Interview: "Are you done with the Ruhr area, Mr. Rothmann?"

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Ralf Rothmann © Franka Bruns / Suhrkamp Verlag

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Perhaps he is the best writer of contemporary German literature, at least its best stylist: Ralf Rothmann. A conversation about happiness and literature, the past and home.

The first sentence is known to be the hardest. At least for writers. Ralf Rothmann is one of the great masters of beginnings. "On the day I realized that there is nothing random anymore, my youth was over." So grand, nostalgic, and promising did "Stier" begin in 1991, his first novel. With "Stier," "Wäldernacht," or "Milch und Kohle," Ralf Rothmann, born in 1953 in Schleswig, has made the Ruhr area a place on the literary map like no other. Rothmann himself grew up in the surroundings of Oberhausen, attended elementary school, and trained as a mason. Afterwards, he worked various jobs as a driver, cook, printer, and nurse. But those who travel with his stories will quickly realize that the destination of the journey is neither food, Oberhausen, nor Berlin, but what the writer, who has lived in the capital since 1976, refers to as the "inner heart space."

Novels like "Hitze" and the love story "Feuer brennt nicht" are created about Berlin, before he looks back to the war years around 1945 with "Im Frühling sterben" and "Der Gott jenes Sommers." Ralf Rothmann is a master, especially of the short prose form, as his collection "Hotel der Schlaflosen" demonstrates.

Mr. Rothmann, can you explain why your books, in which so many grand life designs end small, make people so happy?

Ralf Rothmann:

Life designs, such a word. Can we really design our lives? Who are we anyway? Somewhere in one of my books, it says something to the effect of: Whatever we achieve, it can never be as perfect as what is intended for us... A sentence that is wiser than its author, it seems to me. And as for the longing ones: they may be laid to rest – but not the longing. The longing never. Perhaps the books make you happy for this reason?

"As soon as people become adults, they become ill. When dreams cease, trauma begins..." it says in "Stier". The disillusionment of young people plays a significant role especially in your Ruhr area novels. One might suspect that you are a mature writer in this sense?

Ralf Rothmann:

I believe the sky over my figures is indeed bluer than your question suggests. And anyway, describing the disillusionment of young people does not mean that one is disillusioned oneself; on the contrary. Fortunately, life is not a row house. "... take a sad song and make it better." I still believe in true love, in the power of beauty, and the possibility of human togetherness; I sometimes just become a bit forgetful regarding this belief. But then poetry helps me along, like the line from Octavio Paz that I so dearly love: "Yes, one should demand pears from the elm!"

The past, as it is said in "Stier", protects against the demands of the present. Is it nostalgia that drives your writing?

Ralf Rothmann:

Well, maybe sometimes... Before something experienced solidifies into experience, it takes time, at least for me. And experience is the essence of my sentences; it gives them tension and color. But I hope I do not idealize the past; I would take that badly. In fact, though, it is true that there is something like homesickness in the texts, in delicate vibrations. Yet I do not even know what I have this homesickness for. Certainly not for a place one can step onto.

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Rothmann Audio Walk in Oberhausen

It is a love of mutuality: between the siblings Beckmann and Ralf Rothmann. The writer, who rarely appears in public, has long granted Nils and Till Beckmann the use of his texts for their performance nights. A new project now mixes literature, spoken theater, nature, and sightseeing.

"The meaning of all songs can only be to praise," says one of your characters. Are "Stier", "Wäldernacht" and "Milch und Kohle" elegies or indeed hymns to the region depicted in them and the people living there?

Ralf Rothmann:

To be honest, the region has never seemed as noteworthy to me as it does to many readers. I grew up there, and since my novels are more or less autobiographically tinted, one or the other chimney might smoke between the lines. But that’s not important. The place of literature is not New York or Hanoi or Essen-Rüttenscheid. The essence of my books happens – hopefully! – in the inner heart of the reader. And that’s where I try to reach by simply speaking about my experiences – without hymnic or elegiac distortions.

Are you done with the Ruhr area?

Ralf Rothmann:

The Ruhr area is everywhere; even here in Berlin, they dig the ground away from under their feet every day.

The Berlin in your books does not differ much from the depictions of the Ruhr area. In fact, one does not necessarily get the feeling that the characters live in that city, which the prime-time series and trend magazines stage as the ever-moving capital of the 21st century. Do the stories worth telling take place beyond history?

Ralf Rothmann:

The trend-Berlin you are talking about is not history; it is the attempt to evade history. And that still takes place in the backyards, in the prefabricated apartments of welfare recipients, and in the despair of those who don’t know how to get through the next day. Literature that is worth mentioning tells of the suffering of people and thus awakens and maintains the ability to empathize, I believe. And only then is there also a blessing in it, then it will be inspired and not just made up.

You speak of "providence" and "blessing" – is there a religious underlying melody here?

Ralf Rothmann:

If you want to hear them... But religion is more of an event for the godless, isn't it?