On the stage of the theater and in the Film, Uwe Preuss plays mostly opaque characters. He embodies the characters, where you look at that you have experienced a lot of, you know, but not exactly what, because you don’t talk much. Whether as a corrupt police official in Dominik Graf’s “In face of the crime”, as the jovial head of an investigator team in the Rostock “Polizeiruf” or, most recently, as a mouth, lazy Chancellor’s spouse in the ARD Film “Driven”, will always be disillusioned, locked view, the audience remains hanging. A contradictory Aura surrounds him: He doesn’t want to like, but just to look.
Uwe Ebbinghaus
editor in the features section.
F. A. Z.
Also, Uwe Preuss, personally, has experienced a lot. 1962 born in Dresden, as the son of a project engineer, grew up, temporarily, in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, suggests he is unfit for the office work as a trained industrial clerk (“I Seem to stamp but now the five thousand that shit!”) – as a canteen Manager, a gravedigger and janitor until he discovered his passion for acting. This he is not allowed to engage in the GDR but, because he was denied the service of the weapon. As the dream bursts from the Theater, the way he wants to, only, can eventually leave the country in 1985 after a nerve-wracking stalemate in the West, where he is a student but would still like to watch the game. In the nineties he is engaged by Heiner Müller and the Berliner Ensemble.
Not less Preuss’ family story he told in the book “stone’s throw” in the fifteen autobiographical chapters, and a grandfather stands out, which crashed after four marriages and ten Appointed by a paddle-steamer in the river Elbe is moving. But a self-runner is the story of this family is not, it is not spectacular enough, a lot of you have read something similar already. But already on the first pages, it concludes that there is no more TV inaugural celebrity with the attitude, a professional powers of observation, enabling you to literary Writing. Preuss knows he needs to offer more. Boldly he plays out with the narrative perspective and traced the side of it, a kind of Experiment, which he summarised on the back cover of the book in the scarce words: “Everything that is Superfluous. No one wants to get everything explained. Also, sensuality is not.“
It is the same sound. We follow the fast-paced Bicycle ride of a fifteen-year-olds by a half-Dresden to grandma Gretel in the Prague street. It “smells of Sunday roast and a floor wax”, and the reader is set back with short sentences, which sometimes remind a little bit of lyrics of the Ideal in the GDR of the year in 1979. In a chest of drawers, the young narrator finds the glass eye of his grandfather, which raises only questions as to the reliability of the traditional family history, but also, after a time jump to the year 1984, at the end of the first Chapter, with the stunner into the river is thrown. A psychologizing explanation, there is not, however, a wide narrative space is opened.
In a special way touching
The author’s father follows the tragic, worsening the life of the airhead are liable to large-scale recalls, magically-realistically tuned to the years of Childhood in São Paulo, whose climax is reached in a jump from the ten meter Board, explaining at the same time, the documentary photo on the cover image. The first love, the first theatrical performance, the first apartment, a mother’s day without mother in the year 2009, the escape to the West, as well as a breathtaking return to Dresden, just to celebrate with a friend at the art school carnival – all this is worn very entertaining, in disregard of the chronology together.
But you miss, because of the far-reaching renunciation of reflection and psychology occasionally a recognisable dramaturgy, orientation, voltage. This is a Problem that you know from the Nouveau Roman, which is also consistently on sensuality, but always in a effort to dispel the impression of a certain randomness in Detail.
