The jubilee senior

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Jean Paul (1763-1825)

The Jubelsenior is an idyll by Jean Paul from 1797. The work is one of the nine books that the author wrote between “ Hesperus ” and “ Titan ”. Jean Paul had been working on the subject since 1794 and wrote the text in the last quarter of 1796. Before Johann Gottlob Beygang could deliver the book, the Leipzig censorship authority raised objections.

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On September 3, 1796, Alithea Zwicki was combing cranberries in the forest village Neulandpreis. A consistorial messenger comes by and speaks to the young girl. Alithea is Pastor Schwers' foster daughter. The messenger brings good news. Ingenuin, the youngest son of Seniors Schwers, is planned by the sovereign as the successor of the father in the pastoral office Neulandpreis according to the wording of the document handed over. Eight guilders delivery wages cannot be raised. Alithea is happy to give her jewelry gold as a replacement. The lovers Ingenuin and Alithea could actually get married now. In Theodosia, Ingenuin's dear mother, the young couple has a warm-hearted advocate with Schwers' father. The senior asks to wait two more weeks before getting engaged. In a fortnight, a double anniversary will be celebrated in the Neulandpreis parsonage. Then the pastor will be in office for fifty years and can celebrate the 50th anniversary of marriage with Theodosia on the same day.

The ruler did not confirm the increase in status. The consistorial messenger turns out to be a forger. Good advice is valuable now. Jean Paul can't help it - he interferes in the ongoing action. So the "Profanskribent" goes to the residence of the Principality of Flachsenfingen, penetrates to the sovereign Jenner and asks for Ingenuin's appointment. Jenner is known to Jean Paul readers from " Hesperus ". The request is granted. Prince Jenner wants to come to the jubilee in person. Jean Paul is not at all right, because he appears on the anniversary as the false courtier of Esenbek. On September 18 - the jubilee day - the real von Esenbek in Neulandpreis appears instead of the Prince. Amazed by his double , the court official hands over a genuine certificate of appointment for Ingenuin.

The old maid Amanda Gobertina von Sackenbach, mistress of Schloss Neulandpreis, had loved von Esenbek in her youth. At the time, the courtier wanted to “like to conquer female fortresses”, “but not live inside as a fortress prisoner of marriage”. When the fake Esenbek alias Jean Paul appeared on the jubilee day at the celebration of the double anniversary, Miss von Sackenbach wanted to solve an annoying problem - the love letters that Esenbek exchanged decades ago. So the maid had handed over the letters she had received from Esenbek and had wanted her letters in return. Unfortunately, Jean Paul didn't have the envelopes with the letters with him. When the fraud with the wrong Herr von Esenbek is exposed, the old lady asks Jean Paul for her correspondence back. The writer refuses. As a publicist, von Esenbek's love letters are in better hands with him. If necessary, he could blackmail the clerk with the erotic papers. If the courtier did not hand over the young woman's letters, Jean Paul could threaten to go public.

Quote

"Longing for love is love itself."

Self-testimony

The " pig " is Jean Paul's "bellwether" of all of his subsequent "romantic heroes". That would also apply to the "jubilee senior".

shape

The idyll consists of five reports, four letters from Jean Paul and - usually obligatory for the author - a claused introduction and an after-speech. Fun is guaranteed. Jean Paul throws himself in the same pot with Voltaire and admits: “Few understand me.” In doing so, he goes to great lengths to “finally arouse the curiosity of the reader”. But to be honest, that reader - as always with Jean Paul - has to work through an almost impenetrable thicket of text. After each aberration, the aim is to find the sparse thread that has been lost again and again. The author promises: “I'll get to the story”, but a little later it goes back into the almost impenetrable tangle mentioned above, which is difficult to understand. In the last chapter the “central fire” is stoked. At most, Jean Paul writes in passing about the title “Jubelgreis”. Rather, the “book writer” is concerned with the other figures mentioned above, but also with writers, reviewers, poetry, mismanagement within the small states and the “hereditary brotherhood of colleges and rulers in royal cities”. Even if Jean Paul is constantly celebrating himself as a great writer, to the delight of the readers, the text can still be read as bitter social criticism : "But I would have written even better and more fiery if I had really moved to where I wanted to settle - to Paris! There you don't have time to immortalize yourself with three masterpieces; one must achieve it through one thing, because there the eternal bonfires of enjoyment scorch the thread of life and the guillotines cut it, especially when Robespierre walked over the land with the comet's tail ... "

The reader who perseveres will still be rewarded with poetic prose. This is how Jean Paul writes about the jubilant senior: "His head did not bend, his gaze did not fall as he went deeper every day into the Minotaur cave of old age, in which the sword stroke of death sought him in the dark ..." As during the At the jubilee, a little boy is asked to read out some beautiful wedding wishes, writes Jean Paul, the grandson's voice “sounded touching like a talking heart, and the tones wafted to the two obsolete people who were already standing so deep under the dull earth and the air of the free, bright youth, as in the mines the odor of flowers of the outer upper spring draws itself. "

reception

In 1807, Karl Wilhelm Reinhold counts the work alongside the Titan and the flail years as one of Jean Paul's “excellent works”. Görres calls the work 1811 a “chord of the earth opera”. According to Börne (1825), the “close happiness” of a German is described. In 1870, Hettner emphasized the “delicious little genre pictures” in the text.

The cheering couple reminds Zeller of Philemon and Baucis . Pastor Schwers' role model is the honest pastor of Grünau from the idyll "Luise" by Johann Heinrich Voss , published in 1795 . Zeller excuses Jean Paul's aberrations mentioned above in the “Form” chapter as “literary montage”.

Of the idylls, the “ life of Quintus Fixlein ” and the “ life of the hilarious little schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal ” are more beautiful than the “jubilant senior”. Jean Paul knows what he's doing as an author. And when he then appears as a false aristocrat (von Esenbek), the painful realization of his position in the social offside is revealed. At the behest of a censor , Jean Paul had to change the text.

literature

Text output

First edition
  • Jean Paul: The jubilee senior. An appendix. With an engraved title vignette by Johann Adolph Roßäßler (1770–1821). 397 pages. Johann Gottlob Beygang (1755–1823), Leipzig 1797
Used edition
expenditure
  • Jean Paul: Complete Works, Vol. XX: The Jubelsenior. An appendix. 202 pages. Reimer, Berlin 1826
  • The jubilee senior. An appendix. Pp. 409-559 in: Norbert Miller (Ed.): Jean Paul. Complete Works. Section I. Fourth Volume. Smaller narrative writings 1796–1801. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2000 (licenser: Carl Hanser, Munich 1962 (4th edition 1988)). Without ISBN (order number 14965-3, 1263 pages)

Secondary literature

  • Günter de Bruyn : The life of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. A biography . Halle (Saale) 1975, ISBN 3-596-10973-6
  • Peter Sprengel (ed.): Jean Paul in the judgment of his critics. Documents on the history of Jean Paul's impact in Germany . Beck. Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-07297-6
  • Gerhard Schulz : The German literature between the French Revolution and the restoration. Part 1. The Age of the French Revolution: 1789–1806. Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-00727-9
  • Christoph Zeller: Allegories of storytelling. Wilhelm Raabe's Jean-Paul reading. Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-45218-2 .

Web links

annotation

  1. Johann Heinrich Voß: Luise, Chapter 2

Individual evidence

  1. Edition used, p. 10
  2. de Bruyn, p. 234 below
  3. Miller in the Darmstadt 2000 edition, p. 1173 above
  4. Edition used, p. 72, 10. Zvo
  5. Edition used, p. 58, 24. Zvo
  6. Schulz, p. 338 above
  7. Edition used, p. 63, 4. Zvo
  8. Edition used, p. 32, 3rd Zvu
  9. Edition used, p. 36, 3rd Zvu
  10. Edition used, p. 78, 20. Zvo
  11. Edition used, p. 86, 9. Zvo
  12. Edition used, p. 86, 8th Zvu
  13. Edition used, p. 80, 1. Zvu
  14. Edition used, p. 113, 16. Zvo
  15. ^ Karl Wilhelm Reinhold in: Sprengel, p. 65, 7. Zvo
  16. Joseph Görres in: Sprengel, p. 89, 6. Zvo
  17. Ludwig Börne in: Sprengel: p. 102, 8. Zvu
  18. ^ Hermann Hettner in: Sprengel, p. 210, 7. Zvo
  19. Zeller, p. 346 middle
  20. Zeller, p. 343 above
  21. Zeller, p. 355, 10. Zvo
  22. de Bruyn, p. 194 above
  23. de Bruyn, p. 356 below
  24. de Bruyn, p. 271 middle