The Shylock from Barnow

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Shylock von Barnow is a novella by the Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos , which was probably written in 1870 during his studies in Graz . The text appeared in the collection Die Juden von Barnow at Duncker & Humblot in Leipzig in 1876 .

time and place

In Franzos' collection called Die Juden von Barnow , the novella According to the Higher Law immediately follows Den Shylock von Barnow . In the higher law there is a fixed point in time - the Battle of Magenta in 1859. The text is mostly about before the middle of the 19th century in Podolia .

action

The old Moses Freudenthal, chairman of the Barnow Jewry, is considered in the town among his fellow believers "as the most pious and honest man ... and on top of that ... his immense wealth." Everyone in the town can see how this wealth arises. Moses Freudenthal not only demands interest from borrowers , among whom the respected district judge Mr. Lozinski, who is in office in Barnow, is to be found. He is also a lottery and insurance holder, businessman, innkeeper and property owner. Nevertheless, no one from the Jewish city, neither the beggarly Torah teacher starving with his band of children, nor the panting water-bearer, wants to trade with Moses Freudenthal. "Because greater than this man's wealth is his misfortune."

At the age of 17, Moses was dictated to his wife by his father: Rosele Grünstein. The marriage had remained childless into the elderly of the couple. But then, soon after the difficult birth of the daughter Esther, the mother died. As Esther, Esterka called was five years old, Moses Freudenthal left the narrow Jewish Town, referring to the daughter of his big white house over gray Dominican monastery on the road from Skala to Lviv . District judge Lozinski and his family rented a room on the first floor. When Esther was nine years old, Uncle Schlome wanted to be her teacher; wanted to satisfy his niece's thirst for knowledge. With such a suggestion, Schlome Grünstein initially encountered the resistance of Moses Freudenthal. Schlome, “neither Jew nor Christian”, was considered a Meschumed, an apostate from the faith, since he was deeply impressed by the New Testament , the “idolatry of Christians” twenty years ago .

Moses unceremoniously took all the books from the daughter, kept her busy in the shop and chased his brother-in-law Schlome out of the house. Esther borrowed the new Pitaval from District Judge Lozinski's wife, Heine , Klopstock , Louise Mühlbach , and gradually devoured the 180-volume edition of Paul de Kock's works . Then Ms. Lozinski subscribed to works from About to Zschokke for the now 16-year-old Esther from the Tarnopol lending library . After the father of his daughter had imposed the healthy Jewish boy Moschko Fränkel from Chorostkow as her groom, the beautiful woman ran away with the captain Count Géza Szapany of the Württemberg hussars ; followed him to the Marburg garrison. When Count Géza no longer wanted to have anything to do with the beautiful Esther, the Count's sergeant took care of her. The unfortunate woman made her way to Barnow and died shortly after her arrival on the threshold of her father's house. Was she a Jew or a Christian? Nobody knew the answer. “That's why they were buried where the suicides were buried. But she died of hunger. ”Moses Freudenthal lived for several years, outlived his brother-in-law Schlome and left his fortune to the miracle rabbi of Sadagóra .

Title and form

At a reception given by District Judge Lozinski, Ms. Emilie, the wife of the new actuary from Lemberg, asked the hostess to tell Esther Freudenthal's story. Mrs. Emilie listens to that. The analogue comes to mind of the play The Merchant of Venice , which was given in Lemberg. The rich Moses Freudenthal is henceforth called Shylock von Barnow by the “educated” of the town.

Franzos tells alternately on two levels. The “normal” level includes the view of the Jewish narrator. This shows understanding for Barnow Judaism. On the second level, Freudenthal is reviled by such “educated” people as the Lozinski couple. These assumptions, mostly packaged in malevolent tirades of hate, are later partially confirmed or at least not doubted at the “normal” level.

reception

  • 1964: Creutzburg calls Moses Freudenthal a Hasid and alludes to his orthodoxy . With this categorization of the protagonist, the reader thinks of two incidents. First, when Esther ran away with the Rittmeister, Moses behaved as if the daughter had died. And even if Esther came back, he would have his servants chased her from his threshold. Second, it gets worse: When the homecoming woman Esther knocks on her father's gate that night, he rejects the servants and goes out himself. Franzos writes what the father said to the daughter, nobody knows. In any case he came back alone and the next morning the night watchman and some people found the dead Esther in front of the gate. Creutzburg sees a protective armor as the cause of such religious dogmatism, which has grown through the centuries of persecution of the Jews in Eastern Galicia . In this context, Creutzburg regards the religious dispute between Moses Freudenthal and his brother-in-law Schlome Grünstein as the inner core of the novella.

expenditure

  • Der Shylock von Barnow , pp. 1-45 in: Die Juden von Barnow. Stories from Karl Emil Franzos . 11-15 Edition. Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1920 ( archive.org ).
  • The Shylock from Barnow . P. 223-258 in: Günter Creutzburg (ed.): The wild Starost and the beautiful Jütta. Novellas about love and marriage by Karl Emil Franzos. Illustrations: Wolfgang Würfel . Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1964 (edition used)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Creutzburg in the afterword of the edition used, p. 537 above
  2. ↑ edition used, p. 224
  3. ↑ edition used, p. 254, 12. Zvo
  4. ↑ edition used, p. 225, 8. Zvo
  5. ↑ edition used, p. 246, 6th Zvu
  6. ↑ edition used, p. 238, 12. Zvu
  7. ↑ edition used, p. 251, 1. Zvo
  8. ↑ edition used, p. 258, 12. Zvo
  9. ↑ Creutzburg in the afterword of the edition used, pp. 535-539 above
  10. ↑ edition used, p. 253, 1. Zvu to p. 254, 11. Zvo
  11. ↑ edition used, p. 228, 1. Zvu
  12. ↑ edition used, p. 257 below