The Clown by Heinrich Böll

First published:Ansichten eines Clowns, 1963 (English translation, 1965)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: 1945-1960

Locale: Bonn, Germany

Principal characters

• Hans Schnier, the protagonist, a professional clown
• Leo Schnier, his brother
• Henrietta Schnier, his dead sister
• Dr. and Mrs. Schnier, his parents
• Marie Derkum, his former lover
• Monika Silvs, ,
• Kinkel, ,
• Sommerwild, and
• Heribert Züpfner, members of a Catholic group

The Story:

Hans Schnier, a professional clown, returns to Bonn, his hometown, after he injures his knee performing his act while drunk. When Schnier arrives in Bonn, he has little money (his last employer refused to pay his full fee), no savings, and little hope of future work. Only weeks before this injury, Schnier was a highly paid, well-regarded performer earning enough to live in luxury hotels with Marie Derkum, his lover and companion. When Marie leaves him to marry Heribert Züpfner, a Catholic official and a member of a religious group to which Marie belongs, Schnier ceases to care about the quality of his work as a clown. He stops practicing and starts to drink more, which causes his performances to decline rapidly.

From his Bonn apartment, Schnier calls friends and family members, hoping for monetary and emotional support. However, each of his actions, even his conversations, triggers painful memories. At first these flashbacks are brief recollections of Marie and her group of progressive Catholics, but the reveries increase in length. In one of his early flashbacks, Schnier remembers his sister affectionately; she often acted unconventionally, saying and doing what she felt. With her parents’ encouragement, especially that of her mother, this sister was sent on antiaircraft duty in February, 1945, on a mission that killed her. Schnier blames his mother’s nationalistic fervor for his sister’s death, and when he calls his mother, her official tone and her greeting phrase—“Executive Committee of the Societies for the Reconciliation of Racial Differences”—angers Schnier and reminds him of his mother’s zeal when sending her daughter off to save German soil from “Jewish Yankees.” Although Schnier is calling his mother to ask for her support, he cruelly answers her greeting by saying, “I am a delegate of the Executive Committee of Jewish Yankees, just passing through—may I please speak to your daughter?” Mrs. Schnier is momentarily hurt, but she recovers quickly and rebuffs her son with her severe, dogmatic manner.

After the conversation with his mother, Schnier thinks of Marie, and that triggers the memory of an event that occurred six years earlier and resulted in the consummation of their relationship. Hans was twenty-one and Marie nineteen when he went boldly to her room and slept with her. After this, Marie dropped out of school, and Schnier left his family to begin his career as a clown, but his career developed slowly and the two barely earned enough money to survive. They both wanted children, but Marie had a number of miscarriages. The final one occurred just before she left. Schnier’s memories of his life with Marie were occasionally interrupted by speculations about Marie’s present relationship with Züpfner, a relationship Schnier considered adulterous even though Marie and Züpfner are married.

Schnier calls other friends and relatives and holds unpleasant conversations with each. Although he wants money and psychological support from them, his manner ensures that even those who can help him do not. When he talks to Kinkel, a respected Catholic theologian and a member of the group to which Marie and Züpfner belong, Schnier blames Kinkel and the Catholic Church for his loss of Marie: “That much I have grasped of your metaphysics: What she is doing is fornication and adultery, and Prelate Sommerwild is acting the pimp.” Schnier attacks Kinkel throughout their conversation, and he asserts that his relationship with Marie constitutes a marriage that Kinkel and others destroyed.

While waiting for friends to return his telephone calls, Schnier bathes and reads newspapers. This, too, causes him to remember Marie and her Catholic group. He recalls that at first he had refused to marry Marie because she insisted on a Catholic marriage that required him to swear that their children would be raised in the Catholic faith. Later, when he was willing to agree to these conditions, Marie refused to marry him because she did not accept his conversion as sincere. Schnier believed that his union with Marie constituted a marriage, whether condoned by the government and the church or not, but Marie needed Schnier’s commitment to the church. When Schnier talks with Sommerwild, a Catholic priest who is a member of Marie’s group, Schnier accuses him of having furthered Marie’s marriage to Züpfner, claiming that the priest sent the couple to Rome “to make the whoring complete.”

Still waiting for phone calls, Schnier is surprised by the unexpected appearance of his father, a wealthy German capitalist. The visit is awkward and unpleasant for both, since they had not seen each other for several years and never had a meaningful conversation. The two discuss many painful issues, but Schnier junior believes his father is playing a role that he cannot abandon even to help his son. Schnier junior refers to the needless hardships the family suffered and the fact that, despite their wealth, they never had enough food. Schnier also remembers that his father twice during the war showed compassion: once when Schnier was accused of “defeatism” and once when two women were accused of fraternizing with the enemy. The father agrees to pay his son a monthly stipend, but Schnier knows he will never receive it.

After his father leaves, Schnier reads in the evening paper that Herbert Kalick received a federal cross of merit for “his services in spreading democratic ideas among the young.” This is the same Herbert Kalick who led the local Hitler youth group during World War II. It is Kalick who denounced Schnier as a “defeatist,” and he is also responsible for the death of a young boy whom Kalick forced to carry a loaded bazooka.

Schnier attempts many times to contact his brother, Leo, who is in a Catholic seminary. Leo, who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, renounced most worldly possessions and refuses to break the seminary’s rules to help his brother. Schnier contacts Monika Silvs, a sympathetic member of the Catholic group who helped him in the past, but Sommerwild instructed her to avoid Schnier. When it becomes clear that he will receive no help or support, Schnier decides to sing, play the guitar, and beg at the train station. One March evening, Schnier walks to the train station and sits on the steps, singing a song about “Poor Pope John.”

Bibliography

Beck, Evelyn T. “A Feminist Critique of Böll’s Ansichten eines Clowns.” University of Dayton Review 12 (Spring, 1976): 19-24. Beck analyzes Hans Schnier as a negative person who exploited Marie. Beck asserts that with Marie, Böll depicted a victim of male domination.

Böll, Heinrich. What’s to Become of the Boy? Or, Something to Do with Books. Translated by Leila Vennewitz. New York: Knopf, 1984. Written just before his death, this is Böll’s longest autobiographical work. In it, he reveals connections between his life and his novels.

Butler, Michael, ed. The Narrative Fiction of Heinrich Böll: Social Conscience and Literary Achievement. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Analyzes Böll’s recurring themes of love, morality, economic pressures, and organized religion and his emphasis on renewal and utopianism.

Conard, Robert C. Heinrich Böll. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1981. A good introduction to Böll’s life and works.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Understanding Heinrich Böll. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992. Includes a brief biography, a chronology, and a bibliography. In one chapter, Conard analyzes Böll’s major novels, among them The Clown.

Finlay, Frank. On the Rationality of Poetry: Heinrich Böll’s Aesthetic Thinking. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Discusses Böll’s writings on literature, in which he defends the “rationality of poetry” and expresses his philosophy of aesthetics.

Reid, James Henderson. Heinrich Böll: A German for His Time. Oxford, England: Oswald Wolff, 1988. Reid’s book explores the connections among Böll’s fiction, his life, and his times.

Tachibana, Reiko. Narrative as Counter-Memory: A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in Germany and Japan. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. Although this book does not discuss The Clown, it analyzes other fictional works in which Böll draws upon his personal memories to describe Germany’s defeat in World War II and its subsequent occupation and reconstruction.

Zachau, Reinhard K. Heinrich Böll: Forty Years of Criticism. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1994. Discusses critical approaches to Böll’s work and evaluates Böll’s influence on subsequent German literature.