Content
In the Congo
Urs Widmer:Im Kongo
Zürich: Diogenes Verlag, 1996
214 S.
ISBN 3-257-06116-1
Paperback edition: Diogenes Verlag, 1998
The novel begins and ends in the democratic republic of Congo, the former Zaire of Mobutu, the dictator. The main character, Kuno, sits in the african jungle where he intends to write down his life history on an old Laptop within 3 days and 3 nights. In the first part of the text, Kuno narrates his life as a nurse in an Aged-home in Zurich in which his father was surprisingly brought in one day, after his old warpistole fired at the Postman. In this Home Kuno's father meets his school-friend Fritz Berger, whom he thought to be lost long ago. The two disclosed to the amazed Kuno that they nearly worked together with the German National Socialist during the 2nd world war. The history of the two old men which recalls their past presents the second part of the text.
In the 3rd and last part of the novel Kuno himself finally travels back to the past. The Nazi-Sympathizer and brewery owner Anselm Schirmhahn sends him to Congo to look for Kuno's former friend Willy who is managing one of his brewery there and to whom he no longer has any contact. Willy is Kuno's friend, who had once disappeared with Kuno's teenage lover Sophie. Kuno had not seen him again since 37 years. He travels to Congo so as to find out why Willy no longer carries out his regular money transfer to Schirmhahn in Switzerland.
As Kuno finds both of them in Kisangani, he realises to his horrow that Willy as well as Sophie have become black in the the literary sense of the word. He stays a while with them and undergoes some joint adventures with Willy, one of which was a ritual Mask feast of mighty "Clan-Nobles" in the tropical forest of Congo - to which the head of important european firms are also taking part.
With his return to Switzerland, Kuno realises that he has equally become black. Because as an african in Switzerland he has a lot of problems, he decides to go back to Congo. Ironically he had previously won the affection of the beautiful Anna who is the chief nurse in the Aged-home in which he had earlier worked. As Kuno was still white she has always rejected him: "You can wait there until you are black!" (page 18). Now she falls in love with Kuno and confesses to him that she has always dreamt of Africa. The two then emigrate together to Congo, where she finds her private paradies and Kuno becomes a business partner in Willy's brewery.
Review
Urs Widmer: Im Kongo (In the Congo)
Above all the example of Schirmhahn's Brewery-imperium shows this continuation of colonial practices. The family sells beer to German as well as French colonialagents, collaborates with Hitler and Mobutu and therewith reflects Switzerland's share of responsibility to the crimes of both dictators - eventhough that country had no colonies and remained neutral in the 2nd world war. The Gold of the Jews who were murdered by Hitler as well as the Millions which the zairian dictator Mobutu squeezed from his country are lying in swiss accounts; contrarily, the refugees from former as well as present dictators are discriminated and deported to their countries of origin.
With his return from Congo Kuno experiences the racism in Switzerland. Through his engagement in the Schirmhahn brewery, he becomes an active agent of globalisation which contributes to the neo-colonial exploitation of Africa. As in Widmer's theaterpiece "Top Dogs" (1997) the globalisation appears as art of modern war, a logical continuation of earlier wars.
When the white figures in the novel become black, that is also an expression for the share of their responsibility, their becoming guilty. In Bachtnis' sense, these and other grotesque Exagerations also have a liberating function: The colonial hierarchy between black and white, as stated above all by Joseph Conrad's novel, is turned upside down and overcomed without difficulties. With Widmer, it is not the Africans who "develope" following the colonial political Ideal of an assimilation to europe. The superiority of the european model through a "reverse Assimilation" which extends from the learning of traditional rites to the change of skin colour becomes questionable.
Moreover this aesthetical Artistic mastery, which is often spoken of as Civilisation staleness in a literary sense in the european literature, serves as a yearning for an acculturation and intergration in foreign cultures, which often fails tragically. Also new examples like Gertraud Heise's journey report "Reise in die schwarze Haut" (1978) or Corinna Hofmann's novel "Die weisse Massai" (1998) cement colonial clichés and the presentation of unbridgeable differences between Africa and Europe.
Widmer's cites these clichés as well as the awareness of the shock of the "entirely different" which is also present in Joseph Conrad. The swiss author puts it however not at the end, but at the begining of his action in congo so as to solve it objectively. A second difference lies in the fact that the main character doesn't return to Europe. Kuno remains in Africa which, although considered a "lost continent", appears a possible place to become happy.
In this way another interesting reference to the reality in the relationships between North and South develops: Widmer's novel calls to mind that the international migration movements not only run unilaterally from south to north, but also go from north to south.
The novel is also in this sense a good example for Paul Michael Luetzeler's thesis that in the new german literature a postcolonial view has relieved the earlier colonial eurocentric view (Luetzeler 1997). He intends to overcome negative clichés and draws a realistic-critical image of the 3rd world.
