At first glance, the Reeperbahn in Hamburg does not do much - uneven development, vacancy, grubbings, traffic on four lanes. Even at second glance, at night, it's hardly impressive. After all, the desolation is then bathed in merciful neon light, and who has a few per thousand in the blood, may imagine to live for a few hours wild and dangerous.
There is still - at least - a third view of St. Pauli, a quarter of whose inhabitants may be, how and what they want to be. In the artist are at home and writers and transsexuals and where the pastor ever turned the church for months to the refugee home.
But most of all, St. Pauli is a myth, and to keep it that way, a marketing machine is trying to keep it alive. A bit of red-light nostalgia, a bit cheeky, a bit free. One who has been completely unsuspicious of being part of this Disneyfication is the musician, writer and restaurateur Rocko Schamoni. "Everything that is stupid and crap", it would take place on St. Pauli, he once proclaimed on the occasion of the Schlagermoves. In general, he has a lot to say to the quarter, and most of the time it is the right one.
Touristic Exposure
The expectations were accordingly high when it became known that Schamoni is writing a novel about the St. Pauli of the early sixties. A time in which prostitution was further professionalized and beat music gave Hamburg and the world a new beat. This stuff and this author, nothing could go wrong. But it was.
Schamoni tells a rising story in "Große Freiheit". From the gutter to the stars and starlets of the early sixties. Hamburg, Reeperbahn, St. Pauli. The hookers and the Loddel, the bands and the fans. And right in the middle of it all, a guy who just does not seem to fit into this "huge deprecating machine" that simulates glamor and demonstrates rigor in order to get the money out of the purses as effectively as possible.
Dorle Bahlburg
Rocko Schamoni
Wolfgang "Wolli" Köhler is called his hero, and it has actually existed. Shamoni portrays him as a restless seeker who was at the circus, as a miner in mining, vopo and allegedly even a spy. He reads Camus and Genet. And at some point he lands on St. Pauli, beating himself like that, first as a small dealer, Koberer, bartender, later than, as it is in the guidebook exposition to "Great Freedom" suspiciously glorifying, "most extraordinary Puffboss St. Paulis".
Köhler's life is about freedom and self-determination, about rebellion and maladjustment - this has made Schamoni the fascination, and all these terms are actually read again and again in this novel, only - you can not feel them. This may be due to the monotony of Schamoni's style, a good re-narration in monotone syntax, which does not gain in terms of its rapidity and urgency through the chosen temporal form, the present tense.
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The novel lacks an attitude, the narrator misses any distance to his hero. Schamoni has repeatedly hit Köhler, who died impoverished in 2017, during the last years of his life. Anyone who knew Wolli, was "immediately expire his aura," Schamoni said in an interview. And in the word "expire" may be an answer to the question of why this novel has failed.
As authentic as the scenes in the Bavaria Studios
Many passages seem as if Schamoni simply wrote down what Köhler dictated to the microphone. Possibly, phrases such as "sometimes caresses, sometimes sexualities, but the pairings are more random" try to stay in the tune of time on the one hand, but to intrude a slight irony on the other, but actually they are: awkward and involuntarily funny ,
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Rocko Schamoni and the neighborhood: The Beatles, the Boxing Prince, the bookWhat also bothers you is the absence of a female perspective: women are mainly found in jewelry (and sometimes as dirt). That may correspond to the spirit of the early sixties, from a recent novel one expects more reflection.
Ultimately, all characters lack depth, shamoni hangs them with properties, but all characters remain one-dimensional, especially the celebrities, who appear here in a kind of number revue. In dire anticipation follows Beat on Bums, boxing legend Norbert Grupe aka Prince of Homburg on the Beatles, Kiez-mogul Willi Bartels on sex show pioneer René Durand. All are allowed to secrete a few stanzas before they disappear again in the fog of a glorious past.
Of course, Köhler also meets Hubert Fichte, the Hamburg writer who is still the most impressive chronicler of subcultural life in the city, with novels like "Die Palette". Fichte Köhler had made in his book published in 1978, "Wolli India driver", based on a series of interviews, made known only.
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Rocko Schamoni:
Lot of freedom
hanserblau Verlag; 288 pages; 20 Euros
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They all perform in a St. Pauli, the scenery remains. Anyone who saw Dieter Wedel's TV six-part "The King of St. Pauli" at the end of the nineties - for whom the neighborhood was rebuilt at the Munich Bavaria Studios - will have a rough idea of how little authentic the St. Pauli of the sixties is Shamoni works.
With "Great Freedom" he is not about to scratch the myth, the novel works in his nostalgic realism (including dutiful sex scenes and a lot of neighborhood dialect) as a legend amplifier and should provide in the offices of Hamburg Marketing for champagne mood. He is of a narrative and mental simplicity, which meets the level of provincial gazers who stand in front of the Herbertstraße and jingled joke about what may be hidden behind the entrance.
Rocko Schamoni, like his buddy, "Studio Braun" partner and "Golden Glove" author Heinz Strunk, has long been part of a recycling chain. A new book is almost inevitably followed by stage adaptation and film adaptation. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. And there's no reason to fear that Schamoni is now setting up his own little milking machine, with "Great Freedom - The Musical", "Great Freedom - A Walk on Wolli's Trail" and "Great Freedom - Pub and Souvenir Shop". It was announced, however, that the novel should receive several sequels. And that sounds like a threat.