Matthias Nawrat

Matthias Nawrat can well remember his childhood in Upper Silesia. He grew up with his brother, who was three years younger than him, on a prefab estate in the city of Opole. His mother worked as a sports teacher in the nearby school, his father was a lecturer in social psychology and a researcher at the university. Nawrat says: “I was a normal child in Polish Socialism. I watched Karate Kid in the school cinema, went to church, played war games with friends in the corridors of the apartments blocks and at some stage marvelled at the Commodore 64 belonging to one of my classmates.“ Nawrat remembers queues in front of the supermarkets and the Friday roll call in the school yard in which the same words were always used to praise the Party and the government. And although he always remembered the Poland of his childhood as being grey and sad, when he looks back his childhood also seems to him to have been full of magic: the trips to the wood or to the lake in Turawa, the cosy Christmas celebrations, the endless summer holidays on the Baltic Sea.

His parents, however, saw increasingly fewer prospects in their homeland. They suffered not just from the economic limitations, but also from the repressive atmosphere which turned many people into opportunists. The couple found the constant persecution and intimidation of the civilian opposition around the “Solidarność” strike movement particularly unpleasant. When they moved to Bamberg in 1989, the Nawrat family was unaware just how soon the system would collapse. Upon their arrival in Germany, they were classed as “displaced persons” because their father’s mother was half German and his aunt and his brother already lived in Frankenland.

Matthias Nawrat assumes that his biographical background is the reason why he has written about outsiders from the very start. He learnt German predominantly by reading and writing. But he first clearly felt the desire to be an author when he was studying biology. Matthias Nawrat chose a natural sciences degree because he believed that this would enable him to more deeply explore the living world. He was particularly interested in neurobiology. However, quantum physics, biochemistry and astronomy also seemed to him to be disciplines which would not only allow the phenomena in space and time to be better understood, but also that which lies outside of that: i.e. what the religions call God.

However, his hopes were dashed. He says: “Biology and the theory of evolution did not really help me to develop a deeper understanding in terms of the God question and I didn’t learn anything deeper about people either.” For Nawrat, what decides the humanity of the individual person is his inner world and the decisions he makes in interaction with his cultural historical situation. The novels of science fiction authors, such as Stanisław Lem and the Strugatzki brothers, formed the bridge for him between natural sciences and literature. That is why Nawrat’s first novel was a science fiction story entitled “Waldzone”. The story was about a wood in the future which inexplicably pushes humans to the poles of the planet. A group of scientists then break into its centre to find out what has happened. Unfortunately, the material which sounds interesting, was never published.

In 2009, Matthias Nawrat moved to Switzerland and began a degree at the Literature Institute in Biel. He published his first novel in 2012 with the Swiss publishing house ”Nagel & Kimche” entitled “Wir zwei allein”. The novel was about Benz, a strange young man who had broken off his studies, was delivering vegetables in Freiburg and fell in love with the fairy-like Theres. A critique in the Neue Züricher Zeitung attests to Nawrat having all the qualities necessary for a good author and praises his character development, dialogues and clever handling of different narrative levels. A review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sees the book predominantly as a “declaration of love for the Black Forest” in the tradition of romantic nature worship.

In the same year, at the invitation of Hildegard Keller, Matthias Nawrat took part in the 36th Festival of German Literature and won the Kelag Prize with an extract from his next project. The whole novel was published by Rowohlt in 2014 under the title “Unternehmer”. It is about the 13-year-old Lipa, who searches for reusable materials in the ruins of civilisation. The review in the Süddeutsche Zeitung talked of an outstanding novel about home and coming-of-age, the reviewer in the FAZ particularly praised the power of suggestion of the language. At the same time, it is noticeable that Nawrat changes his style from book to book. For example, in his picaresque novel “Die vielen Tode unseres Opas Jurek”, which was published in 2015, he adopts a tone which is quite different to that in his poetic dystopian predecessor. And “Der traurige Gast” (Rowohlt 2019) and “Reise nach Main” (Rowohlt 2021) also show new sides to the unusually prolific author.

On this, Nawrat says: “In the past, I really enjoyed playing with language. I thought that the poetic can be found in interaction with the linguistic form. Today, I’m more likely to find poetry in the real world and no longer in parallel worlds which have a very noticeable linguistic shift and are quirky.” For the future, Nawrat plans to adopt a distanced narrative mindset: less personal, more scientifically objective. He has just finished a volume of poems with the working title “Gebete für meine Vorfahren”, is writing a literary diary and regularly writes Essays. Nawrat does not know whether he will tackle a novel again any time soon. “A subject matter has to convince me that it can be told in this silly novel form. I would then take it on again, but reluctantly.”

As well as the outsider stories, the author’s themes include the relationship of humans to the “final things” in religion and the impacts of German and Russian colonial endeavours in Eastern and Southern Europe. But that does not make Nawrat a Zeitgeist author. “As an author, you have to find your own country”, he says. “It has its own laws. I’m not really interested in anyone who dabbles in current debates too much.”

Nawrat explains that as a native Pole he does not really have a role to play in the current migration discourse anyway. “As a Pole, you only have the small migration badge in Germany, the ‘seahorse’ for migration, so to speak.” In his opinion, Poland and other Eastern European countries should play a much more central role in the debate around German colonialism. In any case, he wishes that the Poles and Germans, who are neighbours after all, knew more about each other so that they could develop a more differentiated viewpoint. He would see this as a means for approaching each other on an equal footing and as a countermeasure for the moral superiority on both sides.

Matthias Nawrat travels to Poland five or six times a year, either alone or with his girlfriend. His grandmother, two uncles and an aunt still live there. He now has friends in towns, such as Warsaw and Wrocław, as well, where he also holds book readings. What he likes about the Poles is their humour, their defiant manner, which can be romantic as well, but then often very pragmatic too. He also likes the Polish intellect, which in Nawrat’s opinion, looks at people more holistically due to their greater proximity to religion. He also thinks that many people in Poland have a deeper understanding of freedom than people in the West as a result of their historical experience. He is amazed at the battle that many Poles wage against the current “dictocracy”.

What Nawrat values about Germany are the many traditions of thought of the Frankfurt School that have an ideological bias and which have shaped many of his friends. He also attests to the fact that many Germans have an attitude towards foreigners that is unique within Europe. Of course, there is xenophobia in Germany as well, but there is also extensive experience of accepting people from other countries, from which people in Poland could certainly learn. 

 

Anselm Neft, December 2021

 

The author on the Internet: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Nawrat