, Johnson worked on the novel Ingrid Babendererde, rejected by various publishing houses and unpublished during his lifetime.
In 1956, Johnson's mother left for West Berlin. As a result, he was not allowed to work a normal job in the East. Unemployed for political reasons, he translated Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (the translation was published in 1961) and began to write the novel Mutmassungen über Jakob, published in 1959 by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main. Johnson himself moved to West Berlin at this time. He promptly became associated with Gruppe 47, which Hans Magnus Enzensberger once described as "the Central Café of a literature without a capital." [1]
During the early 1960s, Johnson continued to write and publish fiction, and also supported himself as a translator, mainly from English-language works, and as an editor. He travelled to America in 1961; the following year he was married, had a daughter, received a scholarship to Villa Massimo, Rome, and won the Prix International.
1964 - for the Berliner Tagesspiegel, Reviews of GDR television programmes boycotted by the West German press (published under the title "Der 5. Kanal", "The Fifth Channel", 1987).
In 1965, Johnson travelled again to America. He then edited Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti. Buch der Wendungen. Fragmente 1933-1956 (Me-ti: the Book of Changes. Fragments, 1933-1956). From 1966 through 1968 he worked in New York City as a textbook editor at Harcourt, Brace & World and lived with his family in an apartment at 243 Riverside Drive (Manhattan). During this time (in 1967) he began work on his magnum opus, the Jahrestage and edited Das neue Fenster (The new window), a textbook of German-language readings for English-speaking students learning German.
On 1 January 1967 protesters from Johnson's own West Berlin apartment building founded Kommune 1. He first learned about it by reading it in the newspaper. Returning to West Berlin in 1969, he became a member of the West German PEN Center and of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts). In 1970, he published the first volume of his Jahrestage (Anniversaries). Two more volumes were to follow in the next three years, but the fourth volume would not appear until 1983.
Meanwhile, in 1972 Johnson became Vice President of the Academy of the Arts and was the editor of Max Frisch's Tagebuch 1966-1971. In 1974, he moved to Sheerness on the English Isle of Sheppey; shortly after, he broke off work on Jahrestage due partly to health problems and partly to writer's block.
This was not a completely unproductive period. Johnson published some shorter works and continued to do some work as an editor. In 1977, he was admitted to the Darmstädter Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (Darmstadt Academy for Speech and Writing); two years later he informally withdrew. In 1979 he gave a series of Lectures on poetics at the University of Frankfurt (published posthumously as Begleitumstände. Frankfurter Vorlesungen).
In 1983, the fourth volume of Jahrestage was published, but Johnson broke off a reading tour for health reasons. He died on 22 February 1984 in Sheerness in England. His body was not found until
Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania (now Kamień Pomorski, Poland). His father was a Swedish-descent peasant from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pommern. At the end of World War II in 1945, he fled with his family to Anklam (West Pomerania); his father died in a Soviet internment camp (Fünfeichen). The family eventually settled in Güstrow, where he attended John-Brinckman-Oberschule 1948–1952. He went on to study German philology, first in Rostock (1952–54), then in Leipzig (1954–56). His Diplomarbeit (final thesis) was on Ernst Barlach. Due to his lack of political support for the Communist regime of East Germany, he was suspended from the University on 17 June 1953 but was later reinstated.
Beginning in 1953, Johnson worked on the novel Ingrid Babendererde, rejected by various publishing houses and unpublished during his lifetime.
In 1956, Johnson's mother left for West Berlin. As a result, he was not allowed to work a normal job in the East. Unemployed for political reasons, he translated Herman Melville's Israel Potter: His Fifty Years of Exile (the translation was published in 1961) and began to write the novel Mutmassungen über Jakob, published in 1959 by Suhrkamp in Frankfurt am Main. Johnson himself moved to West Berlin at this time. He promptly became associated with Gruppe 47, which Hans Magnus Enzensberger once described as "the Central Café of a literature without a capital." [1]
During the early 1960s, Johnson continued to write and publish fiction, and also supported himself as a translator, mainly from English-language works, and as an editor. He travelled to America in 1961; the following year he was married, had a daughter, received a scholarship to Villa Massimo, Rome, and won the Prix International.
1964 - for the Berliner Tagesspiegel, Reviews of GDR television programmes boycotted by the West German press (published under the title "Der 5. Kanal", "The Fifth Channel", 1987).
In 1965, Johnson travelled again to America. He then edited Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti. Buch der Wendungen. Fragmente 1933-1956 (Me-ti: the Book of Changes. Fragments, 1933-1956). From 1966 through 1968 he worked in New York City as a textbook editor at Harcourt, Brace & World and lived with his family in an apartment at 243 Riverside Drive (Manhattan). During this time (in 1967) he began work on his magnum opus, the Jahrestage and edited Das neue Fenster (The new window), a textbook of German-language readings for English-speaking students learning German.
On 1 January 1967 protesters from Johnson's own West Berlin apartment building founded Kommune 1. He first learned about it by reading it in the newspaper. Returning to West Berlin in 1969, he became a member of the West German PEN Center and of the Akademie der Künste (Academy of the Arts). In 1970, he published the first volume of his Jahrestage (Anniversaries). Two more volumes were to follow in the next three years, but the fourth volume would not appear until 1983.
Meanwhile, in 1972 Johnson became Vice President of the Academy of the Arts and was the editor of Max Frisch's Tagebuch 1966-1971. In 1974, he moved to Sheerness on the English Isle of Sheppey; shortly after, he broke off work on Jahrestage due partly to health problems and partly to writer's block.
This was not a completely unproductive period. Johnson published some shorter works and continued to do some work as an editor. In 1977, he was admitted to the Darmstädter Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung (Darmstadt Academy for Speech and Writing); two years later he informally withdrew. In 1979 he gave a series of Lectures on poetics at the University of Frankfurt (published posthumously as Begleitumstände. Frankfurter Vorlesungen).
In 1983, the fourth volume of Jahrestage was published, but Johnson broke off a reading tour for health reasons. He died on 22 February 1984 in Sheerness in England. His body was not found until
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 29, 2020
Uwe Johnson’s Two Views is short, has only two significant characters but Johnson conveys more here about living through a particular historical moment than I’ve found in books twice the size. At the centre of Johnson’s novella are two individuals caught up in political events they barely comprehend. News photographer Dietbert and nurse Beate meet and begin a relationship but this is Cold-War Germany and they’re soon separated when the border between East and West closes. Two Views may be set during the Cold War but Johnson foregoes the melodrama or barely-suppressed cheerleading for Western democracy often present in fiction that deals with this era. His approach is more nuanced, his perspective too conflicted to lapse into cliché or political polemic.
Johnson moves between Beate, in the East, and Dietbert, in the West, as memories of their tenuous connection intrude on their everyday lives. Dietbert’s immature, rootless, anxious, obsessed with how others see him. His interest in his surroundings limited to what scenes might sell, or which women might sleep with him; sinking his savings into a flashy sports car is the closest he comes to joy, and when it’s stolen his misery seems more intense than when he’s cut off from Beate. If anything, Beate’s another status symbol, a possession he’s determined to recover. Beate’s a model citizen, caring for others has dominated her existence, committed to nursing, since the war she’s been looking out for her mother and brothers. All she wants is a small room of her own. But the border closure sets off a chain of unexpected rebellious thoughts while working at the hospital confronts her with the possible consequences of shrinking freedoms. As more and more of Beate’s friends and colleagues disappear over the border, her isolation and alienation grows.
The division between Beate and Dietbert seems to go beyond physical barriers, Johnson’s couple are two halves that don’t really seem to fit, stand-ins perhaps for his thoughts about his divided country, and neither’s Germany’s portrayed as an enviable place to be. Johnson’s method of presenting his story’s striking. He opens with cinematic scenes, austere, economical, matter-of-fact observations, like a camera filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary. There’s no visible narrator but someone’s clearly behind the lens. But then the camera moves in closer, and Johnson’s style gradually changes, intensifying with Beate’s, and then Dietbert’s shifting emotional states. As plans for Beate’s escape emerge, the pace speeds up. Johnson’s sentences become more complex, and tension mounts, with passages that read like frenetic poetry mirroring his characters’ turmoil. I thought this was impressive, increasingly-gripping, beautifully-written, a fascinating take on Cold-War Germany as well as a compelling examination of a generation who came of age after WW2.
Johnson moves between Beate, in the East, and Dietbert, in the West, as memories of their tenuous connection intrude on their everyday lives. Dietbert’s immature, rootless, anxious, obsessed with how others see him. His interest in his surroundings limited to what scenes might sell, or which women might sleep with him; sinking his savings into a flashy sports car is the closest he comes to joy, and when it’s stolen his misery seems more intense than when he’s cut off from Beate. If anything, Beate’s another status symbol, a possession he’s determined to recover. Beate’s a model citizen, caring for others has dominated her existence, committed to nursing, since the war she’s been looking out for her mother and brothers. All she wants is a small room of her own. But the border closure sets off a chain of unexpected rebellious thoughts while working at the hospital confronts her with the possible consequences of shrinking freedoms. As more and more of Beate’s friends and colleagues disappear over the border, her isolation and alienation grows.
The division between Beate and Dietbert seems to go beyond physical barriers, Johnson’s couple are two halves that don’t really seem to fit, stand-ins perhaps for his thoughts about his divided country, and neither’s Germany’s portrayed as an enviable place to be. Johnson’s method of presenting his story’s striking. He opens with cinematic scenes, austere, economical, matter-of-fact observations, like a camera filming a fly-on-the-wall documentary. There’s no visible narrator but someone’s clearly behind the lens. But then the camera moves in closer, and Johnson’s style gradually changes, intensifying with Beate’s, and then Dietbert’s shifting emotional states. As plans for Beate’s escape emerge, the pace speeds up. Johnson’s sentences become more complex, and tension mounts, with passages that read like frenetic poetry mirroring his characters’ turmoil. I thought this was impressive, increasingly-gripping, beautifully-written, a fascinating take on Cold-War Germany as well as a compelling examination of a generation who came of age after WW2.
May 8, 2024
At this point, I’ve read all of Johnson’s novels, and I can confirm that he has never written a bad novel.
Other reviewers have pointed out many terrific things about this book — namely, its limited cast of characters, nuanced approach to West and East German societies, and great prose style — but I want to focus on some things that are absent from the reviews.
For instance, Johnson gives the title “Two Views” a multitude of meanings; on the one hand, it obviously refers to the West and East German characters. But in terms of the prose, the title is enhanced: Johnson’s sentences often times begin with something that is supposedly “certain,” but by the time they finish, the reader and the character are doubtful of that. In other words, there are “two views.”
Johnson is also a deeply empathetic and nuanced writer. His characters — minor or major — are people, and his works constantly treat them as such. Even Johnson himself treats his characters as people, often times referring to them in interviews as people he actually knows.
That treatment is no different here, figuratively and literally. By the end of the novel, Johnson makes it known that “Two Views” is not narrated by an omniscient narrator but instead himself, crossing the boundary to inform the reader (just once!) that he, in fact, was there.
I could go on. But the TLDR is that “Two Views” is a fantastic read from Johnson.
Other reviewers have pointed out many terrific things about this book — namely, its limited cast of characters, nuanced approach to West and East German societies, and great prose style — but I want to focus on some things that are absent from the reviews.
For instance, Johnson gives the title “Two Views” a multitude of meanings; on the one hand, it obviously refers to the West and East German characters. But in terms of the prose, the title is enhanced: Johnson’s sentences often times begin with something that is supposedly “certain,” but by the time they finish, the reader and the character are doubtful of that. In other words, there are “two views.”
Johnson is also a deeply empathetic and nuanced writer. His characters — minor or major — are people, and his works constantly treat them as such. Even Johnson himself treats his characters as people, often times referring to them in interviews as people he actually knows.
That treatment is no different here, figuratively and literally. By the end of the novel, Johnson makes it known that “Two Views” is not narrated by an omniscient narrator but instead himself, crossing the boundary to inform the reader (just once!) that he, in fact, was there.
I could go on. But the TLDR is that “Two Views” is a fantastic read from Johnson.
September 27, 2014
What a strange book, very little happened for ever such a long time and then in the last few pages the suspense was almost unbearable - great on atmosphere and don't wish to give the plot away but the way it's written reflects how life had to be for the 2 main characters.
September 5, 2024
Der junge Herr B. und die D., durch die Mauer getrennt. Ein egoistischer junger Mann, gefangen in der Gewohnheit mit jeder gehen zu wollen, ein Mann, den ich nur dann mochte, als er aus seinem narzisstischen Verhalten rausgezogen wurde, endlich etwas bedeutsames zu machen. Eine Frau, die ich viel gerner mochte, der die Möglichkeiten und Aussichten von dem ostdeutschen Staat weggenommen wurden, die nun damit nicht ganz klarkommt. Sie hat es verdient, er nicht.
Interesting story about two lovers separated by the Berlin Wall. Neither of their names are given, only the first initials, and the story is told through their alternating perspectives from each side of the wall. I struggled with the writing at first, maybe more because of the language than the author, but learned to like it later on in the book.
bought in düsseldorf with mom at Antiquariat KAMAS
Interesting story about two lovers separated by the Berlin Wall. Neither of their names are given, only the first initials, and the story is told through their alternating perspectives from each side of the wall. I struggled with the writing at first, maybe more because of the language than the author, but learned to like it later on in the book.
bought in düsseldorf with mom at Antiquariat KAMAS
June 5, 2022
3,5
Más por lo bien que está escrito que por lo que cuenta.
https://liblit.com/uwe-johnson-dos-pu...
Más por lo bien que está escrito que por lo que cuenta.
https://liblit.com/uwe-johnson-dos-pu...
September 30, 2013
A book very much of its time, this novel is essentially about the divisiveness of East and West Germany. The tale of two lovers (acquaintances would perhaps be closer to the mark), what the reader faces is an immense accumulation of detail to build the two "views" while two people endeavour to reach each other. The politics remains in the background, but remains a ubiquitous presence. I can't say that I particularly enjoyed reading this, but can recognise the skill.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews