Unter der Drachenwand - Figuren, Erzähltechnik, Leitmotive - Deutsch Oberstufe

Hello, if you are currently preparing for an exam on the novel Under the Dragon Wall by Arno Geiger, then you have come to the right place because I have summarized the most important aspects for you here and we will analyze them and first take a look at the protagonist's fight against Kolbe and his development, then we look at the other voices that have a voice in the novel, namely Lore Neff, Kurt Rittler and Oskar Meier, thirdly, we take a look at the narrative technique and finally, we analyze two central leitmotifs of the novel. It begins with the protagonist Kolbe fights and here we first see the initial situation at the beginning of the fight he is seriously injured on the Eastern Front in World War II and then receives a year of convalescent leave at the beginning it is determined by others he is a pawn of the war he is wounded, he is a victim of war and he has that feeling that his life has completely escaped him, he suffers a lot because of his stolen youth during the four years that he had already fought in the war and that he could not dedicate himself to realizing his dream of life when he returned for his convalescent leave, he also experienced strong alienation in his parents' home.

He has increased conflicts with his father, who still supports the war, and he himself has experienced the horrors of war at the front and can no longer support this defense, leading Folding Piston to decide not to go home to convalesce. his parents to pass the Mondsee train in Mondsee and it is precisely in Mondsee where his central development takes place and Here we take a look at the fundamental pillars of his development. First of all, of course, his experiences at the front, which also accompany him again and again in Mondsee and catch up with him. He traumatized and experienced the war as a horror.

I have to deal with this over and over again, but he also becomes friends with the Brazilian. The Brazilian is a critic of the regime. He himself lived in Brazil for a long time and feels connected to the country and looks very critically at the Nazis. regime and, therefore, fights for freedom of thought and also for criticism of the regime. Also, he knows and loves Margot Neff in Mondsee and Margot Neff is very important to him because she gives him perspective for the future and. a meaning to life and also teaches responsibility Taking on things for oneself but also for Margot and her daughter Lilo and the two have a very equal relationship, they know and love each other at work and they truly see themselves as a small family that has been reunited is another central component of his self-reflection when writing a journal he writes a journal incorrectly we read his journal entries and they help him process his experiences and progress in his development, so over time A Throughout the novel it develops from external determination to self-determination or towards increasing self-determination.

To summarize it again, at the beginning is the following quote: This time too the war had only thrown me to one side. by others, but the year at Mondsee represents a turn towards self-determination and at the end of the novel is the phrase at the moment when I felt that I had broken with something and finally had a life of its own, although the development has not yet been completed by complete and there are certainly development tasks left, such as the Pervitin dependency that still need to be addressed, here one can still speak of a development novel, so it is not only an anti-war novel but also a development novel. novel Let's now look at the other three voices that are expressed in the form of letters.

Here we have Lorennef, who is Margot's mother and lives in Darmstadt. In her letters she shares her everyday worries during the war, for example. her searching for food or coffee but also the lack of loss and loneliness she experiences because she loses many family members in the war. She represents the living conditions of the population on the other side of the front. 16-year-old student who has a romantic relationship with his cousin Nani Schaller enters into conflict and therefore experiences a conflict with his parents, who do not provide evidence of this relationship, his relationship with Nani fails, Nani disappears and even dies and that's why Kurt Rüttler allows himself to be recruited as the last contingent in the war;

It basically represents the tragedy of the last contingent here, that of those young people who were burned to death at the end of the war, when it was already clear that the war would end. was lost and he is again, so to speak, representative of this lost youth. As the last figure we have Oskar Meier, who is just a Jew in Vienna and still believes for a long time in having a good result despite the growing Semitism. which he faces, the anti-Semitism he faces, his wife and son ultimately murdered in Auschwitz and Oskar Meier represents the Jewish destiny in the Third Reich within the novel, so you can see that each of these three characters also assume a representative function and illuminate different facets of society and here we come to narrative technology and I brought you an image of a house with many windows, which is exactly the case in the novel under the dragon wall.

The result is that different perspectives on war, which I have already mentioned, that is, we look at reality not from one window but from many different windows and thus obtain a multifaceted picture that at least matches the complexity of reality. The novel is written in diary entries and in the form of letters, which gives us more of an internal perspective and at the same time great immediacy rather than hindsight. Retrospective. Hindsight means you look back at events and then, of course, you always know a little more, while here we are. they are directly into the action through letters and diary entries.

There are folding pistons in it, he does not know when the war will end, he does not know how the war will end for him at the moment when he writes his diary and through this immediacy the reader is also closer to the events and feelings of the characters later too There is the follow-up note, which is the only place in the novel where an authorial narrator appears who gives us a kind of ending to the characters or a kind of exit and it almost seems that these are historical figures whose documents are represented, but it is not a work of fiction, but it seems very authentic and therefore can also be described as authentic fiction.

Look with you at two central leitmotifs of the novel. On the one hand, the greenhouse is, on the one hand, a place of love for the distant man and Margot. Also called little Brazil, the Brazilian lives and works in the greenhouse and is a. place of joy of living, music and warmth. It is also a place of growth of abundance and beauty. Both tomatoes and useful plants are grown, as well as orchids for beauty. Both are very rare goods in war, it is also a space to think. In another way, a space in which Brazilians and fighters can freely express their ideas because they are protected, they are protected, it is a kind of place of refuge and retreat, but it is also a fragile place.

It is a glass house that is fragile. Finally, it can be said that the greenhouse is a kind of co

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proposal to the war. War means cold, destruction, hatred and deprivation and right here the greenhouse opposes that with the warmth, abundance, beauty and love of it. Another view of the Drachenwand The Drachenwand is the rock mass overlooking Mondsee and actually has two different meanings. On the one hand, it is a place of protection. The rock mass separates Mondsee from the reality of war. and also provides a certain degree of security. It is precisely this freedom that it needs for its development, but on the other hand it is also a place of threat because the dragon wall is associated with death on the dragon wall.

Nanni dies and the dragon. Throughout the novel Mondsee also becomes more and more part of the dragon wall, so we can speak of an ambivalent motive. Finally, my advice, because it was an ambivalent reason. lots of inputs to consolidate your knowledge, take notes on the topics now or if in doubt just watch the video again and now I wish you all good luck for the upcoming exams and see you next time.