The hunger pastor

The Hunger Pastor is a development novel by Wilhelm Raabe , which was preprinted in the first twelve issues of the "Deutsche Roman-Zeitung" from November 1863 and was first published in book form in 1864 by the Otto Janke publishing house in Berlin.

The career of Hans Unwirrsch from the child of poor people to the village pastor is described; The action period ranges from the son's birthday in 1819 to the son's first year of life around 1853.

Thirty-four editions and translations into Dutch (1869) and English (1885) were published during the author's lifetime. A Danish edition appeared in 1911. Raabe proofread several of the German-language reprints himself.

content

In Kröppelstrasse in the fictional small town of Neustadt , master shoemaker Anton Unwirrsch and his brother-in-law, cobbler Nikolaus Grünebaum, celebrate the birth of their son Johannes ("Hans") Jakob Nikolaus. On the same day, the Jew Samuel Freudenstein had their only child, Moses, in the neighboring house.

One year after the birth of the son, Master Anton dies. The shoemaker's widow, Christine Unwirrsch, makes ends meet as a laundress. During the day, Base Schlotterbeck, an elderly maid, takes care of little Hans. The boy later goes to school for the poor . The state has forced the municipality to make the former syringe house, "a damp hole", available as a classroom.

When a horde of classmates tried to torment Moses ("the Jewish boy") on the street, Hans and Moses opposed the attackers. He has had a boyfriend ever since. To the delight of his guardian, Uncle Grünebaum, Hans entered the community school. After that the boy should "become a shoemaker like all other messes and green trees". But one Sunday, against the wishes of his guardian, Hans called in tears and stammering to Dominus Blasius Fackler, a grammar school professor and doctor of philosophy. The professor takes the boy into his school. Uncle gives himself up. He has lost his power over the nephew.

At the grammar school, Hans finds himself in a class with Moses. Both boys are outsiders; Hans through his poverty and Moses through his Judaism. What Hans has to acquire with unspeakable effort, Moses easily overcomes. In spite of this, the shoemaker's son becomes Professor Fackler's favorite student, as Fackler, as the son of a line weaver, is also one of the “dust born”. Fackler places Hans as a private tutor with Trüffler, director of the office. During the high school diploma, Moses asserts his position as prime . Hans is second.

The two friends start studying at the same university. Hans enrolls (which Raabe does not derive or motivate) with the theologians and Moses studies philosophy. While Hans is starving and can only survive the years of study with a scholarship that he owes to Fackler's intercession, Moses lives on a large scale. The father, a junk dealer, had died and left Moses a fortune. Moses finally did his doctorate with a dissertation inspired by Spinoza and accordingly criticized, but ultimately accepted, on "Matter as a moment of the divine" and went to Paris as a freshly qualified Doctor philosophiae . Hans is supposed to take the exam as a candidate for scholarship at home in Neustadt.

On the way home, Hans stops at the “Zum Posthorn” inn in Windheim. The young wanderer is welcomed with joy by the innkeepers, as this guest with the tight budget is not unknown in the house from his stopovers during the past semester break. Hans is not locked. When asked by the landlords, he tells openly about himself and the world. After Hans mentioned the name of his friend Moses Freudenstein in his report, he was asked to sit at the table of a "abdicated mercenary". He made the acquaintance of the out-of-service lieutenant Rudolf Götz and his niece Franziska Götz. The officer speaks ill of his friend. Monsieur Freudenstein did not behave very chivalrously towards Franziska in Paris.

Christine Unwirrsch is dying in Neustadt. When Hans returned from his exam sermon, his mother had slept peacefully. Again through the mediation of Professor Fackler, Hans received a position as tutor on the estate of the country gentleman, Mr. von Holoch in Bocksdorf. In the second year of service, the almighty heir aunt travels there and calls the head of house an “unpolished booby”. Hans is allowed to advertise and comes to work as a private tutor at a wealthy factory owner in Kohlenau in Magdeburg. When there is a disease that the famine fever resembles breaks out, the working people of mutinied. Hans takes the side of the unfortunate factory workers and is no longer allowed to teach. On a walk, the young theologian met Lieutenant Götz - again by chance. The old military man tells Hans about his soldier's past. Götz has two younger brothers. Felix, Franziska's father, died in Paris. That is why the lieutenant brought his niece, whose mother died in 1836, from Paris. Because of her poverty and her nomadic life, the lieutenant put the girl in the house of his brother Theodor in "the big everyday city" of Berlin. The Secret Council Theodor Götz is married to Aurelie, born von Lichtenhahn. The marriage is blessed with two children - the beautiful, capricious Miss Kleophea and the seven-year-old boy Aimé. The lieutenant places Hans in the brother's house as the little boy's teacher. On the way there, Hans makes the acquaintance of Colonel von Bullau - always accompanied by the lieutenant. This is a comrade of the lieutenant who is only occasionally in the metropolis. The colonel can usually be found on his estate in Grunzenow on the Baltic Sea. Before the lieutenant shows the theologian his brother's grand villa, he takes him to the opera. After enjoying art (Mozart's “ Don Giovanni ” is given), Hans meets Moses in the Lutter & Wegner wine tavern . The friend converted to Catholicism and now calls himself Doctor Theophile Stein. Lieutenant Götz cannot remember where he has met the stranger before. Hans does not betray Moses.

The secret council hires Hans. His wife appears to the theologian "as serious as a starless night". The spoiled Aimé kicks his new teacher in the shin. Cleophea's brown eyes exert a magical power of the first order on Hans. Franziska lives withdrawn in the villa. She warns the newcomer about her aunt.

Hans visits Moses in his Berlin apartment. He wants to know why the lieutenant speaks so badly of his friend. Above all, Hans wants an answer to the question: What did Moses do to Fraulein Franziska in Paris? The questioner is treated with "good-natured humor" and receives no answer. Moses dubbed his friend “hunger pastor” and evaded; is interested in Kleophea and speaks of his plans. He is aiming for a professorship for Semitic languages at Berlin University .

Dr. Stein enters the Secret Council's villa and approaches Cleophea in order to marry her. Soon the new family friend feels strong enough "to put poor Hans outside the door as well as his little Parisian acquaintance if necessary". When Hans on a brain inflammation illness and Moses wants to carry out his intention, the patient feels for the first time in his life hatred. Hans hates Moses. After the head of house has got up from the sick bed, the madam gives him notice for the coming Christmas party.

Kleophea lets Dr. Take Stein to Paris. The mother Aurelie Götz blames Franziska and the tutor. Hans is put in front of the door. The Geheime Rat Götz, however, pays the dismissed head of house a residual wage, which temporarily allows him to survive in the city. Hans takes a shabby room and wants to write. Nothing will come of the intended “book of hunger”. Hans travels to Neustadt and mourns the graves of Base Schlotterbeck and Uncle Grünebaum. He sells his father's house and has nothing more to do with it in Neustadt. On the return trip to Berlin, he asked Lieutenant Götz's comrades about Colonel von Bullau. The comrades answer that the Colonel was there and wanted to take Hans to see the lieutenant in Grunzenow. It presses. The lieutenant was in great need because of Franziska. Hans travels to Grunzenow on the Baltic Sea. At the Colonel's estate, Hans and the lieutenant had an argument when Hans found out why the lieutenant had made him the tutor of the Privy Council. Hans should take care of Franziska.

But finally Hans is grateful to the lieutenant for bringing him together with Franziska. When the lieutenant received news of his brother Theodor's death, he worried about his niece Franziska. Hans is supposed to bring the girl from Berlin to Grunzenow. The traveler learns that Kleophea, wife of Dr. Stein was disinherited from his mother. Dr. Stein has treated Cleophea badly ever since.

In the capital, Hans continues to investigate that Franziska left the villa on the day of her uncle's funeral. The theologian finds the girl and kisses her. The young couple travels to Grunzenow. Hans becomes pastor adjunct there and finally takes over the hunger parish of Grunzenow.

worldview

In the Hunger Pastor , Raabe critically contrasts 'good' and 'bad' life plans. The fact that he depicts the evil in the figure of the Jew Moses Freudenstein in this basic Manichaean pattern has led to an ongoing debate about the anti-Semitic content of the novel. Raabe himself is quoted as saying that he in no way meant the novel anti-Semitic: "[I] I only wanted to contrast the longing for light and the pursuit of external success and nefarious enjoyment in it." Following on from this, Horst Denkler in particular has argued The figure of Moses Freudenstein depicted a real person who does not represent the Jews as such. Against this, novel structural arguments were put forward. The structural anti-Semitism of the Hunger Pastor therefore consists in Raabe taking up social stereotypes and confirming and perpetuating them by using them to create literary realism, even if this should not have been his actual intention.

Testimonials

• In a letter to Karl Schönhardt on December 30, 1902, Raabe calls his novel “stale youth quark”.
• On February 4, 1903 to the reader Philippine Ullmann from Stadtoldendorf : “You can also see from Höxter and Corvey that I am not to be counted among the anti-Semites ... Jews have always been among my best friends and understanding readers in my life, And it has not changed until today."

To the narrative technique

The narrator sometimes anticipates. For example, right at the beginning of the novel, the reader learns that Hans will one day be Grunzenow's hunger pastor. Sometimes the narrator admits his ignorance. But when it seems appropriate, he simply withholds information.

Base Schlotterbeck is a ghost seer. After Hans was accepted into the grammar school by Professor Fackler, the base met Anton Unwirrsch. The deceased smiles contentedly. With this trick Raabe expresses in the case: Hans enters the path that was blocked to his father. The boy is guided neither by his uncle, nor by his cousin and mother, but by his father's spirit.

The narrator could have been a high school student, because he writes about the time of the two protagonists Hans and Moses in the Neustädter Gymnasium: "We sweated thick drops of fear over the well-read grammar on top of everything else."

Raabe surprises the reader by abruptly deviating from his style in the last third of the novel and suddenly making Moses think in quotation marks.

Moses Freudenstein resigns towards the end of the novel. Only women from his circle still act. That part of the conclusion, however, appears to be drawn by the hair. On the day Hans and Franziska get married in Grunzenow, Cleophea is seriously injured by a burning French ship that was on its way to Petersburg, rescued by fishermen from Grunzenow of all places. The woman was before the beatings of her husband Dr. Stein escaped. Cleophea dies there on the Baltic coast.

reception

• Moritz Hartmann and Hieronymus Lorm gave the novel an approving review soon after it was published.
• Ferdinand Freiligrath recommends reading this to his daughter Käthe on October 9, 1868: “The book is excellent - very entertaining, but not one of the books that one reads for entertainment's sake, but rather one of those that the reader should stop at force your own chest and from which you rise more serious and yet happier and go back to your day's work. "
• Holz , born in the year the novel was written, mocks the “hunger pastor”.
• Von Studnitz suspects that the “simple-minded” difference “between good and bad” caused the success of the novel. Raabe's criticism of the time is remarkable despite the banal plot. For example, Schwanenberg-Liebert also deals with fiends - such as “the capitalists of the machine age ”. The manufacturer buys knowledge by keeping the tutor, Hans.
• Raabe designed the figure of Moses Freudenstein after the life of the writer Joel Jacoby (* 1811; † 1863).
• Schwanenberg-Liebert: On the one hand, the “Hunger Pastor” is a novel of development - if, for example, the formative role played by the two fathers Anton and Samuel is considered. On the other hand, the antinomic disposition of the protagonists Hans and Moses speaks against the term development novel . Good and bad are carefully “outsourced” to the two heroes. From this follows a certain static in the path of development in the sense that the wrong path is almost impossible. In addition, in every tricky situation, Hans is surrounded by a “protector” who, as it were, as deus ex machina, appears out of the blue in the ongoing action. Although Hans acted as an “ideal figure” in the Biedermeier period , he sometimes seemed ridiculous. So the evil in itself cannot affect the heroic figure Hans. On the contrary - he emerges a little more tempered from every confrontation. Over time, Hans stepped more and more confidently in the direction of the Baltic Sea beach and he admired Moses. His thirst for knowledge was not only inherited from his father Anton, but was also rooted in envy of Moses. Hans mostly overlooks the friend's character defects. Hans and Franziska would have looked and found each other. Their late connection could not come as a surprise to the reader.
• In the appendix to the Braunschweig edition, the editor names the “hunger pastor” Raabe's “most popular book” and a “world success”. Raabe, who, as is well known, rested from writing after 1902 , enjoyed reading the corrections to his subsequent editions in the last years of his life - for example at the “Hunger Pastor”.
• Meyen lists 48 further leading works from the years 1864 to 1969.
• Marcel Reich-Ranicki described the novel as "anti-Semitic" and considered it Raabe's "most questionable, if not most disgusting work."

Expenses (selection)

• The hunger pastor. A novel in 3 volumes. Janke, Berlin 1864.
• The hunger pastor. 4th edition. Janke, Berlin 1886.
• The hunger pastor. 7th edition. Janke, Berlin 1896.
• The hunger pastor. Novel. Special edition for members of the German Book Association. Klemm [u. a.], Berlin-Grunewald [1925].
• The hunger pastor. 57th edition. Klemm, Berlin-Grunewald [1937].
• The hunger pastor. Critically reviewed. Edition, provided by Karl Hoppe . Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Berlin undated [1961].
• The hunger pastor. In: Peter Goldammer , Helmut Richter (ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Selected works in six volumes. Volume 3. Construction, Berlin and Weimar 1964, pp. 5-453 (the text is based on the Historisch-Kritische Braunschweiger Edition) [edition used here].
• The hunger pastor. In: Anneliese Klingenberg (ed.): Raabe's works in five volumes. Second volume. Structure, Berlin and Weimar 1972.
• Karl Hoppe (ed.), Hermann Pongs (edit.): Wilhelm Raabe: Der Hungerpastor Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005 (3rd edition), ISBN 3-525-20112-5 , Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition , vol. 6 (24 vol.)
• Meyen names 37 editions (including in Danish, English, Dutch, Italian, Latvian, Swedish, Slovak and Turkish).

literature

• Ernst Alefeld: The gloomy and melancholy in Wilhelm Raabe's trilogy "The Hunger Pastor", "Abu Telfan", "Der Schüdderrump" , Greifswald: Bamberg, 1912.
• Karl Ziegner: The psychological representation and development of the main characters in Raabe's Hunger Pastor , Greifswald: Adler, 1913 (Diss. Phil. Greifswald).
• Paul Sommer: Explanations on Wilhelm Raabe's “The Hunger Pastor” , Leipzig: Beyer, [1927] (Dr. Wilhelm Königs Explanations on the Classics; 200).
• 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
• Claudia Schwanenberg-Liebert: From community to loneliness. Studies on the occurrence of a literary-sociological phenomenon in the work of Wilhelm Raabe, Frankfurt am Main a. a .: Peter Lang, 1992 (Diss. phil. Düsseldorf).
• Werner Fuld : Wilhelm Raabe. A biography. 383 pages. Hanser, Munich 1993 (dtv edition in July 2006), ISBN 3-423-34324-9 .
• Peter O. Arnds: Wilhelm Raabe's Der Hungerpastor and Charles Dickens's David Copperfield . Intertextuality of two Bildungsromane, New York [u. a.]: Peter Lang, 1997.
• Ruth Klüger : The secularization of hatred of Jews using the example of Wilhelm Raabe's “The Hunger Pastor” . In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Klaus Holz, Matthias N. Lorenz (eds.): Literary anti-Semitism after Auschwitz . Stuttgart 2007, pp. 103-110.
• Jan Süselbeck : The totality of the middle. Gustav Freytag's character Anton Wohlfart and Wilhelm Raabe's protagonist Hans Unwirrsch as 'heroes' of the anti-Semitic 'educational novel' in the 19th century . In: Nikolas Immer / Mareen van Marwyck (ed.): Aesthetic Heroism. Conceptual and figurative paradigms of the hero . Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, pp. 293–321.

Web links

Wikiquote: The Hunger Pastor  - Quotes

• The hunger pastor in the Gutenberg-DE project
• The Hunger Pastor at Zeno.org

Remarks

1. ↑ So he writes: "Nobody was present during the conversation that this visitor [Hans] had with Professor Fackler, and we cannot give the details of the conversation." (Edition used, p. 79, 12th issue)
2. ↑ "... that the old warrior [Lieutenant Götz] had a very specific purpose in bringing this Preceptor [Hans] into his brother's house; but since we are partly telling this story for this purpose too, it will not be necessary to learn more about it at this point than the candidate [Hans]. "(Edition used, p. 186, 18. Zvo)
3. ↑ 'Hey, see the peacock,' he thought. 'I wouldn't have thought it was that smart.' Aloud he said: ... (Edition used, p. 264, 4th Zvu)
4. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert discusses the novel in more detail in her dissertation (pp. 117–204).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Braunschweig edition, vol. 6, p. 491, 17. Zvo
2. ↑ Communications for the Society of Friends of Wilhelm Raabes 31 (1941), p. 29.
3. ↑ Martin Gubser: Literary anti-Semitism. Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century . Göttingen 1998; Jörg Thunecke: "Not all are free who mock their chains". Reply to Wilhelm Raabe's novel The Hunger Pastor in Wilhelm Jensen's Die Juden von Cölln. In: Sigrid Thielking (Ed.): Raabe reports. Literary and literary didactic approaches to the work of Wilhelm Raabe. Wiesbaden 2002, pp. 57-67; Nathali Jückstock-Kiessling: I-tell. Notes on Wilhelm Raabe's realism. Göttingen 2004, pp. 147–156; Ruth Klüger : The secularization of hatred of Jews using the example of Wilhelm Raabe's “The Hunger Pastor” . In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Klaus Holz, Matthias N. Lorenz (eds.): Literary anti-Semitism after Auschwitz . Stuttgart 2007, pp. 103-110.
4. ↑ Raabe-Briefwechsel 1842–1910, published in 1940 by Wilhelm Fehse, quoted in Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 117, 1. Zvu
5. ↑ quoted in Klingenberg, p. 480, 10. Zvo
6. ↑ Edition used, p. 33, 15. Zvo
7. ↑ Edition used, p. 83, 16. Zvo
8. ↑ see also Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 201
9. ↑ Goldammer and Richter, p. 617, 2. Zvo
10. ^ Goldammer and Richter, p. 617, 4. Zvo
11. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert on p. 204 quoted above from "Works: Die Blechschmiede ": "The halo around the belly / the hunger paste approaches ..."
12. ↑ ^{a b} von Studnitz, p. 169, 7th Zvu
13. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 172, 11. Zvo
14. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 170 above
15. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 170 below
16. ↑ Fuld, p. 179, 16. Zvu
17. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 130 above
18. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, pp. 117–123
19. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 126 above and p. 141 below
20. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 127 below
21. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 129 above and p. 201 below
22. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 158 middle
23. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 160 below
24. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 159 below
25. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 179 above
26. ↑ Schwanenberg-Liebert, p. 164
27. ↑ Braunschweig edition, vol. 6, p. 492, 18th Zvu
28. ↑ Braunschweig edition, vol. 6, p. 491, 9. Zvo
29. ^ Braunschweig edition, vol. 6, p. 492, below
30. ↑ Meyen, pp. 347-352
31. ↑ Marcel Reich-Ranicki: "Ask Reich-Ranicki -Read Fontane and Storm!"
32. ↑ Pongs edited the edition from 1953 (Braunschweiger Edition vol. 6, p. 4, 9th Zvu)
33. ↑ Meyen, pp. 93-98