The fool in Christo Emanuel Quint

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The fool in Christo Emanuel Quint is a novel by the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Gerhart Hauptmann , which was written from 1901 and published in 1910 by S. Fischer in Berlin . The text had previously been preprinted in Der neue Rundschau , also in 1910 .

Gerhart Hauptmann on a painting by Lovis Corinth from 1900

overview

Gerhart Hauptmann has a chronicler recount the poor people's topic from the Webern in the form of a novel. The traveling preacher Quint travels through his native Silesia following Jesus . “The fact that Quint found his first and most ardent followers with the poorest is an indication of the socio-critical potential of the novel.” Quint is firmly convinced that he is, so to speak, a reincarnation of Jesus. He reaches Breslau via the Owl Mountains . Laughed at and despised, he leaves home, wanders south via Berlin, Frankfurt , Darmstadt , Heidelberg , Karlsruhe , Basel , Zurich , Lucerne , Göschenen and Andermatt at the end of the year around 1890, loses his way, apparently gets lost above the Gotthard Hospital near by Pizzo Centrale and perish in the mountain solitude in the winter snowstorm.

Regarding the form of this new edition of the Passion of Jesus : Quint speaks in expressions close to the Bible. Marx writes: “The chronicler who is involved ensures that the novel is neither a psychopathological study of enthusiasts nor a religious opinion book.” Sprengel relativizes that the “somewhat narrow-minded chronicler” should not be equated with the author.

action

The pale, tall, red-blonde, bad-looking carpenter's journeyman Emanuel Quint, who only attended the village school, is considered work-shy. The mother had brought him into the marriage after a misstep. From his stepfather, the master carpenter Adolf Quint, often called the banker , Quint leaves his parents' Giersdorfer Hütte in May and wanders - a copy of the New Testament kept on his chest, otherwise without money and in rags - to Reichenbach . There in the market the Protestants are streaming out of the church. Quint gives a sermon of penance in front of the churchgoers in the open air - motto: The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Quint is arrested on the spot. After a good lecture by the pastor, the tramp Quint is released and continues his hike with two linen weavers , the brothers Martin and Anton Scharf. They believe that the penitential preacher, Quint, relieved their seriously ill father from his pain through prayer at home in the hut and thus immobilized them. A small village is reached via the Hohe Eule . In it, Quint meets the lay brother Nathanael Schwarz - Apostle of the Inner Mission . Quint passes the test of this apostle of the millennial kingdom for biblical stability and is baptized by him - like by a second Baptist John - in the village stream. It continues through the Owl Mountains. Quint knows the almost indescribable human misery along the way. The families are wrapped in rags. Some don't even have this; must alternately wrap themselves in rags. Those who are barely wearing anything have to wait in the hut. One such case of saving clothes is that of a veteran from the campaigns of 1866 and 1870 . The Scharf brothers lead Quint to the veteran Schubert and his 14-year-old daughter Martha. When Martha's seizure subsided after Quint had entered Schubert's hut, those present believed the penitential preacher to be a miracle healer. He defends himself in vain. On the first day of Pentecost , a crowd of sick people gathers around the hut where Quint is currently staying. He escapes through the back door into the mountains. On top of that, Quint had to flee from Prussian officials. The work-shy should be put in a workhouse or in an asylum . The Bohemian Josef, a smuggler, knows his way around the border with Austria and helps to escape. In the Bohemian Leierbaude near Spindleruv Mlyn , Quint met the Swabian, a former Protestant apprentice tailor. Quint finds accommodation in the small log cabin owned by the elementary school teacher Stoppe and his wife. Mrs. Stoppe, a pastor's daughter, rates Quint as a good person. The teacher Stoppe is skeptical because Quint makes the poor people in the Giant Mountains defiant. The Swabians, the Bohemian Josef and Quint are arrested by the Austrians. Quint is handed over to the German police and imprisoned in Hainsdorf in Silesia. The judge at the district court in Quint's home district interrogates the delinquent for vagabonding, quacking and public mischief. Subsequently, a psychiatrist certified Quint only slight nonsense.

Back at home with his parents, Quint is offered travel money by Pastor Schuch from Giersdorf. Quint doesn't take any money. The pastor is shaken - Quint calls himself God's Son in spirit. Quint's journey on foot leads to the castle of the Gurauer Fraulein. First of all, his elderly noble patroness takes care of the treatment of his coughing up blood . The 24-year-old deaconess Hedwig Krause is nursing Quint in the hospital. Lord, help! at the Fraulein's expense. Lay brother Nathanael Schwarz informed the young lady in conversation: Those lost people who followed Quint said that this false savior from Giersdorf had “the power of the Spirit of God in him and the power over life and death”. The young lady believes in Quint's fascinating effect on the poor. The noblewoman accommodates the convalescent in the house of the Protestant palace gardener Heidebrand in her rule Miltzsch. Quint hid for nine months in the Gurau Asylum. Head gardener Heidebrand regards Quint as his foster son; even more so - as a potential spouse of 15-year-old daughter Ruth. The gardening couple is soon worried by an observation. The somnambulist Ruth follows Quint on the heels. The foster son apparently holds little Ruth under his spell without ever having touched the young girl. In the circle of the head gardener, Quint is maliciously mocked by the people as Miltzscher fool or Giersdorf savior. Once he was hit by a rock-hard lump of earth in the neck, accompanied by the applauding hoot of the envious crowd. Far from everyone is in the favor of the Gurauer Fräuleins. Despite the undisguised hatred of Quint, two women stand by him: 19-year-old Maria Krause and Hedwig Krause - daughters of the 53-year-old teacher Krause. When the lay brother Nathanael Schwarz in the teaching family railed against Quint's friendship with Maria Krause and intrigued, Quint felt threatened in Miltzsch.

After a nocturnal physical attack by the enemy, the sect of the valley brothers, as the followers of Quint call themselves after their refuge, the mill of the miller Straube, gathers around the smuggler Schwabe and the Bohemian Josef. The latter is sent to Miltzsch by the valley brothers and is supposed to bring the new Messiah into the mill. But Quint wants to shake off the valley brothers, because the now 28-year-old sees himself less as a messiah and more as a seeker of God. Finally, Quint returns to the valley brothers. First he has to calm down the 18-year-old blonde farmer girl Therese Katzmarek, who has had one of her epileptic convulsions. Then he calls one by one to his room and reads him the riot act. Ruth Heidebrand, who Quint regards as her bridegroom, follows him into the mill. Quint brings the girl back to her parents unharmed. In Miltzsch, Quint and Ruth are considered seducers and seduced. The valley brothers expelled lay brother Nathanael Schwarz from their ranks and followed nine to nine to Miltzsch. When the Miltzscher want to stone Quint, it is Therese Katzmarek who offers Quint cover with her body from the hail of stones. On the other hand, the nine valley brothers have searched the distance.

Quint goes to Wroclaw. On the way there, he desecrates a church near Dronsdorf. With the exclamation “I am Christ!” He hits the large altar cross and calls the church a murder pit .

Hedwig Krause now works in a Wroclaw hospital. Quint and his family are staying in the small inn at the Green Tree in Wroclaw . The landlord earns money from the influx of curious people who want to experience guest Quint. Anton Scharf becomes Quint's right-hand man; directs those waiting. Quint preaches: “... if you take what is yours, don't ask for it again!” He loves Novalis , who had said: “Being German is real popularity and therefore an ideal.” In Wroclaw, Quint initially exudes self-confidence. As soon as intelligent and educated people are interested in him, he and his now only seven rural followers seem shy and meek. The first-person narrator in the novel, who calls himself a chronicler, knows, however, that Quint had already finished his life at the time and therefore achieved full freedom. The educated Wroclaw, for their part, are silent, embarrassed about Quint's biblical approaches. In your opinion, you are dealing with a madman.

The police observed the goings-on in the green tree. Social Democrats throw the first stone when they dislike a song during the prayer hour in the hostel.

When the landlord got too colorful, he started the end of the Breslau intermezzo with a punch in the middle of Quint's face. Quint kisses the landlord's hand for this.

Quint's rural retinue does not like his dealings with the educated. Meanwhile backed away to the periphery of Wroclaw, Martin Scharf complains that he doesn't understand Quint's speech. With firm trust in the eagerly awaited and never occurred revelation from the mouth of Quint, the seven disciples still waiting would have left house and court in the lurch, wasted their money, but only heard ambiguous parables from Quint.

Quint doesn't care. Calmly he washes his disciples' feet one after the other. Shortly before the bohemian Josef's turn, he runs away.

Little Ruth Heidebrand is found murdered and Quint is suspected. The six disciples urge him to flee. Quint smiles, goes back to Breslau and is thrown into the remand prison. Born out of wedlock, Quint, a work- shy man, spoiled by socialist , anarchist and nihilistic ideas, is found guilty by the prosecutor. Judges and defense lawyers consider the accused not guilty. Statements by Therese Katzmarek lead to the perpetrator, the Bohemian Josef. The latter hangs himself at the crime scene. At the beginning of October, Quint was released from prison and left Silesia. When someone knocks on his door on the way in the evening, the tired wanderer says: “I am Jesus! Give me a place to sleep! ”Then the door is usually slammed.

Minor characters

Some - persons not mentioned above - appear sporadically or act in the novel, which otherwise appears as if from a single source, a few times out of the blue, as it were, as deus ex machina - for example:

  • The young farmer Kurt Simon appears in the second of the thirty chapters of the novel and only sees Quint again in the fifteenth chapter in the house of the teacher Krause.
  • The editor and socialist agitator Kurowski instructs the Scharf brothers on the basis of the Communist Manifesto : Quint is a deceiver and a self-deceiver at the same time. It is true that Quint preaches with good intentions, but every doctrine that is based on ignorance is misleading.
  • The brothers Karl and Christian Hassenpflug - students from the Münsterland , candidates in philosophy, winners of the black-red-gold ribbon - want to research Quint. The Giersdorf savior, as Quint is called, learns from the students that the revolution will come from the proletarians . After Miltz's stone throwing, the Quint brothers invite you to Breslau.
  • Peter Hullenkamp and his girlfriend Annette von Rhyn.

Of course, there are also minor characters, as is usual in Gerhart Hauptmann's larger prose works, about which more coherent things are told - for example the beautiful young man Dominik, who fell through high school, or minor characters that fit more harmoniously into the novel context - such as the doctor Dr. Hülsebusch, the Mendel couple, who sponsored the young painter Bernhard Kurz, or the notorious quint-hater Herr von Kellwinkel.

Quotes

Gerhart Hauptmann put Quint in the mouth:

  • "... following Jesus is my goal."
  • "... my glory is suffering!"
  • "Every priest is a violent criminal!"
  • "I am the resurrection and the life!"

Testimonials

  • Interview 1912: Gerhart Hauptmann worked on the novel for 27 years.
  • September 19, 1912 to Alfred Oehlke on the criticisms from the ranks of the clergy: "But whoever thinks he sees the Antichrist in the fool in Christ , take care that he does not grow horns and claws himself."

Biographical references

The novel is usually interpreted as a Jesus novel. It is overlooked that this modern “Fool in Christ” has traits and views that are in no way attributable to the biblical Jesus: that he worships the sun, even kneels before it, that he describes nude bathing as a “celebration” and “devotion” cultivates, finds God in nature and wants to connect with the "mother earth" rather than with heaven. That he fights the state and its “hideous butchering festivals” as “bloody madness”, that he goes barefoot and is mocked as the “kohlrabi apostle”. That he refuses to use money. But especially that he sanctifies sexual life - and this in express contradiction to Christianity. All of these are traits that connect him with the “fool” Gusto Gräser, the hiker mocked as a “kohlrabi apostle”, walking barefoot or in sandals, “poorly” dressed. With the anti-militarist and plant eater, with the apostle of nature. So also with the Monte Verità . It is no coincidence that the note: “The Colony in Locarno” (Sprengel: Mythen 127) appears in Hauptmann's preparatory work on Quint . What is meant is the colony on Monte Verità near Ascona-Locarno. That is where poor Quint is drawn in the end. The fact that he freezes to death in the snow on the way to Ticino symbolizes Hauptmann's doubts and fears about this prophetic apparition, which both attracts and repels him. Hauptmann had got to know Gräser by 1909 at the latest, and in 1912 campaigned publicly for him. In 1919 he will climb the Truth Mountain himself and visit Gräser's cave in the Arcegno forest. Clear traces of his struggle with and around Gusto Gräser can be found in his epic Till Eulenspiegel . Till's carriage ride through Germany and Switzerland ends at Ponte Brolla in the Valle Maggia, on the way to the Gusto Gräsers rock grotto.

reception

  • Schlenther wrote in the Berliner Tageblatt on November 27, 1910 : "The fatherless carpenter's son from Schlesisch-Giersdorf felt so deeply into the fatherless carpenter's son from Nazareth ..."
  • Rathenau and Stehr know better. Gerhart Hauptmann had spoken to both of them about his intention to write. Rathenau commented on this in 1910 and Stehr in February 1911 in the Neue Rundschau .
  • For Julius Bab the book is, so to speak, a “fifth gospel”.
  • Robert Faesi was the first literary scholar to call Quint a psychopath - a convenient interpretation that lingers.
  • Theodor Heuss has reviewed the novel. He writes: "Is there any material that was more intimately connected with the problem-searching of the German youth (around 1890) than this: Jesus Christ from Nazareth wanders through the Germany of the present, the Germany of the factories, the class struggles, the Orthodox state church."
  • Although the chronicler says very little about what it looks like inside Quint, Ziolkowski , analyzing the last half of the novel, is relatively certain with his diagnosis of paranoid hallucination . Sprengel does not want to trust the chronicler's “narrow-minded rationalism”. Ziolkowski took over his point of view "unchecked".
  • Sprengel heads the proof of February 1911. From this emerged Gerhart Hauptmann's aversion to Protestant orthodoxy and was a reflection of the sometimes violent reactions of the clergy to the text of the novel.
  • Leppmann claims that Quint's speeches in biblical tone do not reveal whether the speaker wants to save the world or save himself from the world. Compared to the great German novels of the 20th century, the quint got off badly. Nevertheless, Leppmann sheds light on the question: What does the novelist Gerhart Hauptmann have to say to today's reader?
  • Concerning the psychology of Emanuel Quint, Marx refers to studies on the apostle in Zurich in 1888 . Incidentally, the above-mentioned death of Quint in the snowstorm above the Gotthard hospice symbolizes the failure of Zurich's utopian ideas in 1888.
  • Anyone who knows the story of Jesus Christ will find parallel to parallel in the novel. The story of the fool in Christ is of course not told in the diction of the Gospels .
  • The figure of Quint as the epitome of the non-sedentary person is reminiscent of the works of Gerhart Hauptmann's brother Carl and of the Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's Idiots .

literature

First edition

  • The fool in Christo Emanuel Quint. Novel. 540 pages. S. Fischer, Berlin 1910

expenditure

Output used:
  • The fool in Christo Emanuel Quint. P. 7–412 in: Gerhart Hauptmann: The great novels. 814 pages. Propylaea Verlag , Berlin 1968

Secondary literature

  • The Apostle, The Fool in Christo Emanuel Quint . Pp. 194–209 in Peter Sprengel : Gerhart Hauptmann. Epoch - work - effect. 298 pages. CH Beck, Munich 1984 (Beck'sche Elementarbücher), ISBN 3-406-30238-6 .
  • Wolfgang Leppmann : Gerhart Hauptmann. A biography. Ullstein, Berlin 1996 (Ullstein-Buch 35608), 415 pages, ISBN 3-548-35608-7 (identical text with ISBN 3-549-05469-6 , Propylaen, Berlin 1995, subtitled with Die Biographie )
  • The fool in Christo Emanuel Quint . S. 277–288 in: Friedhelm Marx : Gerhart Hauptmann . Reclam, Stuttgart 1998 (RUB 17608, Literature Studies series). 403 pages, ISBN 3-15-017608-5
  • Peter Sprengel: History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9
  • Peter Sprengel: Gerhart Hauptmann. Bourgeoisie and big dream. A biography. 848 pages. CH Beck, Munich 2012 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-406-64045-2

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Leppmann stipulates “around 1895” (Leppmann, p. 273, 16. Zvo).
  2. ↑ The chronicler humanely disparages Quint over the text of the novel - for example with “the fool” or “the enthusiast”. So with “fool” there is no appreciation - for example in the sense of pure goal (Sprengel anno 2012, p. 413, 11. Zvo).
  3. ↑ Giersdorf exists at least three times in Silesia. Because the novel by Kreis Hirschberg (edition used, p. 94 middle) is mentioned, it could be the current Podgórzyn.
  4. ↑ The pastor's name is Schimmelmann and warns Quint of bad examples, as if there were the Anabaptists , Thomas Münzer and other crushed spirits .
  5. ↑ Sanctification movement : Nathanael Schwarz belongs to an unnamed sect and, before the act of baptism, raves about his idol Dorothea Trudel from Mennedorf and her healing of the possessed by the laying on of hands .
  6. ↑ Miltzsch near Wohlau .
  7. ↑ Christine Brückner (see Leppmann, p. 274, 3rd Zvu and p. 400, footnote 172 ( Jauche and Levkojen , Frankfurt am Main 1975, p. 162, ISBN 3-548-20077-X )) thinks that Quint desecrates them Church of his birth father. The latter is a Catholic pastor, to whom Quindt went beforehand. Quindt got the address from his mother. In a lengthy dialogue, the pastor addresses Quindt several times as “my son” and hushes up the son's serious ecclesiastical crime (edition used, p. 322, 4. Zvo to p. 329, 1. Zvu). See also Sprengel anno 2004, p. 374, 16. Zvo
  8. ↑ For example, he writes: "... like a lot of people who are infatuated by madness, I say ..." (Edition used, p. 257, 19th Zvu).
  9. ↑ Marx writes: "This half sentimental, half skeptical Quint follower by the name of Kurt Simon is Hauptmann's self-portrait as a young man." (Marx, p. 282, 6th Zvu).
  10. ^ Brothers Karl and Christian Hassenpflug: The brothers Heinrich and Julius Hart are meant (Sprengel anno 1984, p. 205, 17th Zvu).
  11. ↑ Peter Hullenkamp and Annette von Rhyn: This refers to Peter Hille and Else Lasker-Schüler (Sprengel anno 1984, p. 207, 12. Zvo). Sprengel (anno 2012, p. 319 above) speaks of a satire on the team of poets.
  12. ↑ Dominik is modeled after Carl Hauptmann's childhood friend Dominick. Sprengel described his appearance. (Sprengel anno 2012, p. 28 above).
  13. ↑ With Dr. Hülsebusch is meant Gerhart Hauptmann's childhood friend Alfred Ploetz (Marx, p. 283, 2. Zvo).
  14. ↑ The Mendel couple and the painter Bernhard Kurz: This refers to Toni and Albert Neisser from Breslau , who were patrons of the painter Fritz Erler (Sprengel anno 2012, p. 325 above).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 8
  2. ^ Marx, p. 284, 7. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 73, 8. Zvo
  4. ↑ Sprengel anno 2004, p. 374, 24. Zvo
  5. ^ Marx, p. 288, 8. Zvo
  6. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, pp. 413,12. Zvu
  7. ↑ Leierbaude
  8. ↑ Sprengel anno 1984, p. 202 above
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 328, middle
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 342, 17. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 344 below (Novalis fragments )
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 364, 1. Zvo
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 360, middle
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 362 and p. 395
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 90, 3rd Zvu
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 166, 4. Zvo
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 332, 12. Zvo
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 368, middle
  19. ↑ Marx, p. 280, 4th Zvu
  20. ↑ Marx, p. 283, 13. Zvo, refers to Sprengel in 1982
  21. ↑ Schlenther, cited in Sprengel anno 2012, p. 414, 13th Zvu and p. 783, footnote 329
  22. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 414 above
  23. ↑ Sprengel, anno 2012, p. 414, 18. Zvo
  24. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 414, 10th Zvu
  25. ↑ Marx, p. 28, 15. Zvu
  26. ↑ Marx, p. 283, 13th Zvu
  27. ↑ Theodor Heuss, quoted in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 196, 9th Zvu
  28. ^ Ziolkowski: Fictional transfigurations of Jesus . Princeton 1972, therein pp. 98–123, ISBN 0-691-06235-8 (location listed in Sprengel anno 1984, p. 196 above)
  29. ↑ Sprengel anno 1984, p. 200 middle
  30. ↑ Sprengel anno 1984, p. 201, 13. Zvo
  31. ↑ Sprengel anno 1984, p. 203, 7th Zvu
  32. ↑ Leppmann, p. 272 ​​below
  33. ↑ Leppmann, p. 275, 6. Zvo to p. 277, 2. Zvo
  34. ↑ Marx, p. 283, 4. Zvo
  35. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 148
  36. ^ Marx, p. 284, 16. Zvo
  37. ↑ Marx, p. 285, 11. Zvo
  38. ^ Sprengel anno 2004, p. 372, 6th Zvo and p. 374, 6th Zvu