Hans Fallada and my chasing of a goos writer.
Hans Fallada was a German who had difficult childhood. After a dramatic accident, when he had tried to kill himself and kill his friend, he decided somehow to write srories. Who were his idols of literature, who inspired him to be a writer? They were heroes of fairy tales, "Hans in Luck" and Falada horse from fairy tale "The Goose Girl". Hans Fallada invented his pen name by combining Hans from the "Hans in Luck" and the Falada horse. While I say who were idols, I mean a humor, because you cannot say that just on the event of inventing pen name. The fairy tales were collected by the Brothers Grimm. The tales were of german origin, so we can suppose was Hans Fallada a national patriot? In all, I say a lot of humor, but we don't know yet, was he something or other on the evidence of his pen name. But I think he was a national patriot yet, because he loved German folklore.
Hans Fallada and reality in my life.
Animated series Well, Just You Wait!. Postage stamp. Wikimedia Commons.
All the recent time, when I thought about exploring the idea to write about Hans Fallada on the Google Blogger, I was noticing that something was happening around me. I live in Russia and on February 24, 2022 here was announced the Special Military Operation (Kommersant, February 24, 2022. In Russian. Что происходило после ввода войск России на Украину 24 февраля). The Russian state-run television call the Ukrainian Forces as "nationalists". That is a push for me to think was Hans Fallada a nationalist too? Or he was only a kid, who loved the fairy tales, as once all kids were when they were kids. For example, I loved Soviet cartoon television series about Wolf and Hare, so maybe I was a Soviet patriot, because the cartoons were a Soviet art without any national shadows? The Wolf was a hooligan of unknown ethnicity, the same was the brave Hare, chased by the Wolf. But they speak Russian!.. So, now I guess, the Wolf and Hare were Russian, they speak with Moscow accent. But I am not sure, yet, they were born in Moscow, or they were from Caucasus? Maybe they were Cherkassian origin or Jewish. That what I meant when said that they were probably of Soviet origin, because we culd not trace their precise ancestry, were they of Jewish, or Armenian, or Slavonic ancestry? But that a huge problem, because now all we should know, who is a Ukrainian nationalist, and who is a Russian, because the Russian Kremlin television diveded all the World in the good Russian soldiers-liberaters and the criminal Ukrainian nationalists, who during eight years were bombing Donbass.
Hans Fallada and my research in him.
Then I will research the question about nationalist features in Hans Fallada, and try to compare that with me and my time. I should start to look first on the stories "Hans in Luck" and "The Goose Girl"... (two weeks later) I found the Brother Grimm's fairy tales on YouTube, there I watched cartoon about the Hans in Luck and The Goose Girl. The stories were usual folklore, but we have no similar in Russia with such brutality when Fallada horse was killed, it's a bit alien, and when dead horse's head started to speak, it's also strange and against animal rights. But anyway, Russian have similar terrible fairy tales, for example, we have the tale about a cow killed, that cow was a best friend ever of the little girl Kroshechka-Khavroshechka, but greedy people killed the cow. It's so terrible Russian fairy tale, called 'Kroshechka-Khavroshechka' (the girl's name meaning in Russian something about 'The Little Girl', see Wikipeida (in Russian) 'Крошечка-Хаврошечка (мультфильм, 2007)'). I wonder how Russian peasants were so not merciful to compose such a brutal story, but it exists somehow and it looks very old and popular among Russian.
The second fairy tale, The Hans In Luck' is about a fool, his foolness makes him joyful, because he doesn't understand the seriousness of material life.
And the tale about the Goose Girl is about a princess, it looks alien a bit, but at the same time it has similarity with the fairy tale by Alexander Puskin, The Tale of Tsar Saltan, and other tale by Alexander Pushkin, The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights. So, I have suspicion about Alexander Puskin was he a German spy? That is of my humour. So, nothing interesting, all that is a usual folklore, the Goose Girl is a Princess, her horse Falada was killed for sousages, but the Goose Princess asked to cut the horse head and attached that to the wall near gate, because she loved the horse, and when the Goose Princess convoyed the goose team, the Falada said to her: It is a true Princess! Looks anyway a bit a strange. But all the folklore in the Europe was like that: there all people were not vegans. Russian folklore retold by Alexander Pushkin is the same: the Princess is dead, but, in fact, she was sleeping, I heard the same story, but that was by Brothers Grimm. Alexander Pushkin may have hired the Brothers Grimm's story? Or there were just the same tales.
Alexander Pushkin lived in Saint Petersburg, it's on the Baltic sea, and it's very near Germany, so they had similar folklore. I can guess, that all the poets, Alexander Pushkin and Brothers Grimm, knew something about anti-Semitism, but we cannot still accuse them in the pogroms. It was mainly the Roman Catholic Church that persecuted the Jews.
Also the local peasants, I believe they were xenophobes, I watched, for example, a Polish movie Aftermath (Wikipedia, Aftermath (2012 film)). So, I believe, Russian peasants (not only Polish) were also anti-Semit people, so the peasants were maybe composing a bit xenophobic fairy tales. But anyway, I just try to compose some crime done by Brothers Grimm and Alexander Pushkin, so it looks not very serios thing for me to do...
By the way, I heard in the Russian Monastery, where I was baptized, and worked two weeks as a pilgrim, a story about the Alexander Pushkin, that he was a wrong Russian, because he was from African descent. I suppose a monk, who told me about bad African descent was angry towards Alexander Pushkin, because he wrote the fairy tale The Tale of the Priest and of His Workman Balda, where he diminished the Pope. So, I am afraid my novel becomes too long and I decided to end that with the main conclusion: Hans Fallada and Alexander Pushkin had many similarities, they were reading similar fairy tales. And we can suppose that Hans Fallada was a Russian poet, while Alexander Pushkin was a German novellist. All the World was mixed up, and then Adolf Hitler appeared in Saint Petersburg, while the Russian Emperor Pyotr the First happened in Nazi Germany. I was caught with the chaotic time. And then I met some day a strange person, whose name was Hans Pushkin.
June 14, 2022
