Abdias (founder)

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Abdias is a short story or novella by the Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter from 1842.

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Abdias is an African Jew who lives in the desert and hoards his treasures there. He has to experience that his struggle for wealth does not grow friendships and does not allow love to develop, but only attracts envious people. His house is looted and destroyed by robbers, his wife dies after giving birth to a child. Abdias therefore leaves his homeland and emigrates to Europe. Here he turns all his love and care to his daughter, but she too is taken from him.

In his introduction, Kp. 1. Stifter addresses fate, which mysteriously eludes human understanding and, according to its limited conception, often arbitrarily distributes favor and punishment, which he then illustrates using the example of Abdias, “of which it is uncertain whether his fate is strange Thing, or its heart. In any case, one is […] lured into a gloomy brooding about caution, fate and the ultimate reason for all things. "

Abdias grows up as the son of the wealthy Jewish merchant Aron and his wife Esther in an ancient ruined city in the Atlas Mountains. Although a richly furnished apartment is hidden behind the ruins, according to the tradition of his people he has to leave his family and gather survival experiences on caravans across North Africa and the Orient to India and take care of his own living. Fifteen years later he returns to his parents poor and robbed, but enriched inside. He passed the test and is rewarded by Aron with half of his fortune. In the further course of the plot, the author develops the life problems known from other stories, the contrast between external splendor and inwardness. Abdias brings the “beautiful-eyed Deborah” from Balbek into his house, increases his wealth on his travels, looks after his old parents and gives presents to neighbors who are envious of his oriental merchant style.

Kp. 2. A few years after the death of his parents, happiness turns away from him. Smallpox disfigured his face and Deborah withdraws from him. The neighbors react with glee. Abdias tries to compensate for this loss with even bigger trade activities and demonstrations of power such as the humiliation of an Arab debtor and daringly defends his caravan against attacking Bedouins. The second stroke of fate hits him when, after returning from a trip, he finds his apartment robbed and devastated by the gang of the tribal leader he has insulted and Deborah is so weakened by the birth of a girl that she dies soon afterwards.

Kp. 3. The child, named Judith after Abdias' mother, but addressed as Ditha, now becomes the center of his life, his whole being changes. He renounces the pursuit of the robbers and revenge on his opponents, digs up his hidden securities and gold reserves and emigrates to Europe. Here he hopes for a better life, but is unable to put down new roots. In the valley of a lonely mountain area, since this is not allowed for Jews, he buys a piece of land in the name of a trading friend, builds a house on it and lives there in seclusion with Ditha, who - physically and mentally retarded in her development - is blind. Here the ambivalence of his fate is repeated with unearthly metaphors. A lightning strike that shocked her nerves suddenly enabled the eleven-year-old to see, and that was the beginning of Abias' most beautiful phase of life. Now with his daughter he discovers in condensed form the "million moments" of the newly won world, which are often ignored in people's everyday life: The face of Dithas now begins to "live, and visibly more and more to show the most beautiful thing that a person can do, the heart . ”She develops a“ dreaming, pensive being ”in which his inner world at that time and the present outer world mix. Abdias also changes without, however, dissolving his situation of isolation. If he has so far kept his household restricted and saved the money he had acquired through trade in order to build up reserves for his handicapped child, he now decorates the apartment preciously, buys meadows, cultivates the soil and converts his land into a blooming garden, in which father and daughter live without contact with the neighbors in their own world with Arabic language, clothes and fairy tales as strangers. “He had asked for Europe, he was there now. […], He alone brought the African spirit and the nature of solitude to Europe. ”This happy phase ends when the sixteen-year-old takes shelter from a thunderstorm in the field under a pile of sheaves and is fatally struck by lightning. Abdias lives for more than thirty years in the quiet valley, the fields of which are cultivated for him by the servants of the trade friend.

Book editions (selection)

Stifter's eighth story was written from 1841 to the beginning of 1842 and was first printed in the Austrian Novella Almanac in Vienna in 1843. The second version from 1845 appeared in 1847 in the fourth volume of the studies , as a separate edition in 1853.

Audio book

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adalbert Stifter: Abdias . In: Studies . Edited by Max Stefl , Vol. 2, P. 7. Augsburg 1956.
  2. ↑ Abdias, p. 90.
  3. ↑ Abdias, p. 97.

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