Michael SteindlGallus, Luftschiffer

Rezension

[...] Und wer sein Buch zu lesen beginnt, wird es kaum mehr so rasch aus der Hand legen: Denn schnell merkt man, dass man es hier mit einem außerordentlichen Text zu tun hat. [...]

About this book deutschenglish

He is nine years old, fifty inches tall and strolls around in his green 'Hauslschurz' amid the guests whom his parents, M. & M. Rottenfußer, had invited for the opening of their hotel-pension SONNENHALDE. This was on Mai 28th, 1933. At the end of the story, Gallus is four years older and eight inches taller. Unusual for his age and time, he has already seen much of the world. This is due to the fact that navigators of airship GRAF HINDENBURG from nearby Friedrichshafen, together with captain Eckener und all relevant officers, take up temporary residence at SONNENHALDE/ Scheidegg.

There is a big difference between navigating an airship and flying an airplane. In an airship, at an altitude of 500 to 3000 feet and at a speed of 60 mph, you are close to things and you experience, at the same time, closeness and unattainability.

The 'Röhm-Putsch' of 1934 forces people into the SONNENHALDE, for whom nearby Austria is a country of safe haven. The airship navigators from Friedrichshafen on their GRAF ZEPPELIN come and take them - how do they manage it? - across the border into freedom.

Gallus is sitting at his homework. He has to write an essay on 'What I would like to become'. In contrast to this aunt who is dictating into his notebook all about the profession of a medical doctor, GRAF ZEPPELIN passes by the window: Gallus enters it and flies over SONNENHALDE and over the brook of SCHEIDEGG, called 'Hammerbach'. He knows what he wants to become.

Gallus, Airship-Navigator - this is also the history of the Rottenfußer family, of a mother and a father and their five children. A chamber singer comes into the church of SCHEIDEGG. He listens to the 'miserere nobis' of Bruckner´s 'Windhaager Messe'. The soloist is father Rottenfußer. The chamber singer takes father Rottenfußer along to Munich and into a promising career as a singer.

And SONNENHALDE? For how long would their mother be able to keep the family business? Vicky, the eldest daughter, now wears the earth-brown uniform of the 'ARBEITSDIENST'. Within a short time, she has become director of a 'MAIDEN-LAGER'. Does mother Rottenfußer loose her kids step-by-step to the brown rulers? She fights desperately. She knows: she could only bring her daughter back by sacrificing her own life.

It is May 3rd, 1937: It is the day the airship HINDENBURG starts on its last passage from Frankfurt to America. Magnus Rottenfußer, the opera singer, and his son Gallus are invited passengers. On the way to the Rhein-Main-Airport Frankfurt they are catapulted out of their vehicle, being victims of a car accident. The passage to America - Gallus experiences it as a cabin-boy in his feverish dreams.

Kubis, the chief stewart, is his superior: a man with a black full beard and blackend eye lids. Blackened eye lids have also Gallus and Magnus, the two monks from Ireland who, in the year 600, parted in the location of SCHEIDEGG which carries its name from this event. Kubis, Gallus, Magnus: this is what Gallus has to think about sitting in his RABENHORST tree castle of the pear tree on the Hammerbach brook.

Ihr Werk im Verlag Dr. Kovač

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