Homesickness
Homesickness is the most important novel by Johann Heinrich Jung-Stilling . It appeared in four volumes in 1794, 1794, 1795 and 1796.
content
First volume
Christian tells his parents the pastor's sermon about holy homesickness, which impressed him. The father leads him to a ghost in a rock ruin who, after seven days of contemplation, anoints him as a crusader, and sends him eastwards with his neighbor, Hans Ehrlich. In the first hostel, a gray man orders him to bring money to the poor widow Geroldin, who is being harassed by a corrupt bailiff. Then he finds his future bride as a farmer's daughter with a dead face. The rock man anoints his eyes, and in the sunrise he recognizes their beauty.
Christian von Lichtenberg is accepted in Frankfurt and attends pious readings. In the next tavern he meets the widow with the captain from the first inn. They got married and tell how the bailiff was judged by the gray man. On the way to Augsburg, Christian was shown a shortcut, which led him to get lost. The lady of the castle of Eitelburg seduces him and her daughter to stay until the rock men come and show him the sinful ugliness under the costumes. The repentant Christian lives in a village at the death of a pious pastor. In Augsburg he is only lost, then he meets researchers. He studies with him and shows him his physiognomic cabinet, which shows all human characters in their various forms. At the farewell dinner, an Easterner comes and shows everyone their next route.
Christian and Hans meet a Capuchin in a blacksmith's shop, who protects them from the Catholics standing around when, as Protestants, they do not call Jesus God. A dinner party tells Christian that the anointed are being misled and recommends Frau von Traun to him. But the Morgenländer comes to the evening party disguised as a farmer and defeats a snooty speaker in the discourse. Christian does the same at the next dinner party. A capuchin leads him to a strange ritual. Christian meets an impoverished widow whom he gives help through the first named Capuchin. Then a Catholic invites him to a society in the country, where a ghostly apparition tries to convince him that he should travel to Italy with a young woman. Christian resists and is shown his further path by the Morgenländer, who reveals himself to be his brother-in-law.
In Hungary Christian and Hans meet an impoverished Protestant family to whom he sends help. Although they resist an invitation to the country, they are kidnapped to Countess Nischlin's castle. Christian passively suffers everything she tries to seduce him with, wine, erotic paintings, balls, and finds a voice in the wall that supports him. When he throws Nischlin out of his room, she has him taken to Mr. Sapientia. He pretends to support him and understand alchemy. He lets him fast for seven days and then shows him tricks, but Christian sees through their futility and leaves. Their guide hands them over to robbers.
Second volume
The robbers bring Eugenius and Trevernau, who rebukes him for his self-pity, to Constantinople. The Morgenländer buys them free and ships them to Smyrna, where Hans and Trevernau stay with researchers. He sends Stilling to Alexandria with the merchant Macarius. On the way he tries to convert him to Islam under threat of death, but this turns out to be a test of Eugenius' steadfastness. In Rahmanije, riders abduct him to Emir Abukar, where he becomes bailiff among rough people.
After nine months, Abukar and his brother take him to Merck, who lets him decipher a weathered tablet in Luxor in order to find the secret passage into a pyramid in Memphis. There, three rock men, who turn out to be his father, Basilius and Merck, teach him that the terms space and time cannot be related to spiritual questions. Next he has to descend a river into the labyrinth of the dead and learns about good and bad, and finally, after a simulated murder attempt, about the contrast between sensual and moral principles. He is ordained a captain.
Eugenius and the newly initiated Weißenau, accompanied by the emirs, who are now becoming Christians, travel via Kalira and their camp on the Red Sea to the Catherine's Monastery between the mountains of Sinai and Horeb. There she teaches Gottfried the proof of truth in Scripture, the necessity and quality of divine revelation and why the moral law had to come as a human being. You become a priest. On the way to Canobin Monastery on Mount Lebanon, she captures M. de Bellefond, leaves her starving and shows Urania's mask. Theodor frees her, Schüler also reports of Urania's liberation when the French recognized her beauty. Eugenius and Urania are married in Jerusalem under an old church.
Third volume
The wedding is followed by a secret council meeting, after which the gray man travels west again, the others to Canobin Monastery on Mount Lebanon. They meet Timothy and find two hermits who are waiting for the end of the world. Theodor goes. The two emirs no longer leave Eugenius and save her from robbers. A letter from the regent has them stored, where the Parsis people join and a well-traveled German.
In Bockhara they meet Theodosius and Gregorius. At a festival, the emirs are touched that they are allowed to hold communion without further ado and kiss the flag with the holy lamb. Eugenius is suddenly recalled at night to be checked for leadership. He answers the question about freedom of the press with four essential points that anyone who wants to teach must believe. Nor does he move away from it when he is told that he has failed and that he wants to send him to Africa. So he is found proven by the vice regent in knowledge, stability and altruism. The others are now hearing oriental stories from Abukar.
Fourth volume
They move south from Samarkand, Elias leads them with a map through the mountains to Solyma. Eugenius passed laws on the division and use of the land. In the meantime Lichtenberg, Hildesheimer and the widow Gerold join them with her husband and pastor. Eugenius makes a pilgrimage to the Paraclete, who instructs him to appoint doctors of the church and to bind all sciences to religious doctrine.
The question of how alone is to develop human morality is again used to select the clergy. After a tragedy about two young people who transfigured their lust as St. Sophia and Jesus, a control system of the teaching content follows. Castle and temple are built, money and medicine introduced. Adept Eulalius, who heads the latter, reunites the couple separated by the tragedy.
The poor Protestant couple from Hungary arrive. The paraclet comes to the opening concert of the welfare orders. A secret passage for an invasion is discovered during a mountain expedition on the eastern border. Behind it is a secret society with its own moral code, enlightenment and democracy. According to the judgment of all housefathers, the 1200 members are to be partly banned, but show their repentance in solidarity so that they are pardoned.
Eugenius issues a decree against luxury. A fraudulent Rosicrucian society is exposed, the members excused.
The author describes his visions as he writes, attaches the letter and pastoral letter from Europe and gives a parable of a damned city in the afterword.
literature
- Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich: The homesickness. Complete, unabridged edition after the first edition published from 1794 to 1796, introduced, provided with notes and a glossary by Martina Maria Sam. In the appendix: Young stillings "Keys to homesickness". 1994. (Verlag am Goetheanum; ISBN 3-7235-0741-7 )