The last right

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The last right is a historical novella by Wilhelm Raabe , which was written in February 1862 and appeared in Westermann's illustrated German monthly magazine that same year . The edition came in 1865 when Otto Janke in Berlin within the collection distant voices out. Raabe experienced reprints in 1875, 1896, 1901 and 1905. Meyen names two reviews from 1961 and 1962 and gives twelve editions.

The executioner Wolf Scheffer and the former interest master Christian Jakob Heyliger receive rights from the people, but God gives them the ultimate right .

content

In around 1704, the new executioner Wolf Scheffer spreads fear and horror in Rothenburg im Tal, not only through his merciless exercise of office. The master of the sword, born in 1670, insists on his legal rights at every opportunity in the small town in southwest Germany. Executioner Scheffer lives in the executioner's shop on Herrenberg. In the neighborhood, high above Rothenburg and just as remote, are the Silberburg and, on the Römerhöhe, the Luginsland tower. The rich old Heyliger lives in the run-down Silberburg with his daughter Laurentia. Friedrich Martin Kindler lives as a guard on the watch tower with his son Georg, the black Jürg. Georg returned home from the French War as a poor invalid . Old Kindler had once been the master of the Silberburg. But a judgment of the Reich Chamber of Commerce in Regensburg on April 1, 1675 had confirmed the interest master right and marked the social descent of Kindler to city soldier.

The mothers of George and Laurentia both died shortly after the birth of their only children.

Georg is ashamed of his serious war injury and would prefer not to meet a Rothenburg. So he seeks out Laurentia, his lover, at night on a mossy stone bench behind underbrush in the overgrown garden of the Silberburg. Laurentia does not see how the discord between the fathers can be overcome. Georg is for a rigorous new beginning.

On his nocturnal forays Georg can of course not completely avoid his fellow men. His mortal enemy, the executioner Scheffer, sneaks around the Silberburg. Georg had had a clash with Scheffer in the war and knocked out his opponent's eye.

The old Heyliger - on the Silberburg in the middle of his money bags - has long believed himself surrounded by murderers and thieves. The mania comes to a bad end. The rich old man is found hanged in the attic.

A storm has covered the execution roof. The executioner Scheffer demands and gets his rights from the city of Rothenburg. When Scheffer came home from the war in 1703, he discovered a document among the papers of his father Traugott Scheffer, who died in 1695, which made him the owner of the Silberburg. The father Traugott, Imperial Court Secretary, had sold the right to Heyliger at a high price in 1675 in Regensburg. Although the thirty-year-old contract has no legal force, the executioner gets hold of the enormous fortunes of the suicide Heyliger despite everything. The right obtained brings no luck to the executioner. Wolf Scheffer is slain by the collapsing Silberburg. Georg had saved Laurentia just in time to go to the watch tower. Up there, old Kindler blesses George's association with his enemy's daughter. The City Council of Rothenburg unanimously recognized the old Kindler as the owner of the Silberburg rubble. Father Kindler dies. Georg digs up the money bags and gets rich overnight. He moves to Linz with his wife Laurentia . Marriage is blessed with "boys and girls".

Quote

  • Laurentia to Georg on the bench: “I only have you! Love me, love me, hold me so that I don't perish! "

expenditure

First edition

  • Distant voices. Stories by Wilhelm Raabe. 306 pages. Otto Janke, Berlin 1873 (contains: The black galley . An eulogy from 1609. The last right. Elder blossom)

Used edition

literature

  • Fritz Meyen : Wilhelm Raabe. Bibliography. 438 pages. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973 (2nd edition). Supplementary volume 1, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 in Karl Hoppe (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.
  • Cecilia von Studnitz : Wilhelm Raabe. Writer. A biography. 346 pages. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-0778-6

annotation

  1. ↑ Hoppe suspects, among other things, that Raabe chose Rottenburg am Neckar as a model for the location of the action (Hoppe in the edition used, p. 426, 3rd Zvo).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 310, entry 19
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 407 middle
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 412 below
  4. ↑ Meyen, p. 360, entries 2824 and 2928
  5. ↑ Meyen, pp. 106-107
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 55, 10. 8.vu