The Dräumling

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The Dräumling is a novel by Wilhelm Raabe that was written from April 1870 to May 1871 and published by Otto Janke in Berlin in 1872 . Raabe saw reprints in 1893 and 1905. The fourth edition appeared in Raabe's year of death. Hermann Klemm, also in Berlin, published the 5th and 6th editions in 1919 and 1921.

The celebration of the 100th birthday of Schiller is an occasion for Raabe to settle accounts with the north German Philistine swamp.

content

The philologist Gustav Fischarth from Öbisfelde ended up in Paddenau as rector. 7000 souls live in the little town of Paddenau. It is located on a peninsula in the extensive, much branched north German swamp Dräumling . The school man, a whipping teacher, did his doctorate on the use of the hazel cane in Greek grammar schools. The dissertation that was in print had not reached the book trade. Agnes, the highly educated wife of the rector, comes from Stralauer Strasse in Berlin. She gave triplets to her husband. One of the two little girls dies.

Fischarth had brought through his father's fortune while studying philology in Bonn . One of the fellow students at the time, the swamp painter Rudolph Haeseler from the Rhineland, appears in Paddenau. In contrast to his college friend, the painter is wealthy and a bachelor. The Rector's rented house is right next to Dräumling. Parts of the swamp have taken on the shape of a lake at that point. Wulfhilde Mühlenhoff visits her friend Agnes by rowing boat. The young lady’s retired father - that’s the larmoyant, sorrowful widower Dr. Mühlenhoff, Privy Councilor and former Prince Educator - such visits are a thorn in the side. Wulfhilde wants to declaim the silly verses of the poetic schoolmaster Fischarth at the imminent celebration of Schiller's 100th birthday. The father wants to keep the name Mühlenhoff clean, but is powerless against the daughter. So in his need he calls a rich relative from Hamburg. George Daniel Knackstert arrives and stays in the "Green Donkey" at the innkeeper Ahrens. The father had long since chosen the esteemed relative to be Wulfhilde's husband.

The landscape painter loves the girl. The fight for Wulfhilde breaks out. Knackstert, who escaped one of the Hamburg Schiller celebrations with great difficulty and from the bad into the eaves in Paddenau, is fighting with unfair means. The Paddenauer Schillerfeier is supposed to take place in the “Green Donkey”. Knackstert promises the landlord 200 thalers if he manages to cancel the celebration at very short notice by moving the local Schiller Committee to another restaurant. The attempt at bribery fails. On November 10th, 1859, the painter locked up the speaker, his college friend, and gave the speech himself. In it he mentioned the attempted bribe in a subordinate clause. The landlord Ahrens then urgently recommends the guest from Hamburg to leave.

Wulfhilde's recitation is well received. Knackstert clears the battlefield. The retired prince tutor is forced to make do with the swamp painter as his new son-in-law. The old father has to forego moving into the white villa of the merchant by marriage in Blankenese . Haeseler would like to stay in Paddenau. The new son-in-law is considering buying a villa on Lake Starnberg as a modest summer residence.

shape

Raabe takes the reader into a realm of fantasy. For example, Goethe and Schiller appear in it. Both poets observe the activity in the swamp from their Olympus. Not only when detecting the speaker Goethe does the reader have to be reasonably educated. The reader has to recognize Goethe using the keyword Stadelmann . The philologist Fischarth and his friend, the painter Haeseler, also have a fatal peculiarity. Neither of them say what they mean. Neither the reader nor the person talking to the protagonist can immediately recognize what is meant. The two educated citizens disguise their concerns in episodes from ancient mythology or in events from French intellectual history .

Raabe speaks in symbols. "Dräumling" is used ambiguously. It is not only a north German marshland near the Weser, but also the mass or part of the recently caricatured Paddenau Philistines. The latter have their Schiller in the bookcase and want to prevent his penetration into the local pub, the "Green Donkey", at all costs. Nevertheless they are carried away by Agnes and the keynote speaker Haeseler after Wulfhilde's recitation of the bad verses of the whipping teacher at the local Schiller celebration.

In his novel Der Dräumling , Raabe uses the perspective of a narrator who stands outside of the events and is not part of the narrated world. This form is known as an extra-heterodiegetic narrator . The narrator assumes the position of zero focus, similar to the authorial narrator : the narrator has the overview and stands above the characters and their actions. He is omniscient and holds the threads of history together. In the novel, these features appear mainly through a change of location and perspective. This happens, for example, when the events in front of the Rector's house turn to the talks in the inn. Likewise, the characters in the novel themselves appear as narrators. Particularly noticeable is the painter, who tells many reviews from his life. Since the characters are part of the narrated world, one speaks in this case of an intradiegetic narrator with an internal focus. Thus, your view of yourself and your personal opinion is limited.

Quote

  • "Long live free laughter".

Testimonials

  • To his brother: "The Werck is written in stark contrast to the often so disgusting self-glorification of German philistinism."
  • To Wilhelm Jensen : "The Dräumling will be a beautiful book, but as usual the bad world will not want to believe it."

reception

  • Wilhelm Jensen misses "a significant basic idea" in the book.
  • In August 1872, Johann Jacob Honegger wrote in the Leipziger Blätter für literary entertainment : “After all, that is humor from real water, the whole thing is not exactly a composition on a grand scale, but pleasant to read.”
  • Anton Schönbach said in 1875: "It is very peculiar how this cloudy, fantastic chiaroscuro is interrupted by very realistic, luminous humor."
  • Arno Schmidt sees parallels between the "Dräumling" and " The Woman in White " (1860) by Wilkie Collins in " Zettel's Traum " .
  • Oppermann sees the novel as, among other things, the artist Raabe's self-testimony, in which he leaves the position of the omniscient narrator . But talking of the characters in symbols goes beyond the scope. The author mocked Schiller's “high pathos” and lovingly adored the poet in the same text. The swamp painter Haeseler bears features of Raabe.
  • According to Klingenberg, Johann Georg Fischer and Wilhelm Jensen could have been the godfathers of the Rector's figure.
  • Meyen names other leading works: Otto Kamp (Leipzig 1893), Wilhelm Börker, Wilhelm Fehse, Hans-Jürgen Meinerts (Braunschweig 1899, 1924, 1937, 1949), Johannes Iltz, Franz Hahne (Wolfenbüttel 1926, 1940).

expenditure

First edition

  • The Dräumling. By Wilhelm Raabe. 308 pages. Otto Janke, Berlin 1872

Used edition

  • Der Dräumling p. 5–193 in: Peter Goldammer (Ed.), Helmut Richter (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Selected works in six volumes. Volume 5: The Dräumling. To the wild man . Mrs. Salome . From old Proteus . Horacker . Wunnigel . 884 pages. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin and Weimar 1965 (text basis: Karl Hoppe (ed.): The historical-critical Braunschweiger edition (see below))

Further editions

  • The Dräumling . Pp. 5–201, with an appendix, written by Hans-Jürgen Meinerts and Karl Hoppe, pp. 453–484 in: Hans-Jürgen Meinerts (arr.): Der Dräumling. Christoph Pechlin . (2nd edition) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1968. Vol. 10, without ISBN in Karl Hoppe (Ed.), Jost Schillemeit (Ed.), Hans Oppermann (Ed.), Kurt Schreinert (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe . Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.
  • Erika Weber (Hrsg.), Anneliese Klingenberg (Hrsg.): The Dräumling. With documents for the Schiller celebration in 1859 320 pages. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin and Weimar 1984

literature

  • Hans Oppermann : Wilhelm Raabe. 160 pages. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1970 (1988 edition), ISBN 3-499-50165-1 (rowohlt's monographs)
  • 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
  • Werner Fuld : Wilhelm Raabe. A biography. 383 pages. Hanser, Munich 1993 (dtv edition in July 2006), ISBN 3-423-34324-9 .
  • Gabriele Henkel: A “mood for Friedrich Schiller's centenary birthday”. To the Schiller reception in Wilhelm Raabe's “Dräumling”. In: Søren R. Fauth, Rolf Parr, Eberhard Rohse (eds.): "The best bites of the cake". Wilhelm Raabe's narrative: contexts, subtexts, connections. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag 2009, pp. 197-221, ISBN 978-3-8353-0544-1
  • Eberhard Rohse : Image as text - text as image. Image quotations in narrative texts by Wilhelm Raabe. In: Gabriele Henkel (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. The graphic work. Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 2010, pp. 93–125, here pp. 115–119, ISBN 978-3-487-14332-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Weber and Klingenberg, p. 285, 5. Zvo
  2. ↑ v. Studnitz, p. 312, entry 37
  3. ^ Goldammer and Richter (1965), p. 799, 9. Zvu
  4. ↑ Meyen, p. 64, entry 291
  5. ^ Weber-Klingenberg edition, pp. 242–261
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 140, 1. Zvu
  7. ↑ Oppermann, p. 96, 4. Zvo
  8. ↑ Klingenberg in the Weber-Klingenberg edition, p. 286, 9. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 138, 4th Zvu
  10. ↑ quoted in v. Studnitz (p. 226, 13. Zvo) from “Wilhelm Fehse: Raabe Briefe 1842–1910”, Berlin 1940
  11. ↑ quoted in v. Studnitz, p. 226, 13. Zvo
  12. ↑ quoted in v. Studnitz, p. 226, 16th Zvu
  13. ↑ in Meinerts and Hoppe cited in the Braunschweiger edition, vol. 10, p. 463, 9. Zvo
  14. ↑ in Meinerts and Hoppe cited in the Braunschweig edition, vol. 10, p. 463, 22. Zvo
  15. ↑ Fuld, p. 256 below
  16. ↑ Oppermann, p. 94, 13. Zvo
  17. ^ Klingenberg in the Weber-Klingenberg edition, p. 287, 6. Zvo
  18. ↑ Meyen, pp. 325-326
  19. ↑ Meyen, p. 64, entry 291