The devil in the winter palace
The Devil in the Winter Palace is a short story by Werner Bergengruen that appeared in Zurich in 1949.
The Petersburg tailor Biermann, dressed as a devil in carnival, experiences his blue miracle.
time and place
The location of the action is Petersburg during a carnival during the reign of Tsar Nikolai I , ie between 1825 and 1855. With the reference to Dostoyevsky (see below), the period can perhaps be limited to 1838 to 1843, or a little after 1843 .
content
Avgust Iwanowitsch Biermann, son of the German master tailor Johannes Biermann, who emigrated to Russia , is called to see Chamberlain Ryabtschikow. Awgust, in English August, is supposed to costumize the noble gentleman and his family for the Russian carnival, known as the Butter Week . August gets down to work with great enthusiasm, neglecting his already run-down tailoring business. Because August had an idea: He wants to sneak into the Winter Palace in devil costume and dance in front of the Tsar. August manages it. He appears with a larva, is coal-black all over, has two horns and “a long shaggy tail, but not a horse's foot”. In the Winter Palace the devil mingles in the middle of the “courtly ordered pleasure” and impresses not only little Marja Ryabchikova, but even the tsarina as a brisk dancer . The Tsar ordered the tailor to come to him during the dance evening, exposed him and had him thrown out into the Russian winter night. At thirty degrees below zero, the coachmen are frightened of the person who has been killed. One mistreated August and threw the “hellish passenger” into the deep snow. When he finally got home in the apartment building near the Vosnesensky Bridge, the devil is no better. After August accidentally entered the wrong apartment, Kunin and Sliwinski, two pupils of the seminary who hold wake at August's landlord, are scared to death and flee from the devil. The landlord, Captain Kryshownikow, had been a vicious usurer during his lifetime and had varied during August's absence. The pupils run to the police and report on the appearance of the devil in person. Of course, a police report is drawn up and the tsar learns of the special occurrence. August has to go to the Tsar again in devil costume and scare the two boys again. The tsar is having fun and rewards the three like in a fairy tale.
shape
Bergengruen tells the story in a masterly and enjoyable way and at the very end of the story apologizes for his “fairytale imperial” tsar. He wrote the story during carnival time, and during carnival time “all fairy tales are true”.
Dostoevsky
Bergengruen describes his story as a “ cadet story ”, a fairy tale that can be told to young boys locked in the barracks and explains: The brother of the narrator's grandmother was in the cadet corps with Dostoyevsky.
literature
- source
- Werner Bergengruen: The Devil in the Winter Palace. Story (= The Little Books of the Ark. 175/176, ZDB -ID 251917-3 ). Peter Schifferli Verlags AG "Die Arche", Zurich 1949.
- Secondary literature
- Frank-Lothar Kroll (ed.): Word and poetry as a place of refuge in difficult times. Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-7861-1816-7 .
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. Biographical and bibliographical concise dictionary based on authors and anonymous works. German authors. A – Z. 4th, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 50.