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"Franz heißt die Kanaille" oder Schwarzer Prinz in Steglitz: Kafka in Berlin, 1923/24: Ein Großstadtmärchen ((episch / lyrisch / dramatisch)) by Hans-Peter Fischer

2022; Austrian Studies Association; Volume: 55; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/oas.2022.0002

2327-1809

David B. Dollenmayer,

Franz Kafka Literary Studies

Reviewed by: "Franz heißt die Kanaille" oder Schwarzer Prinz in Steglitz: Kafka in Berlin, 1923/24: Ein Großstadtmärchen ((episch / lyrisch / dramatisch)) by Hans-Peter Fischer David Dollenmayer Hans-Peter Fischer, "Franz heißt die Kanaille" oder Schwarzer Prinz in Steglitz: Kafk a in Berlin, 1923/24: Ein Großstadtmärchen ((episch / lyrisch / dramatisch)). Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2020. 312 pp. The title of this book by Hans-Peter Fischer—a retired Gymnasium teacher and author of three (!) lengthy monographs on Fontane's Irrungen-Wirrungen as well as one on Thomas Mann's Der kleine Herr Friedemann and Buddenbrooks—suggests its heterogeneous and playful nature. Drawing on incidents and figures from the final volume of Rainer Stach's Kafk a biography and other sources (identified in a Nachwort), Fischer has constructed something between a Decameron-like story collection and a literature seminar. It is one of the strangest books I have read in a long time. The frame narrative gets underway with an incident that Dora Diamant recorded in her memoir of the years she spent with Kafk a: On a walk in a Steglitz park, they encountered a little girl crying over the loss of her doll. To console her, Kafk a invented a story: the doll had merely gone on a trip and had been writing him letters about it. In Fischer's fictionalized version, Kafk a and Dora meet the girl day after day in the park and he reads her the doll's letters. The final one bids the girl farewell, since the doll has married an African prince (hence "schwarzer Prinz [End Page 141] in Steglitz") who forbids her further contact with Europe. When the girl tells her parents about meeting "ein Schwarzer" (31) in the park, they are outraged and contact the police, who detain Kafk a. He manages to persuade them of his innocence, but when he returns to his rented room, the landlady refuses him entry, backed up by a large man who hurls anti-Semitic insults at him (Fischer's reworking of the rise in rent that actually led Kafk a to move out). However, Dora finds an even better room in Zehlendorf, in the home of Frau Busse, where Kafk a can recover from the upsetting incident. Frau Busse's daughter Christine, a bright teenager interested in literature, asks if she and two friends may pay "den berühmten Schriftsteller aus dem fernen Prag" (29) a visit, and Kafk a, flattered, agrees. She brings along two young women he already knows: Max Brod's girlfriend Emmy Salveter and Tile Rössler, a bookstore clerk Kafk a first met in the sea resort Mürnitz. In fact, Tile has recently attended a performance of Schiller's Die Räuber with Kafk a, during which he leaned toward her and whispered what Fischer has chosen as his title: "Franz heiβt die Kanaille." Over tea, Kafk a tells the three girls about his encounter in the park and suggests they each tell what they know about the topic "Schwarze in Europa." They discuss the Prussian court musician Gustav Sabac el Cher, son of a Sudanese slave whom the viceroy of Egypt presented to Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1843, as well as the Zulu king Cetshwayo's visit to Queen Victoria's court. Christine talks about the racism in Kleist's Die Verlobung von St. Domingo, which she has read in school. Kafk a suggests that they reconvene regularly to talk about literature, and they enthusiastically agree. From this point on, the frame narrative gradually dispenses with anything resembling a plot and becomes essentially a literature seminar on nineteenth-and early twentieth-century writers. Kafk a calls it a "Leseforum" (42). Over the following days, the group expands to include Dora Diamant, the young actress and sometime Brecht girlfriend Blandine Ebinger, Kafk a's sister Ottla, his Hebrew teacher Puah ben-Tovim, as well as Max Brod and Kafk a's uncle Siegfried Löwy. There is some attempt at characterizing the participants. Blandine, for instance, is worldly-wise and always speaks in thick Berlinerisch, while Christine is the naïve ingenue. Uncle Siegfried is jovial, tells a funny anecdote...