The village school teacher

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The village school teacher ( Max Brod's other title : “The giant mole”) is a story by Franz Kafka , which was written from December 1914 to January 1915, was not completed and was published posthumously . A merchant and a village school teacher wage a vain fight for scientific recognition of the existence of a giant mole. It is not a common struggle, however, but an increasingly bitter conflict.

content

1st section

The narrator, a merchant, describes the case of a giant mole that appears in a village, is admired by the people in the area, and whose existence a village school teacher publishes in a small printed matter. The village school teacher, however, cannot get the scientists interested. A scholar dismisses him with the fact that the black, fat earth is to blame for the huge growth. The village school teacher has made an addendum to his original writing about this and about his other bad experiences and his need.

2nd section

By reading this addendum, the narrator got so close to the fate of the village school teacher that he started his own investigations without knowing anything about the mole or the first printed matter. He wants to give the village school teacher the scientific reputation he deserves.

3rd section

But this does not result in a fruitful collaboration. The village school teacher does not trust the merchant, misunderstands him, and sometimes has justified objections. The merchant, at first completely philanthropist, like his counterpart, bites into the mole issue and now only considers his findings to be correct.

4th section

He fails just like the village school teacher. He too published a printed matter and later a disappointed addendum to it. He now wants to withdraw from the matter. At the last meeting with the village school teacher, whom he was so devoted to helping at first, he just wanted to get him out of his apartment quickly, like something very annoying.

Text analysis and interpretation approach

background

In the fall of 1914, Kafka had heard a soldier's story about a life-saving mole in the trenches. He describes it in a diary entry from November 4, 1914. Due to the temporal connection with the creation of this story, a reference is very likely.

The giant mole

The external appearance of the monstrous mole is more reminiscent of an animal fable or a being from the Panopticon. It is not described scientifically. Only so much is said about him that he could provoke deadly reluctance and is nearly six feet tall. Exactly how he is made is also not interesting for the story, because ultimately it is not about him.

The failure

It is about the relationship between the two who have committed themselves to this matter and who both fail with a time lag, both because of their object of investigation and in their mutual relationship. The tragic lies in the fact that the enthusiasm of the village school teacher and the merchant's compassion do not lead to togetherness, but to mutual wear and tear.

If one looks for the reason for this, one could draw on the fact that both of them could not cope with this scientific subject of biology due to a lack of specific training or at least could not convey it in the corresponding technical terminology. In addition, pity was the driving force for one, and hope of prosperity for the other, so there was no need for scientific research. A scientific analysis is also not presented in the text.

But what about the knowledge experts who appear? The aforementioned scholar and a well-known agricultural newspaper express themselves completely unqualified and ignorant. You would certainly not be called to promote the topic.

In any case, the story is only marginally about a satirical scientific dispute, but rather about the incompatibility of human endeavors.

Others

The manuscript of Kafkas The Village School Teacher can be seen in the permanent exhibition in the Modern Literature Museum in Marbach.

expenditure

  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Die Erzählungen Original version published by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Retired writings and fragments 1. Edited by Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-10-038148-3 , pp. 310-313, 194-216.

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: The giant mole (1917)  - sources and full texts

(aka Der Dorfschullehrer)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Franz Kafka diaries M. Pasley / M.Müller Fischer Verlag 2002 diary entry November 4, 1914
  2. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography . Munich: Verlag CH Beck, 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 437
  3. ↑ Peter-André Alt p. 437