Abstract

Ferdinand Timpe, the narrator of Ferdinand, der Mann mit dem freundlichen Herzen (1950), recounts his various experiences shortly after the Second World War, the diverse phases of his life during and before the war, and numerous stories about his friends and family. Ferdinand’s meandering stream of descriptions and reminiscences has no obvious sustaining theme or coordinated argument, and scholars have tended to concentrate on limited portions of his narrative. Thus one approach has been to highlight Ferdinand’s portrayals of female characters, assimilating them to the explorations of women’s gender roles in Irmgard Keun’s earlier works, while another approach has been to emphasize Ferdinand’s references to literature and politics, maintaining that they express profound doubts about Keun’s own capacity as an author, misgivings prompted by her deep distaste for post-Nazi society in western Germany. This article aims not to provide an exhaustive interpretation of Ferdinand, whether by reconciling the existing analyses or by identifying a new and comprehensive viewpoint, but to demonstrate that the novel’s account of Keun’s professional and political disillusionments after 1945 is considerably more nuanced than scholars have realized, because it attributes those disillusionments as much to Keun’s experiences during the Nazi era as to her experiences thereafter. This article will also suggest that in reviewing the several phases of Keun’s career since 1933, Ferdinand also offers her perspective on the public polemics about “innere und ausere Emigration,” which began in 1945. The titular figure gives the first chapter of his narrative the title “Ich schreibe eine Geschichte” (Keun, Ferdinand 5) and starts by explaining that although he has never written anything before, he has been asked to contribute a story to a new weekly magazine edited by an acquaintance called Heinrich. Ferdinand

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