The Baron Bagge

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The Baron Bagge, first edition, Fischer 1936

The Baron Bagge is a novella by Alexander Lernet-Holenia , which was first published in 1936 by S. Fischer Verlag . It is considered to be one of the author's most important works and the main work of fantastic literature in Austria.

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The framework story takes place in Austria at an unspecified point in time in the First Republic . During a reception at the Agriculture Minister (historically correct: Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) there is a scandal. A certain Baron Bagge, who lives in seclusion as a landowner in Carinthia, is accused of having two young women committed suicide out of heartache because of him. The anonymous first-person narrator, a young regimental officer, can help to resolve the embarrassing situation. Bagge and the young man leave the ministry. On the street, Bagge clears up his young companion by confirming that the two women have actually set their heads in vain to marry him. However, this was not possible. Then Bagge tells his unusual story.

The plot jumps to the beginning of the First World War. "I" narrator is now Bagge. In the winter of 1915 he was an officer with his mounted unit in the northeastern corner of Hungary, near the city of Tokaj . The high command is led by Bagge's superior Rittmeister von Semler, a moody and difficult man. Although not detailed, those involved were already aware of the incipient anachronism of mounted warfare. An atmosphere of futility surrounds the event from the start. Bagge's cavalry unit is on a recon mission northwards. Due to Semler's impulsive orders, the squadron is embroiled in a daring attack against Russian machine guns at a bridge, which, contrary to expectations, is successful. The riders gallop across the bridge. During the battle, Bagge is hit in the chest and temple by blown rocks, but is not seriously injured.

Shortly thereafter, the unit arrives in the garrison town of Nagy-Mihaly . The soldiers are warmly welcomed. You get to know the leading local families, including the v. Szent-Kiraly, friends of Bagge's mother. Bagge falls in love with the beautiful and enigmatic daughter of the Szent-Kiralys and has a passionate relationship with her. The two get married. Increasingly, however, Bagge doubts his sensory perception; he is confused by the strangely peaceful and festive atmosphere of the city. In addition, no enemy troops are sighted in the whole area.

Immediately after the wedding, Rittmeister Semler orders the departure; he too is restless and hopes to find the enemy further north. The squadron roamed through Hungary for days, and the landscape grew darker. When one finally has to cross a river again, Bagge realizes the unreality of the action and does not cross the bridge while his comrades ride over. It is only now that it turns out that all the experiences since crossing the first bridge eight days earlier were a dream-like state. In reality, almost all of the squadron members died in Russian machine gun fire. Bagge was badly wounded.

The novella leaves the First World War at the end and returns to the main story. Bagge reflects on and interprets the events for his young listener: after the attack, he hovered for eight days in a hospital in a twilight state between life and death, while his comrades crossed the border into the afterlife. After the war, Bagge traveled to Hungary again and looked for traces. The love for Charlotte in particular stands before him intensely. He finds the landscape and the cities largely as he saw them in his dream. But the similarities are fantastic. They correspond to reality, but deviate from it in decisive aspects. The people he met in dreams are in truth dead. There was also a real Charlotte, but this deceased young woman also has the name in common with the dream web. Again Bagge arrives at the same bridge. But he still does not dare to cross it.

reception

"Nowhere has this walk to" that unknown country from which no wanderer returns "been traced with such visual power, vividness and dream fantasy as in" Baron Bagge ", the most beautiful novel written by Alexander Lernet-Holenia."

- Hilde game

“The slightly melancholy novella in its short, dense and often lyrical language deals with the motif of gradual dying, the interval that lies“ between dying and being really dead ”. The description of the flowing transitions between the real and the wonderful with the symbol of the bridge makes the novella an important work of German fantastic literature. "

- Lexicon of World Literature, ed. v. Gero from Wilpert

“One could rightly call Baron Bagge Lernet-Holenias“ dream novel ”. And yet a comparison with Arthur Schnitzler's work ten years earlier would be misleading. Because while Schnitzler was playing with the dream, Lernet-Holenia is trying a completely different kind of experiment: He blurs the boundaries between dream and reality so thoroughly that he succeeds in a masterful piece of illusionary prose. "

- Rudiger Görner

Friedrich Torberg regarded the novella as Lernet-Holenia's masterpiece and spoke of an "oscillating, in the right sense profound penetration of life and death, dream and reality." Marcel Reich-Ranicki also praised Lernet's book and said it was a literary achievement, " which can hardly be put aside in German literature of that time ”. Jorge Luis Borges was impressed by the Baron Bagge and recognized parallels to Juan Rulfo's later influential novel Pedro Páramo - in both works the title hero travels a dream world between life and death, meets people who have already died and experiences an unreal atmosphere. Horst Lange valued Lernet-Holenias novella very much and especially pointed out the connections to Rilke's story The Way of Love and Death of the Cornet Christoph Rilke and Hofmannsthal's equestrian story . Roman Rocek wrote about the Baron Bagge: " Praised by most critics as a pinnacle of narrative art of the years between the two world wars, in" Baron Bagge "the sober narrative attitude of Kleist is unmistakably fused with an emotionally charged dream event into a supernatural reality."

The imperceptible slide into the dream state, although expressly announced beforehand, as well as the surprising reversal through the revelation of the dream state, which at the end requires the reader to reinterpret what has just been read, elevate Baron Bagge to a narrative construct of classical dramatic action. John Cheever took up a similar mood in his 1964 short story The Swimmer , filmed in 1968 as The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster . The structure of the Baron Bagge can also be compared to the short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce , which is set in the American Civil War.

Reviews of the Baron Bagge published u. a. Martin Meyer , Armin Ayren and Wolf von Niebelschütz .

Edits

The North German Broadcasting produced in 2000 a radio play based on the novel, with Christian Redl in the role of Baron.

A theatrical version was performed by Alexander Waechter in the franzjosefskai21 theater in Vienna in 2015 .

expenditure

  • The Baron Bagge or Of Dreams and Reality . S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1936, (2nd edition 1940)
  • The Baron Bagge . Afterword by Lambert Binder. Reclam, Stuttgart, 1957 (2nd edition 1964, 3rd edition 1968, 4th edition 1974, 5th edition 1980)
  • The Baron Bagge . Afterword by Hilde Spiel . S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 1978. Reprint as Fischer paperback, 2016.
  • The Baron Bagge . Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 1998
  • The Baron Bagge . Afterword by Rüdiger Görner . Insel Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 2001.
  • The Baron Bagge . Etchings by Robert Schmiedel , afterword by Franziska Mayer. Edition Sonblom, Münster 2014.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rüdiger Görner: Afterword. in: Alexander Lernet-Holenia: The Baron Bagge. Novella. Insel Verlag, Frankfuft / Main 2001 ISBN 978-3-4583-4436-0 pp. 105-112, here p. 105
  2. ↑ Friedrich Torberg: Biased as I am. By poets, thinkers and authors . Langen Müller Verlag, Munich, 1991 ISBN 3-7844-2364-7 , p. 108f.
  3. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Novels from yesterday, read today . 1933-1945. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt / Main, 1990. ISBN 978-3-10-062912-8 , p. 47
  4. ^ Gerhard Drekonja-Kornat: Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Vienna and other cultural stories from Latin America. Lit Verlag, Vienna 2010 ISBN 978-3-643-50141-7 , p. 138
  5. ^ Gregor Streim: The end of anthropocentrism. Anthropology and historical criticism in German literature between 1930 and 1950. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2008 ISBN 978-3-11-020103-1 , pp. 226f.
  6. ↑ Roman Rocek: The nine lives of Alexander Lernet-Holenia. A biography . Böhlau, Vienna a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-205-98713-6 . P. 11
  7. ^ Franzjosefkai21: "Der Baron Bagge" Die Presse , December 3, 2015

Web links

  • Review in Rheinischer Merkur on September 25, 1998
  • Review from lesekost.de