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Før hanen galer
Bygget på dokumentasjon fra nazistenes konsentrasjonsleire, forteller denne romanen om vitenskapens bruk av mennesker som forsøksdyr. Første gang utgitt i 1952. (Bokkilden.no)
172 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
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130 people want to read
About the author
Jens Bjørneboe
63 books185 followersJens Ingvald Bjørneboe was a Norwegian writer whose work spanned a number of literary formats. He was also a painter and a waldorf school teacher. Bjørneboe was a harsh and eloquent critic of Norwegian society and Western civilization on the whole. He led a turbulent life and his uncompromising humanity would cost him both an obscenity conviction as well as long periods of heavy drinking and bouts of depression, which in the end led to his suicide.
Jens Bjørneboe's first published work was Poems (Dikt) in 1951. He is widely considered to be one of Norway's most important post-war authors. Bjørneboe identified himself, among other self-definitions, as an anarcho-nihilist.
During the Norwegian language struggle, Bjørneboe was a notable proponent of the Riksmål language, together with his equally famous cousin André Bjerke.
Jens Bjørneboe was born in 1920, in Kristiansand to Ingvald and Anna Marie Bjørneboe. He grew up in a wealthy family, his father a shipping magnate and a consul for Belgium. The Bjørneboe family originally immigrated from Germany in the 17th century and later adopted their Norwegian name. Coming from a long line of marine officers, Bjørneboe also went to sea as a young man.
Bjørneboe had a troubled childhood with sickness and depressions. He was bedbound for several years following severe pneumonia. At thirteen he attempted suicide by hanging himself. He began drinking when he was twelve, and he would often consume large amounts of wine when his parents were away. It is also rumored that he drank his father's aftershave on several occasions.
In 1943 Bjørneboe fled to Sweden to avoid forced labor under the Nazi occupation. During this exile, he met the German Jewish painter Lisel Funk, who later became his first wife. Lisel Funk introduced him to many aspects of German culture, especially German literature and the arts.
Bjørneboe's early work was poetry, and his first book was Poems (Dikt, 1951), consisting mainly of deeply religious poetry.
Bjørneboe wrote a number of socially critical novels. Among those were Ere the Cock Crows (Før Hanen Galer, 1952), Jonas (1955) and The Evil Shepherd (Den Onde Hyrde, 1960). Ere the Cock Crows is a critique of what Bjørneboe saw as the harsh treatment, after the Second World War, of people suspected of having associated in any way with the Nazis (among them the Norwegian writer and Nobel Prize in Literature winner Knut Hamsun). Jonas deals with injustices and shortcomings of the school system and The Evil Shepherd with the Norwegian prison system.
His most significant work is generally considered to be the trilogy The History of Bestiality, consisting of the novels Moment of Freedom (Frihetens Øyeblikk, 1966), Powderhouse (Kruttårnet, 1969) and The Silence (Stillheten, 1973).
Bjørneboe also wrote a number of plays, among them The Bird Lovers (Fugleelskerne, 1966), Semmelweis (1968) and Amputation (Amputasjon, 1970), a collaboration with Eugenio Barba and the Danish theatre ensemble Odin Teatret.
In 1967, he was convicted for publishing a novel deemed pornographic, Without a Stitch (Uten en tråd, 1966), which was confiscated and banned in Norway. The trial, however, made the book a huge success in foreign editions, and Bjørneboe's financial problems were (for a period) solved.
His last major work was the novel The Sharks (Haiene, 1974).
After having struggled with depression and alcoholism for a long time, he committed suicide by hanging on May 9, 1976.[2]
In his obituary in Aftenposten, Bjørneboe's life and legacy were described as follows:
"For 25 years Jens Bjørneboe was a center of unrest in Norwegian cultural life: Passionately concerned with contemporary problems in nearly all their aspects, controversial and with the courage to be so, with a conscious will to carry things to extremes. He was not to be pigeonholed. "
Jens Bjørneboe's first published work was Poems (Dikt) in 1951. He is widely considered to be one of Norway's most important post-war authors. Bjørneboe identified himself, among other self-definitions, as an anarcho-nihilist.
During the Norwegian language struggle, Bjørneboe was a notable proponent of the Riksmål language, together with his equally famous cousin André Bjerke.
Jens Bjørneboe was born in 1920, in Kristiansand to Ingvald and Anna Marie Bjørneboe. He grew up in a wealthy family, his father a shipping magnate and a consul for Belgium. The Bjørneboe family originally immigrated from Germany in the 17th century and later adopted their Norwegian name. Coming from a long line of marine officers, Bjørneboe also went to sea as a young man.
Bjørneboe had a troubled childhood with sickness and depressions. He was bedbound for several years following severe pneumonia. At thirteen he attempted suicide by hanging himself. He began drinking when he was twelve, and he would often consume large amounts of wine when his parents were away. It is also rumored that he drank his father's aftershave on several occasions.
In 1943 Bjørneboe fled to Sweden to avoid forced labor under the Nazi occupation. During this exile, he met the German Jewish painter Lisel Funk, who later became his first wife. Lisel Funk introduced him to many aspects of German culture, especially German literature and the arts.
Bjørneboe's early work was poetry, and his first book was Poems (Dikt, 1951), consisting mainly of deeply religious poetry.
Bjørneboe wrote a number of socially critical novels. Among those were Ere the Cock Crows (Før Hanen Galer, 1952), Jonas (1955) and The Evil Shepherd (Den Onde Hyrde, 1960). Ere the Cock Crows is a critique of what Bjørneboe saw as the harsh treatment, after the Second World War, of people suspected of having associated in any way with the Nazis (among them the Norwegian writer and Nobel Prize in Literature winner Knut Hamsun). Jonas deals with injustices and shortcomings of the school system and The Evil Shepherd with the Norwegian prison system.
His most significant work is generally considered to be the trilogy The History of Bestiality, consisting of the novels Moment of Freedom (Frihetens Øyeblikk, 1966), Powderhouse (Kruttårnet, 1969) and The Silence (Stillheten, 1973).
Bjørneboe also wrote a number of plays, among them The Bird Lovers (Fugleelskerne, 1966), Semmelweis (1968) and Amputation (Amputasjon, 1970), a collaboration with Eugenio Barba and the Danish theatre ensemble Odin Teatret.
In 1967, he was convicted for publishing a novel deemed pornographic, Without a Stitch (Uten en tråd, 1966), which was confiscated and banned in Norway. The trial, however, made the book a huge success in foreign editions, and Bjørneboe's financial problems were (for a period) solved.
His last major work was the novel The Sharks (Haiene, 1974).
After having struggled with depression and alcoholism for a long time, he committed suicide by hanging on May 9, 1976.[2]
In his obituary in Aftenposten, Bjørneboe's life and legacy were described as follows:
"For 25 years Jens Bjørneboe was a center of unrest in Norwegian cultural life: Passionately concerned with contemporary problems in nearly all their aspects, controversial and with the courage to be so, with a conscious will to carry things to extremes. He was not to be pigeonholed. "
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 10, 2019
Bjørneboe's first published novel, Før Hanen Galer (Before The Rooster Crows) is a book based on documents Bjørnboe came across while he was traveling in Germany some years after the second world war. The documents detailed how Nazi doctors experimented on human beings.
The year before this novel was published Bjørneboe published a collection of poetry (simply called Dikt (Poems)) . The poems were inspired by Rilke, and were existential in nature. This collection of poems already showed that Bjørneboe as a writer was concerned with what it means to be alive -- and what it means to be human.
In Før Hanen Galer we initially meet a Norwegian Jew who has come to Germany in order to find out more about the Nazi's euthanasia programme (Action T4). In the first half of the book we find ourselves in a bombed and destroyed part of Germany (called Xburg in the book). We become acquainted with Max -- a depraved Nazi who is sure to make your stomach turn. Bjørneboe beautifully describes the ruined districts as our Norwegian walks through them (my translation, perhaps not as beautiful):
Flat, flat the desert can be, but trees do grow in it, trees that do not need sun or nourishment. The wild growths are remains of twisted water pipes and the steel skeletons that endure and spread up toward the sky. Here and there stands a faltering chimney pointing upward – to show where the great change came from. Here and there stands one remaining wall of a house, with dead windows that the wind blows through, and with scars after the collapsed floors.
In the latter half of the novel we travel back in time and follow Nazi doctors as they rationalise their experiments, and Bjørneboe is not afraid to describe the gruesomeness of it. There is one part of the book where a group of nazi scientists go on about how great what they will be doing is for science, and how they are doing the whole world a giant favour by ridding it of useless people -- and at the same time figuring things out, like how long people can live without food and water, how much pain a person can tolerate before he gives in, and so on.
A disturbing and thoughtprovoking novel, it is in Før Hanen Galer that Bjørneboe begins his lifelong writing project on "the problem of evil," and he does it masterfully -- not quite as masterfully as in his more famous trilogy, but still brilliantly. There is, however, hope in this work too. There always is in Bjørnboe, even if it is but a flicker of a flame of hope in human kind, it's there, albeit hard to see, and scattered around. And it's beautiful.
The year before this novel was published Bjørneboe published a collection of poetry (simply called Dikt (Poems)) . The poems were inspired by Rilke, and were existential in nature. This collection of poems already showed that Bjørneboe as a writer was concerned with what it means to be alive -- and what it means to be human.
In Før Hanen Galer we initially meet a Norwegian Jew who has come to Germany in order to find out more about the Nazi's euthanasia programme (Action T4). In the first half of the book we find ourselves in a bombed and destroyed part of Germany (called Xburg in the book). We become acquainted with Max -- a depraved Nazi who is sure to make your stomach turn. Bjørneboe beautifully describes the ruined districts as our Norwegian walks through them (my translation, perhaps not as beautiful):
Flat, flat the desert can be, but trees do grow in it, trees that do not need sun or nourishment. The wild growths are remains of twisted water pipes and the steel skeletons that endure and spread up toward the sky. Here and there stands a faltering chimney pointing upward – to show where the great change came from. Here and there stands one remaining wall of a house, with dead windows that the wind blows through, and with scars after the collapsed floors.
In the latter half of the novel we travel back in time and follow Nazi doctors as they rationalise their experiments, and Bjørneboe is not afraid to describe the gruesomeness of it. There is one part of the book where a group of nazi scientists go on about how great what they will be doing is for science, and how they are doing the whole world a giant favour by ridding it of useless people -- and at the same time figuring things out, like how long people can live without food and water, how much pain a person can tolerate before he gives in, and so on.
A disturbing and thoughtprovoking novel, it is in Før Hanen Galer that Bjørneboe begins his lifelong writing project on "the problem of evil," and he does it masterfully -- not quite as masterfully as in his more famous trilogy, but still brilliantly. There is, however, hope in this work too. There always is in Bjørnboe, even if it is but a flicker of a flame of hope in human kind, it's there, albeit hard to see, and scattered around. And it's beautiful.
October 5, 2023
Bjørneboe anmelder på mange måter godt boken selv i etterordene i forbindelse med nyutgivelsen i 67:
«Det er en provokatorisk metode: å gjøre et utvalg av kontraster, å konfrontere leseren med en virkelighet som er like full av motsetninger som vår egen natur, - og la leseren trekke sine egne slutninger selv. -At det i årenes løp har ført til misforståelser, er naturlig. Det har vist seg å være en metode med en enestående evne til å irritere.
Jeg tror dette er en gunstig situasjon, og ønsker den ikke annerledes. Den avdekker noe ved litteraturen, som er helt avgjørende: det er ikke spørsmål om å forstå forfatteren, men å forstå den virkeligheten han konfronterer leseren med…»
Takk for boken.
«Det er en provokatorisk metode: å gjøre et utvalg av kontraster, å konfrontere leseren med en virkelighet som er like full av motsetninger som vår egen natur, - og la leseren trekke sine egne slutninger selv. -At det i årenes løp har ført til misforståelser, er naturlig. Det har vist seg å være en metode med en enestående evne til å irritere.
Jeg tror dette er en gunstig situasjon, og ønsker den ikke annerledes. Den avdekker noe ved litteraturen, som er helt avgjørende: det er ikke spørsmål om å forstå forfatteren, men å forstå den virkeligheten han konfronterer leseren med…»
Takk for boken.
April 9, 2024
Very gudd
June 22, 2016
Det er kanskje alltid litt rart å si at man liker bøker som omhandler noe så dypt og menneskelig grusomt som denne gjør. Men “Før Hanen Galer” gjør det Bjørneboe er så fordømt god på, nemlig å beskrive det ubeskrivelige med menneskelighet.
I sitt etterord til denne utgaven gjør Bjørneboe det tydelig at Heinrich Reynhardt er i hvert fall delvis basert på den virkelige Dr. med Sigmund Rascher, og det later til at det er her karakteren Reynhardts underlige personlige todeling kommer fra. Det er denne todeltheten som nettopp gjør denne relativt korte beretningen så interessant. For det virker både underlig og dypt forstyrrende at en person som utøver eksperimenter på mennesker kan separere dette arbeid og sitt familieliv til de grader at selve separasjonen blir en slags unnskyldning, eller et botemiddel.
Det mest forstyrrende i denne fortellingen er tross alt ikke det grusomme som for det meste skjer bak kulissene, det mest forstyrrende er beskrivelsen av et rasjonelt, vitenskapelig anlagt menneske som klarer å argumentere vekk sin egen menneskelighet, sin egen empati. Dernest følger den totale mangelen på empati som andre karakterer indoktrineres med, som stripper dem for medfølelse og intelligens og etterlater kun hatefylt idealisme.
Dette er ikke hyggelig lesning, men det er en bok som fremdeles har en alt for stor grad av relevans. Anbefales.
I sitt etterord til denne utgaven gjør Bjørneboe det tydelig at Heinrich Reynhardt er i hvert fall delvis basert på den virkelige Dr. med Sigmund Rascher, og det later til at det er her karakteren Reynhardts underlige personlige todeling kommer fra. Det er denne todeltheten som nettopp gjør denne relativt korte beretningen så interessant. For det virker både underlig og dypt forstyrrende at en person som utøver eksperimenter på mennesker kan separere dette arbeid og sitt familieliv til de grader at selve separasjonen blir en slags unnskyldning, eller et botemiddel.
Det mest forstyrrende i denne fortellingen er tross alt ikke det grusomme som for det meste skjer bak kulissene, det mest forstyrrende er beskrivelsen av et rasjonelt, vitenskapelig anlagt menneske som klarer å argumentere vekk sin egen menneskelighet, sin egen empati. Dernest følger den totale mangelen på empati som andre karakterer indoktrineres med, som stripper dem for medfølelse og intelligens og etterlater kun hatefylt idealisme.
Dette er ikke hyggelig lesning, men det er en bok som fremdeles har en alt for stor grad av relevans. Anbefales.
March 20, 2025
Denne boka beriket meg en ytterligere pessimisme ovenfor mennesket og vår natur. Det gjør vondt å erkjenne, men boka illustrerer en så alt for realistisk menneskelig tendens til å legitimere og rettferdiggjøre selv de grusomste handlinger.
Stemmer vel det man sier da; at veien til helvete er brolagt med gode intensjoner…
Forøvrig en fantastisk godt skrevet, grusomt ubehagelig og tankevekkende bok.
Stemmer vel det man sier da; at veien til helvete er brolagt med gode intensjoner…
Forøvrig en fantastisk godt skrevet, grusomt ubehagelig og tankevekkende bok.
November 1, 2021
This book, translated to english from Norwegian, is based on the authors experiences as a journalist while touring through post-war Germany. Parts of the book are chilling in the description of some of the atrocities, and the dehumanization in the concentration camps. As horrible as it is to read the details in the book, I still think it's important to take it in that this happened not so long ago. I found the timeline a little confusing, and some of the characters as well. But this book was initially written as a play, which can be found in the last half of the book, and also some changes may be due to the translation. Overall a good read, and also a very different perspective from the regular stories during the war.
September 23, 2016
Beautifully written. There's a thread of melancholy throughout the entire piece, in accordance to the times. It shows a deep understanding of the human nature. I understand very well why it's well-loved.
December 17, 2019
As a medical student, this really made me aware of that humanity must only use science as a tool, and that humanity shouldt be a tool for science
July 11, 2021
Three childhood friends. One is a doctor performing "medical" experiments in a Nazi prison camp, the second is the commandant of the camp and the third is a Jewish prisoner in the camp. The prisoner has been fattened up, literally, and the time to begin “medical” experiments on him has arrived. What will the men do? “Ere the cock crows.” (Reference: Jesus says to Paul, “Before the cock crows you will deny me three times.”) A shocking and melancholy narrative unravels as we meet those involved directly and indirectly. Bjørnbee focuses on the issue of morality, how each character handles his conscience, or lack thereof, during this very complex and abhorrent time in history. A powerful novel by a talented author.
A side note regarding this publication. This book needs a good edit. There are numerous misspelled words and words that are missing or do not belong whatsoever. It is truly distracting and unfortunate.
A side note regarding this publication. This book needs a good edit. There are numerous misspelled words and words that are missing or do not belong whatsoever. It is truly distracting and unfortunate.
June 26, 2022
grusomt
April 9, 2016
En glimrende liten bok om nazistenes eksperimenter på mennesker. Jævlig, og glimrende debut.
June 8, 2015
Extremely depressing about brutal experiments in concentration camps during ww2
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews