Clemens (story)

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Clemens is a short story by the Franco-German writer Joseph Breitbach (1903–1980). It is originally a chapter from a novel of the same name that was published under the title The Return in 1937 in the first issue of the magazine Maß und Wert published by Thomas Mann .

action

The 17-year-old carpenter apprentice Clemens Wirg is brought home by a police officer after he was released from prison. He had run away from home and was guilty of minor theft. Shortly before the train arrives in Clemens' hometown (which lies on the Rhine between Mainz and Koblenz , but whose name is not mentioned), Clemens tells the policeman about his fear of his strict father, who is expecting his return and probably him as before so often that will be beaten up. While the policeman tries to ease Clemens' fear and promises to calm his father down, the train reaches the station. Clemens' father, the sexton of the local parish church, is waiting for them there. However, he refuses to receive Clemens at the train station, but demands that the policeman bring the son home. Obviously he wants his son to have to walk around town and feel humiliated by the curious looks of people. In fact, Clemens is afraid of having to meet friends and neighbors in his torn clothes and accompanied by a police officer. He is spared this, however, as the two of them are taken from the van of a local inn. The owner of the inn and driver of the car met Clemens with benevolence and kindness; he believes he has learned his lesson and will lead an honest life in the future.

By driving along in the car, Clemens and the policeman reach the sexton house above the city in front of their father, whose severity and brutality the policeman recognizes. So he quickly hands Clemens over, but puts in a good word for him. Without speaking to him any further, the father leads his son into the house, where Clemens 'aunt (who runs the father's household since Clemens' mother has died) has secretly prepared a welcome dinner. The father is furious when he discovers this; he also removes the sign that says "Welcome" and disappears into a storage room, where he pegs something down, without Clemens being able to see what. The sexton clears the festive meal and explains to his son that they will both eat only bread and water for some time to repent. Meanwhile, Clemens continues to wait for the sure beating and asks his father to miss it now instead of keeping him waiting for the blows. In the process, the reader also learns in which, strongly sexual-sadistic tinted way, the father used to punish Clemens. This time, however, Clemens does not get the usual flogging.

Rather, Clemens is very shocked when he discovers a black hat with a mourning ribbon in the cloakroom and fears that his brother or sister may have died. When asked, the father leads him into the storage room and there is actually a coffin there. When Clemens asked frightened who had died, the father only replied that Clemens should read. At the foot of the coffin he nailed a death note - and Clemens reads that it is a death note for himself! Now, during a strict questioning by the father, it becomes clear that Clemens had tried to use a trick to prevent a search for himself: When fleeing home, he deliberately left his clothes on the banks of the Rhine to give the impression that he was bathing drowned. The relatives believed this too and had a funeral mass read for him.

Suddenly it becomes clear to Clemens the pain he inflicted on his siblings and his aunt because his relatives had to think he was dead. For the pious father, however, the unnecessarily read funeral mass is in the foreground, which is why he has come up with a particularly perfidious punishment for his son: Clemens should now sleep in the empty coffin. In addition, his reputation in the city was ruined, the pastor was so upset that a funeral mass had been wrongly read that he had to go to the hospital, and Clemens had to apologize to him personally, as well as to the numerous visitors to the funeral mass who would have sent expensive wreaths. Clemens has already been excluded from the gymnastics club.

Clemens realizes how immature he has acted and how difficult it will be to restore his reputation. Finally he doubts whether his flight from his hard but devout father might not have been a mistake after all.

Historical background

According to Breitbach, the story, which was later reprinted several times, was a chapter from an unpublished novel with the title Clemens, which portrayed the rise of the National Socialists and the seizure of power in a small town on the Rhine. However, nothing can be seen of this topic in the published chapter, it is more about fanatical Catholicism and the attempt to break out of the parental home which is determined by piety and severity.

According to Breitbach's statement, he had worked on the novel (which he also referred to as his main work) from 1930 to 1939 and, at the beginning of the campaign in the West , tried to send a copy of the manuscript from Paris (where he was then living) to Switzerland to the publisher of To send Emil Oprecht . However, this did not succeed because the French post office had stopped transporting parcels just half an hour earlier. After the occupation of France, the Gestapo confiscated Breitbach's papers, including the manuscript of the novel. In the further course of the Second World War, it was initially relocated to Silesia by the Gestapo, then finally brought to Moscow by Soviet troops in the final phase of the war and later given to the GDR.

Breitbach learned nothing of this. After his death and after reunification , the manuscript came to the German Literature Archive in Marbach, part of the remainder of Breitbach's estate. A chapter published elsewhere, which comes from this manuscript, does not match the content of the one printed in 1937, but actually deals with the seizure of power. So it is possible that the found, incomplete manuscript is an earlier or later version of the novel.

Breitbach himself tried unsuccessfully to write the novel again after the war, he also processed the topic of the chapter published in 1937 again in the 1971 play Requiem for the Church .

expenditure

  • The return. In: measure and value. 1, 1937, Issue 1, pp. 75–99 (Thereafter, several prints in magazines and anthologies, also independent editions, translations into French).
  • First chapter of the later rediscovered manuscript for Clemens ' novel , In: Horizonte. Rhineland-Palatinate Yearbook for Literature 3. Edited by Sigfrid Gauch, Sonja Hilzinger and Josef Zierden. Brandes & Apsel, Frankfurt am Main 1996.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.joseph-breitbach.de/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Interview_Inselschiff.pdf
  2. ↑ www.joseph-breitbach.de: Estate.
  3. ↑ On the story of the novel, cf. the foreword by Jean Schlumberger in the (French) edition published by Pierre Seghers, Paris, in 1958, as well as Jochen Meyer: Joseph Breitbach or Die Höflichkeit des Erzählers. Marbach 2003, p. 78 (illustration of the manuscript) and the accompanying guide through the exhibition in the Schiller National Museum Marbach from July 20 to September 28, 2003, display case 14.
  4. ↑ Joseph Breitbach: Requiem for the Church. Ed. Stage manuscript, Frankfurt 1971. Also in: Joseph Breitbach: Die Jubilarin, Comrade Veygond, Requiem for the Church. Frankfurt 1972.