Buchmendel
Buchmendel is a novella by Stefan Zweig from 1929.
action
The narrator flees from a downpour in Café Gluck in Vienna's “Obern Alserstraße ”. Twenty years earlier, as a young, curious person, he had been there. While searching for literature on Mesmer's “ magnetism ”, a friend introduced him to Jakob Mendel, alias Buchmendel. This “magician and broker of books” had been working for years at a “marble table covered with notes” in the café. The “ Galician book dealer ... read like others pray.” In “complete obsession ... he swayed reading like a dark bush in the wind.” When Mendel came to Vienna in 1882, he wanted to become a rabbi . He had not become a sage, but the “miraculum mundi” of all books. His customers included booksellers from Paris, London and “fanatical collectors of heraldic works” such as Count Schönberg, former governor of Styria, the theologian Siegenfeld and the Naval Admiral a. D. Edler von Pisek. Mendel had no bookseller license at all, only a peddler's license. Back then, twenty years ago, Buchmendel had finally answered the request for Mesmer literature with a few dozen titles like a shot, and referred to Gassner and Blavatsky . Mendel had not read any of the books, but merely kept their antiquarian key data in his famous memory.
Well, having gotten older, the narrator asks where Mendel has gone. It turns out that the only eyewitness still on duty is the toilet lady at Café Gluck. Mrs. Sporschil tells the story. Buchmendel, who never read a newspaper, hadn't even noticed the start of the war from his studies. Then at the end of 1915 the disaster took its course. The military censorship office in Vienna intercepts two postcards addressed to enemy territory . Both times the sender is Buchmendel. During the interrogation, the unsuspecting Mendel stated that he was of Russian origin. Born in Petrikau , he is being held as an enemy in a "concentration camp of Russian civilian prisoners near Komorn ". After two years in prison, Mendel was allowed to return to Vienna. The aforementioned distinguished, highly respected collectors of antiquarian treasures - Buchmendel's clients - had worked hard together. Mendel returns to Café Gluck as a broken man and can no longer practice his old profession. Florian Gurtner from Retz , a 1919 rich that have become shifter , new owner of the cafe, chased Mendel on a pretext. Buchmendel dies of severe pneumonia in his miserable attic .
When Mendel von Gurtner - convicted of mouth robbery - was thrown out of the café, he had left a book open on his marble table - Hugo Hayn's "Bibliotheca Germanorum, erotica & curiosa". Mrs. Sporschil, who had never read a book in her life, showed it to the astonished narrator. Ashamed, he gives it back to the good old woman and leaves.
reception
Bauer aptly calls the “quiet, profound” story “the tragedy of an“ apolitical ”” and Rovagnati even speaks of a “biblical legend”.
expenditure
Used edition
- Stefan Zweig: Buchmendel. In: Novellas . Vol. 1, pp. 87-119. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1986 (3rd edition), without ISBN, licensor: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, (Copyright 1946, Bermann-Fischer Verlag AB, Stockholm)
Other issues
- Stefan Zweig: Four stories. ( The Invisible Collection . Episode on Lake Geneva . Leporella . Buchmendel). Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1929 (Insel Bücherei Volume 408, 1st edition) 96 pages
literature
- Arnold Bauer: Stefan Zweig . Morgenbuch Verlag Volker Spiess, Berlin 1996 (vol. 21 of the series “Heads of the 20th Century”), ISBN 3-371-00401-5
- Gabriella Rovagnati: “Detours on the way to myself”. On the life and work of Stefan Zweig. Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998 (Vol. 400 of the series "Treatises on Art, Music and Literature"), ISBN 3-416-02780-9
