Robert LöhrCritiques

En el palacio de Schönbrunn tiene lugar la presentación de un insólito invento: un autómata que juega al ajedrez.
El sorprendente artefacto, que tiene la apariencia externa de un gran turco de penetrantes ojos azules, guarda en sus entrañas un misterio que guía sus manos y su mente. Un secreto que solo conocen su creador, el ingeniero y consejero de la corte Kempelen, y su ayudante carpintero, un secreto confinado en el desván del ingeniero, del que solo es sacado con ocasión de las concurridas partidas de ajedrez y que ha empezado a suscitar envidias y recelo.
Pero el sueño de éxito que acaricia Kempelen no tarda en transformarse en su pesadilla cuando, en presencia de él, una hermosa aristocrata halla la muerte en misteriosas circunstancias. La máquina pensante se convierte entonces en objeto de espionaje, de persecución eclesisastica y de intrigas de la nobleza

El inmortal Goethe encabeza una expedición para liberar Europa de las garras de Napoleón. Ante la ambición y la sed de poder de Napoleón, un grupo de intelectuales alemanes, liderados por Goethe, deciden viajar de incógnito a París. Su objetivo último es rescatar a su delfín, Luis Carlos de Borbón, y restaurar la corona de Francia. Tras enfrentarse a innumerables peligros y sinsabores, y tras descubrir que el heredero al trono es un impostor, los expedicionarios alemanes recelan de sus buenas intenciones y el grupo se disuelve. Sin embargo, aunque Goethe regresa a Alemania aclamado como un héroe, la sombra de la traición seguirá acechándolo...

Almost a rehash of the earlier Das Erlkönig-Manöver, with Goethe and Kleist again involved in undercover activities during the Napoleonic wars. This book is set in 1806-1808.

For complicated reasons, Goethe and Kleist are travelling across Germany incognito, together with Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Schlegel, Madame de Staël, an Italian actress and a black poodle, all disguised as travelling players.

Löhr has fun letting his characters quote from their own (future) works, and he lets himself go a bit imagining what might happen when three major playwrights and the most famous German translator of Shakespeare have to improvise a performance of Hamlet for a rustic audience. The joke palls after a while, though, and the ending has to be very contrived to meet the historical novelist's standard constraint of not actually changing any of the bits of history we know about.½

For a change, a contemporary setting: it opens with schoolteacher, Green activist and single mother Friederieke becoming furious at the success of the Pirate Party in the Berlin state elections in September 2011 (8.9%, 15 seats). Those are votes that should have gone to the Greens, not to a bunch of reckless nerds. She's particularly angry with one of the new Pirate delegates in the state parliament, Volker Plauschenat, who has taken the credit for a successful meme she believes he has stolen from an idea in a blogpost she wrote.

Friederieke decides to infiltrate the Pirates and get her revenge on Volker, which allows Löhr to give us a lot of fascinating — and often very funny — detail about the Pirate phenomenon in German politics, and to show us that there were actually a few serious and worthwhile ideas hiding behind the pony tails, Star Trek references, bestickered MacBooks, and endless bottles of Club-Mate. Of course, we all know how a romantic comedy has to end if it starts with a female character hating a male character, but Löhr manages to twist the narrative inevitability away from the totally obvious a few times along the way. A fun glimpse into the long-gone 2010s!

Imagine it's early in 1805, and you're the ruler of a small German duchy who has received a piece of secret information that might just give you the opportunity to undermine Napoleon's power and stop the relentless march of his armies across Europe. But to make use of it would require a delicate and highly-dangerous secret mission into occupied territory to free a political prisoner who may - or may not - be the real Louis XVII. Whom do you send for to undertake this tricky task? Yes, you got it in one! This has to be a job for the Middleaged Quarrelsome Ninja Poets.

Goethe (for this is Weimar, of course) assembles a crack team: he's supported by the crossbow-toting Schiller and the politically-unreliable jungle survival expert, Alexander von Humboldt. In Frankfurt they are joined by the lovely Bettina Brentano (20) and her jealous fiancé Achim von Arnim, a man who knows a thing or two about medieval verse. And there's a psychotically-trigger-happy young Prussian lieutenant with a comedy about a Broken jug under his arm who seems to have attached himself to the group as well...

They set out on their quest with the requisite quarrels about politics, poetic style, geology, and the like, as well as an astonishing number of bad puns, unconscious quotations from themselves and from each other, and references to every adventure story from William Tell to Crocodile Dundee (Mark Twain gets a look-in too, of course). And, needless to say, it doesn't go well. There are some impressively choreographed Errol Flynn window-smashes and sword fights, some jokes set up so far in advance that we have to stop in admiration for the author's restraint. And some that in more enlightened times would have led to the author being taken out and shot (the prison scene where Schiller, disguised as a monk, finds himself listening to an account of the sorrows of the young warder, for example...).

An entertaining and often very funny corrective for anyone inclined to take German literature too seriously, and interesting evidence that there are still a few historical novelists brave enough to follow Scott's example and just move around any awkward facts that don't fit the narrative.½

Loosely based on actual events in 18th century Europe, The Secrets of the Chess Machine tells the story of the Baron von Kempelen, whom having seen a demonstration of magnetism and claiming that he could invent something even more remarkable is challenged by Maria Theresia, the Empress of Hapsburg, to do so within six months. The result is the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton. However, the Mechanical Turk is nothing but a cunning hoax for hidden inside the machine behind clockwork gear wheels that do nothing and are purely for show is Tibor, an Italian dwarf with astonishing chess-playing abilities. Tibor is deeply religious whilst Baron von Kempelen is in reality a conman. After gaining Tibor's release from a Venetian dungeon the Baron persuades him to utilise his God-given talents in order to fool audiences throughout the Empire.

There have been much written about the Mechanical Turk in later decades but little is known about it's early days so this is a purely fictional account. Initially the Turk was only meant to have one performance in front of the Empress but she is so astonished by it she orders the Baron continue showing it. However, when a woman mysteriously dies after one of its performances suspicion falls on von Kempelen and the Turk, they become targets for intrigue and religious persecution.

On the whole I found the characters are engaging and it is obvious that the author has done his research of the period giving the reader a feel for the machinations of Hapsburg court life and in many respects the murder mystery is secondary but always remains plausible. Far more important is the motivation that drives von Kempelen, who is already relatively successful, to carry out his charade.

That is not to say that I felt that it wasn't without its issues. The author was a journalist before turning author and at times it reads more like a news editorial instead of a true novel. There are also a couple of time shifts which felt rather clunky. Despite these minor faults I still felt that overall it was an enjoyable, worthwhile read.½

So boring, I couldn't finish it.

Goethe, Kleist, Madame de Stael, Schlegel und Tieck reisen verkleidet als Schauspieltruppe durchs Land, im Gepäck die tausendjährige Reichskrone. Als Stück führen sie Hamlet auf- allerdings deutlich verändert und mitunter auch - wenn es das Publikum wünscht - mit positivem Ende.
Das ist definitiv sehr sehr witzig! Allerdings ist die Handlung z.T. auch etwas langatmig.

Very interesting story based on history, with characters I felt invested in. I only have a few minor issues with the story; one of which is the decision to use deception from the get-go. I believe they would have earnestly tried to make a chess playing machine and when that did not succeed, then go with deception as Plan B. Otherwise, superb from beginning to end!

I listened to the recorded version of this book and ended up not finishing the novel. I think it was because I simply didn't like the narrator. The main drawback to listening to a book is that the narrator DOES make a difference in the perception of the book. In this case I found the narrator to have a smug toneless tone, and that made none of the characters sympathetic to the listener. At some point in time I might read this book, but for now I have let go of the recorded version and sent it to the used book store.

The Sängerkrieg (war of the singers) was an imaginary contest between the greatest medieval poets in German, described in a 13th century manuscript and supposed to have taken place in the Wartburg under the patronage of Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia. It caught the attention of 19th century romantics and nationalists, as a representation of cultural and political unity, the birth of the German language, the coming together of Christian and pre-Christian ideas, etc. Everyone from Novalis to ETA Hoffman had a go at it, and it gave Wagner the plot of Tannhäuser.

Löhr takes this sublime moment when Walter von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach were pitting their poetical and performance skills against the (mythical) Heinrich von Ofterdingen, and imagines how it might really have worked out if such a bunch of great creative egos had been invited to a house-party at an isolated castle in the middle of winter. Especially when all of them were also trained fighting men, and had been involved both personally and through their patrons in the civil wars of the time.

The result is a lively, swashbuckling adventure, something between Ivanhoe and a murder mystery story. High culture is there of course, but it's on the margins: the real story is all about greed, envy, lust and political advantage. To add to the fun, we also get a frame narrative involving a later guest at the Wartburg, Martin Luther, a pot of ink, and you-know-who. Very entertaining!

In diesem Roman lässt der Autor Goethe, Schiller, Alexander von Humbold, Bettine Brentano, Achim von Arnim und Heinrich von Kleist zusammen den tot geglaubten französischen Thronerben Ludwig XVII aus dem Mainzer Gefängnis retten. Dabei erleben sie ganz unglaubliche Abenteuer.
Die Geschichte ist recht nett, spannend, man kann einiges über die tatsächlichen historischen Zusammenhänge erfahren. Allerdings taucht in brenzligen Situationen stets in letzter Sekunde ein rettender Helfer auf, meist Heinrich von Kleist. So ist die Handlung dann auch nur zum Teil überzeugend.
Man liest das Buch natürlich wegen der unglaublichen Zusammenstellung der Hauptpersonen. Aber genau hierin liegt auch etwas, das mir nicht gefällt: Historisch verbrieften Personen eine so unglaubliche Geschichte anzudichten, die eine so große Reichweite gehabt hätte, wenn sie denn wahr wäre, das gefällt mir einfach nicht.
Ich habe noch das "Hamlet-Komplott" des Autors hier liegen. Mal sehen, ob ich das noch lese.

Different and fascinating!

I bought the book based on the cover alone and never realised that it's by a german author. I hadn't heard of kempelen either. The story itself was interesting, but i missed kempelen's motive for deceiving people so thoroughly although he was a scientist, and what drove him to kill.

Ein grosser Klamauk. Goethe, Kleist, Schiller, B. Brentano, Arnim und A. Humboldt ziehen aus, einen napoleonischen Gefangenen zu befreien. Aus dieser etwas chaotischen Ausgangssituation konstruiert Löhr einen durchweg amüsanten Roman. Die Geschichte lebt von der aktionsgeladenen und anspielungsreichen Interaktion der Dichter/in und Denker, die auf ihrer Reise alle strategischen und menschlichen Höhen und Tiefen durchschreiten. Die zweite Hälfte des Romans ist bei abschnittsweise geringerem Tempo ein wenig mühsamer zu lesen, insgesamt ist das "Erlkönig-Manöver" aber eine höchst unterhaltsame Lektüre.½

En La máquina de ajedrez, Robert Löhr narra la historia de un invento extraordinario que acabó convirtiéndose en una de las mayores estafas de todos los tiempos. Basada en hechos reales, esta novela es la recreación exquisita de una sociedad ávida de nuevos descubrimientos que hará las delicias de aquellos que disfrutaron con novelas como El perfume y películas como Las amistades peligrosas

Robert Löhr's The Chess Machine (translated from the German by Andrea Bell and published by Penguin in 2007) is a fictionalized version of the story of the Mechanical Turk, a historical hoax produced by Wolfgang von Kempelen and exhibited around Europe in the final decades of the 18th century (and extant until 1854, when it was destroyed in a Philadelphia fire). While we don't know too much at all about the original operator of the Turk, Löhr has given us a character in the person of Tibor, an Italian dwarf plucked from jail by Kempelen and effectively held hostage as the Turk's inner workings.

Tibor, von Kempelen, and the erstwhile assistant Jakob soon discover that their secret is going to be a tough one to keep hidden, and that the steps they have to take to keep the Turk in operation might be troubling ones.

I enjoyed this book; the story held my interest, the writing was excellent, and the way Löhr manages to turn the narrative itself into a very complicated chess match was very well done.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-review-chess-machine.html

romance contando a trama de trapaceiros demonstrando uma falsa máquina de jogar xadrez ainda no século XVIII.

Entretenido. La historia está bien encuadrada en el momento histórico elegido, aunque quizá pudiera habérsele imprimido un menor tinte dramátiico del que tiene. Historia atrayente y divertida al principio que va oscureciendose con el discurrir de la novela.

In the late 18th century, a fabulous new scientific oddity was the toast of Europe. The Turk, a chess-playing automaton built by Wolfgang von Kempelen, was defeating chess masters across Europe. It was a true marvel of the times -- a machine, built after the fashion of a Turkish ruler, that was capable of thought. Built for the amusement of Empress Maria Theresa of Hungary, it played chess, the game of kings, against rulers and commoners alike. In 1808, it played its most famous foe, Napoleon Bonaparte. The Turk was eventually retired, sold, and was destroyed in a fire at Peale's Chinese Museum in Philadelphia in 1854. But what was the secret behind this machine that dazzled royalty and astounded the court machinicians? Robert Lohr devises a tale for The Turk full of intrigue and heartbreak in his novel, The Chess Machine.

My full review is here.

Interesting adaptation of the true story of Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess playing automaton. It intertwines real people with fictional characters such as Tibor, the Italian dwarf who is the first brains of the machine. The historical story was interesting but the characters and how they interact are what makes the story.
This was an audiobook. The narrator was clear and interesting. The story follows two time tracks and at times I found myself having to reorient myself to which track we were on. Still all in all very interesting.

Too speculative, for a work of non-fiction, and too unoriginal for a work of fiction. The first dozen pages start out with great promise, but then it simply becomes a pulp thriller with the chess automaton as just a peripheral plot element.

It really has a cool cover though!

The idea that this was based on actual events intrigued me, but I soon realized that it was mostly fiction. The actual events associated with von Kempelen's chess machine are not well documented and the actual machine is long lost. I was hoping that we had diaries or letters or some such to draw from, but we don't and the author's imagination had to fill in much of the story.

That's not to say the story wasn't interesting or compelling. It was. The story is told in mostly the linear style with occasional flashes forward in time. This reassures us that certain characters prevail or at least survive, but does not diminish the suspense; we want to know what happened and how. The human element was obviously the most fascinating. As soon as von Kempelen 'rescued' Tibor, I knew it would only be a matter of time until it became strained. The balance of power in that relationship was very much on the side of Tibor until von Kempelen managed to tie Tibor to a murder. When Tibor tired of being the chess machine's brain and tried to make a break for freedom, von Kempelen's threats of exposure, prison and possible execution transformed his at will chess-playing to virtual enslavement.

Von Kempelen could not separate his life from the machine no matter how ruinous it became for him. The dead woman's brother wished revenge. His wife begged him to give up the chess machine. A rival machinist, still stung by his loss to The Turk, planted a spy in von Kempelen's household to ferret out the secret of the chess automaton. Tibor was tired and his engineer wanted to leave his employ as well. But von Kempelen would not stop. He craved the fame and fortune that came with exhibiting The Turk. He also feared he would never be able to top it.

The Turk itself is very interesting and at the same time, hard to imagine. We've come so far from mechanical clockwork devices that it's difficult to envision such a contraption. It was basically a large cabinet with a mechanical man built into the side and facing a chessboard on its surface. The automaton was dressed as a Turk and thus the name. The cabinet design concealed a compartment where Tibor would work the machinery and execute The Turk's moves. This was done without direct visual aid and depended too much on ideal circumstances. When the Empress decides that her match must take place outside in the blazing summer sun it becomes a disaster.

It was touted as a thinking machine which is unimaginable to me because of its mechanical nature. How could anyone think that this collection of gears and wheels could actually reason? But as clockwork was the height of machinery advancement, the people thought it could. Except for the rival machinist who knew there had to be a trick. This man turned over many ideas in his head about what could really be driving the automaton. Maybe it was von Kempelen himself since he was never far from the apparatus during play. He even checked the inside to see if there was a man in there (the cabinet itself was so cleverly designed, people could look right in both sides and never see Tibor). But since the cabinet was too small for a regular sized person to hide in he dismissed the idea without it occurring to him that it might be a dwarf. The attitudes toward dwarves by the normally statured are astounding to me; they were abominations or works of the devil and many people didn't even count them as human. Of course it didn't occur to them that one might be the secret to the whole operation.

The writing is fairly straightforward and reads somewhat like an encyclopedia. I'm not sure if this is due to the author or the translation. What is lost in verve is made up for in pacing and plot structure. Luckily for me, as I'm not a chess player nor have much interest in the game, not much of the novel is taken up by play information or lots of boring lists of moves or gambits. It is interesting though to read about how popular a pastime it was and how so many people could play. The ending is a bit weak, but it does build a great amount of tension so the calmness of the final chapter is necessary. There are some nice comeuppances along the way, too, but no revenge is complete.

There are few sympathetic characters. Tibor himself is the most sympathetic. Dwarfism is a heavy burden for him and he seems to go from master to master and has not lived a truly independent life. He is also often targeted for theft, betrayal and cruel practical jokes. He is very religious and his transgressions and sins really trouble him. The author says he transformed von Kempelen's true character as recorded by his contemporaries, but he had to for the sake of the fiction he wove around the facts. It is too bad there isn't more documentation, but given the heavy secrecy surrounding The Turk, it's not surprising. It's also quite sad that the automaton itself hasn't survived. It would be something to see.

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

As regular readers know, one of the topics that often comes up here at the CCLaP website is of the slippery line between what we commonly refer to as "mainstream" literature versus "genre;" of not only where that line should be drawn, but of how we look at books differently based on what side it falls, not to mention the different smaller lines that can be drawn once you're on one side or another. For example, I'm a general fan of the science-fiction genre, as are many of CCLaP's readers; but then within sci-fi, I myself am a particular fan of a subgenre known as "steampunk." A play on the '80s sci-fi term "cyberpunk," it is basically a mix of speculative fiction and Victorian-era (or older) historical fiction, running with science-fictiony concepts based on real events from the time period; for example, what the world would've been like if computers had actually been invented back then instead of the 1950s, which actually did almost happen in real life except for the prototypes' prohibitive costs and enormous space requirements back then. At its aesthetic heart, steampunk is basically the attempt to take various high-tech concepts from our real present day, and "retrofit" them into beautifully-designed wood and metal forms, to imagine a world where robots work off of burning coal and double as exquisite objets de art, all for the good of our Glorious Queen and Her Empire.

That's why I was so excited, after all, to pick up German writer Robert Lohr's first novel, the very smart and fun action adventure The Chess Machine; because it too can be technically counted as a steampunk novel, although in this case is set around a hundred years before most of the genre's other examples, or in other words the late 1700s. And that's because, interestingly enough, the core of the novel's storyline is based around an actual object with shady origins: an actual "Mechanical Turk" chess-playing automaton, in reality an elaborate hoax, well-known as a touring historical item in the 1800s but with society having collectively forgotten its beginnings. Lohr uses this lost origin to his advantage, taking the object itself and moving backwards in time creatively to imagine a colorful and danger-filled Vienna, when a cloudy haze existed between magic and science and where lots of hucksters were ready to step in and take advantage of it. The result is a delightfully exciting story, one that has more potential mainstream appeal than other steampunk novels because of it being rooted in reality; it is a book sure to thrill not only nerdy hard-edged sci-fi fans such as myself, but also those who love the mystery genre and straight-ahead historical fiction as well. There's a reason, after all, that the book rights have already been sold in twenty countries, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear of a major Hollywood deal at any moment too.

So as mentioned, probably the best place to start a discussion of The Chess Machine is regarding its actual historical origins -- that the titular machine at the center of the plot actually used to exist, created by an Austrian named Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen in the 1770s, at a time when such other "automatons" as mechanical cuckoo clocks and artificial writing machines were being unveiled in Europe as well. And although it was filled with real mechanics, Kempelen's chess-playing machine was in fact an elaborate hoax; it was a chess-playing human inside of it the whole time, with an ingenious series of sliding cubbyholes within the contraption, so that the player could shift from space to space as Kempelen opened the various doors of the device one at a time. It was a time when so-called "miraculous" things were being done every day, aided by the newfound popularity of the scientific process; that's why few people questioned the idea of a brass-and-wood machine somehow having artificial intelligence, and why so many people took the Turk's ability to play chess at face value. The machine in fact ended up touring for almost 80 years under various owners, with various small periods of "retirement" for continual technological improvements to the hoax; among other storied destinations, the real Turk ended up playing such luminaries as Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Edgar Allen Poe, before accidentally being destroyed in a warehouse fire in the 1850s. And believe it or not, despite several dozen people learning the secret of the Turk over those 80 years, not one of them blabbed it in public until after the Turk had been destroyed; Kempelen in fact spent his entire life being regarded as a mechanical genius, going to his grave in the early 1800s without any of his peers being the wiser.

What Lohr does, then, is take all the elements of the real story I just laid out, then start filling in the holes with fictional details; of what kind of person Kempelen might have been like, for example, to want to pull a fast one on both royalty and the general public for so long, or of what kind of person might have been actually inside the machine and playing the chess matches back then. And this is in fact an important thing about The Chess Machine to know right away; that when such details are at the discretion of Lohr, he deliberately chooses outlandishly entertaining options, in order to weave a semi-fantastical and always-thrilling action-based plot, one not really grounded that much in reality but definitely a gripping yarn. In Lohr's world, for example, the first hidden player of the Turk's history is none other than a mentally brilliant dwarf who happens to be a criminal, and just happens to be a strict Catholic, and who just happens to be terrified of small, enclosed spaces as well; yes, it's quite lucky that all those traits happen to be the most entertaining ones that we as readers could've had in such a situation!

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that it's adventure-novel logic on display in The Chess Machine; that much like the Indiana Jones movies, you need to be ready to go down that non-real road that Lohr is leading you, and accept all the freakishly coincidental and always visually arresting things going on within this far-fetched storyline. If you're able to do that, though, you're going to find a briskly-paced thriller with all kinds of fun almost magical elements, a story that always stays rooted in reality but sometimes only barely. It's a world of royal courts and shadowy back roads; a world of both political intrigue and soap-opera-like melodrama. At the same time, though, it's an ingenious look at retrofitted technology as well; a step-by-step guide as to how such a machine actually worked, using techniques relying on magnetism and other scientific principles that would take another hundred years to catch on with the general public. It's a nerd action tale that doubles as a historical murder mystery! I love it!

In fact, I'm having a hard time even coming up with anything specifically negative to point out about The Chess Machine, except of course for the obvious one -- that no matter how well a genre piece it is, it's still a genre piece, which means that people who don't like this genre in general are bound to not like this novel either, and will never end up liking it no matter what changes are made. I admit that I'm a fan of not only historical fiction but also caper tales and also steampunk settings; this novel combines all three, so of course I'm going to eat it up like the freaking genre sheep I am. It's part of the natural biases that come with me being a human being as well as an arts critic, that there are certain subjects I personally gravitate towards and certain ones I simply don't care for; in general I think it's simply best to acknowledge this bias and move on, instead of pretending my bias doesn't exist in the first place. All you Nerdy McNerds out there like me are bound to love The Chess Machine, while others are bound to roll their eyes and mutter "Ugh!" merely at the sight of the front cover; as is sometimes the case here, I guess I'll just leave my review at that, and simply admit that I definitely am one of those Nerdy McNerds who adores elaborate little stories like this, although also acknowledge that it's not for everyone.

Out of 10:
Story: 9.3
Characters: 9.4
Style: 9.5
Overall: 9.4½

So kann man reinfallen, wenn man einen historischen Roman wegen der zugrundeliegenden (interessanten) historischen Fakten kauft.

"Als Hofrat Wolfgang von Kempelen 1770 am Habsburgischen Hof seinen Schach spielenden Automaten präsentiert, gilt der Maschinenmensch als großartigste Errungenschaft des Jahrhunderts. Doch tatsächlich verbirgt sich im Innern der Maschine ein Zwerg - und dieses menschliche Gehirn erweist sich als tödlich und sterblich zugleich. Von den Bleikammern Venedigs zum kaiserlichen Hof in Wien, von den Palästen des Preßburger Adels in die Gassen des Judenviertels - ein spannender historischer Roman um ein legendäres Täuschungsmanöver." [Produktbeschreibung]

Die Geschichte des Schachtürken war mir fast gänzlich unbekannt, so daß ich zumindest in dieser Hinsicht einiges gelernt habe. Sprachlich ist das Buch angenehm und gut zu lesen. Allerdings bleiben die Figuren der Handlung etwas blaß, leblos und im wesentlichen unattraktiv; man entwickelt gegen das Ende hin nicht einmal großes Interesse dafür, wie es denn mit den Hauptpersonen weiterging. Die angekündigte Spannung hält sich leider in Grenzen, obwohl die Geschichte, wie ich meine, sehr viel mehr hergegeben hätte. Obwohl der Roman vom historischen Vorbild etwas abweicht – Löhr geht sogar so weit, Kempelen einen Mord begehen zu lassen – gelingt es ihm nicht, den Leser wirklich zu fesseln. Zahlreiche Längen lassen Langeweile aufkommen und bei den technischen Details macht sich das Fehlen von Abbildungen unangenehm bemerkbar. Die Art und Weise, wie der Schachzwerg im Türken versteckt war, wie er sein Versteck wechselte, wenn die Türen des Schachtisches vor Beginn des Spiels zur Demonstration geöffnet wurden, wie er von innen die Züge des Gegenspielers beobachtete [Die Schachfiguren waren mit Magnetkernen versehen, die auf der Unterseite des Bretts an Nadeln angebrachte Metallringe hoben oder senkten], wie er seine eigenen Züge mit Hilfe einer Storchschnabelmechanik ausführte, die die Hand des Schachtürken bewegte, sind so unzulänglich beschrieben, daß mir die ganze Konstruktion unklar blieb, bis ich Bilder davon im Internet aufgetrieben hatte. Hier fehlen Abbildungen, die man in einem Roman zwar im allgemeinen nicht erwarten kann, die aber angesichts der komplizierten Apparatur notwendig gewesen wären.

Gänzlich verschenkt wurde die Chance, die Wirkung des Türken (wie auch anderer mechanischer Apparaturen) in der fortschrittsgläubigen Gesellschaft des ausgehenden Barock ein wenig zu durchleuchten. Obwohl der ganze Schwindel schon zu Kempelens Lebzeiten von mehreren Beobachtern durchschaut wurde, die auch entsprechende Interpretationen des Apparats publizierten, blieb das Publikum davon weitgehend unberührt und stattdessen weiterhin von der Maschine fasziniert. Selbst im 19. Jahrhundert noch reiste Johann Mälzel, der nach Kempelens Tod den Schachtürken gekauft hatte, damit durch die Welt und regte u.a. Edgar Allan Poes kritischen Essay zu diesem Thema (mit der richtigen Auflösung) an. Nicht zuletzt wäre die Geschichte höchst interessant als Parallele zur aktuellen Diskussion über künstliche Intelligenz, deren Anfänge – zumindest deren technische wie philosophische Rezeption – in der damaligen Zeit zu finden sind.

Löhrs Roman ist eins der typischen Bücher, das man nur deshalb zu Ende liest, weil der Anfang ganz ordentlich war und man die ganze Zeit hofft, daß es doch irgendwann interessant oder spannend (oder beides) werden könnte. Immerhin habe ich gelernt, daß die Verben "türken" und "einen Türken bauen" auf Kempelens Schachautomaten zurückgehen. So war die Lektüre nicht ganz umsonst.

Bei Amazon wird das Buch übrigens viel enthusiastischer besprochen, es kann also sein, daß ich einen etwas sonderlichen Geschmack habe (oder daß des Autors Freunde viele Rezensionen eingestellt haben).

3 von 10 in einem finsteren Apparat schwitzenden zwergwüchsigen Schachgenies½