Altershausen (Wilhelm Raabe)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Altershausen is the last novel by Wilhelm Raabe . Created between 1899 and 1902, the fragment was published posthumously by Otto Janke in Berlin in 1911 .

Wife and child of the Real Secret Senior Medical Councilor Professor Dr. med. Friedrich Feyerabend have been resting in the cemetery for a long time. Highly decorated as a doctor, Feyerabend, known as Fritze, turns away from the hustle and bustle after the official celebration of his 70th birthday and goes on the "life-homesick trip" to Altershausen, the town he was born in.

content

Feyerabend, known in his field across national borders, wants to visit Ludwig Bock, known as Ludchen, from the neighboring house in Altershausen. The professor has not seen his first and best friend for sixty years. Now he would like to talk to him about the common rabbit breeding at the time. Feyerabend also wants to learn to walk again in Altershausen. He hopes Ludchen is still alive.

In the evening on his arrival, the professor meets his friend on the platform in Altershausen. The two 70-year-olds recognize each other. The narrator announces: The newcomer gives the “old stupid city kid” a thaler .

The traveler descends incognito in the Ratskeller on the market and takes a room with a view of the father's house. On the evening of his arrival, Feyerabend felt the planking on the gardens, stones, posts on the gates and also castles on a first exploratory tour. On the walks of the following days it turns out that everything is still as it was.

The next time he meets Ludchen, the professor accomplishes what he had never believed before - becomes a child for half a day, becomes an idiot like Ludchen for a while. With this effort, the childhood days seem to expand immeasurably and years of strenuous professional work suddenly appear to be null and void.

On the stone bench of the Maienborn there is an encounter with the forgotten childhood friend Minchen Ahrens. From the “old girl”, the carer of the “clumsy old child”, Fritze learns that his friend Ludchen fell from the tree on his head as a boy and has remained a child ever since - Minchen's child. Fritze lets her friend show her rabbit breeding.

Self-testimony

  • "You may be surprised about the fragment later: it is melancholy-funny enough."

reception

  • The numerous reactions from contemporaries - as Hoppe has collected - are warm-hearted and well-meaning. There are only a few exceptions. For example, on July 17, 1911, Ludwig Lorenz wanted to notice a decline in “creative power” in the Berlin “ Deutsche Tageszeitung ”.
  • Meyen lists 39 reviews for the years 1911 to 1968. For example, the journalist Theodor Heuss reviewed the work in Berlin in his magazine “ Die Hilfe ” in 1911 .
  • According to “Hastenbeck”, Raabe “writer a. D. “named. He wrote “Altershausen” “basically for himself”.
  • Fuld calls the fragment autobiographical, points to Raabe's memory of the year 48 and his stay in Vienna in June 1859. After Fuld, the novel could have remained a fragment because Raabe probably noticed the return to childhood as a sign of old age. Fuld speaks of resignation and exhaustion.
  • Zeller, on the other hand, denies the above-mentioned autobiographical element as an essential element and does not call the novel a fragment, but an open, incomplete, work of art that can be continued.
  • The personality of the protagonist dissociates in the narrative.

expenditure

First edition

  • Retirement home. Edited on behalf of the Raabe family and provided with an afterword by Paul Wasserfall. Verlag Otto Janke, Berlin 1911.

Used edition

  • Retirement home . Pp. 201–312 With an appendix, written by Karl Hoppe , pp. 475–499. in Karl Hoppe (arr.): Hastenbeck . Retirement home. Poems. 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001. Vol. 20, ISBN 3-525-20140-0 In: Karl Hoppe (Hrsg.), Jost Schillemeit (Hrsg.), Hans Oppermann (Hrsg.), Kurt Schreinert (Hrsg.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.

Further editions

  • Retirement home. Otto Janke Publishing House, Berlin 1912.
  • Retirement home. Verlag Hermann Klemm, Berlin 1916 and 1934 in “Complete Works”.
  • Retirement home. Novel. With an epilogue by Andreas Maier . Insel Verlag, Berlin 2010 ( Insel-Bücherei 1335) - ISBN 978-3-458-19335-7

literature

  • Gustav Plaehn : World affirmation in Wilhelm Raabe's poetry "Altershausen" . Gera 1913.
  • Hans Oppermann : Wilhelm Raabe. rowohlt's monographs. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1970 (1988 edition: ISBN 3-499-50165-1 )
  • Fritz Meyen : Wilhelm Raabe. Bibliography. 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, supplementary volume 1, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 In: Karl Hoppe (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.
  • Cecilia von Studnitz: Wilhelm Raabe. Writer. A biography. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-0778-6 .
  • Werner Fuld : Wilhelm Raabe. A biography. Hanser, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-34324-9 . (Edition dtv in July 2006)
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century . CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1 .
  • Christoph Zeller: Allegories of storytelling. Wilhelm Raabe's Jean-Paul reading. Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-45218-2 .
  • Eberhard Rohse : Image as text - text as image. Image quotations in narrative texts by Wilhelm Raabe. In: Wilhelm Raabe. The graphic work. Edited by Gabriele Henkel. Hildesheim, Zurich, New York: Georg Olms Verlag 2010, pp. 93–125, here pp. 99–104, ISBN 978-3-487-14332-3

Audio book

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, pp. 475–476
  2. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, p. 481, entry B1
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 299, 20. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 234, 8. Zvo
  5. ↑ quoted in Fuld, p. 353, 2nd Zvo
  6. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, pp. 476–481
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 479, 5th Zvu
  8. ↑ Meyen, pp. 316-320
  9. ↑ Meyen, p. 317, entry 2698
  10. ↑ Oppermann, p. 120, 16. Zvo
  11. ↑ Fuld, p. 19 middle
  12. ↑ Fuld, p. 43, 14. Zvo
  13. ↑ Fuld, p. 133 middle
  14. ^ Fuld, p. 286, 4th Zvu
  15. ↑ Fuld, p. 345, 7th Zvu
  16. ↑ Zeller, pp. 313-355
  17. ↑ Zeller, p. 353, 4. Zvo
  18. ^ Sprengel, p. 341, 15. Zvu