Christian Bangel: “Or Florida” – More memories than a novel

The German border town of Frankfurt (Oder) was a special place in the 1990s. Here the proximity to the young capital Berlin, there a bridge to Poland that was suddenly open. In the surrounding area there were meeting places for guys with contraband, for local politicians with thick Stasi files and for neo-Nazis. Most of the apartments did not yet have a telephone; those who owned a fax modem were technically up to date. Everyone knew everyone, the easternmost German border town was a place of short distances.

It was also a biotope in which all kinds of colorful existences could flourish. Many of them appear in Christian Bangel’s debut novel “Oder Florida”. There is the long-time Lord Mayor Krautzig, nicknamed “The Eternal”, who always goes to the diving station when Spiegel Online is in town. There is the Wenderitter Franziskus, an entrepreneur who preaches the free market economy to his compatriots. Günther Franziskus wants to be the next mayor, which is why he hires Fliege, a punk and former squatter who has founded an advertising agency. Mathias Freier also works there, he is 20 years old, doing community service, hating Nazi, local patriot and the narrator of this novel.

“Freedom,” said Francis, “is always the freedom of those who are more efficient. In the West they have understood that for a long time, but we Ossis eat the prosperity that others have given us every day. You, for example,” he pointed with his finger to me, “you are young, healthy and a snappy lad. Good teeth. You should actually get up every day at six and say: What can I achieve today? But are you going to do that too?” Well, sometimes I slept a little longer. I looked at Fly, who nodded barely noticeably. “Yes,” I said.

Roman lives from its characters

Mathias Freier’s story gets going when his friend Fliege and the entrepreneur Franziskus decide to make him a press officer and entrust him with the upcoming election campaign. That is the call that our hero must now answer. Since suitors are given a good dose of peace of mind – they like to live right into the day and if it doesn’t work out, Mutti sends food packages – the floor of the strange local farce is well prepared. “Or Florida” belongs to the genre of the entertainingly told post-emergence novel, in which it is actually not so important what happens in detail. This novel lives from its characters.

The author Christian Bangel is a monument to the eccentric, weird, colorful types of his post-reunification years. If they are young, they are called Klarlack, Mike Mischjemüse or Töffel, they celebrate, smoke weed and the summer of 1998 after the fall is all over their heads. Until Nadja shows up, the narrator’s great childhood sweetheart, who pulls him out of his rut ​​with a jaunt to Berlin. Here is the opportunity for a snapshot of Potsdamer Platz:

“I was standing in front of something huge. It wasn’t exactly broken, but also not intact. Not city, but certainly not country. Directly in front of us rose an apocalyptic, kilometer-wide mess of cranes, shell structures, moats, metal scaffolding, wooden planks. Hundreds of floodlights , in impossible, hidden places, turned night into day. A concrete jungle without a single person. I had never seen anything like it. “Potsdamer Platz,” said Nadja, examining one of her strands of hair. This brightness, this silence. How floodlit in an empty stadium. I pressed my face against the struts of the site fence. “Robber ladder,” said Nadja. “

Constant passage novel

“Or Florida” is more like a commemorative report than a novel. Bangel writes tangibly and animatedly, in places also very funny. A time and an attitude towards life come to life, it is the mood of those who were children in eastern Germany during the turning point. You fluctuate between euphoria and extreme caution, two positions that Mathias and Nadja occupy in the novel. In their encounter lies the chance of the hero’s emotional development, coming of age would be the key word here, but Christian Bangel also interprets this narrative thread incidentally.

The result is a novel of constant passage, somewhat talkative and casual, the author does not quite manage to bundle his narrative material. In the end, Mathias Freier does what many young people did in the 1990s, he leaves his home. Freier is supposed to set up a pet shop in Florida for Frankziskus and is trained beforehand by a befriended entrepreneur in Hamburg. It works quite well as a capitalist cliché and shows that the author can also do black and white:

Strössner got up and closed the window. “I accepted as soon as Francis called me,” he says. “For me it is a matter of honor to help our friends from the new federal states.” He sat down again and began to unwrap a lollipop that was on the table. “Terrible, the conditions there. I was in Dresden two years ago,” he said. “They really made something out of it. But all the rest. That has to be worked through completely.” He put the lollipop in his mouth and looked at me. “But you, you got out of there.”

One suspects that someone like Mathias Freier doesn’t even want to come out. His trip back to Frankfurt is a journey into the new freedom, he decides to stay where he comes from. It doesn’t move the world, but it always warms the heart. And it preserves the memory of a few years after the reunification of Germany, which are history again.