The hunt for love

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The Hunt for Love is a novel by Heinrich Mann , published in 1903. The text was drafted in January of the same year and the writing was completed in the summer.

The decadent millionaire son Claude desires the beautiful Ute, but will never own her.

action

hunt

The day the novel began, old Marehn, a millionaire Munich construction speculator and father of 20-year-old Claude Marehn, has just died. Karl Panier, 63 years old, also a speculator, is appointed guardian of Claude , who is still underage.

In the hunt for love, Claude succumbs to beautiful women; first and foremost the self-confident, also 20-year-old acting student Ute Ende. Ute doesn't let a man get close to her and is busy living her stage career. But soon the unapproachable Ute finds her master in Karl Panier, the old man with gouty knots on his hands. The old man deflowered the ambitious Ute, after he generously sponsored her as a patron and then immediately made it mad with a prepared candy.

It is also Karl Panier who snaps almost every desirable young woman - whether virgin or cocotte - from Claude's nose and hastily nibbled on it. The guardian and notorious womanizer Panier continuously supports his ward Claude financially in a moderate manner.

Because Claude can't get his great love Ute after a long effort, he leads a dissolute sex life with her stage rival, the 17-year-old Gilda Franchini, who is said to be from Frankfurt an der Oder. Claude realizes that he really only loves Ute. When Claude finally, exhausted by the unrestrained life, coughs dry, his hair is falling out and he is dying of death, it is Ute who rushes from outside to the deathbed of Claude, who is not yet 25 years old, and watches over his last days. At the end of the novel, Ute wants to confess her love to Claude the moment he dies. Unfortunately, like almost everything the young actress does, Ute's last appearance in the novel is theater.

love

Heinrich Mann tells the love story of Claude and Ute. The couple has known each other since childhood. Both have a tense relationship with their parents. Claude wants more than something like mere brotherhood. As a budding actress, Ute doesn't and doesn't want a relationship, although the audience expects her to do so. Claude desires Ute's long thighs. He worships Ute. She doesn't want to know anything about it.

She had turned him down years before the novel began. The then seventeen-year-old Claude had taken women to replace them - one after the other. Although Claude doesn't tolerate women , he needs them as a remedy for his extremely annoying headache. The stupid thing is - Claude still only desires Ute. Claude promises to leave her alone for a while as she works on an off-site stage. While Claude waits well in Munich, Ute is seduced by Panier (see above). Claude and Ute had loved each other like siblings in the summer. Loving Ute is what Claude sees as the meaning of his life. If that were possible, he would love Ute beyond his death. Ute confesses to Claude that she doesn't love him, she rather loves art. Claude pouts, takes other women (they confess to each other that Claude loves very much ) and is hungry for Ute. She rejects him again. Claude abuses the next virgin.

But he's looking for Ute; eagerly takes in all of her words and gestures. She torments him in her stage language, confesses her dislike. Ute does not have the talent of the Franchini. Alone she takes failures. Claude finally wants success in life, and he wants to take the strength for it from his longing for Ute. Claude builds a theater in Munich - just for Ute. “Die pink silk panties”, a piece that Pömmerl, one of Claude's many friends, wrote especially for Ute, will not be the success she had hoped for. The new theater building turns out to be an economic mistake. Professor von Archibald, another old man, gets into bed with Ute exactly according to Panier's recipe. Claude, once again left by Ute, certifies himself incapable of love after Archibalds' "success" with Ute.

Good friends

Claude is not lacking in friends who pump up the universal heir.

  • Spießl, the 20-year-old nihilist , puts Claude's addiction to Frau Ute on a par with bowel movements. He ruthlessly analyzes Claude's drive and dissects a piece of prehistoric man, inherited from Claude's manly mother, the widow Melanie Marehn. These great cattle, inside Claude, hunt for love. That is why Claude never becomes a full nihilist.
  • The rich, impotent merchant's son Köhmbold only wants beauty.
  • With Claude's money, the poet Pömmerl publishes the unsuccessful monthly “Der Rosenbusch”.
  • Professor von Archibald, director of the Academy for Dramatic Art, is not Claude's friend, but he knows how to capitalize on Claude's entrepreneurial awkwardness, just as he duped Claude's father. The director wants to support Ute if she wants him. Ute initially rejects the lecher. After the failure of “The pink silk panties”, Ute gives in to the director's renewed insistence and is hired by him to Berlin as a reward. Claude learns about the act of the monster from Ute's mouth and breaks because of it. He hates Ute and rears up. Claude wants her lover, even though she gives herself to the elderly. Ute does not participate. She thinks she is strong, make a sacrifice to her art. Ute is strong. And Claude, conquered by her will, slacks and gives in. He excuses the mistress. You can't love.
  • Captain von Eisenmann, Claude's mother's lover, only wants the best for Claude. The captain wants to raise the boy and control him as he controls the rather young widow Melanie.

Finally, at Claude's sickbed, the good friends can only be seen once. Panier, partially paralyzed by a stroke, is the notable exception. He stands by the sick person.

  • The young end, Ute's father, thinks the daughter's acting is less important. It would be more humane if Ute watched Claude's last hours on her deathbed. The hypocritical father wants to get hold of Claude's property through his daughter.

Capitalists, straw men, proletarians

The novel is a contemporary document from the German Empire on the threshold of the 20th century.

Panier explains his blessed father's system to Claude. A mortgage is taken out at the bank. The interest is paid from the sale of a property. Nobody knows what property the speculator has, not even he himself.

Claude has concerns about this practice. For example, when one of the straw men involved in the above-mentioned “manipulations” hanged himself, he had a remorse. The crook Panier, however, goes over corpses.

Panier simply takes an angry worker, the brother of one of the many young women that Claude has one after the other, to Café Luitpold. Claude is part of the party. You get drunk and misbehave. The proletariat no longer wants to rebel and thanks for the nice evening. The year is 1903. Panier still has the worker under control almost playfully.

Quotes

  • "He who lies is not free."
  • "Every step to a woman is a fateful step."

Testimonials

  • Heinrich Mann
    • on January 10, 1904 to Ludwig Ewers : "The many social issues, but it was necessary because it defines the characters of the hero and heroine more precisely." A quarter of a year later he is happy because his friend called the book a decameron and explains it : "Now Claude is not only a decadent lover, but also a declining military ... Hence a lot of social relationships ..." and confesses: "I still love the book. It is written almost in one go, with an intensity of inner sympathy like hardly anything else from me ... "
    • on July 25, 1905 to Inés Schmied: “This book has been completely misunderstood. It was only taken for an outpouring of sensuality: it is more ... "
  • According to Anger, Heinrich Mann had his beloved sister Carla , who wanted to assert herself as an actress, in mind when writing the Ute-Ende passages of the novel . In this context Anger quotes from “ An Age is Visited ”: “I see it as if it were alive, developing; upright in the long, tight-fitting dress as they were worn back then. She ... spoke with the confidence of her twenty years. "

reception

Contemporaries
  • Thomas Mann
    • writes to his brother on December 5, 1903 after reading it: "... what you do is sick ... because it is the result of a crooked and unnatural development ..." and judges: "... I miss every rigor, every unity , every linguistic attitude. "
    • writes on December 30, 1903, impressed by the reading to Kurt Martens : "I am at a loss."
    • on January 17, 1906, is irritated by the openness of his brother. So he writes to him: “You are absolute. I on the other hand deigned to give myself a constitution ”.
  • November 20, 1904: The mother Julia Mann to the son: "The fact that you are too daring to draw in well-known Munich personalities in the hunt for love makes Löhr a little uncomfortable in his position ..."
  • From 1903 to 1909, Adolf Dannegger (1903), Georg Jacob Wolf (1904), Kurt Aram (1904), Leo Greiner (1904), René Schickele (1904), Paul Friedrich (1905), Julie Speyer (1905) and Lion Feuchtwanger (1909).
Later statements
  • April 17, 1958: Alfred Kantorowicz notes that the text, which was written in half a year, was too hasty .
  • Anger quotes from letters from the sisters Julia and Carla, who write to the brother after reading the novel.
  • Ebersbach describes Ute's legacy sneaking on Claude's deathbed as a “comedic brilliant achievement brought to life”.
  • The novel was planned since December 1900 and written in the first half of 1903. He radiates “simple humanity and warmth”.
  • In the novel, "Nietzsche's ' will to power ' is implemented in realistic-satirical social scenes".
  • Ute, the would-be artist, reached her top acting form at the end of the novel, when she wanted to give herself to Claude on his deathbed in order to get hold of the inheritance.

“ The hunt for love was unmistakably a roman a clef. That the actress Ute Ende wore many features of Carla might still be a private matter of the siblings. But next to her, all of Munich appeared, the Schwabing ›artist folk‹ as well as the ›good company‹ - amazing how exactly Heinrich knew the city, in which he stayed seldom and always only for a short time! Everyone recognized in Claude Marehn the then twenty-five-year-old founder of the island and literary patron Alfred Walter Heymel , everyone recognized Countess Franziska Reventlow - a woman from Lübeck too! -, everyone recognized everyone or thought they recognized them, well-known painters, poets, theater directors, property speculators, industrialists, bankers, aristocrats, hundreds and more, and even if there were no 'keys' to the novel as with Buddenbrooks, Munich had one Social scandal that was in no way inferior to the excitement in Lübeck. "

- Peter de Mendelssohn

Stage adaptation

expenditure

  • The hunt for love. Albert Langen, Munich 1903.
  • The hunt for love. A novel. Wolff, Leipzig 1916.
  • The hunt for love. Novel. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin (GDR) / Weimar 1957 (published without the afterword by Alfred Kantorowicz, who fled to West Germany while it was being printed).
  • The hunt for love. Volume 3 of the Collected Works. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1969.
  • The hunt for love. Novel. Study edition in individual volumes. With an afterword by Alfred Kantorowicz and a material appendix compiled by Peter-Paul Schneider. Fischer-TB, Frankfurt 1987 (3rd edition 2006), ISBN 3-596-25923-1 .

literature

  • Klaus Schröter : Heinrich Mann. With testimonials and photo documents. 20th edition. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-50125-2 .
  • Sigrid Anger (Ed.): Heinrich Mann. 1871-1950. Work and life in documents and images. With unpublished manuscripts and letters from the estate. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin / Weimar 1971.
  • Volker Ebersbach : Heinrich Mann. Life, work, activity. Reclam, Leipzig 1978.
  • Brigitte Hocke: Heinrich Mann. Bibliographical Institute, Leipzig 1983.
  • Helmut Koopmann in: Gunter E. Grimm , Frank Rainer Max (eds.): German poets. Life and work of German-speaking authors. Volume 7: From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century. Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-008617-5 .
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 .
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A – Z. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 410.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heinrich Mann on January 29, 1947, quoted in the study edition, 2006 edition, p. 497, 8th Zvo
  2. ↑ Kantorowicz in the afterword of the study edition, 2006 edition, p. 490, 8th Zvo
  3. ↑ Volume 3 of the collected works. Aufbau-Verlag, p. 187.
  4. ↑ Volume 3 of the collected works. Aufbau-Verlag, p. 306.
  5. ↑ Heinrich Mann, quoted in the afterword of the study edition, edition 2006, p. 520, 10. Zvo
  6. ^ Heinrich Mann, quoted in the afterword of the study edition, 2006 edition, p. 520, 10th Zvu
  7. ↑ Heinrich Mann, quoted in the afterword of the study edition, edition 2006, p. 520, 1. Zvu
  8. ↑ Heinrich Mann, quoted in Kantorowicz in the afterword of the study edition, edition 2006, p. 489, 5th Zvu
  9. ↑ Anger p. 97.
  10. ↑ Thomas Mann, quoted in the study edition, edition 2006, p. 505, 4th Zvu
  11. ↑ Thomas Mann, quoted in the study edition, edition 2006, p. 507, 17. Zvo
  12. ↑ Thomas Mann, quoted in the study edition, 2006 edition, p. 514, 7th Zvo
  13. ↑ Schröter pp. 55-56
  14. ↑ Julia Mann, quoted in the study edition, ed. 2006, p. 522, 5th Zvu
  15. ^ Dannegger, Adolf in the German biography
  16. ^ Wassermann-Speyer, Julie in the German Biography
  17. ↑ Study edition, 2006 edition, pp. 525–526
  18. ↑ Kantorowicz in the afterword of the study edition, 2006 edition, p. 488.
  19. ↑ Anger pp. 97-98.
  20. ↑ Ebersbach p. 101.
  21. ↑ Squat p. 39.
  22. ↑ Koopmann p. 24.
  23. ↑ Sprengel p. 332.
  24. ↑ From: Peter de Mendelssohn: Der Zauberer Volume 1. The life of the German writer Thomas Mann. 1875 to 1905 , Fischer 2016.
  25. ^ Alfred Kantorowicz : My afterword that was suppressed by the Aufbau-Verlag in the eastern edition of this novel . In: Die Zeit , No. 16/1958

Remarks

  1. ↑ The author interrupted his work with the writing of Pippo Spano (Heinrich Mann on January 29, 1947, quoted in the study edition, 2006 edition, p. 497, 6th Zvo).
  2. ↑ Heinrich Mann's mother means her son-in-law, the bank director Josef Löhr. The latter was the husband of Heinrich Mann's sister Julia Löhr .