Құлдыққа Салынған Адам

1918 novel by Heinrich Mann
the 1951 film

Der Untertan (; literally "the underling", translated into English under the titles Man of Straw, The Patrioteer, and The Loyal Subject) is one of the best known novels of German author Heinrich Mann. The title character, Diederich Hessling, a dedicated 'Untertan' in the sense of a person subservient to a monarch or prince, is an immoral man who is meant to serve as an allegory of both the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II and German society of his time. The novel was completed during the July Crisis in 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I. Extracts had been published in the satirical magazine Simplicissimus from 1912 onwards, causing great controversy. Mann signed a contract with the magazine Die Zeit im Bild [de] for the publication of the censored version of the novel from the beginning of 1914, but on 1 August the publication was stopped as "inappropriate". A book edition was not published until 1918 by Kurt Wolff in Leipzig. for his "unpatriotic" or even "Communist" stance; at the same time, some reviewers described it as an "account of a gullible people seduced by power". where it was regarded as 'the original anti fascist novel' and 'the masterpiece of bourgeois realist literature'. In the West Germany, however, the author was denounced as a Communist sympathizer and the novel was not published until 1964; it was rediscovered primarily under influence of the 1968 student movement. Frederick Betz, a modern critic, regards the novel as "one of the great political novels of the 20th century" for its depiction of the conflict between the authority and democratic principles. The novel is frequently read in German schools up to today. which, however, may be viewed as "a device to reach a unity of form with content", praised by Mark Roche as "an aesthetic corollary of Hessling's self contradictory concepts of justice." Diederich's ideals, blood and iron, and the might of opulent power, are exposed as hollowness and weakness. He is an allegory depicting and satirizing the German people's increasing susceptibility to militarism, ultra nationalism, anti Semitism, and colonialism. His character is often juxtaposed, in both words and appearance to Kaiser Wilhelm II. In one instance, Hessling's behavior and outward appearance move an observer to stammer, 'It almost seems to me You look so very much like His ' , meaning the Kaiser. Mann expected the readers to gain insight into the real word by means both the content and the form of text; by following the French social novelists and writing the novel as a parody of Realist bildungsroman, he represented his view on the life in Imperial Germany as "a parody on the self and of ideologies and events", where German imperialists lived their lives as parodies of national pride and of will to dominate the world, and parodies of realism, as they "refused to respect anything that cannons could not destroy, and they despised things invisible that live in the mind", as Mann explained in his 1929 preface to the novel.

A lithograph named Der Untertan was created by Karl Hubbuch in 1923. In East Germany, the book was made into the 1951 DEFA film Der Untertan (released in English as The Kaiser's Lackey), directed by Wolfgang Staudte and starring Werner Peters as Diederich Hessling. It received the National Prize of the German Democratic Republic and initially was banned in West Germany until a shortened version was released in 1957. A radio drama was produced by the public Westdeutscher Rundfunk broadcaster in 1971. The BBC adapted the book for a six part TV mini series Man of Straw, broadcast in 1972, with Derek Jacobi as Hessling.

The Patrioteer, done by Ernest Boyd and published in English in 1921, became the first translation of the novel and the first Mann's novel published in English. After the World War II, the translation was reissued under the titles Little Superman (a reference to the concept of Übermensch and its usage in the Nazi propaganda) and Man of Straw in 1945 and 1947 respectively. In 1998, the incomplete translation by Boyd was adapted as The Loyal Subject, with new portions translated by Daniel Theisen, edited by Helmut Peitsch [de]. This new version is regarded as more accurate, adequate to the original and complete.