In 2009, the Nobel Committee on Literature awarded the prize to the German poetess, prose writer Herte Muller. If the European reader is familiar with her works, then in Russia few have heard of her. German by nationality, she was born in Romania and suffered all the hardships of the dictatorial regime of the Secretary General of the local Communist Party Nicolae Ceausescu. Most of her books are devoted to this.
Romanian childhood
Hertha Muller was born in 1953 in the small town of Nitzkidorf. It is located in the historical region of Banat, long since divided between three countries - Romania, Hungary and Serbia. The closest major settlement was Romania’s third largest city, Timisoara.
Her family belonged to the Banat Swabs - a common name for the German-speaking population of this historical area. Grandfather is a farmer and merchant, his father served in the SS troops during World War II. Mother, after the communist regime came to Romania, was deported to a camp in Ukraine because of her German descent. She managed to get free only three years before the birth of Hertha.
In Timisoara, Hertha Muller graduated from Western University - a Romanian university, founded in 1962. Her specialty was German and Romanian literature.
Emigration to Germany
In 1976, Hertha Müller begins an independent life as a translator at a tractor factory. By then, Ceausescu had been in power for only two years, and all the hardships of the regime were only beginning to appear.
In the 79th, Muller was unemployed for a trivial reason at that time - the refusal to cooperate with the Romanian secret police Securitate. After that, Hertha interrupted by private German lessons, worked in kindergarten, and began to write.
The decision to emigrate takes only in 1987. Together with her husband, also a writer, Richard Wagner, they move to Germany, to West Berlin.
First publications
Hertha began to write shortly after the death of her father. In 1979 she finished the novel "Lowlands", consisting of 14 small short stories, united by a common main story. However, the work was published only after three years, and it was heavily censored. The original version was released only in 1984 in West Germany. After that, Hertha became restricted to travel abroad, and when she obtained permission to leave the country, the secret police tried to discredit her, claiming that she was an agent of the Securitate.
Early work is dedicated to the banat community in Romania, in which Hertha Muller grew up. The author’s biography is closely related to this topic. The traditional values presented to the writer by the microcosm of a large repressive society are described in detail. Her first novel, The Lowlands, describes the dying village of her childhood from the perspective of a child. One of the most memorable in this work is the image of a croaking frog, which the reader should associate with the German minority. As one of the heroes of the novel says: "Everyone brought a frog when he immigrated."
Literary recognition
In the 90s, she actively works in the literary field. In 1992 he released a novel, known in the Russian translation as “The Fox was already a hunter then”, which tells about life in the Romanian province at the turn of the 80s and 90s. And a few more works, including the famous "Zverdts", translated into Russian.
This is a frightening, largely autobiographical book, in which Hertha Muller describes the fate of the young generation of immigrants from Germany during the most terrible years of the reign of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu. This was the first book that brought her recognition and numerous awards in the literary world. It was written after the death of two friends of the writer, which happened under mysterious circumstances, and tells the story of a company of young people whose friendship collapses under the influence of totalitarianism.
Most importantly, the author manages to focus on a terrible paradox: people who are oppressed find solace in their dreams of dictatorial rule. The older generation of ethnic Germans living then in Romania, as the author claims, kept sincere devotion to Hitler and his ideas.
Prose muller
The general leitmotif, which Geert Muller is trying to convey to the reader, is somewhat similar to the principle of the literature of romanticism - "an unusual hero in unusual circumstances." Only with Müller is this art of man surviving in inhuman conditions, as well as the psychology that guides the oppressed and their oppressors. These ideas are especially pronounced in the 1997 novel “I wish I had not met myself today” in 1997. In it, a young worker is attacked by a tormentor representing the law enforcement system.
In the same year, the novel “Appointment” was published about the trip of a rank-and-file factory worker on a tram, who asks unexpected questions, such as sudden changes in the tram's route. A similar problem of personality adaptation in a totalitarian society is devoted to an earlier work, Traveling on One Leg, in which a young Romanian of German descent tries to adapt to life by being involved in close relationships with three men at once.
"Swing of breath"
“Swing of Breath” (the Russian version often includes the “Inhale-Exhale” option) is the most famous novel written by Hertha Muller. Reviews of him by literary critics and readers in many ways brought her the Nobel Prize.
The protagonist of this work is a young German who was deported to the USSR in 1945. He is only 17 years old, he is just beginning to understand the world and feels a change in himself - a sexual craving for men. At this time, together with all the adults in his hometown, he was forced to go to a camp in Soviet Ukraine. The main character is engaged in heavy physical labor, suffering from hunger and cold. Trying to get settled in this world, he builds a system of relations with security guards, free settlers, and other prisoners. The Angel of Hunger hangs over it all, and the hero finally abandons his spiritual life, preferring the physiological instincts of survival and the need to eat.
Nobel Prize
In 2009, Hertha Muller became the winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. Photos of the writer after that deservedly took their place on the first pages of the world media.
The main theme of her work is to convey to the reader her own experience of unfreedom and violence against a person, to talk about collective memory, from which they often try to squeeze out a lot of things, which are unpleasant and scary to remember. For example, about the Ceausescu regime.
In addition to prose, Hertha Muller publishes poetry books and essay collections. She paints pictures and creates photo portraits.
Hertha Muller has recently become popular in Russia. The Nobel Prize awarded to her played a role. Her books are devoted not only to pan-European issues, but also to the problems of the Romanian nation. For example, Muller does not cease to reproach the Romanian people, who very quickly forgot the horrors of dictatorship.