On thinking about the power of utopia by Klaus Nilius
[This article published in Sept 2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.ossietzky.net/18-2020&textfile=5262.] The title of Uwe Timm's 1993 novel is a promise: "The discovery of the curry sausage". Almost like "The discovery of America". And where was the curry-sausage "discovered"? In Hamburg, of course. If the Berliners are now rebelling - and that's not true, after all, Berlin is the true birthplace of this culinary delicacy - then they should first prove that they can build an airfield before they are willing to believe that they can approach something as complicated as the creation of a curry-sausage. Written is how it was. In Hamburg, the snack bar operator Lena Brücke leased a sausage stand at Großneumarkt in 1945 after the end of the war. When ketchup bottles broke during a transport and the sauce mixed with curry powder - delicious! - the sales hit was born. That's how it was. And that's that. By the way, Timm's "racing pig Rudi Rüssel" confirms everything, and you can believe him confidently, since it was awarded the German Youth Literature Prize in 1990. Over one million copies have been sold so far. Uwe Timm, born in Hamburg on March 30, 1940, celebrated his 80th birthday half a year ago. Reason enough for the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch to present a volume of Timm's literary and essayistic reflections ("Der Verrückte in den Dünen"); and for Wallstein Verlag to invite literary scholars, authors, publicists and translators to study Uwe Timm's novels, novellas, stories, essays, poems, children's books and screenplays ("Wunschort und Widerstand"). To say it right away: the two books complement each other wonderfully. Leap in time back to 1919: After the assassination attempt on the first Minister President of the newly founded Bavarian Republic, Kurt Eisner of the USPD, the Bavarian soviet republic was proclaimed on April 7. Politicians, intellectuals, comrades-in-arms such as Ernst Niekisch, Ernst Toller, Erich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Eugen Leviné, Max Levien and Rudolf Egelhofer set the tone. And for seven days the entrepreneur, financial theorist and founder of the free economy doctrine Silvio Gesell was the people's representative for finances, ergo Minister of Finance, in the anarchist-revolutionary republic. After only four weeks, on May 2, the Free Corps associations and the Reichswehr put an end to the war. Prison sentences, death sentences or immediate execution followed. The Republic's defenders were mercilessly persecuted. Silvio Gesell was also arrested, charged with high treason, but acquitted by the summary court on the basis of his speech in self-defense. In 1924, Gesell again went to Argentina for several years, where he had stayed twice before.