Pictures and stories from Swabia

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Pictures and Stories from Swabia (originally: Pictures and Stories from Swabian Life ) is the title of a two-volume work by the writer Ottilie Wildermuth . The collection of stories is considered to be Wildermuth's main work and made the author known in the entire German-speaking area in one fell swoop . Today the Swabian parsonages , which form part of the first volume, are mainly known.

Emergence

In 1847 Ottilie Wildermuth presented her husband Johann David Wildermuth and her brother with her own literary experiment for the first time. It was the tale An Old Maid , which later became the first story of pictures and stories . Her brother Hermann Rooschüz brought this first story to the editors of Cottas Morgenblatt , which they published anonymously and asked for more stories. Soon the genre pictures from a small town and the Swabian rectories appeared in the Morgenblatt under the name of the author . In 1852, the Stuttgart publisher Adolph Krabbe published the two cycles with further stories as a book entitled Pictures and Stories from Swabian Life . After the second edition, the title was changed to Pictures and Stories from Swabia . They appeared under this title from then on, most recently in the 1970s.

content

Most of the stories have an autobiographical background: their protagonists were often relatives and ancestors or acquaintances of the author. The humorous stories mostly deal with topics from Swabian or Württemberg history or from 18th and 19th century society. Franziska von Hohenheim appears in it as well as her husband Karl Eugen , but also farmers, innkeepers and other villagers.

The stories are divided into several parts that contain an average of five to six stories. In the first volume these are:

  • Genre pictures from a small town
  • Pictures from a middle-class family gallery
  • The old houses of B. (later: von Kirchheim )
  • Swabian rectories
  • Marriage stories

The second volume covers the parts

  • Design from the everyday world
  • Paths in life, crooked and straight
  • Hagestudze
  • From the village

"Swabian Parsonage"

In the cycle Swabian Rectory Houses , different facets and episodes from the life of Württemberg village pastors are portrayed. The pastors are sometimes portrayed positively by being described as pious, hospitable, generous or fond of children. Some pastors come off badly in the stories, e. B. the "stingy" or the "hazelnut priest". This brought criticism to the author, not only from pastors, but also from other compatriots. The story The peaceful rectory therefore had to be deleted from the collection. In 1857 Wildermuth reported to her pen pal Justinus Kerner : "Tomorrow I want to take my husband on a foot trip to Lenninger Thal to see a few well-known pastors, provided that the pastors don't kill me." It is "life-threatening for me [...] to venture among the pastors, since they cannot forgive my parsonage".

The stories in detail are as follows:

  • The friendly rectory. The Benningen pastor August Tritschler served as a template .
  • The hazelnut priest. The model for this story was Johann Schweppe, pastor in Feldrennach near Pforzheim.
  • The rectory with many daughters. History made up.
  • The humorous rectory. Gustav Feuerlein, pastor of Wolfschlugen near Nürtingen, was the godfather of this story . He was the father of Auguste Eisenlohr, whose biography Wildermuth with Auguste. Has presented a picture of life .
  • The frugal rectory. The "frugal" pastor was Karl Kayser from Hegenlohe .
  • The hospitable rectory. The pastor of Endersbach , Eberhard Glöckler , provided the material for this story .
  • The stingy rectory. This story was inspired by Johann Cranz, pastor of Steinenberg , and later by Plattenhardt .
  • Another hospitable rectory. The model was Pastor Ferdinand Dinkelacker from Erligheim .
  • The pious rectory. History made up.
  • The peaceful rectory. The role models here were the pastor of Erdmannhausen , which is near Wildermuth's hometown of Marbach , and his sister. She complained to the author after the first publication, whereupon the story was not published any further. It is also absent in most modern editions.

reception

The pictures and stories learned quickly a widespread and well-known authors recognition after its publication. Emilie Uhland told the author, "In year and day she did not hear her husband laugh as he did when reading the 'City Clerk'".

“You have long been a dear friend in the Lützelflüh rectory . Perhaps the passage of time will take hold of you one day and carry you over mountains and valleys, and then you direct your steps in Bernerland [...] and we could then tell you how much we delight in your book and everything you say in it. "

- Jeremias Gotthelf : Letter to Ottilie Wildermuth dated October 11, 1853.

“[It] is not a moment neglected to tell you that, not only in many years, but not easily ever read anything lovelier than these tales, which took me to my earliest youth, weighed in the sweetest memories - and thanked you now not just for the gift but for the work itself, and not praised the writer, but the woman, whose soul was created not to simply grasp such lovely appearances in all their simplicity, but to represent them in such a pure manner, without interfering with an incorrect or disturbing tone . "

- Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling : Letter to Ottilie Wildermuth from January 14, 1854.

"[...] How shocked I was when I saw that this was not a book that was an ordinary event of the day [...]; but that there is a work of deep and noble significance. […] I would like to say a thousand warm thanks for your wonderful book. Nothing pleased me so much for a long time. In our time of artlessness [...] this healthy creative ability looked at me like a noble pure muse with clear human eyes. […] You have to work a lot from nature (as the painters say) because your figures are so rounded that you can walk around them […]. How beautiful is the figure of her shoemaker's wife! I do not bring it from the heart and from the head. [...] The whole background of the family and the town seems to me to be a masterpiece of art. "

- Adalbert Stifter : Letter to Ottilie Wildermuth dated February 8, 1854.

“Think, dear Frau Wildermuth, I have always had such a great antipathy for the products of female writers that I went to your first book with prejudice - but how I was beaten and at the same time amused and refreshed! [...] I flatter myself that you have a very special sense of humor with which you can so pleasantly envelop serious intentions [...] If you read your things, you also know that you can darn stockings; You can feel through every line that head and heart work together here - in a word, you are the opposite of most female writers and called to give us something to read. "

- Friedrich and Mathilde Bodenstedt : Letter to Ottilie Wildermuth from December 1853.

Editions (selection)

The pictures and stories from Swabia , especially the Swabian parsonages , were published again and again during the author's lifetime and after her death up to our time and thus developed into Wildermuth's most famous work.

  • Pictures and stories from Swabian life. Adolph Krabbe, Stuttgart 1852 (²1853).
  • Pictures and stories from Swabia (Ottilie Wildermuth's collected works. First complete edition, Vol. 1 and 2). Adolph Krabbe, Stuttgart 1862.
  • Pictures and stories from Swabia. Adolf Kröner , Stuttgart ⁶1890.
  • Pictures and stories from Swabia (Ottilie Wildermuth's collected works), ed. by Adelheid Wildermuth, illustrated by Fritz Bergen . Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft , Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig undated [around 1900].
  • Pictures and stories from Swabia. Carl Hirsch, Konstanz undated [around 1915].
  • Swabian rectories. Stories. Reclam's Universal Library, Vol. 4963. Reclam-Verlag , Leipzig 1920 (²1926).
  • Swabian rectories. Renatus-Verlag, Lorch 1936.
  • Swabian rectories. Osiander , Tübingen 1976 (1980).
  • Pictures and stories from Swabia with the Swabian rectories. Introduction by Peter Härtling , ed. by Rosemarie Wildermuth. Verlag JF Steinkopf , Stuttgart 1977 (²1991).
  • Life paths - crooked and straight. ( Small Goldfinches series ). Edited by Rosemarie Wildermuth. Mühlacker / Irdning (Styria) 1987.
  • Swabian parsonages ( a small state library, vol. 8). Introduced and edited by Friedemann Schmoll . Klöpfer & Meyer Verlag , Tübingen 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ For the origin of the pictures and stories see Agnes Willms , Adelheid Wildermuth: Ottilie Wildermuths Leben, compiled and supplemented from her own notes. 4th edition. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig undated, p. 191 f. and 224 f.
  2. ↑ Adelheid Wildermuth (ed.): Justinus Kerner - Ottilie Wildermuth. Correspondence from 1853 to 1862. Stuttgart 1960, pp. 158–161.
  3. ↑ cf. Rosemarie Wildermuth (Ed.): Paths of life - crooked and straight. Stories by Ottilie Wildermuth. ( Small Goldfinches series ). Mühlacker / Irdning (Styria) 1987, p. 123 f.
  4. ^ A town clerk , from: First volume, pictures from a middle-class family gallery. Ottilie Wildermuth reports this in a letter to her mother dated December 16, 1849, quoted from Agnes Willms, Adelheid Wildermuth: Ottilie Wildermuths Leben, compiled and supplemented from her own notes. 4th edition. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig n.d., p. 215.
  5. ↑ Agnes Willms, Adelheid Wildermuth: Ottilie Wildermuths Leben, compiled and supplemented from her own notes. 4th edition. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig n.d., p. 235.
  6. ↑ Gustav Leopold Plitt (ed.): From Schelling's life. In letters (3rd volume: 1821–1854). Salomon Hirzel , Leipzig 1870, p. 249.
  7. ^ Adalbert Stifter's complete works. 18th volume; Correspondence: Volume 2, ed. by Gustav Wilhelm ( Library of German writers from Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, vol. XXXV), 2nd edition. Reichenberg 1941, pp. 206-212.
  8. ↑ Agnes Willms, Adelheid Wildermuth: Ottilie Wildermuths Leben, compiled and supplemented from her own notes. 4th edition. Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig n.d., p. 235.