Roman “efforts” – the hole in the sole

Carsten Linnemann, General Secretary of the CDU, wants to “go to the substance” and Chancellor Friedrich Merz dreams of painting poorly the last money; One could simply no longer afford “this welfare state”. These latest failures of the federal government against arms and marginalized consequences to the old principle: Those who have difficulties will be difficult.

Rhetorically, the impairing experts strive to not let too much humanity arise: they speak of systems, processes and structures. Technocratic abstractness is intended to prevent any empathy. This is how an organization acts that claims to be committed to a Christian image of man.

One of these people who are degraded in this way is Manfred Gruber. Somewhere in Austria, he stands at a supermarket fund and wants to treat himself to a freshly pressed orange juice – exceptionally. It is the second of the month when the budget still gives such extravagances. At least he thought that, but at the cash register it turns out: there is no money in the account. The office has not transferred. To want to drink an orange juice yourself is too much required.

Gruber is a conscientious and experienced social welfare recipient. He knows that he submitted all the documents that he wrote enough senseless application letter. He didn’t do anything wrong. It must be an oversight. But it is not an accident: the office has decided that he can work. And that’s why they unannounced the remuneration.

He is certainly not a hero, had a rather wild youth, learned butcher in a large company, got a child, drank too much and threatened the child’s mother, sometimes thrown a full beer bottle when the relationship broke up. At some point he gave up the job – the back! – and took care of the frail mother at home.

Since his death he has had the house that is already enough. The garden wants to be dug up, a neighboring child needs a rabbit stable. Gruber has largely given up drinking, just like almost all interpersonal contacts. The relationship with the son is broken, the small talk with the neighboring annoys, it is not very good at talking to others. He just wants his calm.

But that is not intended, because there is this “efforts”, as it says in Austria. If he is not looking for work, the office will take away the house, the house he wants to bequeath his son as the last gesture of affection. The house whose preservation has become his life. But of course the office doesn’t understand that. In any case, it is considered uncomfortable and unadjusted because he constantly complains. For example, when it is conveyed back into a completely senseless job that it is clear anyway that he will not be able to do it. But Gruber is not unwilling: he fits, goes there, does several layers of unpaid work and then heard what he already knew.

And then there is the thing with the foot. It started with the fact that he ran through the rain -wet streets to the office to clarify the delay in payment. And because he had a hole in the sole, the whole skin is softened. On top of that, a nail grew. He ignores that, makes a little ointment on it, but he doesn’t want to go to the doctor. And then it gets worse and worse, also because of the work measure in which the office puts him against his will.

This is one of the common reactions of people who are disturbed by offices. They don’t believe that they are actually helped somewhere. They are to be continued, this is their everyday experience. This makes it difficult to go to the doctor, especially if you were ideally brought up.

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Author Sandra Weihs describes all of this in a dry, snappy tone, which never rises over the figures. It is the tone of a human objectivity. Most of the time, the narrator – a social worker who somehow tries to save the Gruber’s house – speaks to her client in her thoughts. It is like a long letter that sometimes has something excuse: she already knows that she too is part of the system that Manfred Gruber has already displayed and mutilated; After all, she tries not to harden it herself.

Weihs, who is a social worker herself, is very successful to not only capture the helplessness of the person concerned, but also to present the total dulling of the people in the system. In the end, the politically stable also remains nothing more than pious wishes. The machine, which manfred Gruber crushes, built others, for example people like Merz and Linnemann. There is something hopeless in watching all the grubers how they will struggle against this machine and gradually grind.

Manfred Gruber will saw off after all his fights; It seems to him the last way out to escape all the madness. At the very end, an insurance expert on television will say that he suspects that Manfred Gruber wanted to sneak up a guest house – and that was probably a fraud. So it is, you tear out one leg and it is still not enough. That is what Linnemann and Merz continued for the poor for whom Manfred Grubers have intended: a well -tempered cruelty.

Sandra Weihs: Effect. Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt, 256 pages, born, 24 €.