Class in German Society (Part III), Magic Hoffmann by Jakob Arjouni
The third novel in this series is Magic Hoffmann by Jakob Arjouni. Magic Hoffmann was first published in 1996.(1) The main character of the novel is twenty-four year old Fred Hoffmann. The story is set in the late eighties and early nineties and the novel begins and ends in Dieburg, a small town in Hessen where Fred grew up. The novels starts with Fred being released from prison. He expects two friends, his partners in crime, to pick him up. When neither of them turns up, he goes to Berlin in search of them.
Fred’s family background
Fred comes from a modest to poor background. When Fred was still small his mother left his father for a Swiss civil engineer. Fred’s father then moves to a small beekeeper’s cottage in the woods and Fred lives in Dieburg at his grandmother’s house. Fred’s father is portrayed as bitter and withdrawn. He doesn’t like Fred’s school friends, or rather their middle-class parents: “Folk with a detached house, subscriptions to five newspapers and a local Greek restaurant – they have no pity. They hate me because I don’t know the name of our mayor and don’t give a damn about acid rain – all rain is lousy.” (p. 74)
Fred’s father dies in an accident when Fred is eleven. His grandmother Ranunkel becomes his sole care giver. Used to a frugal life, she is strict and old-fashioned: “She was wearing her green and yellow striped dress, a dark apron and the brown cardigan which had been mended a hundred times. Her grey hair was, as usual, severely combed back and piled into a bun.” (p. 7). After her death all that is left in their home is ‘cheap fifties-style furniture beneath thick layers of dust.” (p. 15)
Lack of money is normal for Fred and he is used to getting by without. He has “medium-length dirty-blond hair, which he had cut himself since he was fourteen; he piled it up in his fist at the top of his head and snipped the overspill.” (p.9) When he is released from prison Fred’s clothes and general appearance is completely at odds with the norm: […] ”his antediluvian gym shoes, his torn blue overalls and his village idiot’s hairstyle were an offence to the cultured eye.” (p.21) People frequently laugh at him or treat him with condescension.
His friends’ family background
While still at school, Fred and his friends, Annette Schöller and Nickel, dream of a better, a more exciting life than is available in their small home town of Dieburg, and they want to emigrate to Canada. To quickly get the necessary money for this, they hatch a plan to rob a local bank. The robbery is a success, since they manage to get the money and escape, but Fred makes a stupid mistake and is later caught by the police. He refuses to give the names of his two friends to the police and is incarcerated for four years.
After Fred has waited in vain for his friends to pick him up from prison, he first tries to find them in Dieburg, then Berlin. Fred feels closer to Annette and knows her parents well. Thus, he starts his search by going to her parent’s house. Annette comes from a middle-class family. Her father is the vice principal of the local grammar school. The front garden of their house indicates that Annette’s family is different from most people in the small town: “The garden was still a sort of Mediterranean oasis in comparison to its meticulously laid-out neighbours with their beds of pansies and fir trees. At the Schöllers’ house the garden hadn’t been mown, shrubs and flowers mingled in wild confusion, and sage and rosemary grew in brown earthenware pots.” (p. 25) The interior of the house is decorated in a modern, almost Scandinavian style: “[…] practical bright wooden furniture, orange lampshades, tapestries in woodland colours and a poster promoting understanding between peoples.” (p. 27) There’s also a(n ironic) reference to education: … “a plaster head of Mr. Schöller was resplendent. An artist friend had given them the sculpture. It gave him the air of a Greek philosopher.” (p. 27)
When Fred asks for Annette’s current address, her father refuses to give it to him and wants him to leave. The distrust and dislike between the classes is neatly shown in the relationships between the Hoffmanns and Schöllers. Fred’s father didn’t like the Schöller’s and Annette’s father doesn’t think much of Fred. (2) He accuses Fred of having been a bad influence on his daughter. “You got her mixed up in your dirty business and used her.” (p.30) Schöller is referring to the bank robbery the three friends did together. He – much like Annette herself (3) – is conveniently forgetting that his daughter lives off the stolen money in Berlin and uses it to finance unpromising art films. Annette can only afford to live the life she’s living, because of the robbery, but she feels no obligation to Fred whatsoever. As a representative of the middle class, Annette lacks all empathy with someone like Fred and uses him for her own benefit.
Nickel’s parents are the incarnation of the German petit bourgeoisie. “Nickel’s father owned a small hardware store and had read little in his life apart from screw diameters and saw blade sizes. He was suspicious of anything that didn’t have to do with building shelves or putting up hooks and his head seemed to serve merely for putting pencils behind his ear. […] His wife ran the household […] and reminded her husband on a daily basis not to be too generous, too gullible – which was about as necessary as insisting that someone with a club foot should limp.” (p. 99) As a teenager Nickel rebels against his parents as much as he can. During the four years of Fred’s incarceration, however, Nickel has started a family, bought a house from his gains of the robbery and is aiming for a career in academia.
While the dream of emigrating to Canada got Fred through prison, neither Nickel nor Annette intend to go there now, never mind emigrate. While Nickel shows some solidarity with Fred (he’s invested the money for him and later pays him out), the friendship soon proves untenable. Disappointed with his friends, Fred threatens Nickel in order to get his share of the money in the way he wants it (all in one rather than in monthly dividends). Nickel does as he says, but after Nickel has paid Fred out, he no longer wants anything to do with him either.
Unlike Annette, Nickel doesn’t fritter away his gains from the robbery. He is ambitious and wants to work his way up. He uses the money to get the education his parents didn’t have and invests in a middle-class dream of a happy life. Nickel wants to help Fred, but soon gives up on him.
Social differences in Berlin
Once Fred gets to Berlin he books a cheap room in the aptly named “ otel Lu k”: “The neon letters shone dimly above a shattered glass door. Behind it, a dark stairway led to the first floor. […] A lone window provided light. There would normally have been four, but three had been boarded up. […] a frayed red carpet ran up the stairs and bits of the banisters were missing. […] The room smelt of mothballs and old upholstery. […] Almost everything in the room was brown: the curtains, the furniture, the carpet, the bedclothes; only the walls were grey and the lampshades pink.” (p. 49) Fred opens the window. There’s an office building on the other side where “Permed women with padded shoulders sat among the IKEA furniture with rubber plants.” (p. 47) The hotel seems like a big city version of his home in Dieburg.
As can be seen from the following, Arjouni likes to contrast rich and poor. While exploring the city, Fred walks through Kreuzberg. Kreuzberg is a large well-known quarter in Berlin. Until 1993 Kreuzberg was famously divided into two different postcode areas. One area was cheap and run down, the other arty and gentrified. The reader experiences both through Fred’s eyes as he wanders through the streets looking for Annette’s house. At first, he notices that “the houses and streets were decaying, the pubs emitted a harsh stench of fags, beer and rancid fat, and old women wandered round with handcarts full of firewood.” To Fred’s astonishment some of the locals wear poverty like a badge of honour […] ”they [young beggars with dogs] seemed proud, as if their poverty was some kind of rare craft.” But “The nearer he got to Annette’s address, the smarter the houses became, the cleaner and leafier the streets. Now the pedestrians looked like students or pianists, and the pubs smelt of food.” (p. 53)
Fred later tries to meet Annette in the fancy restaurant Le Parisien whose main clientele are “film directors, gallery owners, film producers, publishers, architects, lawyers, actors. In Le Parisien you ate to meet people.” (p. 157) Fred can’t read the menu as it is in French. He doesn’t want to ask the waiter for help and decides to order spaghetti with tomato sauce. The dish is not on the menu and the waiter is so put out that he would like to throw Fred out right away. Since Fred looks to the staff like a “construction worker – he’s just waiting to smash up the joint”, they get him spaghetti from the pizzeria round the corner. When the plate of spaghetti arrives, Fred is delighted, because they smell exactly as they did in the pizzeria in Dieburg: “As if he were suddenly sitting with Annette and Nickel in the little room with football photos and string of garlic on the wall, doing their homework over pizza bread and Chianti. Mietta on the jukebox, the owner giving them coffee on the house, the smell of tomatoes cooking.” (p. 159) The scene in Dieburg couldn’t be more different from Le Parisien with its “counter of dark, polished wood with gleaming brass fittings and silver taps, the semicircular glass lamps on the walls, which bathed everything in soft yellow light, the silver ashtrays and candlesticks, the dark red leather, the antique sign for the toilet, the silk curtain.” (p. 158) After Fred has finished his meal, the waiter tries to get rid of him by saying that the table is reserved. When Fred protests and wants to sit at the bar until Annette arrives, he is quickly delegated to a bench beside the cloakroom. Fred concurs and while he is waiting there, customers heading for the toilets think he works as a toilet cleaner and leave tips for him.
The scene at Le Parisien shows that Fred’s appearance and behaviour mark him out as someone from the lower classes; and that upper and middle-class people tend to identify him immediately as not one of their own and treat him accordingly. (4) Fred usually refuses to be offended and deals with these situations in a pragmatic fashion. In this case, he simply collects the tips before he leaves the restaurant. Fred firmly believes that having large amounts of money like the gains from the robbery will make all the difference and allow him to lead the life of his dreams irrespective of what others think of him. His naïve dream is shattered completely by the end of the novel. Nonetheless, Fred still refuses to be a victim. He is a misfit who exposes the gaps in German society.
Summary
Arjouni works with contrasts in Magic Hoffmann: Dieburg – Berlin, rich – poor, educated – uneducated. However, neither end of the scale is depicted as more attractive than the other. German society is portrayed as deeply divided and the class divisions create a space where the political right begins to flourish. There are many scenes in the book that involve Neo-Nazis (4), both in (former) West and East Germany, in the countryside as well as in the city. Some Neo-Nazis are uneducated louts, others well-educated (pseudo) intellectuals. According to the novel, right wing ideology is present across the entire spectre of society, if more prevalent among the lower classes. Considering the huge social differences we are faced with now and the surge of right wing populism across Germany, Arjouni’s view of German society was astute and prescient.
Fred’s family background
Fred comes from a modest to poor background. When Fred was still small his mother left his father for a Swiss civil engineer. Fred’s father then moves to a small beekeeper’s cottage in the woods and Fred lives in Dieburg at his grandmother’s house. Fred’s father is portrayed as bitter and withdrawn. He doesn’t like Fred’s school friends, or rather their middle-class parents: “Folk with a detached house, subscriptions to five newspapers and a local Greek restaurant – they have no pity. They hate me because I don’t know the name of our mayor and don’t give a damn about acid rain – all rain is lousy.” (p. 74)
Fred’s father dies in an accident when Fred is eleven. His grandmother Ranunkel becomes his sole care giver. Used to a frugal life, she is strict and old-fashioned: “She was wearing her green and yellow striped dress, a dark apron and the brown cardigan which had been mended a hundred times. Her grey hair was, as usual, severely combed back and piled into a bun.” (p. 7). After her death all that is left in their home is ‘cheap fifties-style furniture beneath thick layers of dust.” (p. 15)
Lack of money is normal for Fred and he is used to getting by without. He has “medium-length dirty-blond hair, which he had cut himself since he was fourteen; he piled it up in his fist at the top of his head and snipped the overspill.” (p.9) When he is released from prison Fred’s clothes and general appearance is completely at odds with the norm: […] ”his antediluvian gym shoes, his torn blue overalls and his village idiot’s hairstyle were an offence to the cultured eye.” (p.21) People frequently laugh at him or treat him with condescension.
His friends’ family background
While still at school, Fred and his friends, Annette Schöller and Nickel, dream of a better, a more exciting life than is available in their small home town of Dieburg, and they want to emigrate to Canada. To quickly get the necessary money for this, they hatch a plan to rob a local bank. The robbery is a success, since they manage to get the money and escape, but Fred makes a stupid mistake and is later caught by the police. He refuses to give the names of his two friends to the police and is incarcerated for four years.
After Fred has waited in vain for his friends to pick him up from prison, he first tries to find them in Dieburg, then Berlin. Fred feels closer to Annette and knows her parents well. Thus, he starts his search by going to her parent’s house. Annette comes from a middle-class family. Her father is the vice principal of the local grammar school. The front garden of their house indicates that Annette’s family is different from most people in the small town: “The garden was still a sort of Mediterranean oasis in comparison to its meticulously laid-out neighbours with their beds of pansies and fir trees. At the Schöllers’ house the garden hadn’t been mown, shrubs and flowers mingled in wild confusion, and sage and rosemary grew in brown earthenware pots.” (p. 25) The interior of the house is decorated in a modern, almost Scandinavian style: “[…] practical bright wooden furniture, orange lampshades, tapestries in woodland colours and a poster promoting understanding between peoples.” (p. 27) There’s also a(n ironic) reference to education: … “a plaster head of Mr. Schöller was resplendent. An artist friend had given them the sculpture. It gave him the air of a Greek philosopher.” (p. 27)
When Fred asks for Annette’s current address, her father refuses to give it to him and wants him to leave. The distrust and dislike between the classes is neatly shown in the relationships between the Hoffmanns and Schöllers. Fred’s father didn’t like the Schöller’s and Annette’s father doesn’t think much of Fred. (2) He accuses Fred of having been a bad influence on his daughter. “You got her mixed up in your dirty business and used her.” (p.30) Schöller is referring to the bank robbery the three friends did together. He – much like Annette herself (3) – is conveniently forgetting that his daughter lives off the stolen money in Berlin and uses it to finance unpromising art films. Annette can only afford to live the life she’s living, because of the robbery, but she feels no obligation to Fred whatsoever. As a representative of the middle class, Annette lacks all empathy with someone like Fred and uses him for her own benefit.
Nickel’s parents are the incarnation of the German petit bourgeoisie. “Nickel’s father owned a small hardware store and had read little in his life apart from screw diameters and saw blade sizes. He was suspicious of anything that didn’t have to do with building shelves or putting up hooks and his head seemed to serve merely for putting pencils behind his ear. […] His wife ran the household […] and reminded her husband on a daily basis not to be too generous, too gullible – which was about as necessary as insisting that someone with a club foot should limp.” (p. 99) As a teenager Nickel rebels against his parents as much as he can. During the four years of Fred’s incarceration, however, Nickel has started a family, bought a house from his gains of the robbery and is aiming for a career in academia.
While the dream of emigrating to Canada got Fred through prison, neither Nickel nor Annette intend to go there now, never mind emigrate. While Nickel shows some solidarity with Fred (he’s invested the money for him and later pays him out), the friendship soon proves untenable. Disappointed with his friends, Fred threatens Nickel in order to get his share of the money in the way he wants it (all in one rather than in monthly dividends). Nickel does as he says, but after Nickel has paid Fred out, he no longer wants anything to do with him either.
Unlike Annette, Nickel doesn’t fritter away his gains from the robbery. He is ambitious and wants to work his way up. He uses the money to get the education his parents didn’t have and invests in a middle-class dream of a happy life. Nickel wants to help Fred, but soon gives up on him.
Social differences in Berlin
Once Fred gets to Berlin he books a cheap room in the aptly named “ otel Lu k”: “The neon letters shone dimly above a shattered glass door. Behind it, a dark stairway led to the first floor. […] A lone window provided light. There would normally have been four, but three had been boarded up. […] a frayed red carpet ran up the stairs and bits of the banisters were missing. […] The room smelt of mothballs and old upholstery. […] Almost everything in the room was brown: the curtains, the furniture, the carpet, the bedclothes; only the walls were grey and the lampshades pink.” (p. 49) Fred opens the window. There’s an office building on the other side where “Permed women with padded shoulders sat among the IKEA furniture with rubber plants.” (p. 47) The hotel seems like a big city version of his home in Dieburg.
As can be seen from the following, Arjouni likes to contrast rich and poor. While exploring the city, Fred walks through Kreuzberg. Kreuzberg is a large well-known quarter in Berlin. Until 1993 Kreuzberg was famously divided into two different postcode areas. One area was cheap and run down, the other arty and gentrified. The reader experiences both through Fred’s eyes as he wanders through the streets looking for Annette’s house. At first, he notices that “the houses and streets were decaying, the pubs emitted a harsh stench of fags, beer and rancid fat, and old women wandered round with handcarts full of firewood.” To Fred’s astonishment some of the locals wear poverty like a badge of honour […] ”they [young beggars with dogs] seemed proud, as if their poverty was some kind of rare craft.” But “The nearer he got to Annette’s address, the smarter the houses became, the cleaner and leafier the streets. Now the pedestrians looked like students or pianists, and the pubs smelt of food.” (p. 53)
Fred later tries to meet Annette in the fancy restaurant Le Parisien whose main clientele are “film directors, gallery owners, film producers, publishers, architects, lawyers, actors. In Le Parisien you ate to meet people.” (p. 157) Fred can’t read the menu as it is in French. He doesn’t want to ask the waiter for help and decides to order spaghetti with tomato sauce. The dish is not on the menu and the waiter is so put out that he would like to throw Fred out right away. Since Fred looks to the staff like a “construction worker – he’s just waiting to smash up the joint”, they get him spaghetti from the pizzeria round the corner. When the plate of spaghetti arrives, Fred is delighted, because they smell exactly as they did in the pizzeria in Dieburg: “As if he were suddenly sitting with Annette and Nickel in the little room with football photos and string of garlic on the wall, doing their homework over pizza bread and Chianti. Mietta on the jukebox, the owner giving them coffee on the house, the smell of tomatoes cooking.” (p. 159) The scene in Dieburg couldn’t be more different from Le Parisien with its “counter of dark, polished wood with gleaming brass fittings and silver taps, the semicircular glass lamps on the walls, which bathed everything in soft yellow light, the silver ashtrays and candlesticks, the dark red leather, the antique sign for the toilet, the silk curtain.” (p. 158) After Fred has finished his meal, the waiter tries to get rid of him by saying that the table is reserved. When Fred protests and wants to sit at the bar until Annette arrives, he is quickly delegated to a bench beside the cloakroom. Fred concurs and while he is waiting there, customers heading for the toilets think he works as a toilet cleaner and leave tips for him.
The scene at Le Parisien shows that Fred’s appearance and behaviour mark him out as someone from the lower classes; and that upper and middle-class people tend to identify him immediately as not one of their own and treat him accordingly. (4) Fred usually refuses to be offended and deals with these situations in a pragmatic fashion. In this case, he simply collects the tips before he leaves the restaurant. Fred firmly believes that having large amounts of money like the gains from the robbery will make all the difference and allow him to lead the life of his dreams irrespective of what others think of him. His naïve dream is shattered completely by the end of the novel. Nonetheless, Fred still refuses to be a victim. He is a misfit who exposes the gaps in German society.
Summary
Arjouni works with contrasts in Magic Hoffmann: Dieburg – Berlin, rich – poor, educated – uneducated. However, neither end of the scale is depicted as more attractive than the other. German society is portrayed as deeply divided and the class divisions create a space where the political right begins to flourish. There are many scenes in the book that involve Neo-Nazis (4), both in (former) West and East Germany, in the countryside as well as in the city. Some Neo-Nazis are uneducated louts, others well-educated (pseudo) intellectuals. According to the novel, right wing ideology is present across the entire spectre of society, if more prevalent among the lower classes. Considering the huge social differences we are faced with now and the surge of right wing populism across Germany, Arjouni’s view of German society was astute and prescient.
- The text contains several quotes from the English translation (No Exit Press, 1998). The page numbers reference the English text.
- “He had never liked the boy, something that Fred only realised much later.” P. 29
- “Even the bank robbery […] seldom came up in her thoughts, and when it did, it was a foolish mistake that could have destroyed her life, and which it was better to forget. She was only dimly aware of the connection between this mistake and the money which she had paid for board and lodging to this day.” p. 63
- “’Fine,’ said the man giving a rubbery smile. ‘Well, Fred: we have a small problem here. I’d like to hear from you as an outsider your concept of German culture.’” p. 60)
- See for example, p. 38, p.70, p.184