The shot from the pulpit

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The shot from the pulpit is a humorous novella by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–1898), which is influenced by the work of Gottfried Keller and was written between May and August 1877. It was first published in the Zürcher Taschenbuch in 1878 .

people

  • General Rudolf Wertmüller
  • Wilpert Wertmüller, pastor of Mythikon, his cousin
  • Rahel Wertmüller, daughter of the pastor
  • Pfannenstiel, candidate of theology
  • Rosenstock, pastor of Uetikon
  • Hassan, general's body moor
  • Krachhalder, church elder from Mythikon

structure

The novella is divided into 11 chapters and has its climax in the 9th chapter («shot»).

Table of contents

Pfannenstiel, candidate of theology, is a weak and naive person. He does not feel equal to the "world of coercion and the mask". That is why he believes that he will have to give up his love for Rahel, the daughter of the pastor of Mythikon, because of the great difference in class.

He visits General Wertmüller, a cousin of the pastor, to ask him for a position as a military chaplain in his Venetian company . The general refuses this request because he regards the pan handle as too weak. In the further course of the conversation the general learns that Pfannenstiel loves his great cousin Rahel. The general, who has been received with discomfort in Mythikon due to the fact that he is a disbeliever and hires foreign slaves, hatches a plan to unite the two lovers. It is also a long-awaited wish of the general to make fun of himself at the church's expense.

When Pfannenstiel wakes up the next morning in the general's house, he has already gone to his cousin's church armed with two weapons of the same kind. There he gives his cousin one of the two pistols. However, this has a very stiff trigger. The cousin accepts with thanks, but at a favorable moment, shortly before the sermon begins, the general exchanges the stiff weapon for the second, which has a lighter trigger. The priest puts the pistol under his robe and begins the sermon. At the last stanza of the mythic's favorite song ("Praise God with a loud noise!"), When the general sees his plan already failed, the priest pulls his gun and accidentally fires a shot.

The general appeases the angry Mythikon community by including it in his will. He bequeathed the pastor from Mythikon a castle where he could live and take care of the hunt. But the latter has to resign and give his blessing to the two lovers. The municipality of Mythikon receives the coveted land on the condition not to tell anyone the story of the shot from the pulpit . The general died of a mysterious illness during the campaign.

background

The novella goes back to an anecdote about the brick house pastor Christoph Schmezer (1800–1882), who frequented the Heidelberg Society Der Engere and maintained close contact with the poet Josef Victor von Scheffel and other great Heidelberg figures. On the occasion of a social gathering, Schmezer had bought a toy gun for his son and after a long night and little sleep had returned from Heidelberg to the sermon in Ziegelhausen , where a shot from the toy gun came off a relevant passage from the Bible. The anecdote about Schmezer, known as the “dashing pastor of the century”, was passed down by Joseph Viktor Widmann , who studied in Heidelberg from 1862 to 1864 and was friends with Gottfried Keller . Either from this or from Meyer's relatives Meyer-Ott in Zurich, who in turn were in contact with Scheffel, the story came to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.

filming

Under the direction of Leopold Lindtberg , a film version of the novella was made in 1942 with Adolf Manz in the leading role.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhard Hoppe: 750 years of Ziegelhausen 1220–1970 , Heidelberg 1970, pp. 60–63.

Web links