The competition at an East Berlin school of theatre is deadly. Of Christiane Neudecker told in "The God of the city".

"...On the trail of a brilliant artist". Theatre sample 2013 to "war and peace" (people's stage) photo: Reuters

This writer is a language witch. Christiane Neudecker lures her audience into a mysterious narrative cottage, in which, of course, not geknuspert may be, but everything was introduced with a Holy Serious, finally, in literary hell ends up the oven. The novel title "the God of The city" refers to the eponymous poem by Georg Heym, the legendary dark poets, which collapsed in 1912, at the age of 24 to run at the skate into the ice of the Havel.

Heym behind a narrow, but important work with expression of left-wing poetry, drama fragments and short stories. In the case of Heym, the God of the city is a bloodthirsty Baal, who delights in the urban "Korybanten-dance", to the orgiastic rituals of those demons, the accompany according to the ancient idea of the gods, mother-goddess Cybele: "On one blocks he is sitting wide. / The winds were black to his forehead. / He looks full of anger, where in solitude / The last houses in the country verirrn.“

Of trials and tribulations in a very different way also tells Neudeckers novel, in which the gods always show their evil sides. A famous Director and theatre God named Korbinian Brandner takes over anyway, in 1995, at the East Berlin Academy of dramatic art, Erwin Piscator, a new Director-Year. Catherine, Tadeusz, Black, François and Nele have secured the five coveted places, and right at the beginning of your studies, you will have to prove themselves.

Brandner has scheduled a test, which seems like a fun study game and as a bitter wicked theater seriously turns out to be. From a mysterious Faust-Fragment of Georg Heyms this will be a decent staging, which will in time be the anniversary of the death of the poet on a sample stage listed.

Brandner, the whole spectacle of Satan, by the intimidated by the study group in ordination to to the full tone: "you will embark on an adventure on the traces of a brilliant artist. [...] You will feel his inner turmoil, his torment, his genius. You will encounter his demons – and your own.“

own demons, learn the five directed by the laity alone, therefore, are familiar with, because Brandner gives each pupil, different fragments of the Fragment, the analyzed first, self-directed and interpreted, but then, together with the fellow students for the stage need to be worked. Envy dominated, the Team that is not.

What are the research questions the überengagierten freshmen, need to be shared, what information is better kept to himself, in order to score points at the big show game master? The old Faust-the subject is closer Ultrabet than the I-Narrator, Catherine initially believes. Must you get involved with the devil, in order to convince the beloved Professor? Or should they be better against the in of your men makes so condescending Professor garde rebel, as Black does?

it Is a diabolical act of revenge against the audit Commission?

The competition makes the protagonists to stage characters that can hide their Strengths and weaknesses in the spotlight on the bad. Neudecker illuminates your such a contradictory and, therefore, sympathetic heroes, each in their own chapters, which are kept in the personal narrative perspective. To shake up a tried and tested means, not only to the credibility of Catherine, the Central narrative voice, but also the Fears and neuroses, and especially the jealousy among themselves to represent.

So hard, the psychological pressure on the five, the most Sensitive seems to be found only in death, a way out of this blamed. The spectacular suicide is perhaps the last attempt of a desperate student, in order to be the morbid Heym-Fragment just? Or is it a vicious act of revenge against the audit Commission, which is now on the media pillory?

The headlines don't miss your effect anyway, especially as it soon comes out that the theatre of God to the times of the GDR entered into a Pact with the Stasi-the devil, the own career.

The highlight of the novel is, especially in the fact that the author of poetry, prose and Drama, and that she sets the literary genres in a productive relationship, to grind without your Own powers. Neudecker takes the narrative Moment of expressionist poetry seriously, and told with the intoxicating Bustle of the theater students in the cold, wet post-reunification Berlin is actually a kind of Korybanten-dance.

The writer, who studied at a Berlin exhibition spieluni, but also knows that not every Fragment of a brilliant poet, a good show piece to stage. If, in fact, the greatest voice artists ever get on the paper scribbles, this should not overrate the importance of posterity better.

Neudeckers prose poetry impressed, because the language and subject levels intricately linked to each other, without the literary braid. When the text threatens to tilt the research of the theatre novices to the academic, plays Neudecker suddenly with tension elements. If you think to read a Thriller, the author, once again, the tone of voice and fascinates with expressive descriptions of souls and the natural and urban landscapes.

Christiane Neudecker: "the God of The city", Roman, Luchterhand Verlag, Munich, 2019, 667 pages, 24 Euro

no one has not asked the question of whether the novel relies too much on poetry, nostalgic moods and maybe a little in the width goes, surprised Neudecker with rapid mono-the loner Black boxes, the is one of the strongest characters in the novel.

this highly talented Ruthless by be risky-pleasure full life, how he pumps himself full of drugs, but the most clear view on the study of Theatre is convincingly formulated and shows the literary skills Neudeckers that unfold in the role of prose radical characters especially.