The image of the emperor
The picture of the emperor is a novella by Wilhelm Hauff , which he wrote in 1827 and which appeared at the end of 1827 in the "Taschenbuch für Damen" for the year 1828 by the JG Schrag publishing house in Nuremberg.
During the pre-March period, the novella brings together the former Swabian knight Thierberg, impoverished by the Reichsdeputationshauptschluss, with his daughter Anna and General Willi, who rose under Napoleon , with his son Robert, who was open to democratic ideas. It is told from the perspective of old Thierberg's Brandenburg nephew, Albert von Rantow, who is proud of the Prussian military achievements in the Wars of Liberation .
The plot lets the young Brandenburger meet the Swabian Robert in the stagecoach, where the Swabian and the southern German landscape leave him a better impression than his previous prejudices would have allowed him. Then, after all sorts of romantic, unexpected encounters and mix-ups, the two find each other again as rivals for Anna von Thierberg's love. When the Swabian democrat was arrested , the man from Brandenburg ignored his rivalry and tried to help the Swabian. Anyone who finds this less motivated will be frightened by the way in which a picture of Napoleon, which gives the novel its title, resolves all conflicts. For by the repeated report of old Thierberg about his meeting with a noble French captain , the solution is indeed prepared, but by no means made probable. This process is less likely to be attributed to romantic notation than it is to be seen as a mistake that 25-year-old Hauff left behind in order not to slow down the pace of his production.
The story provides a good impression of estates and country team result prejudices of the time and from the very contradictory picture that the figure of Napoleon had left shortly after his death in Germany.
Historical role models
The prototypes of the characters in this novella were for General Willi the Freiherr Ernst von Hügel , for whom Hauff had worked as a tutor , and for the French enemy Thierberg, the Mayor of Bremen Johann Smidt , who had accompanied the army of the anti-Napoleon coalition to Paris in 1814. The two castles in the story are modeled on Guttenberg Castle near Haßmersheim- Neckarmühlbach (between Heidelberg and Heilbronn ), the ancestral seat of Baroness von Hügel, nee. Gemmingen -Guttenberg, and in Hornberg Castle (Thierberg in the novella), which is located on the other side of the Neckar and has been owned by the Gemmingen-Hornberg family branch since 1612.
