Billiards at Half-past Nine
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| Author | Heinrich Böll |
|---|---|
| Original title | Billard um halb zehn |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Penguin Books (Eng. trans.) |
| Released | 1959 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 280 pp (Eng. trans. paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-14-018724-3 (Eng. trans. paperback edition) |
Billiards at Half-past Nine was written in 1959 by Heinrich Böll. It reflects the opposition Böll, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, had to the period of Nazism as well as his aversion to war in general.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
The entirety of the novel takes place on the day of September 6, 1958 but the story stretches back to the turn of the century through the use of flashbacks and the retelling of memories of the characters. It follows the Faehmel family in post-Nazi Germany as well as their history during the First World War through the present day of 1958.
[edit] Plot summary
The novel begins with Robert Faehmel's secretary's description of Robert and the knowledge that something is out of the ordinary of her routine life. Robert is an architect who is meticulous in everything he does. An old school friend of Robert had shown up and Leonore, his secretary at the office, sent him to the Prince Heinrich Hotel where Robert always is from the hours of 9:30 to 11:30. This is to cause trouble for the entire Faehmel family, which includes three generations of architects: Heinrich Faehmel, his son Robert and Robert's son Joseph. Through the old bellhop at the Prince Heinrich, Jochen, the reader learns that it is a man named Nettlinger who wants to see Robert, but Jochen refuses to let the man into the billiards room to disturb his patron.
Upstairs, Robert is telling the young bellboy, Hugo about his life and we find out that Nettlinger used to be a Nazi policeman. Robert and his friend Schrella, both of whom were schoolmates with Nettlinger, had opposed the Nazis, refusing to take "the Host of the Beast," a reference both to the devil and the Nazis. Schrella had disappeared after being beaten by Nettlinger and their gym teacher, Old Wobbly, also a Nazi policeman.
Nettlinger and Old Wobbly, we find out, have not just beaten Schrella and Robert, but corrupted Robert's brother Otto. Heinrich Faehmel, who married Johanna Kilb, had four children, of which Robert is the only one alive, Otto dying last in 1942 at the Battle of Kiev. Johanna is now committed to a mental institution, going there after she tried to save some Jews from the cattle cars going to the extermination camps. It is now Heinrich's 80th birthday. Heinrich and Robert meet in a bar after going to visit Johanna, sitting down and talking for the first time in many years.
Meanwhile, Schrella has returned to Germany and talks with Nettlinger, who tries to make amends for his past life despite the fact that he has not really changed and remains an opportunist. Schrella goes visits his old home.
We meet Joseph Faehmel and his girlfriend Marianne. Joseph has just learned that Robert was the one who destroyed the beautiful Abbey his grandfather had built and this greatly upsets him. Marianne tells him the story of her own family: that her mother had been so brainwashed by the Nazis that she had tried to murder her children at the end of the war.
Johanna, who is still a hold of her wits as she ages, leaves the sanatorium with a pistol which she intends to use on Old Wobbly for his sins past. The entire family gathers in the Prince Heinrich Hotel for the birthday party and Johanna shoots at Old Wobbly, who is not killed. At the conclusion, Robert adopts the bellhop Hugo, and he and Joseph carry in the birthday cake which is shaped like Abbey. Heinrich slices it and hands the first piece to his son.
[edit] Characters in "Billiards at Half-past Nine"
- Robert Faehmel – an architect who opposed the Nazis but was in the army towards the end of World War II and demolished St. Anthony Abbey by the orders of a Nazi general
- Heinrich Faehmel – Robert's father who built St. Anthony Abbey and celebrates his 80th birthday
- Johanna Faehmel – Heinrich's wife, committed to a sanatorium in 1942 for trying to go into the freight cars with the Jews headed to the extermination camps
- Joseph Faehmel – Robert's son, also an architect who is helping to rebuild St. Anthony Abbey
- Ruth Faehmel – Robert's daughter
- Schrella – Robert's school friend who opposed the Nazis and disappeared in 1936, reappearing in 1958
- Nettlinger – Robert and Schrella's classmate and former Nazi policeman who has risen in status since the end of the war
- Hugo – the bellboy at the Prince Heinrich Hotel who is at the end adopted by Robert
- "Old Wobbly" Vacano – former Nazi policeman who was Robert and Schrella's gym teacher
- Marianne Schmitz – Joseph's fiancée whose Nazi-indoctrinated mother tried to kill at a young age
- Heinrich Faehmel, Jr. – Heinrich's first son who died at seven with love for the Kaiser
- Otto Faehmel – Heinrich's second son who was brainwashed by the Nazis and was killed at Kiev
- Ferdi Progulske – Robert and Schrella's schoolmate who was executed by the Nazis after trying unsuccessfully to assassinate Vacano.
- Jochen Kuhlgamme – the old bellhop at the Prince Heinrich
- Edith Schrella – Schrella's sister who was killed by shrapnel in the World War II
[edit] Form and structure
The majority of the story does not take place in the present, but rather we learn most of the plot through the use of flashbacks, characters remembering something from their past or relating a story from their life to another person. This complex plot structure allows the characters to be more fully explored as things do not simply happen to them, but are built upon and remembered in a certain way. Each character's story is given depth through the memories as their emotion comes through strongly as they remember events from years past. They, as well as the reader, know the significance of these events in their lives at the moment and thus can more accurately relay them.
The effect of their actions is readily seen by the reader when most everything that actually happens in the novel has actually already happened in the characters' pasts. The connections between the different family members is also very strong because of the flashbacks and retellings. We do not simply hear about Heinrich, then Roberts and finally Joseph for instance, instead their stories are one, interwoven between each other until their story becomes the same. This is important reflection of what happens in the story as they all are linked to St. Anthony Abbey and to the wars and strife around them.
[edit] Point of view
The point of view of the novel is very important and the rotating first person perspective gives the story its deep insight. Fully eleven different characters provide a first person perspective in the novel and each chapter switches the point of view. The first is told by Robert's secretary, Leonore, the second by the old bellhop Jochen, the third by Robert, the fourth by Heinrich, the fifth his wife Johanna, the sixth by Robert again, the seventh by both Schrella and Nettlinger, the eighth by Joseph Faehmel and his fiancée Marianne, the ninth by Schrella, the tenth by both Robert and his daughter Ruth, the eleventh is again told from the perspective of Johanna, the twelfth and thirteenth by nearly every different character in the story. Some of these chapters are told in first person and others by third person omniscient and specifically follow the thoughts of a certain character.
Böll's decision to have so many different narrators greatly affects the book. In the beginning, we first meet Robert through his secretary and then old Jochen; it is not until the third chapter when we actually become face to face with the protagonist. We meet Heinrich Faehmel in the first chapter, but only through the eyes of Leonore, the secretary. Our connection to characters is constantly being filtered by the narrator at the time. Though this could have the possibility of being subjective to the point of unreliability, the many points of view instead enhance the story. In some ways, the subjective retellings could be a reflection on the world the Faehmel family lived in: of their government and the Nazis trying to brainwash their country and its people.
In the story, however, the perspectives presented offer many different views of the characters. The relationship between father and son, husband and wife, friend and schoolmate and dissenter and blind-follower is not simply discussed but with the many different perspectives, given full access to. Through his father we see Robert, through Robert we see Schrella and through Schrella, Nettlinger. Everyone is described by not simply one narrator, but we are able to see the different sides and histories of each character.
[edit] Major themes
Böll was an impassioned pacifist and it comes as no surprise that his themes in Billiards at Half-past Nine all revolved around the idea of the stupidity of war. The two world wars that the characters in the book live through, and fight through, are never projected in a positive light but instead show the insanity of war. It affects the different characters in different ways and it is through their different stories that Böll reveals that the war was not simply useless, but destructive to the country, the society and to all those involved.
Robert´s role in World War II is the main story the theme revolves around. He was in school with Schrella when his friend and he first swore "never to put the Host of the Beast our lips," (p. 42), a reference to the idea of supporting the ideals and acts of the Nazis. This is also an allusion to the host of the lamb, which refers to the Christian idea that Jesus, as the lamb, sacrificed himself for mankind. The Host of the Beast then, would be the opposite, that is to say to worship Satan. Schrella invited him to join his small group of dissenters and both were beaten and whipped by Nettlinger, Old Wobbly and the police. Both of them also disappeared for a periods of time to save themselves. Later, however, Robert is required to join the army, and becomes a demolition expert, destroying buildings bridges and everything in the path of the German Army. It is in this position, under the command of a crazy German general, that he carries out the order to destroy St. Anthony Abbey which his father had built. He knows it is senseless but carries out the order nevertheless. The worthless destruction of the Abbey is symbolic of the uselessness of the war Germany fought and of war in general.
Robert's mother also refused to conform to the Nazis and was put into a sanatorium because she tried to get in the cattle cars with the Jews going off to the extermination camps. During the First World War, her sentiments were no different. She had said what Heinrich felt at the time, but had been too afraid to voice. At an officer's party "she said it out loud: 'That fool of a Kaiser.,' " (p. 82). She was put on military tribunal, but Heinrich successfully defended her saying that she was " 'pregnant, gentlemen, in two months she'll be having it./ Lost two brothers, Captain Kilb of the Horse Guards and Cadet Kilb, both killed on the same day. A little daughter too, lost her in 1909,' " (p. 83). He pled her insanity, but the irony was not lost on him. Heinrich told himself: "All along I knew I should have been saying, 'I agree with my wife, absolutely.' I knew that irony wasn't enough, and never would be," (p.83). Though it is his wife who is eventually certified crazy, it is the war which is insane in its very nature.
The stories of many of the other characters also culminate into a renouncement of war. Joseph's fiancée Marianne was a child during the waning years of the Second World War. He father was in the military and her mother was a nurse. When they saw that Germany was about to fall to the Allies however, they were so indoctrinated by the Nazi propaganda that they decided it was better to die for their dying cause than to live in an occupied Germany. Her father "fired a bullet into his mouth," (p. 204) and died in front of Marianne. Her mother put a rope around Marianne's younger brother's neck and hung him from the doorway. Marianne was next, but the act was interrupted and she survived. That a war would cause a mother to do such a thing is a point that is gotten across over and over in the novel as the German generals are all crazy, the policemen all unnaturally cruel and all the Faehmels steadfast in their resistance to the ideas of war.
[edit] Allusions/references to actual history, geography and current science
In the flashbacks and retellings, the setting shifts around a lot, but the majority of the plot takes place in the city of Cologne, Germany. This is a direct reflection on Böll's ideology. Not only was Böll born in Cologne, but saw it taken over by the Nazis as well as the bombing of the entire city by the Allies towards the end of the war. Cologne was a cultural capital of Germany and the bombing not only destroyed the entire city, but cost 20,000 civilians their lives.
Within the city, much of the action takes place in the Prince Heinrich Hotel, where Robert plays billiards every weekday. The Hotel, and more specifically the billiards room, is a place where Robert focuses his routine around. After the unsettling stupidity of the war, Robert relishes his routine, habits he needs to make his life ordered again. He doesn't even really play billiards; "for some time now he had given up playing according to the rules, trying for runs, racking up points," (p. 31). For Robert, it's not about winning or losing, it's the physics of the game, of the action and reaction and the laws of science that stay constant no matter what. "Energy of the blow imparted to the ball by cue, plus a little friction, question of degree…and behold, impulse was converted into momentary figures," (p. 31) as the balls bounce off of each other. In the billiards room, Robert is able to do everything precisely how he wants in, in his ordered fashion, contrasting to the world outside the hotel where Robert had to deal with the unpredictable stupidity of war. Even when he was in the war, he reduced his demolitions to stress and give. "He's never been interested in the creative side of architecture," Joseph observes about his father. "Only in the formulas," (p. 192). Robert thus goes to the Hotel on his precise schedule to play a game of scientific certainty as he tries to escape from the memories of war and regain some sort of certainty in his life.
St. Anthony Abbey, though not a place where much of the plot takes place, is a setting that is pivotal in the Faehmel family. Heinrich Faehmel built it as a budding young architect. In fact, it was his first commission when he entered the design against other much-more well-known architects and won. Many years later, in the waning days of World War II, his son Robert demolished the Abbey. He was in the German Army under the command of a general, he called "off his rocker, and the only idea in his one-track mind was 'field of fire,' " (p. 63) the idea of destroying everything in your path. In this case, the Abbey "lay exactly between two armies, one German, the other American," (p.63). Robert did not want to destroy the Abbey, he said that the German army needed a filed of fire "like a hole in the head," but he destroyed it all the same, "just three days before the war ended," (p. 63). Finally, Robert's son Joseph is helping to rebuild the Abbey and though he really does not want to be an architect, the Abbey is what ties the family together. He, like his grandfather, understands the uselessness of blowing up the Abbey. Heinrich had "walked through the rubble of the Abbey…mumbling what the peasants were mumbling, what Grandmother had always muttered in the air-raid shelter, whywhywhy," (p. 201). In the very end of the novel, at Heinrich's birthday party, there is a model of St. Anthony's made from cake. Joseph, and Robert's adopted son Hugo, bring the cake in and then Heinrich "cut off the spire of the Abbey first, and passed the plate to Robert," (p. 280). They have reconciled and their family history has become emblematic of Germany's history in the setting of St. Anthony Abbey.
[edit] Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
Billiards at Half-past Nine was made into a film in 1965. It was entitled Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht (Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules) and was directed by Jean-Marie Straub.
