Andreas Vöst

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Andreas Vöst is a novel by the German writer Ludwig Thoma published in 1906. The story tells how a Bavarian farmer perishes through slander by the local pastor. Andreas Vöst is Thomas' first novel.

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The plot consists of three parallel strands that intersect.

Andreas Vöst is a farmer at the Schullerhof in Erlbach. He inherited the farm through indebtedness and, thanks to careful work, brought it back up. The local pastor Baustätter has been hostile to him since Vöst had spoken out against supporting the construction of a new church tower with community funds. When a newborn child of the Vösts dies unbaptized, the pastor shows himself tough and insists that the little one be buried outside the consecrated cemetery without a rite or a tomb. Vöst's daughter Ursula has entered into an affair with the Hierangl farmer's son and is pregnant by him. Old Hierangl is a faithful follower of the pastor and rival of the Schullerbauer; his son denies paternity.

When the pastor begins to tease the Schullerhof in sermons, Andreas Vöst decides to run for mayor in the upcoming local elections. The pastor continues to get upper water when Vöst's mother dies and surprisingly leaves the church five hundred marks for the new church tower. On All Souls Day, the pastor publicly breaks a small wooden cross that the farmer had planted on the burial ground for her deceased baby. For Andreas Vöst these events bring an increasing alienation not only from the church, but also from the Christian religion.

Vöst just won the mayoral election against Hierangl, which angered the pastor. In many other communities, the candidates who are close to the farmers' union also win. Pastor Baustätter shows the Hierangl a note, which was supposedly written by his predecessor Held, according to which the father Vösts complained about mistreatment by his son after the handover of the Schullerhof. The pastor wants to prevent Vösts from being confirmed as mayor at the district office; he also has the news spread specifically in the village. The Schullerhof gets into the talk, in an attempt at arbitration Vöst lets himself be carried away to assault Hierangl. Vöst confronts the pastor, who cleverly refers to the presumed note from the predecessor.

In fact, the pastor requests that Vöst be refused the appointment of mayor and attaches a copy of the alleged note from the pastor's predecessor. Driven by the concern that the district could slip away from him, the district official refused to approve the appointment of Vöst as mayor.

Vöst tries to restore his honor through official channels. But the bailiff declares that he is not responsible. Vöst's reputation in the village is increasingly suffering, he looks for a lawyer , who makes it clear to him that in view of the evidence he can hardly do anything from a legal point of view. Vöst's sense of justice is deeply affected. He seeks his luck at the ordinariate , where he is treated benevolently, but also finds no support in the matter.

He refuses to go to church, from which his wife suffers, even at Christmas , and is increasingly becoming an outsider. The servants quit, only lazy and unwilling servants and maids are willing to work on the Schullerhof. Attempts to bring the alleged father of his grandson to account (also in court) come to nothing. When his daughter Ursula gives birth to her illegitimate child, Pastor Baustätter demands that, as a child of shame, it must be baptized in the name of the saint of the birthday, in this case Simplicius . This brings Vöst on against the pastor. Only after having made sure in the neighboring parish that this request is unlawful and intervenes with the church administration, the pastor baptizes the child in the name requested by the mother.

In a second line, Thoma describes the rise of the farmers' union. In Nussbach, craftsmen and farmers' representatives (with the support of a local newspaper critical of the church) discuss the need, as elsewhere in Bavaria, to set up cooperatives for the farmers and to emancipate themselves politically from the center , since the clergy no longer adequately represent the interests of agriculture and craftsmen. Meanwhile, the state parliament member Metz, dean and papal house prelate, visits the district administrator to urge him to exert his influence in favor of the center candidates in good time for the local elections. The bailiff asked the pastors where the rebellious tendencies existed and received a strong warning from Erlbach about the character of Andreas Vöst.

At a citizens 'meeting, a speaker from the farmers' union enthuses farmers about the idea of ​​joining forces politically and economically. The MP Metz, who also appeared, was broadly opposed.

The third narrative tells of Sylvester Mang's departure from the clergy. The young Sylvester Mang is the son of a housewife from Erlbach. With the means of a cousin, he was able to attend high school in Freising and is now studying theology in Munich . His mother wishes for a social advancement with a career as a pastor. During his training he regularly visited the old pastor Held, who was a kind of mentor to him. After the death of the popular pastor Held, the relationship with his successor Baustätter remained distant.

During a visit at home he met Gertrude Sporner, daughter from a wealthy merchant family in Munich who was visiting relatives. The love of music brings the two closer together, and Mang subsequently visits the Sporners' house regularly to make music with Traudl. Father Sporner advises him to refrain from visiting because of his upcoming ordinations.

Sylvester has increasing doubts about his calling to the priesthood. Through liberal professors he reads the works of secular authors and befriends his roommate Schratt, who had participated in the revolution in 1848 and also knows the old pastor Held from the days of the revolution. Schratt encouraged Mang to turn to a secular career, and give him a job as a tutor .

At a ball there is a rapprochement with the Sporner family, who no longer oppose the connection with Traudl after they learn that Sylvester no longer wants to be a pastor. He is reconciled with his mother too, she too accepts his worldly future. Pastor Baustätter tries to harm Mang by letting the cousin who financed his school attendance plot against him, but Sylvester is optimistic that he can sort it out.

During a visit to Pastor Baustätter, Sylvester confronts him about the allegations against Vöst, which, to the best of his knowledge, are unfounded. When the pastor presents him with the evidence, Mang realizes that the writing on the note is not that of his mentor, Pastor Held, which he knows well. But since the church seal is also on it, it becomes clear to him that the note must be a forgery by construction workers. Mang informs Vöst of this and drives him to the district office. There one explains to the two that the confirmation as mayor will not be made as long as Vöst has not clarified the accusation in court.

Vöst, who in the meantime had regained hope, is now at the end. On Easter Sunday he gets drunk in the pub and gets into an argument with Hierangl, whom he hits on the head with a beer mug. Hierangl dies. Vöst is sentenced to four years in prison while the pastor begins building the new church tower.

background

The story takes place around 1900 in the vicinity of Dachau in Bavaria . Since December 16 falls on a Sunday in the novel, the possible plot years are 1894/1895 and 1900/1901. The district town of Nussbach does not exist, but is modeled on the real Dachau, the Unterbräu inn mentioned in the novel is actually in Dachau. The names of other places are mostly villages or field names from the Dachau area (Erlbach, Giebing, Fahrenzhausen, Schachach, Webling, Biberbach, Edenholzhausen, Zillhofen), some of them alienated (Hilgertshofen instead of Hilgertshausen).

Thoma has modeled the figure of the farmer's union leader Vachenauer, who is the main speaker at the citizens' meeting in Nussbach, from the farmer's unionist Georg Eisenberger from Ruhpolding.

language

While the narrative text is in High German tinged with South German, Thoma lets his characters speak in different depths of the Bavarian dialect depending on their origin and level of education . Andreas Vöst speaks consistently in the dialect, also to the pastor, to the district administrator or in court. Pastors, students and townspeople speak closer to the written language than peasants and farmhands. Sylvester Mang adapts his language coloring to the interlocutors and speaks to his mother with a slight dialect coloring, while he uses pure High German with his roommate and in the Sporner house.

In a letter from mother Vöst to her son, Thoma uses the awkward and comical written German of a writer who is only at home in the dialect ("At the notary's is the Desdament gwest and I have not known anything."). Thoma also used this style in his letters to Filser .

The dialect coloring of many dialogues is so strong that a reader who is ignorant of Bavarian will not understand it.

Origin and reception

Besides Der Wittiber and Der Ruepp , Andreas Vöst Thomas is the only novel. When it was created in 1905, Thoma lived in Munich and, in addition to freelance writing, worked as editor-in-chief of Simplicissimus .

The story is based on a true event that Thoma witnessed in 1899 during his time as a lawyer in Dachau. Thoma reflects on the secular power of the Catholic clergy, which he rejects. His image is differentiated: he contrasts the figure of the scheming and devious Erlbach pastor Baustätter with his predecessor Held with integrity. The authorial narrator shows himself to be more conciliatory in his attitude towards religion than the figure of Vöst, who completely falls away from faith because of the injustice he has suffered. The wintry Christmas scene in Erlbach and the depiction of the alpine nativity scene take up the motif that Thoma was supposed to elaborate in his verse epic Holy Night in 1918 .

Politically, Andreas Vöst has the rise of the Bavarian Farmers' Union at the beginning of the century as his background. Thoma gives ample room to the speech of the peasant group Vachenauer and the helpless reaction of the Center Party deputy , the dean of Metz, whereby he knows how to pull the reader on the side of the peasants and exposes the cleric to ridicule.

According to Martin Klaus, the motif of the boy who is to be trained as a priest according to his mother's wishes has parallels to the wishes of Thomas mother, which Ludwig Thoma had always opposed.

Andreas Vöst is recommended as school reading in Bavaria. Eberhard Itzenplitz filmed the novel for Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1979 with Jörg Hube in the leading role.

Work editions

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fourth chapter, Andreas Vöst
  2. ↑ Work overview at zeno.org
  3. ↑ See Faber-Behütuns (no year)
  4. ^ Klaus (2016).
  5. ↑ See the entry in the Bavarian Reading Forum
  6. ↑ See Andreas Vöst in the Internet Movie Database (English)