The rider and Lake Constance
The Rider and Lake Constance is a ballad written by Gustav Schwab in 1826. It is recorded in writing that on January 5, 1573, the Alsatian post bailiff Andreas Egglisperger rode across the frozen Lake Constance to Überlingen . This event with a happy ending inspired Schwab's 1826 ballad with its famous bad ending.
action
A rider in a hurry intends to reach Lake Constance and cross it with a ferry boat. It is deep winter, and so he misses the shore and accidentally crosses the frozen and snow-covered lake , believing it to be a treeless, undeveloped plain. Arriving on the other bank, he realizes the danger he has been in. While various people who have come to congratulate and invite him, the rider loses consciousness in shock and falls dead from his horse.
Phrase
“Ride across Lake Constance” is a daring act in which the actor only realizes in retrospect how risky the undertaking was. In ignorance or misinterpretation of the ballad, this phrase is sometimes used incorrectly, namely when the risk of failure is seen in advance, i.e. a high risk is consciously taken.
Others
- Eugen Roth's collection of poems Ein Mensch , published in 1935, contains a poem entitled Dangerous Ride , which refers to Schwab's ballad. Eugen Roth wrote the poem in 1933 and reflected in it the uncertain political future at the beginning of the Third Reich .
- During the ice procession in 1963 over the frozen Lake Constance from Hagnau to Münsterlingen, the rider Georg Starkr from Fischbach near Friedrichshafen ("Reiter vom Bodensee") took the lead on a Haflinger horse.
- In 1971 Peter Handke published the play Der Ritt über den Bodensee .
- The ballad inspired the sculptor Peter Lenk to create his work Bodenseereiter in Überlingen .
- Robert Gernhardt's 1997 parody Bodenseereiter was set to music in the same year by Otto Waalkes as the cover version of the Beatles song Paperback Writer .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Rider and Lake Constance
- ↑ [1] Deutschlandradio Kultur, November 28, 2014