The high forest

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The Hochwald is a story by Adalbert Stifter (1842/1844). She first appeared in Iris. Paperback for 1842 , then in a revised version in 1844 in the second volume of studies .

The Hochwald tells a failing love story against the backdrop of the Thirty Years War. A girl's suitor, rejected by her father, seeks out his beloved in her hiding place in the forest and promises to work to mediate the fighting between the parties. In this way he hopes to win the affection of his beloved's father, who is defending his castle, and to prevent the fighting, but instead becomes the victim of the argument himself.

The narrative is less concerned with drawing a picture of the inner constitution of the war, like Grimmelshausen in Simplicissimus or the Landstörzerin, or later Brecht in Mother Courage , nor emphasizing the moral of failure, like Storm in his novella Aquis submersus . On the other hand, the topoi forest, home and fate, growth and decay are sometimes colored in a manner reminiscent of Scott or Cooper , also of Thoreau and the Rousseau's natural magnificence, which anchors the basic feeling of Stifter's history so firmly in Biedermeier , but narrative far beyond them (actual or supposed) ›coziness‹ of the era goes beyond.

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The structure of the narrative is constructed using a frame narrative : On a wandering in Bohemian the narrator comes across a castle ruin and remembers the story that this building tells.

The actual (internal) story takes place against the background of the Thirty Years' War , probably between 1632 and 1634, when the Swedish troops pushed into Bohemia (until they were forced to give up this request in 1634 in the battle of Nördlingen ). During this time a nobleman (Heinrich von Wittinghausen ) lives with his two daughters (Klarissa and Johanna) in a castle. In order not to expose them to the danger of the approaching war, he set up a hut for the daughters in the depths of an adjacent forest, located by a lake that only a few are aware of. In this hut, guarded by an old friend who knows the forest (Gregor), the daughters are told to wait for the Swedes to approach.

After some time, which the daughters had already spent in the forest, a supposed stranger becomes noticeable, but shortly afterwards he becomes recognizable as the adored (Ronald) of the older daughter (Klarissa). Granting the connection little chance, his father once urged him to leave the castle walls; the bond of the heart, however, never broke - so that it now finds renewal and confirmation in the solitude of the forest. But not only the affair of the lovers, also that of the war, the young man strives to turn for the better, he is a Swede himself and expects to be able to ask his compatriots to spare the castle of the hoped-for father-in-law.

The end of the narrative brings the tragic completion of fate in a simple manner that hardly approaches sophoclean entanglements: the youth is actually able to appease those who are already besieging the castle, but then becomes on the other side of the besieged when he closes the matter proclaim rides, not recognized and killed by the father of the beloved himself. The castle is then set on fire by the angry Swedes and so put into the devastated state that the narrator finds from the context of the story, even if the sisters who are now condemning themselves to virginity still lived in the walls.

Nature and culture

The attraction of the story, Der Hochwald, lies less in the above. Action as in the description of the landscape around the Blockenstein in the south of Bohemia . And then only then are the figures illuminated and facetted, portrayed in the participation in the forest - from which the world of human work stands out, in which the war rages and in which - once drawn - the love bond is supposed to perish. First of all, however, the forest is chosen by the father as protection for the girls, especially the younger Johanna, who is more susceptible to the horror that often clings to the wilderness, "with seriousness and love" (chap. 1/209):

“Not a breath, no idea of ​​the outside world penetrates in, and when you see how the splendid tranquility is always the same, always uninterrupted, always friendly in the leaves and branches, so that the weakest grass can flourish undisturbed, then you have difficulties It is difficult to believe that the noise of war and destruction has been raging in the human world for many years, when the most precious and artful plant, human life, is destroyed with the same speed and frivolity, with what effort and Care the forest tends and educates the smallest of its flowers. […] ‹« (1/211).

Creation is contrasted with war in its innocence, however not in general or comprehensive, but in precisely that microcosm that the wild forest may represent. Even in Johanna's childish fantasies, the image of a forest of deep innocence quickly penetrated. If you are able to introduce yourself, frightened by a fama that has just been spread about a game shooter, to imagine the forest dark and forbidding, then this picture quickly turns to the idyll:

“He described everything so vividly, including all of the forests up there, immense and impenetrable, so that our only gardens are against it. A beautiful, black magic lake should rest in their midst, and wonderful rocks and wonderful trees stand around it, and a high forest around it, in which no ax has sounded since creation. "(1/207).

The forest then appears almost personified to those wandering through, those seeking their refuge by the lake, not as living beings, but as life, not as a counterpart, but as an enclosure:

“Clear, lovely, silver-light human voices - girls' voices - emerged from between the trunks, interrupted by the partial striking of a small bell. - As if listening to the new miracle, the wilderness held its breath, not a branch, not a leaf, not a stalk moved - the rays of the sun stepped unheard on the grass and made green-gold traces - the air was motionless, shiny and dark blue - only the stream compelled by his law, spoke on incessantly, slipping fleetingly over the enamel of his pebbles like a colored glaze. "(2/217).

Even if shortly thereafter it says "The train was over - our lovely forest spot had seen the first people" (2/218) and later something like "as if a new feeling were gently going through the whole forest" (3/241 ), this inclusion, which on the one hand sometimes makes the narrator stand out, on the other hand lets the forest appear in person, should not hide the fact that nature is never intended as a counterpart but as a comprehensive, higher order - so that Stifter is able to write:

“Anyone who looks at the girls' faces, how they float twice pure and delicately next to the dark bottom of the forest foliage, how they bloom and glee out of the flowing white veil of the headdress - you would not have thought that they were so much in front of them recently Forests feared and shied away from. Johanna almost always stayed at the top, just as she was immensely afraid of her nature, so she was immensely happy now [...] «(2/219).

Here the girls bloom and float like the fog, and in nature as comprehensive, the nature of Johanna as an individual reveals itself. But the difference also lights up here: As much as both, forest and Johanna, are of nature, the latter lacks precisely that measure that is found in the nature of the forest. But the healing is immediately added to this ailment:

"The splendor and celebration of the forest with all its richness and majesty penetrated her eye and clung to her little heart, which so quickly overflowed with fear but also with love [...]" (ibid.).

Only now is Johanna able to see the individual in its entirety, sees the "strange bush" with the "strange, glowing red berries" (ibid.), Then the "mighty tree" or the "ray of sun breaking around a corner", then the "little forest water "With its" silver sparks "(2 / 219f.), Finally hears" Schmelz "and" Klage "(2/220) of the different tones:

"[...] like a beautiful thought of God the vastness of the forest slowly sank into her soul [...]" (2/220).

The image of the forest also approaches the enchanted forest of fairy tales, but, as the conscious narrator teaches himself, it is not the forest that is the fairy tale, but rather the people "[...] were a fairy tale for the wilderness all around" ( 3/240) - only to indulge in the fairytale again shortly afterwards, when the lake "[...] pushed its waters, as it were, in order to capture their afterimage [...]" (ibid.). But before that we were taught:

»[...] there is decency, [...] an expression of virtue in the face of nature, which has not yet been touched by human hands, to which the soul has to bow, as something chaste and divine - - and yet it is ultimately the soul alone, which lays out all its inner greatness in the parable of nature. "(2/224).

Love alone seems to be assigned a special position here, elevating people, as Ronald describes it:

"How weak and wonderful is a person when an omnipotent feeling moves his soul and gives it more shimmer and power than lies in the whole of the other dead universe!" (5/266).

In love man surpasses himself, becomes something more - but this is also where his vulnerability lies. And war seeks and finds this bare spot, which is nothing other than killing people who are dearest to any other people somewhere. But the forest can do nothing to oppose war but itself. For "where the most precious and artful vegetation, human life, is destroyed with just such haste and frivolity, with what effort and care the forest tends and raises the smallest of its flowers" , the forest is again just the simple protection to flee the war.

But where man then abandons this protection, the protection of primeval nature and his own presence, the forest can no longer save either. And so the daughters, whom the love of the father led into the forest, survive, but the love of one of the daughters and then the lives of both are put to shame, since the young man is unable to hold onto it. He is no more capable of this than his father, for both honor lies on the battlefield and both ultimately lie in the ground in an unknown field. In the end, hiding does not succeed, the story ends again in front of the panorama of the castle ruins, in which the maidens, whose grave no one knows about, eke out the rest of their lives.

(Quoted from: Adalbert Stifter, Collected Works in Six Volumes , edited by Michael Benedikt and Herbert Hornstein, Gütersloh 1960)

radio play

On May 7, 2016, Der Hochwald was broadcast as a radio play on Austrian Broadcasting ( Ö1 ) (original broadcast). Editing and direction: Andreas Jungwirth . Music and sound: Miki Liebermann . With Sophie Rois , Stefanie Reinsperger , Pippa Galli , Laurence Rupp , Raphael von Bargen , Paul Wolff-Plottegg , Michael König . Sound and technology: Anna Kuncio , Manuel Radinger .

Literature (selection)

  • Roy Pascal: The description of the landscape in the "high forest". In: Lothar Stiehm (Ed.): Adalbert Stifter. Studies and Interpretations. Commemorative script for the 100th anniversary of death. Stiehm, Heidelberg 1968, pp. 57-68.
  • Christine Oertel-Sjögren: Cloth as a symbol for art in Stifter's “Hochwald”. In: Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 73, 1974, ISSN  0363-6941 , pp. 375-388.
  • John Reddick: Mystification, Perspectivism and Symbolism in "Hochwald". In: Johann Lachinger et al. (Ed.): Adalbert Stifter today. Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria, Linz 1985, ISBN 3-900424-03-9 , pp. 44-74 ( series of publications by the Adalbert Stifter Institute of the Province of Upper Austria 35 = Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies 33).
  • Hans Steffen: Dream Need and Dream Analysis. Stifter's "Hochwald" as an aesthetic play of meaning. About the inwardness of modern man. In: Etudes Germaniques. 40, 3, 1985, ISSN  0014-2115 , pp. 311-334.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Oe1.orf.at: The radio play gallery. In: oe1.orf.at. Retrieved April 13, 2016 .