Es waren Habichte in der Luft

Hamburg edition of the works. A reader-friendly study edition, all texts reviewed and compared with the original typescripts and first prints. Each volume includes a detailed commentary on the history of its creation and reception.

With his debut "There Were Hawks in the Air," Siegfried Lenz established himself in 1951 as one of the great hopes of post-war German literature. The novel is set shortly after World War I in the Russian-Finnish border area. The Finnish village schoolteacher Stenka is pursued by the revolutionary government after a political coup. He attempts to disappear into the anonymity of the underground, but his attempts at camouflage are seen through by the residents of the border village. In his first novel, Lenz addresses the experience of totalitarian rule, one of the central themes in his work.