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Marlen Haushofer: Das fünfte Jahr (The Fifth Year)
This is only a short novella which may or may not explain why it has taken so long to appear in English. As the title tells us it is set over a period of a year, year in which we follow the heroine, the four year-old Marili. No dates are given but it is clearly set shortly after World War II. Marili lives with her grandparents.We gradually learn her parents are both dead, her father being killed during the war in Russia. Not only have her grandparents lost their son-in-law and daughter but they have also lost their other children, killed in the war or in the case of the youngest dying from diphtheria aged five.
The family lives on a farm in Austria and as well asMarili and her grandparents, there are two others, a deaf and a toothless farm hand called Kajetan and a maid/housekeeper called Rosa, who also looks after Marili.
Inevitably, the pall of death hangs over the household, particularly the grandmother. Fortunately, it is clear that.Marili brings them joy. However, she is starting to question her origins.Grandmother, she said suddenly, who am I actually, if I’m not your child?,. She likes to make sausage-shaped tubes out of newspaper and names them after all the household, including Lisl who she has just learned was her mother.
Hanging in her room is the picture of the crucifixion which of course she does not really like. The God she then prayed to was old and kind, a distant, powerful relative of her grandfather.
A lot reminds them of death. For example, there is a pear tree and young Max, the child who later died of diphtheria, used to sit on the branch a lot. The grandmother, his mother, had told him to stop as she was worried about damage to the tree, but since his death she has felt very guilty about this and cannot help seeing the tree and being reminded of her lost son. The way she talks about him, it is clear that he was the apple of her eye.
Weather is inevitably key in this book and we open in winter with the snow falling. Grandfather and the dog are off for a walk, butMarili insists on a a accompanying them. They go to the mill and while the grandfather is discussing business with the miller she sees a boy with kittens. He casually remarks to her that he will probably drown them. At this point, she viciously attacks him and gets into a fight with him and has to be entangled by her grandfather. She is very bitter at the thought of the kittens being drowned. It is this along with other episodes involving animals that shows that she represents the life spirit which her grandparents have to a certain degree lost with the death of their children.
We see another example of this in her dream of a toad which Rosa plans to cook and again, even though it is a dream, she is very upset about the possible death of the toad.
As the weather gets better, she goes or wandering in the wood where she takes great pleasure in the flowers and there also in the animals that she encounters including bumblebees, a hedgehog and even snakes and the mouse in the kitchen. She also, of course, enjoys the domestic animals, including the dog and the cattle.
But the dead cannot be forgotten, at least not by her grandparents. Her grandmother eventually takes her to the cemetery where her mother and other family members are buried.
Above all Marili enjoys life. She enjoys the animals, the nature surrounding the farm and of course, her grandparents and Rosa and Kajetan. All of whom she will willingly embrace. She is active, always wanting to do things and happy with her grandfather as he works on the farm but also happy wandering in the wood and admiring the plants and animals.
There are problems. For example.Marili falls ill and her grandparents are deeply worried, but she does recover. Indeed, as she recovers, the snow starts falling and we have covered the complete year.
There is no doubt that Haushofer wrote this book as a life affirming work as Austria was coming out of World War II where of course they did not do too well and as we see here are lots of people who died both through illness and in war, particularly in the invasion of Russia. Marili clearly represents a new, positive, life enhancing spirit through whom the horror of the war can at least to some degree be forgotten while life moves forward and takes on a more positive aspect.
h3>Publishing history
First published in 1951 by Ullstein
First English translation in 2026 by New Directions
Translated byShaun Whiteside