Everyone knows what the path is.

But what is the goal?

In the marathon it is: the way.

To have flown, run, walked, dragged, causes pain.

And proud.

It leads to delirium and happiness.

It has been described hundreds, thousands of times, and every author who has won the great battle with distance, time and, above all, his mind and body, feels an urgency of his own to let the world participate in this experience.

Really true: a marathon text is definitely more charming than a finisher jersey.

Even if longer.

Michael Reinsch

Correspondent for sports in Berlin.

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The anthology “. . . on the last meters - moments of crossing the finish line ”from the arete publishing house gives fifty of these voices a forum, well: 48; two can express themselves twice. It is not uncommon for the authors to appear to have no other purpose than to share their exploits. The writer Günter Herburger, who died three years ago in Berlin and literally a forerunner of marathon literature, stands with a passage from his work "Lauf und Wahn" representative of the mixture of exuberance and weirdness, rousing enthusiasm and idiosyncratic worldview that this special Genre shapes: “My son, a multilingual auto mechanic with a high school diploma, escorted me to the marble entrance to the eyewear shop, where I could change. From the hypothalamus it rains in opiates, a feelingas if I were floating through several kingdoms, whose wafer-thin backdrops were repeated incessantly. (3:04:42) "

The triumph over the weaker self

Yes, the time must also be mentioned.

Stopping the clock is a goal of running.

But first and foremost, the texts deal with the transformation into an athlete, the metamorphosis into a good example for the rest of the world, which even a drug addict succeeds in here.

That leads, again and again, to triumph over one's weaker self.

If this happens to you, what should you do other than report it?

Manfred Steffny, writing runner and running reporter, introduced self-irony into the genre in 1993, where it has existed since then as a trace element and is reflected in figures like Achim Achilles; this is also represented in this volume. Steffny slipped into the role of the very first marathon runner who ran because he really had something to announce: the victory of the Athenians over the Persians in 490 BC. As Thersippo's messenger of victory, he stated: “But I was pretty exhausted because I had run the last few kilometers anaerobically, and sat down on the steps.” There was no talk of a fatal collapse, which has been erroneously passed down.

Instead of dying, the hero disappears with a young beauty who wiped the sweat from his forehead.

From his cloud, when he was finally no longer among the living 2400 years later, he watched his Greek compatriot Spiridon Louis at the Olympic gold medal in 1896. And the first running magazine in Germany, that of the publisher and editor-in-chief Steffny, was named after him.

"I'm not human, just a machine"

The heroes of the running boom, which was still in motion in the sixties and seventies, are represented, celebrities and stars from Alexander Weber to Werner Sonntag, the blind runner Marla Runyan and Kathrine Switzer, the 1967 first participant in the Boston -Marathons was - illegal and hostile.

Dieter Baumann, Volker Schlöndorff and Joschka Fischer.

The Green Foreign Minister is accompanied on his first marathon by a well-trained reporter who regularly has to assure his editors on the cell phone that Fischer has still not broken into.

And Haruki Murakami.

The novelist persuades himself to endure a hundred-kilometer run: “I'm not a person, just a machine.

That's why I don't feel anything at all.

Just move me forward. ”Until Waldemar Cierpinski and Heinz Florian Oertel, thanks to whom a generation born in 1976 with the name Waldemar goes through life.

Or runs.

One must not hide the fact that all the clichés are gathered: the wall that one seems to be running against.

The man with the hammer.

The endorphins.

The happiness hormones.

It is hard to believe how many inner bastards roam the world's running tracks.

The texts are shortened, the impression is condensed, the experience condensed. That is the achievement of the sports scientist and runner, the literary connoisseur and editor Detlef Kuhlmann. Last weekend he gathered some of his authors for the literature marathon in Berlin. Next Sunday, after a year of pandemic-related break, the largest marathon in Central Europe will take place again. 30,000 participants are expected, each of whom will have something to tell afterwards and many will have something to write about.

The collection features reports on Emil Zatopek's first Olympic victory, the 10,000 meters in London in 1948, and on the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila's first Olympic victory in the 1960 marathon in Rome. They are little ambers: impressions caught in the moment. No hint of the following achievements of the runner from Prague, who showed in his movements how strenuous running can be. No indication of his three Olympic victories in Helsinki in 1952. No indication of how he resisted the crackdown of the Prague Spring in 1968 with poise. No glimpse of the historical significance of the Bikila victory. He ran barefoot in front and, as we know, a continent followed him. For African runners, the journey is not the goal. But the goal.

Discussed book:

Kuhlmann, Detlef: “… on the last meters - moments of crossing the finish line.

An anthology ”.

Paperback, 220 pages, 20 euros, ISBN: 978-3-96423-058-4