The wind in the willows

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The Wind in the Willows ( The Wind in the Willows ) is a novel for children, the Kenneth Grahame 1908 published. The novel is one of the great English children's book classics . In 2015, 82 international literary critics and scholars voted the novel one of the most important British novels . With a total of around 25 million copies sold, the novel is one of the best-selling of all time.

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The shy mole flees from spring cleaning and sees a river for the first time in his life. He meets the vital water rat , with whom he befriends. The water rat introduces him to the hearty, good-natured, but exhaustingly self- loving toad , the resident of an impressive mansion, who is completely obsessed with technical achievements such as motor boats , expensive caravans and cars, with which he usually starts wild excursions, which he usually goes with Accidents end. The mole also makes the acquaintance of the gnarled, venerable badger , which the two of them visit in his domicile in the wild forest. On the way back, the mole picks up the scent of a familiar smell. At first he doesn't know what it is, but then he realizes that it is an old building that he gave up a long time ago. The impatient rat, urging to hurry because of the uncomfortable weather and its longing for the river, pulls the hesitant mole with it until he bursts into tears. Frightened by himself, the rat apologizes to the mole and together they search and find the old home of the mole, where the two end the day by a crackling open fire and with an improvised dinner consisting of old canned goods and beer.

When the rat, the mole and the badger tried to dissuade the toad some time later from his constant hunt for distraction and amusement and a correspondingly lavish and self-destructive way of life, the toad showed himself so unreasonable that the badger ordered him to be house arrested and put him in a bedroom locked up. The toad succeeds in escaping with a trick. Intoxicated by his cunning and full of arrogance, he steals a car and ends up in human prison. There he arouses the pity of the jailer's daughter, who decides to help the toad to escape. Her suggestion to disguise him as a laundress so that he can escape from the prison complex undetected seems to the toadstill unworthy of him, and he forbids the claim that his stature was made for this plan. The prospect of lingering on in the damp cell, however, changes him and finally he generously admits that the idea could also have come from him.

The escape succeeds, but he finds out that he has left his wallet in the dungeon. At a train station he meets another good-natured person, a train driver who is willing to take the supposedly old woman with him for free. Even when they are followed by a locomotive full of police officers on the way to Kröterich's home and the Kröterich has to confess to the engine driver who he really is and what he has committed, he sticks to him and Kröterich can escape unnoticed at the exit of a tunnel drop. On arrival at home, he finds that his property has been occupied by martens and weasels , who gleefully chase him from the farm. Only with the help of his three friends does he finally manage, using sabers and muskets, to put the outnumbered but not particularly brave squatters to flight and to recapture his home. He solemnly vows to improve, which his friends know correctly.

Emergence

The Scot Grahame grew up as a child with his grandmother in a house on the river and as an adult went on many boat trips with his son. In the evening he would tell him stories about the animals they met. He also wrote the adventures that formed the basis of this novel for his four-year-old son, to whom he sent the chapters on vacation.

The author equipped the animals with individual, human characteristics that do not contradict the animal behavior of the species. In the characters and their actions, Grahame expressed a deeply felt humanism ; so each of the main characters in the story has its own characteristics. Quarrels often arise among the animals. However, what unites them and ultimately makes them inseparable is the belief in what is good and best in each other.

Grahame achieved impressive descriptions of nature that capture the beauty of the individual seasons and make an unobtrusive plea for a life with the environment beyond an exaggerated belief in technology and progress.

The 1931 edition of the novel was illustrated by Ernest Shepard . Toad Hall , the toad's estate, is believed to be based on either Mapledurham House or neighboring Hardwick House .

Translations into German

The first German translation was published in 1929. The best-known translations are by Harry Rowohlt (1973), Sybil Gräfin Schönfeldt (1988) and Anne Löhr-Gößling (1996).

The translations in detail:

  • Christoph, Grossmaul and Cornelius. The adventures of a cheerful company on the river, in the forest and elsewhere . German by Else Steup. D. Gundert, Stuttgart 1929
  • The people around Master Dachs. A long history of very lively animals . German from Theresia Mutzenbecher. Herder , Freiburg im Breisgau 1951
  • The wind in the willow or the badger sends its regards, but doesn’t want to be disturbed . German by Harry Rowohlt. With illustrations by Heinz Edelmann . Middelhauve, Cologne 1973 (current edition: No and No, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-0369-5123-7 )
  • The wind in the willows . German by Gisela Richter. Ion Creanga Publishing House, Bucharest 1975
  • The wind in the willows . German by Sybil Countess Schönfeldt. Bertelsmann, Munich 1988 (current edition: cbj, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-570-12996-9 )
  • Wind in the willows . German by Uta Angerer. Südwest-Verlag , Munich 1989, ISBN 3-517-01139-8
  • The wind in the willows . German by Anne Löhr-Gößling. Thienemann , Stuttgart and Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-522-16935-2
  • The wind in the willows . German by Kim Landgraf and Felix Mayer. Anaconda Verlag , Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-86647-762-9

Audio book

  • The audio book edition read by Harry Rowohlt himself ( Kein & Aber , Zurich 2003, ISBN 3-0369-1320-3 ), along with his Pooh-the-Bear audio book (Rowohlt also translated this), is one of the most successful German-language children's audio books.

Adaptations

music

In 2002, Johan de Meij implemented the musical content in his composition for symphonic wind orchestra The Wind in the Willows .

Elena Kats-Chernin composed a children's opera based on the book, which will be premiered in July 2021 at the Kassel State Theater .

Theater and film

Radio play adaptations

Martin Walser wrote the first German radio play adaptation of the work . The 60-minute radio play was produced by SDR under the direction of Walsers and first broadcast in 1953.

A six-part German-language record set (1976) of the children's book by Charlotte Niemann based on the translation by Harry Rowohlt for Deutsche Grammophon in coproduction with the children's radio Radio Bremen received the German Record Prize in 1978 . Her seemed Ulrich von Bock , Horst Breiter , Sabine Postel , Kurt Lieck , Marion Marlon and Jens Scholkmann as a spokesman with.

In 1985 Eddie Hardin set the children's book to music with the participation of Tony Ashton , Maggie Bell , Donovan , John Entwistle and many others. In 1991 there was a live demonstration of it in Freiburg im Breisgau .

With De Wind i de Wide , a Swiss dialect radio play version by Heinz Stalder was created in 2004 , which was awarded the Swiss Children's and Youth Media Prize in 2005. Director: Geri Dillier ; Music: Dead Brothers , interpretation: Ueli Jäggi (narrator), Michael Neuenschwander (mole), Bettina Stucki (water rat), Hans Schenker (tokerich), Frank Demenga (badger), Ernst Sigrist (otter) and others; Production DRS 1 , Tudor Verlag Zurich, (3 CDs)

Westdeutscher Rundfunk produced and broadcast a six-part German radio play version in 2008. The radio play based on the translation by Harry Rowohlt was written by Oliver Metz, the music was composed and recorded by Ulrike Haage , and Annette Kurth directed the film. Contributing speakers:

  • Narrator: Alexandra Henkel
  • Mole: Jan-Gregor Kremp
  • Water rat: Stefan Kaminski
  • Kröterich: Tommi Piper
  • Badger: pure beauty
  • (uva)

Comic

Michel Plessix adapted the book from 1995 to 2001 as a four-part Franco - Belgian comic series . The German edition of it won the Max and Moritz Prize in 2000 for the best German-language comic book publications for children and young people. A new edition in one volume appeared in 2013 ( Splitter Verlag , ISBN 978-3-86869-696-7 ). Also published there in 2013 “The Wind in the Dunes” ( ISBN 978-3-86869-697-4 ), a volume in which Plessix tells new stories based on Grahame with the characters known from “The Wind in the Weiden”.

Others

The debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by the British band Pink Floyd is named after the 7th chapter of the book.

The Irish-born songwriter and singer Van Morrison released the song Piper at the Gates of Dawn on his CD The Healing Game in 1997 with the refrain: "There's the wind in the willows, and the piper at the gates of dawn".

In the Simpsons episode The Big Impostor , Lisa and her class are supposed to read the book The Wind in the Willows and write a test about it.

A signed first edition of The Wind In The Willows, dedicated to Ruth Ward, Alastair's childhood friend, fetched £ 40,000 at Bloomsbury Auctions in London in November 2010 - five times the estimate.

Four sequels were written by William Horwood , namely Christmas in the Willows , Winter in the Willows , Spring in the Willows, and Fall in the Willows .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Guardian: The best British novel of all times - have international critics found it? , accessed on January 2, 2016
  2. ↑ Best seller list: The best-selling books of all time, position 33. Retrieved on September 18, 2018.
  3. ↑ Paul Goldsack: River Thames . In the footsteps of the famous. Bradt, Bucks 2003, ISBN 1-84162-044-0 .
  4. ↑ https://www.staatstheater-kassel.de/musiktheater/premieren-2021/ (accessed on June 7, 2020)
  5. ↑ Kenneth Grahame, Heinz Stalder: De Wind i de Wide Swiss Institute for Children's and Youth Media, accessed on September 18, 2018.
  6. ↑ Heartbreak behind Wind in the Willows: Author was failure as a father. By Tamara Cohen for the “Daily Mail” online November 25, 2010

Web links

Commons : The Wind in the Willows  - collection of images, videos and audio files