Eric Ehrhardt “Im Klauhof”: The book as a den of thieves

A thief can be compared to a card-player, but not to a spoilsport. The latter pushes the board off the table in frustration. The card-player, on the other hand, takes the game as seriously as the thief takes the ownership structure by violating the rules. Their breach is almost constitutive of the norm; the law needs criminals more than the police. And literature needs those who destroy language, transform it, and put it through the wringer.

Eric Ehrhardt now offers himself as an expert on both the theft and the artificial corruption of language. The author, born in Magdeburg in 1989, studied philosophy, German and Greek studies in Leipzig, Basel and New York and now lives in Zurich.

In his volume with the already funny title “Im Klauhof” and the even funnier subtitle “After a Goods Incident” he sends a professional and passionate shoplifter through a “shopping paradise” with his best friend, the backpack “Schlucki”.

Eric Ehrhardt: “In the Klauhof”. Ritter Verlag, Klagenfurt 2026. 152 pages, 21 euros

Nevertheless, associations with Dante's description of hell arise when Ehrhardt lets his long-fingered hero ponder consumption, property relations and the “war on advertising”. The military is one of the main motifs in which Ehrhardt creates his new words, because: “Buying is war, stealing is fighting”.

His narrator leafs through the handbook of “infamy tactics” and quotes the classic “On War” by “Crall von Clauewitz”. The thieving process is reflected in the poetological. One or two letters are missing or have been replaced by one that fell off a truck somewhere else.

This book is a den of thieves where there is a lot of laughter, but in whose twilight it is also easy to get lost. With its unusual nature, the volume fits perfectly into the program of the Klagenfurter Ritter Verlag, one of the most distinguished houses for the offbeat and experimental. Publishing avant-garde is a tradition on Lake Wörthersee and there has never been a big deal about it here.

Ehrhardt's style, which shrugs its shoulders between poetry and prose, relies on the insight-generating power of silliness, even impertinence. When you read it, you think of Elfriede Jelinek, who helped Kalauer win the Nobel Prize, or the early Ernst Jandl. Both role models represent productive delinquency. The irritation caused by what sounds wrong and wrong makes them aware of the methods with which language superimposes itself on reality, with which it conceals, denies, and glosses over horror and injustice.

Following this tradition, “Im Klauhof” reveals itself to be an enlightening work, but the necessary clarity is missing to determine what is being illuminated here. The text is so dense and so in love with its own motifs that it hardly reveals its deeper truths to the reader. However, this is only a shortcoming for those who believe that one must read all books from cover to cover or at all.

In the case of “Im Klauhof”, a different procedure is recommended, which is also indicated by the cryptographic illustrations of hand signals that the author used in his book. No, this book was not necessarily printed to read through, but rather to open it up, to marvel at all the word monsters and sentence monstrosities - or even, striving for the performative: to let yourself go along. Whoever steals this book demonstrates education and good taste!