Philosophical questions from eleven perspectives

Created: 04/10/2022 17:02

Musician and now also author: Karl Rellensmann presented his debut work at the weekend.

Distrust any answers that don't raise new questions.

Karl Rellensmann alias Carl Os © Andrea Jaksch

"Galactically a snitch": The "Romantic Dystopia" is Karl Rellensmann's (68) official entry into the writing guild.

At the weekend, the head of the music teachers' association presented his debut work in the Kurparkschlösschen in Herrsching.

Herrsching

– The director and co-founder of the music teacher association (MLV) Herrsching wrote his philosophical family novel under the synonym Carl Os – and under the maxim: “Distrust all answers that do not raise new questions”.

At the weekend he presented his debut as part of a musical reading.

"I've been writing for as long as I can remember," says Herrschinger in an interview with Starnberger Merkur.

Growing up "in the angular stillness of this post-war heap of rubble called Germany", his questions bounced off the dogged silence of his parents.

Questions about the horrors of the Holocaust, which he first heard about as a teenager.

In the form of films "with skeletons tumbling out of concentration camps," he recalls.

The high school student took refuge in music and writing.

As a child, he filled “thirteen thick diaries” with his thoughts.

Countless short stories, poems and novels followed, all of which ended up in a drawer.

The short story "Galactically seen, snipe" was created, and the "Whale Texts" were added around the turn of the millennium.

He dug both of these out of the depths of a drawer about ten years ago and turned the texts into a 592-page novel.

From eleven perspectives, he approached the question of what would happen "when the network becomes aware of itself".

What, for example, “if the Internet penetrated the typing center of a taxi company and self-driving cars were turned into weapons?” he asks.

The author invented lenses through which the Internet spy on computer users.

And the "mycelium", a kind of swarm formation in the network that becomes independent, propagated through "the immortality of zeros and ones, their metamorphoses into ever new forms".

Its main character Vau works as a molecular biologist in a laboratory.

“Only three countries are still allowed to export (hard coal).

So the rest cheat their license.

I'm supposed to expose the cheaters," Vau describes his job.

Then Shirin, a childhood friend, appears.

"Suddenly she was standing in front of me.

Raised both hands, placed them on the streamlined side bones of her helmet, smiled sweetly: "And, Vau, do you still know me?" He is commissioned to translate the genetic language, comes across family secrets - and suddenly finds himself face to face with his jealous wife Simone .

The author humorously integrates his characters into the family novel and gradually approaches the issues that concern Rellensmann as the father of two adult sons: an internet that suddenly acts without instructions.

Or why our life is built on infinite growth.

He worked on the plot for years.

Every winter five to six hours a day in a hut in Senegal.

With no electricity, no running water and no internet, says Rellensmann.

The result is a story that focuses on a “dirty past”, follows the paths of a present dominated by the Internet and is expanded by ideas of a “not entirely carefree memory of the future”, reveals Rellensmann.

Always with answers that raise further questions.

“Galactic seen Schnuppe” was published in CoLibri FairLag and costs 24 euros as a hardcover or 16 euros as an e-book.

The new publication can be bought at www.colibri-books.de and on online marketplaces.

also read

Sailing accidents on Lake Starnberg: rescuers get man from the hull of his capsized boat

This pastor is a godsend

Michele Kirner