Bourdanin's children
Bourdanin's Children is a novel by Gertrud Fussenegger (1912–2009) that was published in 2001 by Langen-Müller in Munich. The novel is a continuation of the family story that began in the 1951 novel The House of Dark Jugs .
action
Family life in the house of Captain Balthasar von Bourdanin in Pilsen is always overshadowed for his second wife Marie, his two children Balthasar and Margarete from their first marriage, and their children, Kläre, Roderich, Luise and Fritz, by the cold-hearted, almost brutal educational violence of the Father.
The eldest son Balthasar, in particular, has suffered greatly. Since he initially excels in school through his special knowledge and his quick grasp, his teachers let him skip a year. The Rittmeister is overwhelmed with pride in this success and cannot cope with the fact that Balthasar is not up to this challenge and is demoted again. Furious, the father begins to torment Balthasar with nightly exams. To do this, he wakes the boy out of sleep every day at midnight to check whether he has mastered the material learned during the day. When young Balthasar started attending the military school in Pressburg , he was nervous. His life tragically ends with suicide.
Margarete and Klare both become teachers and remain unmarried. Roderich becomes an officer and is a woman's favorite. He spends most of his life in Albania . The youngest, Fritz, also chose the military career. While Roderich goes through life light-heartedly and charmingly, Fritz freezes in his strict belief in obedience. During the First World War, as an officer, he led his regiment to ruin, unable to act against an order, even if it was obviously nonsensical.
Luise studies piano in Prague , but has to give up because of a heart condition. Similar to mother Marie, she marries a widower, Arno Preinfalk, who has two children from his first marriage. But in contrast to her mother, who had to suffer from the Rittmeister's coldness all her life, she finds happiness in Arno. In order to protect the children from his first marriage from the mother of his first wife, Arno moves with his family to Galicia . There they live happily until the outbreak of the First World War. Arno survived the war and then moved with his family to Vorarlberg , as the German-speaking population is no longer welcome in the newly formed Czechoslovakia . Lilis and Arno's daughter Eggi is the only child whom the Rittmeister adores and whom he does not treat with the usual severity. She becomes the chronicler of the family history.
review
A comprehensive review by Dieter Borchmeyer can be found under the title " Echoes of the Sunken World " in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , January 30, 2002, No. 25, page 42.
expenditure
- Bourdanin's children . Novel, 379 pages, Langen Müller-Verlag Munich, 2001, ISBN 3-7844-2827-4