Christoph Pechlin

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Christoph Pechlin is a novel by Wilhelm Raabe that was written from August 1871 to September 1872 and published by Ernst Julius Günther in Leipzig in 1873. Raabe experienced reprints in 1890 and 1906.

Stuttgart, in the 1860s: The theologian Dr. Christoph Pechlin from Waldenbuch im Schönbuch chooses the wrong bride, but only feels it after the engagement.

content

The pastor's son Christoph Pechlin - a passionate Jew's harp players  - had once in Tübingen , studied together with Ferdinand, Freiherr von Rippgen from Dresden. Pechlin had taken theology and von Rippgen had studied law. A "fellow student" from the Tübingen Youth Days is Dr. Leopold Schmolke; meanwhile “famous international” lawyer in Frankfurt am Main.

Pechlin had broken out of the Tübingen monastery . The former donor, a would-be poet, writes as a “capital city-political and criminalist reporter” for around 25 local Swabian newspapers from Heilbronn to Ulm to Friedrichshafen .

Friend Ferdinand, the Royal Saxon Assessor, made a good match in his home country and was able to quit the service in Dresden. He lives in Stuttgart with his wife, Lucie, who is three years older than him and the daughter of a silk merchant from Loschwitz . The friends' apartments are in the same building on two adjacent floors. Lucie, the stately, imperatorial, childless wife, is getting fatter and Ferdinand is getting thinner and thinner. The baroness cannot stand the loud jew's harp player at all. Lucie thinks that her husband will also take her to the grave. The henpecked hero Ferdinand does not revolt once against the unyielding wife in the whole novel. Only the British bosom friend Miss Christabel Eddish could save the severely tested baroness from her marital misery, her fate. So Lucie calls her friend over from Munich by letter. The 30-year-old Miss Christabel, a “tall, pretty blonde”, is currently on her way to Florence . On the edge of the Theresienwiese Miss Christabel met inside the Bavaria Sir Hugh Sliddery, captain in the 77th Infantry Regiment of Her Majesty Victoria , Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Miss Christabel lets out a scream and Sir Hugh escapes via Theresienwiese.

The British virgin arrives in Stuttgart. Lucie is delighted.

The Swabian extheologist goes on a trip to Göppingen on the Hohenstaufen with his Saxon friend, the assessor who is not on duty . The English lady and Lucie choose the same destination. You meet on the summit of the historic Kegelberg. Pechlin thinks the Englishwoman is "not that bad at all, a very nice, a very clean girl". You quarrel. In anger, the ladies leave the gentlemen, march down to the village and spend the night in the "Lamm". A wedding is being celebrated loudly in the “Ochsen” next door.

Sir Hugh - on the way to Germany from Italy via the Viamala - was at the Hotel Travi in Andeer with the lawyer Dr. Meets Schmolke. In the hotel's dining room, the international lawyer had accused the military of hiding some things from them - and even misleading them. For example, Sir Hugh had withheld from the Frankfurt lawyer a certain agreement with Miss Christabel. Having entered Germany, the Brit got caught in the above-mentioned wedding party in the "Ochsen". The celebration turns into a violent scuffle. Pechlin, who in the meantime has dismounted with Ferdinand and has also moved into the “Lamm” quarters, goes over to the “Ochsen” and joins “in the cheerful mess”; gives Sir Hugh a hand too. Ferdinand stays with the frightened ladies. The Baroness and Miss Christabel want to be saved by the Saxon on the spot; want to go back to Stuttgart. No wagon is readily available in the middle of the night. While Pechlin continues to participate in the rural pleasure, that is, fights, the first stone breaks through a window in the dining room in the "Lamm". With his courageous demeanor, Pechlin smoothes the waves. Miss Christabel is deeply impressed by such a man. The hero can kiss her hand. The Baroness Lucie is speechless. When Sir Hugh appears in the door, the kissed woman faints. Pechlin catches the beautiful British woman with presence of mind. The astonishment of the baroness continues. Pechlin doesn't come home anymore. He moved to Obertürkheim ; wants to stay close to Miss Christabel. The couple strolls on the banks of the Neckar and becomes engaged. Step by step, the squat exstiftler becomes a well-dressed, better-off man.

When Pechlin and Miss Christabel meet with Ferdinand and Lucie in the Kursaal in Cannstatt , the baroness turns around. She finds the couple delightful and wishes them luck.

All of a sudden Pechlin asks an experienced husband, his Saxon friend, for advice. How can the fiancé of Miss Christabel, this vampire , get away? The overly polite, reserved Saxon is always good for advice. He refers to the friend Schmolke in Frankfurt. You come up with a credible reason for traveling together to the Main metropolis. But the two ladies are traveling with me. The two couples go to the “international matchmaker and marriage separator” in Döngesgasse. Miss Christabel and Leopold Schmolke know each other. The lawyer leads the gentlemen into a pension. A boy of about six lives in it. It looks like it's the son of Miss Christabel and Sir Hugh. The two slip away from responsibility. Pechlin takes care of the child.

Quote

"Young men are also virgins,
Who do not trust women "

shape

The narrator speaks of himself with respect: "We, the historian, ..." This "knightly historiographer" uses his language in a playful way: Fate is "insidiously, maliciously, gleefully, cruelly". Whenever he lets an English tongue break German, the foreign speaker always explains his vocabulary in a subordinate clause: "You ... have to ... show it to me afterwards ... in your diary, your diary ..." The narrator frankly initiates the reader into his structural dispositions : “That this reappearance of the captain has to be dealt with in a new chapter is clear, and the seventeenth seems to us to be quite suitable for it.” In addition, a look into the future is sometimes thrown: “On a later page of this book we will Take readers to the Kursaal in Cannstatt am Neckar… ”There is no lack of reader encouragement:“ The next chapter is the eighteenth and will definitely be a very nice and full one. ”The narrator knows Russian .

The novel is written with the punch line in mind: When Miss Christabel meets Sir Hugh Sliddery in the book, this is most likely the father of her boy (see above), then the reader, who does not yet know anything about the child, wonders: Why can both of them not stand? The solution is at the end of the novel.

On the one hand Raabe digressions to the address of are training citizen , mostly as wordy preparation for a simple statement disguised, almost unbearable. Before, for example, the two couples meet in the 29th of 38 chapters in the Kursaal in Cannstatt, the action time frame - that is, the time around 1865 - is left until the time the Weda is written , just to caricature the porter at the hall door . On the other hand, the long reproduction of the tavern brawl in the dance hall in Hohenstaufen's “Ochsen” is a masterful, hard-to-beat painting of the popular Swabian way of life in the 19th century.

reception

  • Meinerts and Hoppe mention the statements of some of Raabe's contemporaries. In 1873, Edmund Hoefer found the story of “Literature Friend” published by Hallberger in Stuttgart as “great, exuberant and cross-fidelity”. In the Leipziger Illustrirten Zeitung , the events in the text are classified as somewhat improbable, but the attributes "great, adventurous, hilarious and amusing" are found. The Leipzig reviewer, however, criticizes Ferdinand's not always stylish Saxon . Raabe improved what was criticized in the reprint. On the occasion of the reprint in 1890, Moritz Necker also found words of praise in the Grenzbote in 1891 . The “graceful” story is told “lively”. But Raabe is exaggerating a little. A certain A. W. is annoyed in 1890 in the Allgemeine Conservative Monthly about the “unbearable breadth” and does not consider the work to be very important.
  • Recent comments ignore the novel with an aside. But in 1980 Jörg Thunecke examined “Raabe's Anglo-Saxon language attitude” in the text. What is meant is the somewhat overpowering wheel breaking of the British Sir Hugh. Son-Hyoung Kwon looked at the grotesque in Raabe's late work.
  • Meyen names further leading works: Hermann Marggraf (Leipzig 1873), Benno Rüttenauer (Leipzig 1890), Adolf Rude ( Osterwieck 1903), Karl Geiger (Wolfenbüttel 1927) and Wilhelm Fehse (Braunschweig 1937).

expenditure

First edition

  • “Christoph Pechlin. An international love story by Wilhelm Raabe. “220 pages. Ernst Julius Günther, Leipzig 1873

Used edition

  • Christoph Pechlin. An international love story . Pp. 203–450, with an appendix, written by Hans-Jürgen Meinerts and Karl Hoppe , pp. 485–515 in: Hans-Jürgen Meinerts (arr.): Der Dräumling . Christoph Pechlin . (2nd edition) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1968. Vol. 10, without ISBN in: Karl Hoppe, Jost Schillemeit, Hans Oppermann, Kurt Schreinert (eds.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.

Further editions

  • Christoph Pechlin. An international love story by Wilhelm Raabe.
    • 227 pages. Otto Janke, Berlin 1890 (2nd edition)
    • 226 pages. Linen. Fracture. Otto Janke, Berlin 1906 (3rd edition)
    • 279 pages. Hermann Klemm, Berlin-Grunewald 1916 (4th edition; 5th edition 1921)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 312, entry 39
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 205
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 493
  4. ↑ At the time, for example, Herr von Beust (used edition, p. 360, 2nd supplement) was giving a ball in Dresden. Since the count went to Vienna in 1866 (used edition, p. 511, 6th supplement), the novel act beforehand.
  5. ↑ Raabe might mean Fravi (see also: Hotel Fravi )
  6. ↑ today: Töngesgasse
  7. ↑ Schmolke whispers to himself: "... you - green-eyed, fish-blooded Polypin, have I finally got you ready ?! O you hopeless, pretty mother-of-pearl witch, will I finally get rid of you from the files ?! "
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 403, 14. Zvo (Raabe quotes Johann Michael Hahn (edition used, p. 406, 5. Zvo and 514, 3. Zvo))
  9. ↑ For example, he writes of the white tsar "bjelawo czaro" or of holy Russia "svyataja Rossija" (edition used, p. 378, center)
  10. ↑ Meinerts and Hoppe in the edition used, pp. 491–493
  11. ↑ Meyen, p. 321, entry 2729
  12. ↑ for example Sprengel, p. 326, 7. Zvu or Fuld, p. 306, 1. Zvo and p. 258, 5. Zvo
  13. ↑ Oppermann, p. 157, 13. Zvo
  14. ↑ see under web links
  15. ↑ Meyen, p. 321
  16. ↑ Meyen, p. 57