Lord and dog

Thomas Mann with Bauschan , sculpture group by Quirin Roth in Gmund am Tegernsee , 2001

Herr und Hund , subtitle: An Idyll , is Thomas Mann's longest story , along with The Swapped Heads . It was created in 1918. Its first edition was a private print and appeared in Munich in November 1919 as a one-off special edition of 120 numbered and signed copies. The proceeds went to needy writers. At the same time the official book edition appeared, along with the song of the child . In 1922 the story was included in Collected Works in Individual Editions , in 1945 in Selected Stories and in 1958 in the Stockholm Complete Edition of Thomas Mann's Works.

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Thomas Mann describes his experiences with his hen- dog mix Bauschan, who, as a half-starved, sickly puppy, succeeded the Collie Motz, for whom the author in Royal Highness also set a (albeit more modest) literary monument.

Herr und Hund is without a doubt one of the most sensitive and humorous literary testimonies about domestic dogs - and their owners. It is divided into five chapters, the headings of which already indicate that this text does not claim to be a literary work in the strict sense : It comes around the corner , How we won Bauschan , Some news about Bauschan's way of life and character and The Revier , which provides an unusually meticulous description of the Mannschen walking area around the Munich domicile in what was then the suburb of Bogenhausen. Most of the space, that is, almost half of the story, is taken up by the last chapter entitled The Hunt . The author also reveals why: Out of gratitude I am describing her - out of gratitude for the relaxation she gives him after a strenuous morning writing as a writer. The whole morning he usually cared for and fought (...), had overcome difficulties that only crunched like that, then it would be the hunt with Bauschan that distracts and cheers me, that awakens my spirits and me for the rest the day when there is still a lot to be done.

In the various episodes from living together with the animal it is told, among other things,

• how exclusively Bauschan is fixated on his master as a reference person and how skillfully he tries to encourage him to play together and to go on daily excursions;
• what a nerve-wracking task waiting for a dog can be;
• How exciting, ritual-formal, but above all unspeakably embarrassing, the encounters with other dogs turn out to be;
• how Bauschan, following his instinct to hunt, finds field mice and occasionally turns them into porridge ;
• how one day a mentally confused sheep follows him at every turn;
• how he pursues pheasants, ducks, seagulls and rabbits, always with a harmless outcome, that come before his nose;
• how he knows how to infect his master with his passion, even how to put him in a downright atavistic hunting fever;
• What embarrassment the good animal gets when it accidentally actually preyed on a pheasant , and
• What embarrassment his master gets when a hare fleeing from Bauschan suddenly jumps into his lap ;
• how Bauschan almost apostates once when he meets a real hunter shooting a duck , and
• how jealous his master can become when Bauschan allegedly punishes him with withdrawal of love;
• how an abrupt end of the relationship threatens when the owner thinks that the animal has to be sent to a veterinary clinic because of "occult bleeding".

But master and dog remain. Bauschan got over the suffering and is enjoying stable health.

Bauschan's vita

Bauschan, whose name is taken from Fritz Reuter's novel Ut mine Stromtid and is probably a corruption of Bastian , was one of Thomas Mann's favorite dogs and the only one of his animals that became the protagonist in one of his works. The two poodles named Nico , which he kept in his higher years, have made their way into his diaries in much more detail and at least one of them also appears in a film report about Thomas Mann, but they did not appear literary.

Bauschan lived for about four years in Thomas Mann's Munich villa, which and its surroundings form the background of the story. In the winter of 1919/1920 there were signs of illness. On December 26, 1919, Erika and Klaus Mann took him to a veterinary clinic after a “young man with a throat and a doctor's degree” - as Thomas Mann in the corresponding diary entry - had diagnosed distemper , “distemper in the now rampant severe disease Form, which also affects older dogs. Purulent pneumonia, but also nervous symptoms [...] Forecast cloudy “ . On January 16, 1920 Thomas Mann noted: “Report from the clinic, finally, that B auschan [in the original italics] cannot be restored. Urinary poisoning is also present. Painless killing is recommended and then ordered by us. "
RIP
I quoted K. Katia Mann as a memorial inscription :
" Fortune has also proved favorably for him,
because someone dies more beautifully, whom in life
an immortal song praised. ""

Footnotes

1. ↑ Lord and dog / singing from the child. Two idylls . Berlin: S. Fischer Verlag (1919).
2. ↑ today Thomas-Mann-Allee 10,
3. ↑ The real Bauschan of the Mann family, however, died early and was only four years old.
4. ↑ August von Platen , Sonnet Admiration, the Muse of Singing

Web links

• Image offer from S. Fischer Verlag, which probably shows the wrong dog.

Wikiversity: What did Bauschan look like?  - course materials