Hanna X

1. Hanna X Ein Referat von Maren Laux & Nina Schiel

2. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

3. Biographie André Brink • André Philippus Brink • * 29.05.1935 in Vrede • Nachfahre von niederländischen Kolonialherren • einer der bedeutendsten zeitgenössischen Schriftsteller Südafrikas • afrikaanssprachiger Autor mit internationaler Anerkennung • mehrfach für den Booker Prize nominiert, und mehrfach auf der Shortlist für den Nobelpreis (Literatur) vertreten

4. Biographie André Brink • Bekannt als störrischer Aktivist gegen die Zensur während der Apartheid • Werke schwanken zwischen Lakonie und Schelmerei • aktuell : Honorarprofessor am Department of English Language and Literature der Universität Kapstadt

5. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

6. Spurensuche André Brinks „A very young girl seated at a kitchen table with a middle-aged peasant suitor who has his back turned to the observer. One large blunt paw rests on her tigh. His whole body, his ill-fitting jacket, the back of his narrow head, everything defines him as a loser –a mean spirited, violent, hard-drinking, abusive loser.“

7. Spurensuche André Brinks „She, too, is evidently poor. But she is young, her thin body can barely contain the rage and resentment that seethe in her against that moment which will decide the rest of her life.“ (S.7, S.139)

8. Spurensuche André Brinks • “…those glimpses of humanity, of femininity, those solitary and deprived figures, images of almost terrifying isolation, and yet of defiance, a universe of melancholy and understatement and muted colours behind which one sensed a forever unexpressed secret world the onlooker could only guess at, never gain access to.” (S.7)

9. Spurensuche André Brinks “Suggesting, it seemed to me, the male spectator, the heart of being woman, the pathos of being irredeemably young, or irredeemably old, two stages of femininity here remarkably collapsed into each other.” (S.7)

10. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

11. Bremen - Waisenhaus ´The orphanage is pervaded with smells. Urine, carbolic acid, old leather, mould, despair. And food: sauerkraut, leeks, potatoes, fish heads streaming in a pot. But good smells too. Newly baked bread, milk straight from the udder frothing in the pail, freshly ironed laundry, shoe polish, a candle that has just been blown out.´ (S.61)

12. Bremen - Waisenhaus ´It is given to her by a small stranger she meets in the bright shallow water. Her name, she says without being asked, is Susan. She comes all the way from an island called Ireland and does not speak German very well (she has come here with her father, she explains, who is employed at the harbour with a lot of other foreign Catholic people from Thuringia and Bohemia and other places whre there is no work for the men). Hanna asks to see the shell, and the little girl hands it to her with an endearing mixture of shyness and eagerness. It is beautiful, whispers Hanna, almost too beautiful to believe. Hold it to your ear, Susan tells her, you will hear the sea.´ (´S.39)

13. Bremen - Waisenhaus ´‚Come over here,‘ he says, his face shiny with sweat. Hanna doesn‘t move. ‚I won‘t be touched today,‘ she says. It is like another‘s voice speaking through her, surprising her. It feels as if she isn‘t really down here with him, but somewhere high up on the rafters, looking down on the two of them, the large shapeless man, like a bundle of washing wrapped in black, the girl with the gawky body.´ (S.69)

14. Bremen - Waisenhaus ´If there are devils in me, then they're mine. And you have no righth to drive them out, she says. There is a reckless and a passion in her now, which seem to excite him unbearably.´ (S.70)

15. Bremen - Waisenhaus ´She is taken back to the cellar for another week. She no longer feels the hunger. She is barely conscious of the pain when they come for the daily beating. But she is aware of the cold. It creeps into the marrow of her bones. She is shivering, day and night. Her head throbs with pain, she is racked with fever. Sometimes she hears voices. Fräulein Braunschweig saying, „You must read this. Die Leiden des Jungen Werther. It is a beautiful book.“ The small piping voices of invisible children, Trixie and Spixie and Finny. (S.73)

16. Bremen – In service ´There is a prolonged silence. Even the light seems to defer to it. Then Hanna says, „Show me.“ It is midnight before he insists that she go to bed. (…) „Think of it as a military campaign,“ Herr Ludwig has told her. „Think of it as a battle plan If your enemy makes certain moves, there are others you can make to counter him: stop him, waylay him, forestall him, lure him in a different direction, pounce on him from behind. And for every move you make, you can be sure he will think up something else in turn; so keep him guessing, don´t let him see what you really have in mind before it is too late. Always try to stay one step ahead, try to read what is happening inside his head.“´(S.119)

17. Going down ´… Hannah and Lotte, two lonelinesses merging, two histories, a single breathing living being, beautiful in the dark, vulnerable yet strong while it lasts. What is this I, this you?´ (S.79)

18. Afrika - Zugfahrt ´There is a very small, very unpleasant grin on his face. ‚When I fuck a woman,‘ says Hauptmann Böhlke of the imperial army in a voice as still and keen as a blade of very fine steel, ‚she stys fucked.‘ And then he fucks her.´ (S.145)

19. Afrika - Zugfahrt ‚Now I‘ll show you what i meant,‘ he says through clenched teeth, but whether in rage or pain is hard to tell. She wants to clutch her shell in the palm of her hand but there is only emptiness. They are all around her. They are taking off their belts with the heavy pointed metal studs. Some of them have army knives. One of them produces a piece of wood which he wedges between her teeth. That is how Hanna X dies, this time. (S. 147)

20. Frauenstein ´The house. More an outcrop of the earth than a house. Set in an Old Testament landscape, a moonscape, a dreamscape. To the women transported here the days and weeks by mule-cart or ox-wagon must have seemed not so much a journey through geographic and geological space as the traversal of a regiob of the mind, an abandonment of uncomplicated time, and undoubtely of hope; (…) Frauenstein exists, dream or nightmare, a phantasmagoric Schloss, not on the Rhine or in Bavaria but in the African desert. And from the turn of the last century, it found a new designation as asylum to those women transported to the colony for the support or delectation of ist menfolk, and then turned down.´ (S.10/11)

23. Weggang aus Frauenstein ´She is ready to take her leave. This is not another escape. She will not be running away from something again, but towards something. What has happened in this place today, what they tried to do to little Katja, has awakened her from her sleep of death. Because it was to her that is was done. Like all the humiliations of her life, inflicted by all those involved in her slow dismemberment. Now she must begin to re-member herself. There is something in her which has never been there before and which gives shape to all that has happened to her, and inside her. It is hate. Tongueless, she tastes the word in her mouth. Hate. It has a bitterness of a medicine that restores life.`(S.149)

25. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

26. Hass • Hass = zentrales Motiv im Buch • zu Beginn wird diese Emotion nach und nach aufgebaut: Pastor Ulrich, Frau Agathe, Hildegard, Dieter, Frau Knesebeck, … • Hass als Befreiungsschlag und Ausbruch aus der Stille • There is something in her which has never been there before and which gives shape to all that has happend to her, and inside her. It is hate. Tongueless, she tastes the word in her mouth. Hate. It has the bitterness of a medicine that restores life. (S. 149)

27. Hass • ‚Is it only killing and death you can think of now?‘ Katja asks with a vehemence Hanna has not seen in her before. ‚Don‘t you have feelings any more?‘ All I can still allow myself to feel is hate. This word she has to spell out letter by letter; she has no shorthand sign for it as yet. There isn‘t room for anything else. ‚It will destroy you.‘ (S.245)

28. Hass • Hate? Oh yes, the hate is still there, the hate which has made it possible for her to survive. All these years it has kept her alive, it has driven her on, even before she had learned to give it a name. Waiting. Waiting for this. For this moment. (S.305)

29. Hass • No. No, she will not kill him. It is no longer necessary. It is not worth it. Killing him cannot undo the world that has made him possible. She need not stoop to that. It is too simple. And there has been blood enough. All she needs is to make sure the world will take note That passionate message scrawled on a hot morning on the blank pages from a Bible dropped in the dust. (S.306)

30. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

31. The other Side of Silence • Gewalt als zentrales Thema: • im Krieg & Hannas Leben • Entmenschlichung der Kolonisatoren macht aus Hanna und ihrer Armee „Andere“ • Menschen ohne Rechte, ohne Würde, ohne Namen und ohne Stimme • Hannah X durchbricht das System • Körper als Zeugen der Gewalt • ‚What in God’s name has happened to you? You look like something out of hell.“ (S. 166) • Hannah X als Spiegel der Gewalt

32. The other Side of Silence • Flucht aus Frauenstein um ihre Gewalt ins Zentrum zurückzutragen. • Motiv des Hasses ist dabei wichtig für Hanna X • menschliche Emotionen • „Die andere Seite, die im Titel des Romans markiert wird, ist somit vielleicht die Fähigkeit einer schmerzhaften Erinnerungsarbeit, die Fähigkeit, die eigenen kolonialen Wunden wahrzunehmen, die koloniale Gewalt zu erinnern, die Täter anzuklagen und die Opfer zu hören.“ (Ulrich Lölke, 2005)

33. The other Side of Silence • At least, she thinks, there is nothing she regrets. No pain, no agony, no fear, no darkness, no extremity or outrage. What she sees will not be the people in the crowd, but the grave face of a small girl on a distant beach. Knowing that this is why she is still here today, and will not kill. For the sake of that tiny image. And what she hears will not be the shouts and cries and curses or even the tumult of applause, but the very quiet sibilance within the confines of a shell. And if she smiles, if what she shows can be interpreted as a smile, it is because now, at last, Hanna X has reached the other side. (S.307)

34. The other Side of Silence • Böhlke nicht umzubringen, sondern ihn und sein Umfeld mit seinen Taten zu konfrontieren, verhilft Hanna X aus ihrer Stille herauszutreten. • Böhlke entgeht seiner gerechten Strafe trotzdem nicht: Selbstmord als Eingeständnis seiner Schuld?!?

35. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

36. Die wahre Hanna X • Welche wahren Fakten hat Brink in Hannas Geschichte einfliessen lassen? • Historische Fakten: • Leben im Waisenhaus, Arbeit als Dienstmagd, Rekrutierung Heiratsfähiger Frauen nach Deutsch-Südwest, Bedingungen auf dem Schiff, Frauenstein, … • „She becomes an individualized composite portrait in which many life stories mingle into one.“ (Andrè Brink)

37. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

38. Diskussion • Auffällig: Hannas Faszination vom Märchen „Bremer Stadtmusikanten“ und der Biographie von Johanna von Orleans

39. Diskussion • Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten. Welche Wirkung hat das Märchen auf Hanna? • „…etwas Besseres als den Tod findest du überall“ • schöpft Hanna Mut aus dieser Aussage? • verdeutlicht, dass aus jeder noch so aussichtslosen Lage, Energie, Mut, Hoffnung und Kraft für einen Neuanfang geschöpft werden kann (u.a. S.73)

40. Diskussion • Hanna - eine moderne Jungfrau von Orleans? • Parallelen: z.B. Visionen/Stimmen hören von Johanna von Orleans, imaginären Freunde von Hanna X (S.40, 73), beide Frauen, die von der Gesellschaft verraten wurden/werden • „Hütet Eure Zungen, Ihr die Ihr Euch meine Richter nennt, denn eines Tages werdet Ihr gerichtet. Doch Eure Strafe wird die meine übertreffen.“

41. Inhalt • André Brink • André Brinks Spurensuche • Hanna X – Ihr Leben (Chronologisch) • Hass • The other Side of Silence • Die wahre Hanna X • Diskussionsansätze • Quellen

42. Quellen • Diese Powerpoint kann heruntergeladen werden unter: http://www.simni.de/Uni/HannaX.ppt

43. Quellen • http://www.nb.co.za/HumanRousseau/hrAuthorCV.asp?iAuthor_id=5272 • http://people.africadatabase.org/en/profile/2184.html • http://www.alovelyworld.com/webnamib/htmgb/sossus.htm • http://www.historicum.net/ • http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/english/ • http://www.berlinerliteraturkritik.de/index.cfm?id=5029 • http://www.uni-lueneburg.de/fb3/kolonialismus/loelkebrink.pdf • http://www.harcourtbooks.com/authorinterviews/bookinterview_brink.asp • http://www.wydera.de/urlaub/Namibia-2004-Alles.html • http://www.stpetribremen.de/geschichte.htm