ABSTRACT
Delius lived during the years 1963-78 mainly in West Berlin and his work of the period reflects and propagates the many causes associated with the student movement and the APO (auβerparlamentarische Opposition). He first became known as the author of laconic and reflective poems in the manner of Brecht (Kerbholz (1965), Wenn wir bei rot (1965), Ein Bankier auf der Flucht (1975), Die unsichtbaren Blitze (1981)) and of documentary satires (Wir Unternehmer (1966), Einige Argumente zur Verteidigung der Gemüsefresser (1985)), of which the most notorious, Unsere Siemens-Welt (1972), led to a libel action. His awareness of the forces at work in contemporary society and of how their interaction affects individual lives underlies all his novels. Ein Held der inneren Sicherheit (1981) is a fictional projection of the situation created by the murder in 1977 by the Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe of Hans-Martin Schleyer, chief of the West German directors’ organization; it centres on the assistant of an equivalent figure who, after unleashing a publicity campaign for the interests represented by his dead superior, experiences a crisis of loyalty which is only overcome by his transfer to another position. In Adenauerplatz (1984) a security guard employed to watch over a shopping and business complex in an anonymous German city is forced to confront the contradictions of his position as a refugee from Chile after the fall of Allende when he is drawn into collusion with a plot by friends to burgle an international wheeler-dealer with a stake in the political status quo in South America; having become aware of the ramifications of Third World exploitation he decides to abandon his job and return to Chile. Mogadischu Fensterplatz (1987) is a fictional treatment from the perspective of an ordinary passenger of the hijack carried out by members of the Baader-Meinhof group in Somalia in 1977 and reflects a deepening concern with Third World topics evident also in the work of Born and Timm. Die Birnen von Ribbeck (1991), a story consisting of a single sentence seventy pages long, describes the impact of the opening of the Wall on a farm in provincial GDR made famous by a ballad of Fontane. Himmelfahrt eines Staatsfeindes (1992) completes, after the novels of 1981 and 1987, a trilogy on ‘the German autumn’ of 1977, concentrating by means of a plot with surreal elements on the similarities and differences which emerge from the duel between a leading terrorist and the chief of the German CID. Der Sonntag, an dem ich Weltmeister wurde (1994) presents via a memory of Germany’s football victory over Hungary in the 1954 World Cup an account of a crisis in a father-son relationship. In Der Spaziergang von Rostock nach Syrakus (1995) a GDR citizen succeeds in leaving the GDR for Italy before the Wende, only to return voluntarily and report on his experiences to the Stasi.
