FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN ZAUNER’S DAS ENDE DER EWIGKEIT AS A REGIONAL NOVEL

Abstract

The concept of Heimatroman (regional novel) which can be translated into turkish as Memleket Romanı is one of the literary genres of Heimatliteratur (regional literature) which has come up in the 19. century. The word Heimat can be used in a narrow or a broad sense. In the broad sense it means fatherland or homeland and in the narrow sense it has meanings such as hometown or the place where a person was born and raised. Regional novel is the upper-genre of some novel types like village novel (Dorfroman), farmer novel (Bauernroman), mountain novel (Bergroman). Friedrich Christian Zauner is one of the most important authors of the contemporary Austrian literature. Most of his novels are about his fatherland. Das Ende der Ewigkeit which is the subject of this study consists of four volumes with different titles and they are published between the years 1992-1996. In the novel the historical events in Austria between the years 1900-1938 are described through a small village named Thal. People living in the rural areas and their world are transferred to the readers in detail. The aim of this study is to analyze and discuss the mentioned novel of Zauner as a regional novel.

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FRIEDRICH CHRISTIAN ZAUNER’S DAS ENDE DER EWIGKEIT AS
A REGIONAL NOVEL
Seval ERDOĞAN
Necmettin Erbakan University
P_seval@hotmailcom
Fatih TEPEBAŞILI
Necmettin Erbakan University
ftepebasili@konya.edu.tr
ABSTRACT: The concept of Heimatroman (regional novel) which can be translated into turkish as Memleket
Romanı is one of the literary genres of Heimatliteratur (regional literature) which has come up in the 19.
century. The word Heimat can be used in a narrow or a broad sense. In the broad sense it means fatherland or
homeland and in the narrow sense it has meanings such as hometown or the place where a person was born and
raised. Regional novel is the upper-genre of some novel types like village novel (Dorfroman), farmer novel
(Bauernroman), mountain novel (Bergroman).
Friedrich Christian Zauner is one of the most important authors of the contemporary Austrian literature. Most of
his novels are about his fatherland. Das Ende der Ewigkeit which is the subject of this study consists of four
volumes with different titles and they are published between the years 1992-1996. In the novel the historical
events in Austria between the years 1900-1938 are described through a small village named Thal. People living
in the rural areas and their world are transferred to the readers in detail. The aim of this study is to analyze and
discuss the mentioned novel of Zauner as a regional novel.
Keywords: Contemporary Austrian Literature, Friedrich Christian Zauner, Regional Novel
INTRODUCTION
Friedrich Christian Zauner, one of the most recognized writers in contemporary Austrian literature, has
produced works on different literary genres. He was born in Reinbach (Innkreis), in the south of Austria and he
still lives there. The creativity in his works, by which we are impressed when we read them, is a result of the
inspiration by the people around him. (as cited in Zeyrek, 2010, p. 6. ). That's why Zauner tries to structure his
subjects, usually based on his country. So he attempts to remind the forgotten and to make it alive again
(Tepebaşılı, 2013, p. 39). You feel yourself as if you were eyewitness and what you read, is your own reality.
Zauner shows us how powerful, efficient and so much realistic a writer can narrate. Through Das Ende der
Ewigkeit he brings all the social and historical changes of Austria during about forty years to light. Even the title
itself tells about the content of the novel. It describes the lifestyle of rural areas and their unchangeable
considered world. The endless order collapses as a result of the war and its social and economic consequences.
PURPOSE
Aim of this study is to analyze Friedrich Christian Zauner’s Das Ende der Ewigkeit as a regional novel. Which
typical features it has? To what extent can we categorize it as a regional novel? These are the questions based on
this study and we are going to try to answer them.
METHODS
In this study two methods were carried out. The first is the hermeneutic method. This method is used in the
meaning of "the esoteric meaning of a text, in the sense of understanding the real meaning, and it is regarded as
the science of interpretation" (Hermeneutik, n. d.). The other one is the “intrinsic” (text-based, werkimmanent)
method. This method was used effectively in the German literature in the 1950s. Accordingly, we need to make
the interpretation independently of the factors that are related to the text.
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About The Novel “Das Ende Der Ewigkeit“
Das Ende der Ewigkeit, that has a very important place among the works written by Friedrich Christian Zauner,
is the main title of a novel with four-volumes. Das Ende der Ewigkeit means the end of the endlessness. In fact,
even the title tells us in essence the content of the story. The first volume Im Schatten der Maulwurfshügel of
the novel was published in 1992, the second one Und die Fische sind stumm in 1993, the third one Früchte vom
Tannenbaum in 1994, the fourth and last volume Heiser wie Dohlen in 1996. Each one of them describes
averagely 10 years.
In his novel Das Ende der Ewigkeit, Zauner also quickly attracts readers to the world he created. The story of
this novel, which we can see as the basic of the study, begins exactly on the last day of 1899, the first night of
1900. The beginning of 1900 is also the beginning of the new century and it is at the same time a portent of the
coming changes. Through this novel, the peasants and their social experiences are shown to us with all their
aspects and facts. The rural community has written and unwritten rules that are seen as unchangeable. Everyone
is tightly bound to them. In the night where the story begins, Theres was born. She is Lipp’s daughter, who is a
saloon keeper and a farmer as well. On the way to bring a midwife for his wife Anna Lipp finds a child named
Maurits almost frozen. Maurits, a person who is abandoned on the street, uncertain where he came from,
whitout any status in society and Theres, the daughter of a farmer with a certain status, are the main heroes of
this novel. Maurits is symbolized in the story as a disturber, because by his coming everything begins to change
in principle. (Erdoğan, 2014, p. 31-36)
Regional Novel (Heimatroman)
When we search for the concept of regional novel (Heiamatroman), it is difficult to find sufficient information
about it. Because the tendency to do studies in this field is very new, so we are really in need of more theoric
and practical materials about regional novel and regional literature.
A regional novel attempts to depict a specific geographic region and the people that inhabit it. A regional novel
is typically set in a single area of a country and portrays the customs, culture, historical background, dialect and
behavior of that region. (regional novel, n. d.)
A regional writer is one who concentrates much attention on a particular area and uses it and
the people who inhabit it as the basis for his or her stories. Such a locale is likely to be rural
and/or provincial. Among the earliest of regional novelists was Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849),
an Anglo-Irish woman who was one of the first to perceive the possibilities of relating
characters to a particular environment. Her most notable novels were Castle Rackrent (1800),
Belinda (1801) and The Absentee (1812). Castle Rackrent is generally believed to have been
the first of its kind. [….] Once established, the regional novel began to interest a number of
writers, and soon the regions described became smaller and more specifically defined (Cuddon,
2013).
According to Meyers Kleines Lexikon (1986) regional novel is the main form of the regional literature. It is
determined by some characteristics like being against city life, idyllic-idealizing and one-sided glorification of
homeland and village people characterized by nature and native speech (p. 194)
In Gero von Wilpert's literature lexicon (1976, p. 330) homeland and nature are exposed in the regional novel as
a concept of value and as a source of the anti-civilization-romanticist sentiment. Also that regional novel which
deals with great property and manors backs away from the real and modern situation of an industrial agricultural
Productivity and tends to an insincere and not real romantic world of feudalism.
The stylistic elements listed down refer not only to the regional novel before the end of the Second World War,
but also to that trivial regional novel, which aims more for a mass flavor. These elements are (Heimatroman, n.
d.):
 Disturbance of the village order usually by intervention of a stranger, who brings unrest into the static
life of the village.
 A closed location, an isolated world (for example a village surrounded by mountains)
 The man tied into the eternal cycle of the year
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 The divine order of creation as a fixed temporal order
 The village community as a hierarchically structured, "god-willed", therefore unchanging order
 Traditional woman’s role
 The happy end; The original order is restored (acceptance or rejection / failure of the stranger)
 Portraying the characters in black or white
The novel deals with the life and love story of Theres and Maurits from the christmas night of 1899 till the
union of Austria to the Great German Empire. A course of action that guides the reader through another history
of Austria, through an age of upheaval, which had already indicated the downfall of the constant and
unchangeable order of the village named Thal. (Thunecke, 1999, p. 50-57) In the same article underlines Jörg
Thunecke his opinions about Das Ende der Ewigkeit through the following paragraph:
„Gesunde, naturnahe, bäuerliche Lebensformen, Erhaltung der Landschaft, des Volkstums, der
unverfälschten Stammesart, rechtmäßiger Eigentumsverhältnisse und überlieferter religiöser
Einstellungen: das waren die Hauptformen der des traditionellen Heimatromans. Zauners
Zyklus hat mit keiner diesen Thesen etwas gemein. Weder werden die Manschen und ihr
Gewerbe in dieser abgelegenen Provinzgegend auf irgendeine Weise idealisiert, noch erhalten
die Dörfer und Landschaft je einen romantischen Anstrich, gleichwohl sie auch nicht als Hölle
auf Erden, wie in manchen Anti-Heimatromanen, verteufelt werden. Im Gegenteil! So wie die
Schilderung des Fegfeuers – des unzugänglichsten, unwirtlichsten und ärmsten Gemeindeteils-
lesen sich fast alle Ortbeschreibungen des Innviertel-Zyklus. Und ähnlich detailliert und
sorgsam recherchiert, in den historischen Fakten absolut wahrheitsgetreu, werden auch die
gesellschaftlichen Strukturen dieser Gegend dargestellt, wie etwa die hierarchische Gliederung
des dörflichen Lebens im äußersten Zipfel Österreichs.“ (p. 52–53)
As the Roman tetralogy is neither to be found in the context of the regional novel (Heimatroman) nor
in the genre of the anti-regional novel (anti-Heimatroman), Karl Markus Gauss (1996, p. 25-30)
describes “the tetralogy also as a literary exploration of the homeland, since the term Heimat is
neither praised nor condemned but rather discovered”.
CONCLUSION
Friedrich Christian Zauner narrates not only the story of Theres and Maurits, he also gives us lots of
informations about Austria during the time between 1899 and 1938 through a small rural area located in the
south. Historical and sociological events and changes are chronologic mentioned.
Zauner describes in his novel the people living in the villages like Thal and Fegfeuer. Their daily life, customs,
social relationships, culture, dialect, behaviors, in other words the way of their life is expressed in detail.
In conclusion it is possible to say that the novel «Das Ende der Ewigkeit» of Friedrich Christian Zauner can be
categorized as regional novel, because most of the features about regional novel are to be found in it. However
the rural life is not glorified. Neither he adorns the world of villagers, nor does he disdain it. In the end all the
resources mentioned above see this tetralogy within the context of the regional literature (Heimatliteratur).
REFERENCES
Cuddon, J. A. (2013). A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. Retrieved from
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/book?id=g9781444333275_9781444333275 (14.11.2016)
Erdoğan, S. (2014). Friedrich Christian Zauners Das Ende der Ewigkeit als ein Familienroman. Master’s
Thesis, Necmettin Erbakan University, Institute of Educational Sciences, Konya.
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Gauß, K. M., (1996). Der Rand in der Mitte. Die Chronik einer Heimat. (Hrsg: A. Pindelski). „Das Ende der
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