"Christmas!"
"Christmas!" Is the title of a 1897 novel by the German writer Karl May . The plot of the story, written as a travel narrative, is set partly in Germany, partly in the Wild West of the USA and describes experiences of the main characters Winnetou and Old Shatterhand , which are related to events that the latter experienced during his student days in Europe.
The title of the novel refers to a Christmas poem that the narrator May wrote for a magazine and that appears again and again in the course of the plot.
action
The plot is described by Karl May as a first-person narrator and is divided into two parts in terms of place and time.
The original first chapter (“Introduction”) takes place in imperial Germany or in Bohemia and describes the creation of the poem and the experiences of young Karl May and his friend Hermann Lachner, known as Carpio, on a multi-day hike during the Christmas holidays. In the Bohemian town of Falkenau they get to know the impoverished Hiller family, who are on the run from an unknown distress. With the last of their money, the two friends help the family make their way to Bremen , from where they want to emigrate to the USA , where the family's father is already staying.
Chapters 2 through 5 take place in the American West several years later. The narrator has now matured into the famous Westman Old Shatterhand and stays incognito in the small town of Weston, Missouri, to pursue his work as a travel writer. By chance he comes across Mrs. Hiller, whose husband, a fur trader, is being held captive by enemy crow Indians . They accuse him of killing some Crow Indians together with Shoshone friends . In his hotel, Old Shatterhand also overhears the planning of an attack on two gold prospectors. Old Shatterhand suspects the "Prayer-Man", a gangster disguised as a traveling preacher, who u. a. had marketed the Christmas poem without permission.
Together with his blood brother Winnetou, Old Shatterhand sets out into the wilderness to free Hiller. The two also want to try to prevent the attack on the prospectors. One of these prospectors turns out to be Carpio, who has meanwhile also emigrated to the USA and is exploited there by his malicious uncle, the other prospector. Carpio joins Old Shatterhand and Winnetou. Together they are captured by the Blood Indians , who hand them over to the Crow Indians. There Old Shatterhand succeeds in convincing the chief of the Crow Indians that the raid on his warriors was undertaken by the Blood Indians. After he has defeated the chief of the blood Indians in a duel, the blood brothers pursue the Prayer-Man and his accomplices, who kidnapped the ill Carpio from the camp of the crow Indians.
During the pursuit, they come across their old friend Amos Sannel, who also has an unfinished business with the “Prayer-Man”. He was accompanied by Hiller, who was able to escape from the more distant main camp of the Crow Indians. Hiller is bitter because of the strokes of fate in his life and is therefore very hostile towards Old Shatterhand and mocks him because of his unshakable faith. The poem reappears here as the trigger for the dispute.
At a finding hole, a gold mine in a river, in the wintry Rocky Mountains , they can finally catch the gangsters and free the meanwhile seriously ill Carpio. Hiller joins the gangsters out of spite. Both parties spend the winter separately in a valley warmed by a hot spring. There the gangsters are buried by an avalanche, but Old Shatterhand manages to save Hiller. He then converted back to the Christian faith . Old Shatterhand can now hand him a letter from his wife, after which the family can return home, since they have succeeded in clearing up an intrigue directed against them. The heroes in the valley celebrate Christmas together with the Shoshone who have since arrived, with the dying Carpio reciting the poem one last time.
Seal Christmas Eve
May chose his poem Christmas Eve from 1884 as a basis for the plot.
Christmas Eve.
"I proclaim great joy
Which happened to you;
Because was born today
Your Savior Jesus Christ!
- It sounds cheering through the spheres, suns herald every star, incense smells on altars, bells ring near and far.
It is bright as day in the rooms
Everything breathes pleasure and happiness
And on colorful [draped] trees
The joy-drunk look hangs.
- It is almost as if the bright night wants to turn into day; Only up there in the cell Is it so dark, is it so quiet.
The festival draws joy below
Now in all hearts;
Up with his sorrow
His grief alone.
- U [Dru] nten it waves through the alleys, fresh and red. Above, with a face pale as a corpse, he fights with death
He leans against the wall, trembling
Fear of fever clutches
And deep showers fly
Through the twitching figure
- His pale lips quiver. His brain glows feverishly, He cools his hot forehead on the cold iron bars
He folds his hands in prayer
Lift up the eye:
“Father, give a happy ending
That I can die in peace.
- Look down on your child That longs for your light, The lost one approaches again, Do not go into judgment with him.
There roused in the nearby dome
Solemnly the organ sounded
And in the majestic stream
Swings on the choir singing:
- "Lord, now you let your servant go to sleep in peace, for his eye has still seen your Savior down here ."
And the priest puts his hands
Blessing on the head of the dead.
“Blessed is he who continues to the end
Believes in eternal love.
- Blessed is he who strives for the source of life from the bottom of his heart And lifts his gaze to heaven in the last hour
Are you still looking in the departure
Above the atonement star
Will he guide you to the truth
And to the glory of the Lord.
- That is why the joy that happened to us is also for you; Because today your Savior Jesus Christ was also born! "
- Karl May
Others
In 1911 there was an illustrated edition with pictures by Claus Bergen .
In 2002, a three-hour radio play was released, which was reissued in 2007. The main roles are spoken by actors from the Bad Segeberg open-air theater .
Remarks
- ↑ http://karl-may-wiki.de/index.php/Weihnachtsabend_(Gedicht)
- ↑ Wikipedia: Christmas Eve (poem). In: The Karl May Wiki. Retrieved February 11, 2019 .
literature
- Hartmut Vollmer: "Christmas!" - a "work of salvation" Karl May . In: Communications from the Karl May Society No. 46 , pp. 3–13. ( Online version )
- Heinz Stolte : The fiddler on the roof. Content and form of the novel ›» Christmas! «‹ . In: Yearbook of the Karl May Society 1986 . ( Online version )
- Walther Ilmer: Karl May's Christmas in Karl May's ›» Christmas! «‹. (A track reading in search of clues) . In: Yearbook of the Karl May Society 1987, 1988, 1989 . (Online versions 1987 , 1988 , 1989 )
- Heiko Postma: Old Shatterhand & Old Jumble. Notes on Karl May's novel "Christmas!" . In: Die Horen (Volume 178), pp. 13 ff. ( Online version )
- Rainer Jeglin: "Christmas!" . In: Gert Ueding (Ed.): Karl-May-Handbuch , Verlag Königshausen & Neumann Würzburg 2001, pp. 227–232. ISBN 3-8260-1813-3
- Dieter Sudhoff , Hartmut Vollmer (Eds.): "Christmas!" , Igel-Verlag 2007. ( Table of Contents )
- Wilhelm Brauneder : Christmas . In: Wiener Karl-May-Brief 3/2009.
- Christoph F. Lorenz: poet, narrator, composer. The triple 'alter ego' in Karl May's "Christmas!" along with all sorts of Christmas and resurrection myths , in: ders. (Ed.): Between heaven and hell. Karl May and religion. Second, revised and expanded edition , Bamberg / Radebeul: Karl-May-Verlag 2003, pp. 207–237.
- Ulf Abraham : Karl May as a narrator. Semantic fields and text patterns in "Christmas!" , In: Jb-KMG 2017, pp. 171–192.
Web links
- Text of the original edition from 1897 on the homepage of the Karl May Society
- Entry in the Karl May Wiki
- Review of the radio play at Hoernews.de