Buchholzens in Italy

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Title illustration of the first edition
Cover illustration of the 28th edition, 1885
Cover illustration of an edition from 1890
Buchholzen's travel route

Buchholzens in Italien is a travel novel by Julius Stinde that was published in Berlin in 1883 by Freund & Jeckel.

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Karl Buchholz has rheumatism and, accompanied by his wife Wilhelmine and brother-in-law Fritz, goes to warm Italy at the beginning of spring to find healing. From Verona the journey goes to Pisa, Milan, Genoa and Livorno, where the art objects recommended by the Bädeker are viewed and assessed in a specifically Berlin-style. There is a lot of annoyance for Mrs. Wilhelmine, which is caused by high entrance fees, conceited Englishmen and the constant Skat game of the men. Travel acquaintances enrich the event: Mr. Öhmichen (patterned trousers manufacturer), Mr. Spannbein (painter and educated art talker), the Kliebischs, a couple on their honeymoon who can hardly appreciate the sights of the country because of so many hotel stays. A love story with a dramatic kidnapping also spices up the sightseeing tours. The highlights of the trip are the stays in Rome and Naples. In Rome, while trying to demonstrate Berlin elegance, the Buchholzens are soaked in the rain in the park of Villa Pamphili. The tumultuous street life is studied in Naples, and while climbing Vesuvius the Buchholzens even meet two acquaintances from Berlin: Dr. Stinde and the painter Fritz Paulsen . The return journey goes via Florence and Venice, and after overcoming the Alps, the travelers reach their beloved Berlin: “Under the linden trees, the trees were in the most wonderful green. What does the south also know about our spring? "

Background to the creation and publication

Stinde collected the material for his book on a trip to Italy in the spring of 1881. His father had died in February of that year and Stinde's health was poor, he was looking for rest and relaxation and went traveling. He himself reports about it in an autobiographical essay:

“And when spring approached, the first lonely spring, my doctor said I had to go south. Following his instructions, I crossed the Alps and thawed out again. With the physical well-being, the pleasure of seeing returned, and since Italy is not just about classicism, Frau Buchholz involuntarily joined me and helped look. After a year and a half I brought the manuscript of 'Buchholzens in Italy' to my publisher. "

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As early as 1878, Stinde had published descriptions of the petty bourgeoisie in Berlin under the pseudonym "Wilhelmine Buchholz" in the Deutsches Monday newspaper . Some of them also deal with Italian topics and were later incorporated into the book context:

  • In the " Hiddigeigei " on Capri . In: German Monday Gazette No. 18 of May 2, 1881.
  • In the zoological station in Naples . In: German Monday Gazette No. 30 of July 25, 1881.
  • A tour of Vesuvius . In: German Monday Gazette No. 40 of October 3, 1881.
  • On the Gulf of Salerno . In: German Monday Gazette No. 3 of January 16, 1882.

The "Italy" book must have been produced in a hurry, because the first edition still contains a large number of printing errors and small typographical inaccuracies (wrongly placed or missing commas, irregular quotation marks, etc.). Only for the second and higher editions have these things been corrected. The first edition can only be found in two German libraries, so it is quite rare. Another example with a dedication to Ernst von Wildenbruch is described below. The first edition can be recognized by the page number: VIII and 166 pages. Larger print runs have 168 pages, sometimes more.

Contemporary criticism

The number of copies sold rose rapidly and reprint after reprint became necessary. Stinde was an early master of literature marketing. He took care of the appearance of the book himself and made sure that reviews appeared in all major newspapers and magazines. However, some reviews appeared without his intervention, and one of them, which Theophil Zolling published in the present , in which the Buchholzens were calculated for their alcohol consumption, he used as an opportunity for a counter-article that has become a pearl of Stinde's humor.

"Any Tissot could easily take the matter seriously and regard the heavy consumption of schnapps as a peculiarity of the bourgeois capital city citizen, which is not true."

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Stinde replied to this in an article in the German Monday Gazette of December 24, 1883 with the title: "How I betrayed Berlin to the French":

“I took the book and counted exactly how many times I had Buchholzens take one. Exactly ten times. They are on the road for two months. So there is a sip of cognac every week, or, since the book has eleven sheets, - without the preface - exactly 10/11 sips on 16 pages each. I asked a state-employed arithmetic teacher to do the math. It was true to a hair. He asked whether the Buchholzens were so weak that they had enough of so few drops? If this were not the case, however, I would have acted irresponsibly against the state; I should have expected more in the interests of Buchholz's alcohol industry. "

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In the end he writes that, for the sake of the truth, he wrote another cognac in the book that he had forgotten to write down.

This claim does not stand up to serious examination. The comparison of a list of all cognac sips from the higher editions of "Buchholzens in Italy" with the findings in the first edition brings to light the sobering fact that all of the schnapps listed in the higher editions are already in the first edition, not a single one was added later . This means that the author, who in the book already operates in an area in between fictitious portrayals of reality and realistic fiction, has whipped a little. The strong reaction of Stinde suggests that Zolling's criticism has hit a sensitive point. In addition to the narcotic drug cognac, the Buchholzens also consume other entry-level drugs such as red wine and white wine on their journey - not to mention the smuggled cigars.

The reading contemporaries were delighted with the most salient characteristics of Frau Buchholz in the Italian Beech, her domineering arguing, her stupid Berlin fixation and the pennilessness with which she debates on artifacts. The Berliners recognized the type immediately and did not feel hurt. The whole Reich laughed at this Berlin style, with the side effect that Berlin became popular and its upstart role as the Reich capital became more acceptable.

The evil satire, tempered by reconciling humor, is directed against trite travel. Apparently the mass movement of travel agency tourism had already begun at that time, moving through distant countries on fixed routes with the Baedeker in hand.

Wilhelmine Buchholz, however, is immune to Baedeker's way of looking at art. She makes very independent observations, for example in view of the Milan Cathedral :

“In Berlin the churches are not half as big; on the contrary, any of them can go for a walk in the Milan Cathedral. It towers high above the houses: snow-white with countless points and points, as if a confectioner had sprayed it with tragacanth. But if you look closer you can see that the points are complete towers, and the spikes turn out to be marble figures. Two thousand such statues are said to be on the outside of the cathedral. You could use it to occupy Pariser Platz and the linden trees as far as the palace in Berlin if a doll were to stand next to each lantern, and there would be enough left for the road to Charlottenburg. [...] I also do not believe that if, for example, all of Berlin's marble bedside tables and washbasins were piled up on top of one another on the Tempelhofer Felde, something would come out that would look similar to the Milan Cathedral, if the first architects in Germany were not called in, in order to be worked together, as with the Reichstag building! "

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Twenty years after the book was first published, Gotthilf Weisstein assesses its nature and effect as follows:

"It was almost a literary event when the anonymous book" Buchholzens in Italien "appeared here in the publishing house of Freund and Jeckel in 1883, after a few features" by Wilhelmine Buchholz "had preceded it in a local newspaper. The apt, but always within the limits of amiable mood, satire on German, especially Berlin, Italian drivers, portrayed well-observed types, pictures and situations that appeared familiar and familiar to every reader. In the main heroine, the incomparably real figure of a middle-class housewife of straight intelligence and merry philistineism was portrayed, as we had observed and greeted her every day in Berlin companies, in the railway coupé, in the hotels of the Riviera and elsewhere, and greeted her with mocking smiles. But the other actors were not pale fictional characters either, but people as one knew them and could constantly be seen beside you. In addition, the tone of the story was so fresh, graceful, and with all the satirical exposure so amiable that even those who were hit had to laugh when they saw their likeness in such a comical half-distortion in this bold concave mirror. Buchholzen's in Italy had a great success in bookselling, and soon the author, known and popular up until then only in cheerful Berlin artist circles, had gained a name throughout Germany, which was further strengthened in the next Buchholz gang, "The Buchholz Family". "

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Significance in literary history

Ms. Buchholz asserted herself in her own way against the already swollen travel literature dealing with Italy at the time. She also deals with tradition, for example when she tells her daughters a self-made Italian poem with clear allusions to Goethe. Above all, however, it is the narrative strategy of the author Stinde that brings a completely new tone to the well-known Italy song. Three voices form the contrapuntal text full of tension. Wilhelmine Buchholz offers the cantus firmus. The author as a commenting fictitious editor to whom Wilhelmine delivers her reports can also be heard as secondary voices, and the author himself as the arranger producing everything can also be heard. The latter, for example, in the two mottos that he put in front of the book:

"Io parlo per ver dire, non per odio d'altrui, nè per disprezzo."

- Petrarch. Canz. XVI.

"Do you know the land where the lemons bloom?"

(According to the continuous counting of the canzoniere , as it is also observed in the Dreyer / Gaborian translation, it is the lines 63f. Of the canzone CXXVIII ("Italia mia ..."), which read in the cited translation: "Not I speak out of contempt / still out of a reason to hate others ".)

Editions and copies

A copy of the first edition of Buchholzen's in Italy is in the Wildenbruch Library at the Central and State Library in Berlin . The book is characterized by two special features: it contains a dedication letter from Stinde to Ernst von Wildenbruch and it contains a title illustration that has been replaced by other pictorial works in the later editions. The dedication to the "dear traveling companion, Professor Fritz Paulsen" is also missing in the first edition. The text growth from the 1st to the 21st edition is 120 lines or almost three pages. It is mostly a matter of clarifications of the expression and newly incorporated Berolinisms. An edition with 6 colored plates by Wilhelm Plünnecke was published in 1939 by Grote Verlag in Berlin. A revision of the text by Angelika Reichmuth with illustrations by Jürgen B. Wolff was published in 1987 by Eulenspiegelverlag in Berlin and later by various other publishers. The text of these edited editions differs considerably from the original in many places. The manuscript of the work is at the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin in the Märkisches Museum .

literature

  • Italo Michele Battafarano and Hildegard Eilert: Italians as rascals in Eugenie Marlitt's “The Twelve Apostles”, Friedrich Spielhagen's “Storm Flood” and Julius Stinde's “Buchholzens in Italy” . In: Literature in intercultural dialogue . Festschrift for the 60th birthday of Hans-Christoph Graf v. Nayhauss. Edited by Beate Laudenberg and Manfred Durzak. Bern: Lang 2000, pp. 269-313.
  • Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel: Fritz Reuter's novel “De meckelnbörgschen Montecchi un Capuletti or De Reis' near Constantinople” (1868) a narrative model for Julius Stinde's novel “Buchholzens in Italien” (1883)? . In: Contributions of the Fritz Reuter Society 10 (2001) pp. 61–82

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Julius Stinde: How I made the acquaintance of Frau Wilhelmine Buchholz . In: Velhagen & Klasings monthly books, 12th year (1890/98) Vol. 1, 65-69
  2. ↑ Theophil Zolling in the present vol. 23, 1883, pp. 334–335.
  3. ↑ Julius Stinde: How I betrayed Berlin to the French . In: German Monday Gazette of December 24, 1883
  4. ↑ Julius Stinde, Buchholzens in Italien , 28th edition, p. 36.
  5. ^ Gotthilf Weisstein: Obituary for Julius Stinde . In: National-Zeitung , August 9, 1905, 1st supplement, pp. 2–3.

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