Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben der Gesine Cresspahl
Jahrestage. Aus dem Leben der Gesine Cresspahl, a four-volume novel by U. Johnson, the first three published 1970-3, vol. 4 in 1983. The novel covers a year, from August to December 1967 (vol. 1), from December 1967 to April 1968 (vol. 2), from April to June 1968 (vol. 3), and from June to 20 August 1968 (vol. 4). The central character, Gesine Cresspahl, appears briefly in Mutmaßungen über Jakob.
Gesine is an unmarried mother who, with her daughter Marie, born in 1957, lives in New York, working for an American firm. The novel uses a technique of montage that includes notes, jottings, newspaper cuttings, and recollections. Dialogue, soliloquy, descriptions of persons and scenes alternate with extracts from the New York Times, and in a series of flashbacks a chronicle of the times through which Gesine and Lisbet, her mother, and her father, a joiner, have lived, is unfolded.
Four main themes run through the work: firstly, the relationship of Gesine and her daughter to each other and to their American environment, which is foreign to Gesine, but home for her young daughter; secondly, the condition of the world with the war in Vietnam; thirdly, the racial problem of the USA, and the urban disintegration of New York. The fourth, and perhaps most important, theme is the history of Germany seen through the life of Cresspahl, Gesine's father, who married the local squire's daughter in Mecklenburg, and set up a business in England. Lisbet moved back to Germany when her child (Gesine) was due to be born in 1932, and Cresspahl followed her shortly afterwards. The years during the National Socialist regime bring the suicide of the pious Lisbet after the outrages against Jews in Kristallnacht (1938), and Cresspahl's years of widowhood. The British take Mecklenburg but withdraw, and Soviet occupation ensues. Cresspahl, appointed Bürgermeister of Jerichow by the British, is arrested and maltreated by the Russians. At the end of vol. 3 Gesine contemplates a journey to Czechoslovakia during the Czech ‘thaw’, and it is with the commencement of this journey and after the death of Dr Erichson has deprived her of the prospect of happiness and security, that vol. 4 ends. The ‘Last and Final’ section of the fourth volume, dated 20 August 1968, records her stop in Copenhagen, where she and Marie meet Dr Kliefoth, Gesine's old teacher in English and deportment. An octogenarian representing her Mecklenburg homeland, he has attended her father's funeral as a friend; Gesine now hands him her story and the three stroll for a while along the water's edge. The reunion of three generations affirms a natural order that contrasts with the volume's sharp focus on the disturbing political scene, a poignant aspect of which is the fate of children. On the final page, Johnson states the time during which he wrote the tetralogy: 29. January 1968, New York, NY-17. April 1983, Sheerness, Kent.
The work is clearly planned with the utmost care to produce a coherent point-counterpoint. It is written with discipline and precision, and gives a feeling of balance and fairness. Although only the modern USA and the years from 1936 to 1959 were experienced at first hand by Johnson, his re-creation of Germany in the earlier years is fully convincing. The restrained style is frequently ironic, but also has passages of atmospheric description. Jahrestage combines originality of structure with a high level of craftsmanship.
