Novel
The Hothouse
Das Treibhaus
Wolfgang Koeppen · 1953
Synopsis
Felix Keetenheuve, past forty, a journalist under the Weimar Republic and then an exile in England under Nazism, has returned to sit in the Bundestag for the Social Democrats. He has just buried his young wife Elke, whom he reproaches himself for having neglected for politics, and takes the train to Bonn, where Parliament is to vote on anchoring the young republic in the West. Isolated in his own party, he has to carry there the voice of the opposition against rearmament.
Context
After a visit to Bonn in early February 1953, the novel was written in a few weeks, in the spring, in a windowless room of a hotel installed in an air-raid shelter in Stuttgart. The publisher hesitated over the text; it appeared on 4 November 1953 from Scherz & Goverts, after some toning down. The title refers to the climate of Bonn, in the Rhine basin, and to the confinement of the politicians. Adenauer is recognised in the chancellor and Kurt Schumacher in the leader of the Social Democratic group, although Koeppen refused to see it as a roman à clef. It is the second of the three novels he devoted to postwar Germany.
Who it is for
A short novel, set over two days, which follows its character's thoughts very closely; no French translation has been found.
Prizes and reception
Singled out in the United States by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of its English translation; adapted for the screen by Peter Goedel in 1987.