The Ruepp (novel)

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Der Ruepp is a novel by the German writer Ludwig Thoma , published in 1921. The story describes the self-inflicted downfall of a Bavarian farmer. The Ruepp is Thomas's last novel.

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The story begins on a Sunday during harvest time. In the village inn, the farmer Ruepp gets drunk and starts serious arguments with other guests, including his neighbor, the farmer Lukas. On the way home he lies down by the side of the road and sleeps off his intoxication there.

In the meantime, his younger son Michel is coming home for vacation from high school in Freising . On the train he met his child friend Stasi, Luke's daughter, with whom he still feels connected. Michel was, against the advice of the pastor (and against his own will), urged by the father to "study", that is, to take the Abitur and then to attain a spiritual office in the seminary. But he is unsuitable for studying, failed the second time and cannot go back to high school in the fall. His dream would be to attend the agricultural school in Weihenstephan and then work as a manager on a larger estate.

The maid Loni, who has lived and worked on the farm for decades, lives in the Austragshäusl on the Ruepphof . She raised the Ruepps' children and especially Michel is dear to her. Now she is dying. Years ago she had lent Ruepp three thousand marks, a good part of her saved fortune, in exchange for a promissory note. Her only living relative, a cousin from Munich , means nothing to her, and she would rather leave her inheritance (the claim against Ruepp and roughly the same amount in cash and securities ) to Michel. She therefore demands that the notary from Dachau be sent to her so that she can make her will in good time. But Ruepp does not want to be without a farmhand or horse during harvest time and ignores the wish.

Michel learns from his mother that the farm is not doing well economically, since Ruepp repeatedly gets involved in risky and often loss-making timber and cattle deals. Michel helps with the field work and makes friends again with a childhood friend, Zotzen-Peter, who now works as a farmhand on the Ruepphof. A bailiff from Dachau comes with a claim from a cattle business, which Ruepp can only partially settle with cash that he had actually intended to pay off other urgent debts.

Ruepp sees himself in an increasingly desperate situation and turns to the dying Loni for further help. She denies that she has further funds and again asks for the notary for her will. Ruepp's wife arrives and offers Loni to send his son Michel to Dachau by bicycle. Ruepp feels offended in his honor as the head of the family and, despite the harvest time, sets off with the horse and carriage to Dachau to get the notary.

In Dachau Ruepp stops at the inn, meets a group of cattle dealers and brokers to play cards, who find an easy victim in the cocky Ruepp. In a frenzy and increasingly reckless, he gambled away several hundred marks on the tarot , realizes that he was cheated in the game and instigates another quarrel. In the end, he and the others are thrown out and only meets the clerk at the notary who throws him - the drunk and rampaging peasant - out of hand. He returns to his farm without having achieved anything.

At home he hides his debacle, just saying that he told the clerk to call the notary. One wonders in the courtyard that the notary does not come. The pastor gives Loni the sacraments of death and comforts Afra, the peasant woman who has complained of her suffering. Loni dies without making a will first. Afra, the Rueppin, knows that Loni has a promissory note for the loaned three thousand marks, in which the exact conditions are noted, but the Ruepp claims that he had verbally agreed with her that he could repay the money at will. Before anyone comes to the court for Loni’s burial, Ruepp goes into her room, steals Pfandbriefe and the ominous promissory note from her box; His wife almost caught him; he was able to hide the papers in his robe just in time when she came to him in the room.

Ruepp goes to the mayor the next day and hands him the box with Loni's estate. This includes almost four hundred marks in cash. Ruepp is convinced that the legally secure processing of the inheritance is secured, but even the mayor does not agree and makes it clear to Ruepp that he cannot testify that Ruepp had not gotten anything aside beforehand.

In the meantime, Michel lets the servant Zotzen-Peter persuade him to take a night trip to the neighboring village. The two are caught looking at the window , recognized and severely beaten. They can't hide the consequences at home and invent a story of a fight after a visit to a pub. Ruepp immediately wants to go to the police and admonishes Michel to be more class conscious and not to get involved with the servants. The piquant story of the prospective priest who was caught looking at the window is making the rounds everywhere. Michel also confesses his failure at his mother's high school and is summoned by the village pastor.

On the way to mass and to the pastor, Michel meets his child friend Lukas Stasi again, who makes bitter reproaches to him about his trip through the window. Michel slowly realizes her affection; he confesses his failure to her, too, and she gives him prospects of a future together if he takes up a managerial career after leaving agricultural school. Even with the pastor, who had considered him unsuitable from the start, he admits that he had failed at school; the priest is friendly towards him, but also makes it clear to him that even with good academic performance, the Fensterl scandal would have put an end to his spiritual career at the latest, even if Michel had not yet received any ordinations .

This means that everyone in the area knows about the end of Michels' high school career - with the exception of his father, Ruepp. He is summoned to court in Dachau to clarify Loni's inheritance. Their cousin Pfleiderer, a previously convicted clerk from Munich, claims the inheritance in the absence of a will and assumes that Loni must have left far more than the four hundred marks that Ruepp had given. Ruepp denies that there was more money, then admits the Loni loan, but insists that the repayment conditions were verbally agreed so that he could have repaid the money at will. The magistrate demands that Ruepp and his wife have to swear that. Ruepp is reluctant to include his wife, but the judge remains tough.

Ruepp has fourteen days to find a solution or to convince his wife to take the required oath. In the tavern he only drinks with the socially deprived day laborer Langgörgl, who flatters him to be invited to a beer. Ruepp does not succeed in convincing or persuading his wife of perjury . The mood in the yard is becoming increasingly depressed. An out-of-court settlement with Pfleiderer, to which he offered several hundred marks, failed, and even an attempt to get the necessary cash through a property deal with the Lukas farmer did not lead to any result. Ruepp visits the day laborer Langgörgl in his shabby hut, drinks with him from Kramer and sees what future awaits him. He doesn't go home, but hangs himself in a nearby forest.

His eldest son Kaspar takes over the indebted farm, Michel has to work as a farmhand and after a while the Stasi marries a farmer from the area.

background

The story takes place around 1900 in the vicinity of Dachau in Bavaria . Only the village of the Ruepphof, Weidach, is invented, the other places in history (Dachau, Altomünster , Markt Indersdorf , Erdweg ) really exist, as do the inns Unterbräu , Zieglerbräu and Hörhammer in Dachau mentioned in the novel .

language

While the narrative text is in High German tinged with South German, Thoma lets his characters speak in different depths of the Bavarian dialect depending on their origin and level of education . The pastor of Weidach, the magistrate or the notary clerk, for example, speak closer to the written language than farmers and servants. The scribe Pfleiderer, who was Ruepp's opponent in the inheritance dispute, does not give any inkling of any dialect, but instead uses a lot of foreign words and lofty expressions. The young Michel adapts his language coloring to the interlocutors and speaks with the servants or his family in deep Bavarian, while he speaks more written German during the conversation with Pastor Holdinger.

The dialect coloring of most of the dialogues is so strong that a reader who is ignorant of Bavarian will not understand it.

Origin and reception

Besides Andreas Vöst and Der Wittiber , Der Ruepp Thomas is the only novel. During the period of its creation in 1920/1921, Thoma sank increasingly into political and private bitterness. At this time Thoma also wrote his notorious inflammatory articles for the Miesbacher Anzeiger ; In contrast to his political articles, Thoma does not look for the cause outside the Ruepp (for example with the Reich government, the Social Democrats or the Jews) - rather the case of the family is based solely on the failure and wrongdoing of the peasant.

Martin Klaus argues that Thoma also gave his own family history in Ruepp , including the downfall of a middle-class family through addiction to drinking and quarreling. The motif of the boy, who, according to the family's wishes, is to be trained as a priest, has parallels to the wishes of Thomas' mother, which Ludwig Thoma had always opposed.

Jutta Faber-Behütuns points out the parallels to Ludwig Anzengruber's drama The Perjury Farmer from 1872, whose motifs Thoma used in Ruepp .

The Ruepp is recommended as school reading in Bavaria. Kurt Wilhelm filmed the novel for Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1979.

Work editions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Work overview at zeno.org
  2. ↑ See Judith Heitkamp (2013).
  3. ^ Klaus (2016).
  4. ^ Klaus (2016).
  5. ↑ Faber-Behütuns n.d.
  6. ↑ See the entry in the Bavarian Reading Forum
  7. ↑ See Der Ruepp (TV film) .

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