The way to Oswalda

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The way to Oswalda is a novella by the Austrian writer Franz Karl Ginzkey , which first appeared in 1924. Like several works from this period, the author treats the relationship between men and women in modern times. Similar to Brigitte and Regine , this is also about the struggle of men with an excessive claim to possession of the female sex. Gernot, the protagonist of the story, suffers from the loss of the motherly woman who gives him security and security and who stands by him unconditionally.

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After many years, the narrator meets his childhood friend Gernot again, who invites him to his house in Sievering . There he meets his wife Oswalda, who is blind. Now Gernot tells his marriage story and admits in this context that he had withheld an important incident from the author when he was young, although the two had promised each other complete openness.

As a sixteen-year-old schoolboy, Gernot was studying with the narrator in his house when he noticed that an important document was missing. The father was on a business trip while the mother stated that she was visiting a relative in Brno . But Gernot had a key to the apartment that nobody knew anything about. When he entered the apartment, to his horror, he surprised his mother in the bedroom with a strange man. He quickly ran away and wondered if and how he should talk to his parents about it. He made up his mind to keep everything to himself. He has never seen his mother again since the incident, since she left father and son on the pretext of needing her freedom. He did not tell his father about his experience and also kept it a secret from his friend.

Since he buried what had happened in himself, he couldn't process it either. He had lost confidence in women. Nevertheless, after a few years he married Erna. At the beginning of this relationship he was able to hide a certain pathological distrust. Erna had innocently told him about a childhood sweetheart to Hartmann, her brother's friend. When he suddenly reappeared and frequented the family, his experience with his mother rose before him again. He distrusted his wife, even if he had no reason to. He even went secretly into his apartment on a suitable occasion, as he did when he surprised his mother. Although he did not find his wife, he did find an in and for itself harmless letter from Erna to Hartmann, in which she wrote about the strange behavior of her husband. This was enough for him, a divorce resulted.

After years of self-torture, Gernot was a war correspondent on the Italian front in 1916, where he received a letter to his daughter in Vienna from a dying colonel and promised to deliver it. This daughter was Oswalda, who immediately impressed Gernot. She had been blind since she was twelve, but lived her life with great dignity. He happened to see her again after the war when he was given his office in the same house where Oswalda lived. The two got closer and Gernot married the blind, but inwardly enlightened Oswalda. She was the woman who, through her maternal and kind manner, was able to heal Gernot's sick soul and helped him regain his trust in femininity.

Right at the beginning of the story, Gernot says to the narrator:

"" It is in the nature of love that it binds two beings together. But I, you see, see its best miracle in the liberation that it can bring us. This finding back to oneself, while one completely owns the other, this pure release in feeling on the way through the other, this clarification to duality, which is again only unity, it seems to me not only to be the crowning achievement of love, but also to be the ethical justification of marriage. However, how much mutual trust is necessary for this! ""

expenditure

  • The way to Oswalda . Narrative. Staackmann, Leipzig 1924
  • Three women. Rositta, Agnete, Oswalda . The Bergland Book, Salzburg 1929
  • Three women. Rositta, Agnete, Oswalda . Foreword by Karl Hans Strobl . German printing association, Graz 1931
  • The way to Oswalda . Foreword by Karl Heinrich Waggerl . Javorsky, Gmunden 1953
  • Selected works in four volumes . Vol. 2 novellas. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1960
  • The Toothache Lord God and other short stories . Book club Donauland, Vienna 1982

literature

  • Franz Kadrnoska: Awakening and Falling . Austrian culture between 1918 and 1938 . Europa-Verlag, Vienna 1981, p. 212 [1]
  • Robert Blauhut : Studies on Austrian literature of the 20th century . Braumüller, 1966, p. 60 [2]
  • Josef Nadler : literary history of Austria . Austrian publishing house for fiction and science 1948, p. 444 [3]