Records of a Thumper family
Notes on a Klopfer Family is a short story by Arnold Zweig . It was created in 1909 and appeared in 1911 together with the story Das Kind , as Zweig's first book publication, by Albert Langen Verlag . It then appeared in various anthologies and in 1949 in a revised version under the title Family Klopfer . In terms of style and subject matter, the history of decadence poetry can be assigned. Parallels to Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks , which Zweig read with admiration at the age of 19, can be seen in the depiction of the decline of a family .
content
The first-person narrator of the story is the doctor Heinrich Klopfer. He tells the story of his family, starting with his great-grandfather, the farmer Jakob Klopfer. The family experiences a social rise, which is accompanied by a spiritual decline.
He describes his father Peter Klopfer, who was a famous poet, in great detail. Heinrich wants to destroy the positive image of his father, which he built up through falsified letters and diaries. The father had always suffered from fears and an excessively irritable imagination and committed suicide at the age of 52. Heinrich also describes his haughty, sober, detached attitude towards society, his family and traditional values. His only close relationship is with his sister Miriam, who is also a doctor and with whom he lives - he never had a wife or lover. Heinrich notices the first signs of a mental illness in himself and has arranged with Miriam that she should kill him with an injection of morphine if the illness should break out.
Version from 1949
The revised version was supplemented by a "preliminary report" and a "conclusion" from the perspective of Miriam Klopfer, who is portrayed in an editor's fiction as the editor of her brother's notes. This allowed Zweig to incorporate the experience of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, as well as his changed political attitudes, into history. Miriam reports that she lives in Israel with two foster children who were orphaned by the Holocaust. She is the last survivor of her family who perished in the Holocaust; her brother Heinrich was assassinated in Jerusalem.
source
- Arnold Zweig: Klopfer family. Narrative. Leipzig: Insel Verlag 1952. ( Insel-Bücherei No. 370)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ursula Homann: What do we still know about Arnold Zweig today? On the occasion of his 120th birthday . Published in literaturkritik.de on November 11, 2007.
- ↑ Stefanie Leuenberger: Writing-Space Jerusalem: Identity Discourses in the Work of German-Jewish Authors . Cologne: Böhlau 2007, p. 189ff. ISBN 9783412200589 . (limited preview on Google Books)