The image of Christ

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The image of Christ is the first novella by the Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos , which appeared in the second yearbook of Buchenblätter in 1869 under the title David der Bocher . The yearbook brought together works by German authors from Bukovina . Westermann published the text in 1870. In 1876 the Christ picture in the collection Die Juden von Barnow at Duncker & Humblot in Leipzig came on the book market.

background

Franzos writes about his first love in his prose firstling. In the summer of 1868 he had secretly got engaged to a young Christian in Chernivtsi . When the lucky guy started studying in Graz in the fall semester , he received a letter from the bride. In it she rejected him: "My heart breaks, but you are Jewish ...".

Ten years after the publication of the "Christ Image", that Christian had long been married in England and got her hands on the text. The woman became the first translator of the novella into English.

action

The narrator, who grew up in the Podolian town of Barnow as the son of the city doctor, saw the picture of Christ by Countess Jadwiga Bortynska for the first time at the age of twelve and recognized his teacher David den Bocher, the son of the late Rabbi Blum.

Before David Blum became a teacher in Barnow, he had left the town after the death of his mother and wandered through Galicia and Poland . In Vilna , the aged, wealthy Prince Sugatscheff made it possible for the poor Talmudist to train as a doctor. Although David remained true to his beliefs, he changed the name to Dr. Friedrich Reimann. The patron died. His son, Prince Alexius Sugatscheff, a reckless, depraved person, stayed mostly in Baden-Baden . The doctor followed his new master. It was there in Germany that Friedrich Reimann met and fell in love with the painter Jadwiga Bortynska. Prince Alexius told the painter about the doctor's Jewish origins. Jadwiga Bortynska separated from Friedrich Reimann. The latter went back to Barnow, where he became a teacher and took care of the sick. The following winter, the doctor treated people suffering from rampant nerve fever and died of this disease. Friedrich Reimann had previously met the painter in Barnow. He had not complied with her request for forgiveness for "... but you are Jewish ...". The doctor had stuck to his renunciation.

The narrator concludes his story about the creation of the picture of Christ in Barnow: Jadwiga Bortynska painted this picture the following summer - after the death of his lover - in Switzerland .

reception

  • 1935: Eduard Castle observes the work of the "decisive determinist " French.
  • 1964: Creutzburg on the one hand praises "the path from biographical truth to poetic generalization", evaluates Reimann's renunciation as a protest against the insurmountable denominational barrier and, on the other hand, does not hide the artistic deficiencies of this literary prelude, such as the weak composition, the psychologically superficially motivated plot as well as avoidable sentimentalities.

literature

expenditure

  • The image of Christ . P. 627–639 in: Westermanns Monatshefte , Vol. 28, Braunschweig 1870 ( online )
  • The Christ picture, pp. 227-257 in: The Jews of Barnow. Stories from Karl Emil Franzos . 11-15 Edition. Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1920 ( archive.org ).
  • The image of Christ . S. 173–198 in: Günter Creutzburg (Ed.): The wild Starost and the beautiful Jütta. Novellas about love and marriage by Karl Emil Franzos. Illustrations: Wolfgang Würfel . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1964 (edition used)

Secondary literature

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ The Bocher is called the unmarried.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ansull, p. 41, 6th Zvu
  2. ^ Franzos: Mein Erstlingswerk, pp. 213–240
  3. ^ Creutzburg in the afterword of the edition used, p. 531 below
  4. ↑ Creutzburg in the afterword of the edition used, p. 532 above