Looking Backward

The book Looking Backward or Life in the Year 2000 ( German under the titles A look back from the year 2000 to 1887 and a look back from the year 2000 to the year 1887) by Edward Bellamy, the 1888 first appeared, is by Julian West, a young American who. towards the end of the 19th century during treatment with animal magnetism, a kind of hypnosis, falls into a deep sleep, which persists over a hundred years When he wakes up, he still finds himself while at the same position, but the world around him has changed.

Content

Julian West wakes up in Boston in the year 2000 and finds himself in the care of Dr. Leete and his attractive daughter Edith again, which proves to be a descendant of Julian's fiance. During the past hundred years, the U.S. has become an ideal community. There is little action in the novel, it is only shown essentially as master of the house Dr. Leete and his daughter Edith introduce the protagonist in the new world and explain to him the living conditions of the ideal community.

As this community has been reached is vaguely described. The change was made on an evolutionary way, since humanity in the 20th century decided to build a cooperative polity. So there is in the world of 2000, industrial republics, working together as a global state, and thus enable their citizens to a carefree existence. Work is needed, but by their form of organization and broad distribution of goods is considered exploitation overcome. All are trained according to their abilities, however, must perform work service in an industrial army, thus unpopular work is done. The individuals working for the common good without their own inclinations to neglect, however, the management bodies and working armies are organized along military lines. Julian West is with his experience in the 19th century professor of history of the period. A small elite senior male servant of the state determines the composition of the leadership positions.

What Julian West strikes first is that the air in Boston is clean and not polluted by the exhaust from the chimneys, as he was in his time, in the 19th century, used to. But the social life has changed. People are actually equal, everyone has equally a part of his life for the community work - Dr. Leete compares this Industrial Service ( Industrial Services ) with the military service in the old days.

There is no money, but credit cards, their value with each purchase the corresponding amount will be deducted (which is an anticipation of the author, because the first actual credit cards were first offered in 1924 by the Western Union).

At the service industry all members of society are involved, each one according to his strength. And everyone gets in return an equal share of the jointly developed values. The motto is that you do not get reward for it, that one is more or less to be able to afford, but that one is a man.

Also the need for entertainment is taken into account. According to the technical possibilities of his time, the author designs entertainment media the distant future. Based on the new phone he had just developed a system of mass entertainment by the city orchestra for 24 hours different types of music playing in several places, which is transmitted over telephone lines into the homes. There the music lovers can choose a program and play through speakers in his living room ( see also Theatrophon ). The fees will be deducted from his credit card.

Also on the education you have been thinking, and the fundamental principle of society in the year 2000 is that the formation of the one most needed, which has the least natural gifts. Intelligent, interested people tend to seek after, only the less intelligent need promotion. And it is in everyone's interest that your fellow citizens are formed.

Position in the literature

Bellamy floats like Étienne Cabet, Bertha von Suttner, and Theodor Hertzka before overcoming social question by technology. His utopia is often rather dry and didactic, partly exaggerated maudlin. In her partial match goes with the modern reality ( better air in some major cities, welfare state ) in matches of quasi scientific accuracy over (credit cards, mass entertainment based on free choice between a variety of providers in an electronic network). Thus, it is not just a template for the pessimistic authors ( Aldous Huxley, Karin Boye, Stefan Andres, Constantin Virgil Gheorghiu, George Orwell), but also packages the way for the future research, inter alia by Walter Greiling.

Effect

Publisher Wolfgang Biesterfeld speaks of "the most successful utopia of the 19th century and perhaps the most widely read utopia at all " (1983, p 296 ). The sequel, entitled Equality remained similarly unsuccessful as the other writings of the author.

Publisher George of Gizycki writes in the preface (1890, p.3):

" It seemed to me that this work to the sunshine state ' well let put aside the famous utopias of the past, like Thomas More, Utopia [ ... ] Bacon's New Atlantis and Campanella. No such writing has had such amazing success, like this: it has been published about two years ago, and is already the 301 thousand of the American original and the 21st edition of the English reprint ago. Since we have so far had only a garbled and unreadable a German translation of this book, it seemed desirable to the German public to provide a useful, and I hope that the present is a. From socialistischer and of opposite hand, many objections have been raised against the work, and certainly it is not subject to a few; but I think it contains profound ethical truths. "

Contemporaries criticized the advocacy of women's emancipation and threw Bellamy an advocacy of atheism and materialism ago.

Ernst Bloch criticized that the described conditions are not fundamentally different from those of the capitalist world. While efforts are being eliminated some harmful effects, but the general layout of the capitalist world remains consist of:

"The world is a gigantic Boston or rather between Chicago with some agriculture; the territory of the latter used to be called natural. "

Above all, the utopian News from Nowhere (News from Nowhere ) by William Morris adjoins Looking Backward:

" Particularly appealing reads the uptake of Looking Backward in Germany during the Wilhelmine era. Immediately by different authors translated into German ( first in a disfiguring version of G. Malkowski under the title All nationalized. Social Policy novel, 1889), the text provided in the countryside, the just of the Iron Chancellor has given the socialist laws, for lively controversy. A series of transformations and parodies created. While Eduard Loewenthal uses ( The State of Bellamy's, and his follow-up, 1891) Looking Backward as a vehicle for the dissemination of which he invented and now forgotten belief, Cogitantismus ', try other authors, in their sense of the possible evolution of the Bellamyschen state to the test to ask. Ernst Müller ( A look back from the year 2037 to the year 2000, 1891) strives for a balance between reconciling the various political positions in not ideal future state by more charity and the poor more satisfaction, he recommends the rich; Philipp Wasserburg (! Little later continuation of Bellamy's Looking Backward 2000, 1891) would prove the example of Cuba that Bellamy's construction is not applicable to all countries and climates; Conrad Wilbrandt ( The Lord Frederick Ost experiences in the world Bellamy's, 1891) laid the act to Germany and shows the failure of the model to the leveling of human needs and to errors in foreign trade; the German American Richard Michaelis ( Looking Forward, 1890; German A look into the future an answer to: .. A review of Edward Bellamy 1890) makes the experiences of Julian West's in a trivial by any means described style bloodbath end, that of Dr. Leete and his supporters friends for years duped out mob wreaks. "

Expenditure

A total of 14 editions in various editions, most recently in 1998.

• Translator: George of Gizycki. Hg Wolfgang Biesterfeld. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 1983 ISBN 3-15-002660-1 ( Universal-Bibliothek 2660 ) [ with afterword by the editor ]
• Translator: Alexander Fleischmann. Übers after 301 thousand of the original American edition. Edited by Georg Gizycki. Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig oJ. Experienced the socket to 1891 seven editions.
• Translator: Clara Zetkin. A look back from 2000 to 1887, Dietz, Stuttgart 1914.