The enemy of money

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Peter Rosegger around 1865

The money enemy is a short story by the Austrian writer Peter Rosegger from 1875.

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Melchior Ehrlich, called Melchi, is the grandson of Ehrlich, a well-respected blacksmith during his lifetime. Melchior's father, however, had been jailed for infidelity . Melchior's parents had taken care of a strange, terminally ill peddler in their house. After his death the father kept the cash - ninety guilders - for himself. The mother had sold grain, bacon and meat without her father's knowledge because she valued cash in her own pocket above anything. Melchior's father had died in prison. Soon Melchior and his older brother Kilian were orphaned. The brother was staying with the chief forester Tarnwald and Melchior as a boy with the miller. After Kilian had been taken away by the gendarmes as a banknote counterfeiter , Melchior had sworn to himself, “I won't have a penny in my life from the damned money that kills the good people!” Melchior could no longer stay with the miller because he was in front of them Barriers of the court did not want to swear perjury to exonerate the miller. The miller was suspected of robbery. The manager's fish container had been looted.

Melchior, now 18 years old, finds a job as a farmhand with the farmer from the high Weid, known as Hochweidhofer. Over the next six years, the hard-working Melchior was promoted to head servant, i.e. the reliable right hand of the Hochweidhofers, but only took room and board as wages.

Besides the story mentioned above, which lives from criminal involvement with money or counterfeit money, the text is primarily a love story. Melchior's marriage to the young maid Antonia Schwammer, called Toni, fails because of the lack of money. Toni is married away by the well-to-do shoemaker Mirtel Gegerle from Sterzen, who is looking for a wife for his three children.

The Hochweidhofer had put aside a total of five hundred guilders for his loyal servant, but Melchior had not accepted a guilder. When the old man comes to an end, he calls Melchior to his deathbed. The servant does not take the parcel with the money - also because his loved one stole the money from him. Finally Melchior accepts the parcel from the dying man after the latter had suggested that Melchior should imagine that there was no money in the parcel, only a memory. Outside, Melchior throws the banknotes into the fire.

When the Hochweidhofer died, his easy-going son Fritz took over the farm. The new master does not appreciate Melchior, also because that money-burning has made the rounds among the servants. Melchior is considered a half-fool, leaves the courtyard, goes to Sterzen and stops by Toni. The young woman has become a widow. Mirtel Gegerle left the childless woman with offspring from her first and second marriage and a mountain of debt. Believers are clearing the house. Toni and Melchior, now 24, find each other again and get married. When Melchior realizes the misery in his wife's ruined household, he gives up his aversion to money and lets Toni manage the proceeds of his new wage labor.

Side stories about money

Some turbulence in the plot occurs when counterfeit money is taken or changed.

Two stories are meant symbolically and are repeated over and over again in fragments, distributed over the entire text.

The touching story of the Froni takes up a lot of space. The Sennermägdle, as she is called, has been waiting in vain for her lover, who made her pregnant and abandoned her at a young age. To put it briefly, it says: Anyone who was pretty penniless in the second half of the 19th century could not start a family.

The old bachelor Remini Dreihand dies a violent death in his neglected dwelling. Nobody knows whether the miser was a victim of robbery or had laid hands on himself. Dreihand was not a subordinate of Hochweidhofer's, but only lived near the farm and there did money with God and the world. Just one example: For the reader, the shoemaker Mirtel Gegerle falls like a Deus ex Machina from Rosegger's narrative heaven towards the end of the text. The narrative darkness is only illuminated with a brief comment. Remini Dreihand had apparently brought the young Toni to his friend Mirtel Gegerle. But the shoemaker was otherwise outwitted by his friend. Deprived of his money, Mirtel Gegerle had died an alcoholic. Remini Dreihand stands for the bad in people when it comes to financial advantage.

literature

expenditure

  • The enemy of money . In: The book of short stories by Peter Rosegger . tape 1 . L. Staackmann, Leipzig 1899, p. 142-215 ( archive.org ).
  • The enemy of money . In: Peter Rosegger: The book of novels. Second volume, L. Staackmann. Leipzig 1915, pp. 253-320.

Secondary literature

annotation

  1. ↑ Speaking of Sterz, in Rosegger's home town of Carinthia , the former poor people Sterz is served up from time to time.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Karl Wagner, Max Kaiser, Werner Michler 2003, p. 339: Letter from Rosegger in Graz of April 28, 1875 to Heckenast.