The Eternal Light (Peter Rosegger)

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Peter Rosegger in 1893

Eternal Light is a novel by the Austrian writer Peter Rosegger , which was published in 1897 by L. Staackmann in Leipzig . In this priestly novel Rosegger appears as the editor of the fake diary entries of a Catholic pastor .

overview

The aged city parish chaplain Wolfgang Wieser has drawn the ire of his bishop on due literary publications. Because the chaplain could not leave the letter, he was banished by the bishop to the remote high mountain community of Sankt Maria im Torwald at Easter 1875. The entries in the parish register of this settlement of seventy farms go back to 1580. Wieser worked there at the foot of the Hohen Rauh until his death in autumn 1889. In the fourteen years he had to experience two changes in the village of Sankt Maria. Tourism first found its way into the mountain village . This is being displaced by industrialization : no city ​​dweller wants to go on holiday in a town with an ironworks . Mountain farmers mutate into proletarians . Wagner takes the text as Rosegger's discussion of social democracy .

No matter, the pastoral care of the nature people in the high mountains is not a cozy affair. And the pastor has forbidden himself to write. So he reads. What is written There is no difference in the lives and deeds of believers and unbelievers.

The narrator does not reveal the location of the action. The perplexed reader would like to move the Hohe Rauh close to the Styrian Eisenerz Alps because of the abundant iron ore deposits . This does not contradict the statement in the novel that the state of Tyrol is far away. The diary writer Wolfgang Wieser names Hohenmauth as his place of birth.

Novel title

The title is included in several places in the text for interpretation.

  • Christian virtues : Wieser's bishop says at the beginning of the novel that the eternal light is faith . Rosegger closes the novel with its quintessence: Wieser finds his final resting place in the churchyard of Sankt Maria. On the base of the stone cross on his grave is carved: “ Love is eternal light”.
  • The shepherd Rolf, the son of the village blacksmith (see below), once read that God is eternal light. Pastor Wieser corrects: God brought light and thus eternal life from heaven to man. That is nothing more, interferes with a stranger. Even the heathen had in prehistoric times someone who brought the light down from heaven.
  • After seven trapped Viennese “cave explorers” were rescued from the night of the grave in the Laudamus cave after waiting for nine days, Pastor Wieser wrote in his diary on September 7, 1880: “It was a holy glow of eternal light”.

In addition, the highest elevation of the Hohen Rauh is called the Lichtl . On this snow-covered and icy mountain point, scattered light occasionally shimmers down to the village in the early dawn.

The novel can also be read as a chapter on light worship with regard to the person of Rolf, who, as a self-appointed lay priest so to speak , stands far above the pastor in terms of natural philosophy . When the pastor has reached the end of his Latin, he advises the escaped seminarist Luzian (see below): "Go up to Rolf ... there is the light."

content

When Wieser took up the position of pastor Johann Steinberger, who suffered from a mental illness and then died in the Narrenturm , in the alpine village of Sankt Maria am Torwald in May 1875 , the thaw came up with a practical test. The first sermon from the pulpit of the village church to the address of the mountain farmers has to be postponed. After a landslide , avalanche debris hinders the drainage of the water masses flowing down from the Hohe Rauh. Wieser helps to rescue a buried victim and experiences the careful management of the rescue work by the competent community leader , the village blacksmith Simon Eschgartner. Although the blacksmith opposed the emerging tourism in Sankt Maria in the following years, the Alpine Association refused to support the construction of roads and, to the annoyance of some farmers, ignored the horrific earning potential, he was re-elected as community leader. The headmaster shows moral courage in some respects. After a bad harvest he buys up the whole harvest of the village against the resistance of the haves and distributes it evenly and fairly. For this, the disadvantaged farmers scold him as a social democrat. The blacksmith dies after being assaulted by the angry possessive peasants during an inn tussle. His successor in office opens the door to the advancing industrialization.

The blacksmith leaves behind a son - Rudolf Eschgartner, called Rolf. During his father's lifetime, the boy had left the blacksmith's shop in the village, which was not always reached by the sun, and hired himself as a lumberjack high up in the sun-drenched Dreibrunnwald. The diarist Wieser agrees to observe the nature-loving lad's inclinations. One of them - in addition to the preference for meditating away from Christian dogmas: Rolf, in Wieser's opinion spoiled by the tourists wandering around, likes to lie naked in the sun unobserved in summer during his free hours. When the “sun youth” plays the conscientious objector, old Wieser climbs into the mountain forest on behalf of the blacksmith and persuades the boy. Rolf moves in, but is released early after the father dies. The forge is to be continued. But Rolf stays with the loggers.

On September 5, 1875, Pastor Wieser visited the poor, child-rich farming family Stelzenbacher, called the Steinfranzel people, in the farthest corner of the Rauhgraben. Wieser takes ten-year-old Ottilie from the happy family. The schoolchild is supposed to take the place of the pastor's cook Regina. At the beginning of July of the following year, the pastor took the eleven-year-old Luzian from the delighted family, a yellow-haired boy who looked closely at the visitor. After passing the exams in the monastery, the prelate says that a prince of the church could be carved out of such wood. Luzian is allowed to pursue a career as a priest.

As I said, the new money-hungry community leader opens the door to investors from Austria’s major cities . One of them, the Jewish entrepreneur Isidor Ritter von Yark from Pest , first buys one farm after the other for tourist marketing and also acquires forests around St. Maria. Finally, the fake knight, as the locals call him behind the scenes, realizes that smelting the iron ore deposits in the Torwald can make a lot more money. So soon the chimneys will smoke. So the summer guests stay away. The Pest knight has two sons. The older, a passionate hunter, that is Hermann von Yark's favorite son, inherited his father's entrepreneurial talent, but fell on the day before Christmas in the snow-covered Hohen Rauh while stalking from the walls above the Schuttbach. The day laborer Holz-Hoisel finds the dead man on an ice floe in the creek bed. Now all the knight's hopes rest on the younger son Joseph. He is hardly interested in his father's business, but prefers to look around on his travels in a foreign country. After his brother's death, Joseph was forced to return to the knight's mansion in St. Maria. On July 24, 1889, the ironworkers revolt. The mansion is stormed, looted, set on fire and burned down. Luzian Stelzenbacher, now twenty-five years old, saves the two foreign capitalists. Old Yark survives the storm of the exploited, but dies of shock a month later. Luzian had escaped from the seminary years ago and appeared in Vienna as a speaker against capital in front of proletarians. Sent out as an agent by the Social Democrats , Luzian, the "runaway theologian" in his place of birth in front of the listening working class, railed against the capitalist, this rag.

Wieser's housekeeper Regina dies in the spring of 1887. Josef von Yark and Rolf Eschgartner approach Luzian's sister, the beautiful Ottilie Stelzenbacher. Josef makes the race. But Pastor Wieser is fighting for his new cook: A marriage between a Catholic and a Jew would not work. The pastor has no chance. Joseph converted. The pastor still doesn't give up. He would rather give the woman to Rolf. Ottilie decides differently.

In the spring of 1889 the pastor was advised to found a Christian social association. Wieser can't refuse the superiors. The workers do not listen badly when the clergyman recommends peace of mind instead of material security, because Jesus was also a social democrat. The speaker is laughed at and shortly afterwards stands almost alone in the hall. An older worker who wants to talk to him is whistled back by the comrades class fighters.

In any case, the diary writer finally despairs: “... how lonely and lonely I have become here with my old Christianity ... I see an old, venerable world going under before my eyes. There is nothing I can do about it, and it was all placed in my hands ... “The circle is full. Pastor Wieser's senses become confused. He goes to the mountain forest and dies of the same disease as his predecessor.

Side stories

The novel with its many side stories is very entertaining. For example, the tragicomic story of the village teacher teacher Michael Kornstock is told. He composes operas that no one can hear. The composer's descent is unstoppable and runs through intermediate stations such as note transcribers in Vienna. Kornstock returned to Sankt Maria as a beggar in 1885. To his later satisfaction, the homeless person finds a Michael Kornstock memorial there, the area around which he scrupulously keeps clean with a broom and dustbin. All the while he whistles to poor Augustini his seemingly never-ending tone poems. The invalid Augustini cannot escape. His legs were torn off in an accident at work in the Sankt Mariaer Bergbau.

On August 12, 1878, Kornstock's successor, Sandor Uilaky, took up his post in Sankt Maria. The appearance of this teacher can also be read as a little tragic comedy. At the folk festival on the Brückelwiese, the Hungarian takes the prize cup from the climbing tree and acquires a right. On the dance floor, the “master monkey” with the cry “The most beautiful is mine!” Tears the adored Ottilie out of the astonished Rolf's arms and whirls through the hall with the pastor's cook. Rolf is not resentful. On the contrary - at the same festival he freed the rival from the grip of Madame Karschinkoff by stabbing her to the chagrin of her owner. The madame was a dancing bear during her lifetime . Uilaky's left arm remains paralyzed.

The story of the seven penniless Viennese “cave explorers” who were locked in for days is worth reading. During their unsuccessful treasure hunt, the locals sacrificially saved them from drowning from death in the late summer of 1880, but the city dwellers show themselves to be thoughtless. The pastor registered the utter “gratitude of these people”. Nobody directs a prayer to heaven. However, one of the seven adventurers - the little clerk - became wealthy nine years later. He gives the farmer Mathias Glockner, alias Hies im Grund, 3000 guilders. Glockner's estate was washed down the stream in 1880 after the mountain wall that blocked the cave exit was pierced. The forward-looking Glockers were all able to save themselves from the breakthrough into the valley and were taken in as homeless by the pastor.

In his prosaic aberrations, the narrator Rosegger not only offers contemplative comedy and stories with an unexpected outcome - as indicated above, but also keeps the reader in suspense with a criminal case in the novel: Pastor Wieser presents excerpts from the papers left behind by his predecessor Johann Steinberger. The latter lost his mind after a dilemma: Mathias Spatzel, who is called Holz-Hoisel, has confessed to a robbery for which the innocent Tobias Steger is to be executed. Steinberger pulls all possible levers in motion, but Steger is the victim of a judicial murder . The killer is free. Now the detective story continues in the novel: Wieser has been watching the Holz-Hoisel for years. Born in 1847 as the son of a Bohemian pond digger, Holz-Hoisel was a groom in the monastery and a lumberjack in the Haselbachwald. Skilled in building bridges over gorges, the Holzer had always found work. Towards the end of the novel, the multiple murderer confesses all his crimes to the clergyman.

In general, Rosegger draws one narrative register after the other - describes the alpine nature in a memorable way over the seasons; includes customs. A Haberfeld drift should not be missing in the latter context.

reception

  • Pail observes that when describing his characters Sandor Uilaky and Isidor Ritter von Yark, Rosegger “ cannot completely hide anti-Semitism or racism ”. Pail confirms the statement about the Jew Yark with Bunte's monograph from 1977.
  • According to Bubeníček, Rosegger varies in the novel - as in the writings of the forest schoolmaster and in the seeker of God - the relationship of a figure from the intelligentsia to the population. Bubeníček also explores the question: Why is Wieser losing his mind? and finds an answer in a conflict of conscience: on the one hand Wieser wants to obey his bishop and on the other hand he has to write out of “responsibility for those entrusted to him” and thus act contrary to the church like his predecessor.

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Wolfgang Bunte : Peter Rosegger and Judaism. Old and New Testament, anti-Semitism, Judaism and Zionism. Olms, Hildesheim, New York 1977, ISBN 3-487-06444-8 , p. 272 ​​ff.
  • Gerhard Pail: Peter Rosegger - a trivial ideologist? In: Uwe Baur , Gerald Schöpfer , Gerhard Pail (eds.): "Foreign made?" The folk writer Peter Rosegger . Böhlau, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-205-05091-6 , pp. 72-73.
  • Hanna Bubeníček: land surveying. Peter Rosegger's characters between utopia and failure on the edge of the provinces. An attempt at topography. In: Uwe Baur, Gerald Schöpfer, Gerhard Pail (eds.): "Foreign made?" The folk writer Peter Rosegger . Böhlau, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-205-05091-6 , pp. 147-154.
  • Karl Wagner : The literary public of provincial literature. The popular writer Peter Rosegger (=  studies and texts on the social history of literature, 36). Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-484-35036-9 .
  • Hans-Anton Ederer: Was Peter Rosegger a religious writer? Or: literary depreciation due to religious sentimentality. In: Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler , Karl Wagner (ed.): Peter Rosegger in context . Böhlau, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-205-98841-8 , pp. 174-183.

Remarks

  1. ↑ The speaking job title Hirtner = shepherd refers to pastor .
  2. ↑ In 1880, a Sankt Mariaer farmer in the tourism industry earns more in two summer months than he earns from hard peasant labor all year round.
  3. ↑ Among the rescued Wiener trippers is a cabinet makers , a bookbinder , a Schirmmacher , a fitter and a small clerk.


Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ederer, p. 174, 6. Zvo
  2. ^ Wagner anno 1991, pp. 321–343.
  3. ^ Pail, p. 73.
  4. ↑ Bubeníček, p. 148.
  5. ↑ Bubeníček, p. 153.