Eine Zierde für den Verein: Roman vom Rauchen, Sporteln, Lieben und Verkaufen

Fleißer’s only novel, originally published in 1931 as Mehlreisende Frieda Geier (“Flour-rep Frieda Geier“) and reissued in slightly revised form under the present title (“An ornament to the club: a novel of smoking, sport, love and sales”) in 1974.

The story has strong autobiographical elements, with the author appearing twice, once as Frieda, a clever, strong-minded young woman who works as a travelling salesperson for a flour company, and once as Frieda’s little sister Linchen, a student in a repressive, narrow-minded convent school. Their parents are dead, and Frieda is paying her sister’s school fees and is determined that Linchen should make something of her life. The nuns seem to have other ideas…

Frieda is show more involved with Gustl, the local swimming champion, who has just broken away from his parents to set up his own tobacconist’s shop in the town. He’s a good guy, within his limits, and Frieda clearly enjoys being with him (and the sex!), but she soon comes to realise that the 20th century has yet to reach Gustl’s corner of Bavaria, and the chances of his accepting the idea of marriage as an equal partnership are nil. He is a “child of nature”, as the narrator puts it, as ironically as she can. If Frieda stays with him, it will be as unpaid assistant in his shop. The idea of Frieda as having a career of her own, or as breadwinner for Linchen, just can’t penetrate his felt hat. Moreover, Gustl is beginning to realise that he has time in his life for either women or training, but not both. (We get a tantalising suggestion that it might really be men who turn him on, but this unfortunately isn’t developed further.)

An entertaining narrative, with lots of fun poked at Bavarian macho culture along the way, even if we know that in real life Fleißer didn’t end up having Frieda’s chance to say “no” to a life behind the counter, largely thanks to having her literary career messed up by the Nazis. show less