On the Rope by Erich Hackl

Abstract

Reviewed by: On the Rope by Erich Hackl Viktoria Pötzl Erich Hackl, On the Rope. Translated by Stephen Brown. London: Haus Publishing, 2020. 180 pp. Erich Hackl was one of the first authors I ever saw give a reading. I was seventeen years old when he visited my high school. His book Auroras Anlaß was part of our curriculum. My school was not too far from Braunau am Inn, in Ried im Innkreis, where neo-Nazi youth and lefties (referred to as Zecken by the neo-Nazis) traded punches, and where Jörg Haider found a broad audience for his Aschermittwoch speeches. It was in this peculiar context that I listened to Erich Hackl give a reading from one of my favorite books in the late 1990s. At that time, I was as impressed as a teenager could get. I loved the author's poignant language and his choice of topics—especially since his [End Page 176] texts spoke to the budding feminist in me. Hackl's texts did not only inform my love for reading, they also offered a refreshingly rare female perspective—refreshing, at least, in the late '90s in rural Upper Austria. As I write these lines, and while I am thinking about what it means to offer female perspectives as a male author, Gayatri Spivak comes to mind, in particular her reflections on representation. Spivak discriminates between the act of speaking for someone (that is, to represent, vertreten) and that of speaking as someone (to portray, darstellen). However, Hackl handles the thorny issue of representation with utmost care, dedication, and love, which has the effect of making On the Rope an edifying read. The story's focus on the heroism of the three main protagonists, Reinhold Duschka, Regina Steinig, and Lucia Heilman, leaves little room for the perpetrators, and as a result it negates a voyeuristic reading. In Hackl's On the Rope, the narrator mostly speaks for Lucia, a Jewish girl, who survived the Shoah while in hiding with her mother Regina in Vienna. The narrator changes from the omniscient narrative voice to Lucia's own voice, allowing for a multilayered perspective. It is a story filled with compassion, bravery, and heroism and at the same time a story about the most horrible atrocity committed by millions, which ultimately ended in the killing of millions. On the Rope is based on a true story. It is a story about motherhood, friendship, resilience, survival, and solidarity. Reinhold works to save the lives of two Jewish women, Regina and Lucia, by hiding them in his workshop and providing them with food, care, and work. The book's first and main part narrates the story of our two female heroines. In the second, shorter section, we learn more about Reinhold from various perspectives, thus giving us a complex portrayal of a flawed hero, whose biography leaves us with many questions. It is exactly here that the book and the author's language show their strengths: a constant change of perspective and the bravery to write the unknown, to address gaps, to narrate various versions of one event. Here, faulty memories are not a deficiency but the very fabric from which life stories are made. Hackl's mastery in using the uncertain to his advantage culminates in offering a magnitude of perspectives, especially while creating wholesome characters about whom more is unknown than known. Though the plot is told in a linear way, the story itself questions the very concept of linearity, allowing for not only a single story but a multiplicity of versions that could have happened all at the same time, embracing the gaps, the unknown, as not everything needs to be told. It doesn't matter when exactly events took place [End Page 177] and how many people were involved; facts and numbers are just that. On the Rope transgresses facts and numbers by simply providing us with a multitude of narratives without falling into the trap of identifying the "singular," "authentic" version or truth—as there cannot be one. On the Rope is not a story about another white man saving Jewish women, who are portrayed as mere victims; the story's focus lies...