The wrong weight. The story of a verification master

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The wrong weight. The story of a calibration master is a novel by Joseph Roth , which was published in 1937 by Querido-Verlag Amsterdam. It is about the all too honest Austro-Hungarian calibration officer Anselm Eibenschütz, who finds enmity, love and an early death in the Galician district of Zlotogrod .

content

Inspector Anselm Eibenschütz comes from the Moravian town of Nikolsburg , served as a sergeant in the artillery for twelve years and found his home in the regiment . At the instigation of his wife Regina, who wants him all to herself, Eibenschütz reluctantly left barracks, uniform, comrades and friends . Every long-serving employee has the right to a post and Eibenschütz would have liked to return to his homeland as a sequester or draftsman , but none of these are needed in all of Moravia. So Eibenschütz had to accept a job as a verification supervisor and moved with his wife to Zlotogrod in the far east of the empire, right on the Russian border. State authority is despised there and the deceased sealer was valued for his inaction. Eibenschütz, however, takes his new job very seriously and brings several merchants to court, which makes him generally hated. Resistance stirs; initially in the form of a few denunciation letters . One of the enemies and letter writers owns the border tavern in the village of Szwaby and calls himself Leibusch Jadlowker . This thickset, stocky, irascible innkeeper and grocer , who actually Kramrisch is, houses vagrants, thieves, robbers and Russian deserters and manufactured false weights . Jadlowker was a dock worker in Odessa and had to flee Russia because of a manslaughter (see homicide ).

Eibenschütz holds his wife responsible for the tight spot he's stuck in. He no longer wanted Regina . His wife begins an affair with Eibenschütz's subordinate, the young clerk Nowak, and fears that she may have become pregnant. Becoming aware of cohabitation through a denunciation and Regina's sudden urging, he succeeds in uncovering the affair and quietly getting Nowak to be transferred. He now restricts contact to his wife to the bare minimum. Instead, Eibenschütz began to frequent the border tavern and fell in love with the gypsy Euphemia Nikitsch. She is Jadlowker's friend and lives in the Grenzschenke. Eibenschütz met the son of Josef Nowak, who was born soon afterwards by his wife, with disgust and indifference.

When the calibration supervisor caught Jadlowker selling fish without a license in a market soon afterwards, he put up a strong resistance. Jadlowker was then sentenced to two years in prison and Eibenschütz was officially appointed as the provisional administrator of the Grenzschenke . Jadlowker had taken out several mortgages on the Grenzschenke. One of the creditors is Kapturak, a friend of Jadlowker and a sly business man. The staid, clumsy Eibenschütz experienced the first love of his life in bed with Euphemia and from then on actually lived in the Grenzschenke. Happiness is short-lived. A third lover of the gypsy, the Maronibrater Konstantin Sameschkin , comes in the fall with sacks of chestnut therefore making prior rights to the Beautiful asserted. Euphemia separates from Eibenschütz. He stays in the tavern, surrenders to the drink and neglects his official business.

The cholera breaks out and pulls people away. Eibenschütz longs for death, but his wife and child die. The epidemic is rampant. After all, convicts from the Zloczow dungeon have to be hired to get the bodies out of the houses. Jadlowker is among the corpse bearers. Kapturak gives the convict the identity of a cholera death and hides the friend in the house. Under the influence of a new gendarme, Eibenschütz rules his office more strictly and mercilessly than ever before. Jadlowker fears his discovery and leaves his hiding place. The main obstacle to his return to his old place of work under a new identity is Eibenschütz. Because of this - and out of revenge - he kills the sealer, for whom nobody mourns. The killer and Kapturak are imprisoned. Euphemia stayed in the tavern and Sameschkin, disgusted by the local conditions, moved away forever.

Quote

I don't have my heart on duty .

reception

filming

The film The False Weight by Bernhard Wicki with Helmut Qualtinger as Anselm Eibenschütz, Agnes Fink as Regina Eibenschütz, Evelyn Opela as Euphemia Nikitsch and Bata Živojinović as Leibusch Jadlowker in the leading roles was produced in 1971. Wicki won the gold film tape for this .

literature

source
  • Joseph Roth: Novels 3. The wrong weight. The story of a verification master . Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-462-02379-9 , pp. 135-231
expenditure
  • Fritz Hackert (Ed.): Joseph Roth Works 6. Novels and Stories 1936–1940 . The wrong weight. The story of a verification master. Novel. 1937. With an afterword by the editor. Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7632-2988-4 , pp. 127-224.
  • Text output at Projekt Gutenberg-DE
Secondary literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roth p. 214
  2. ↑ Nürnberger p. 117
  3. ↑ Steierwald p. 74.75
  4. ↑ Sternburg, pp. 462-463

Web links