The last summer (Ricarda Huch)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The last summer is a story in letters from Ricarda Huch , which was published in 1910 by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt in Stuttgart and Leipzig.

A chapter of Russian anarchism is played out . Staitscheva places this chapter in the events of the Russian Revolution in 1905 and describes the text as Ricarda Huch's death sentence on Russian tsarism as a social class .

overview

Governor Yegor von Rasimkara is on summer vacation with his wife Lusinja and the three grown children on his Kremskoye estate near Petersburg . Before the start of the trial of the revolting students - with the imprisoned rebel Demodov at the head - the often uncontrolled but fearless and imperturbable governor does not want to be seen in nearby Petersburg. Lusinja von Rasimkara's fear of the rebellious students is not out of thin air. The husband who closed the university received a threatening letter.

At Lusinja's urging, Yegor von Rasimkara hires the 28-year-old academic Lju as his secretary. In truth, the young man is supposed to protect the governor on the estate from the threatened bomb attack. Nothing will come of the protection. On the contrary - the anarchist Lju transports the noble couple to the afterlife with an explosive charge.

Before that, Lju had snuck into the couple's bedroom and put a second threatening letter under the woman's pillow. This letter, on which Lusinja had slept all night, had struck her as a death sentence the following morning. Only - the execution date was missing. The sensitive Lusinja is no match for the unscrupulous intellectual Lju. When she realizes that the second threatening letter is in Lju's handwriting, she shares the knowledge with the scribe in private. The killer is never embarrassed. He also circumnavigates this cliff without the slightest collision; lightly dispels Lusinja’s concerns.

content

The letters, written by the three protagonists named above and the couple's children, mostly at the scene of the action in Kremskoye to addresses in Petersburg, are dated from May 5th to August 2nd - the day the couple died. Most of the three women write to Tatjana, the governor's sister and her son Peter. Velia, the son of the house, often writes to Peter too. The governor is lazy to write because his right arm is disabled. In one of his few letters he politely but firmly refuses Demodov's mother's petition for clemency: the student Demodow will probably be executed.

Lju wrote quite a few letters to his like-minded fellow Constantine in Petersburg. The reader is therefore very well informed about the murder intention.

On the eve of August 2, the assassin leaves for Petersburg. Before he left, he did a great job: the children, whose trust he had stolen, left for Petersburg or Paris at the suggestion he had carefully put forward . The governor's typewriter was "repaired" in Petersburg under the direction of the anarchist Konstantin. When the governor tries out the machine, writes a brief letter to his two children traveling to Paris and while Lusinja bends over her husband lovingly while reading, the explosive charge is detonated when Yegor types the capital letter of his first name.

shape

Brekle emphasizes the psychologically differentiated reflection of the Kremskoj events. A few comments on this.

Lju has fallen out with his father, but that is something of a minor offense. Otherwise, the slim, clean-shaven, reserved man of the English type with the really outstanding intellect has the best references. He wants to rule the family members. He can't do that with the governor. Nevertheless, Lju threads the assassination perfectly. “A kind of nerve pain in the right arm” of the landlord is the starting point: Lju persuades the governor that a typewriter is needed.

If the victims are looked at from a psychological point of view, one thing is certain: the governor has no idea whatsoever and “has no fear at all”. His wife Lusinja expresses herself much more sensitively: Lju, whose “enigmatic look” is uncanny for her, who has “something strange and unfathomable” about him, “could be possessed by a strange, demonic will.” On the one hand, he is very interested in everyone individual family member and, on the other hand, reveal almost nothing about himself. And if he is hiding something, then it cannot be mean. Lusinja is wrong here. Lju not only wants to murder the governor, but - for his safety - also his wife.

Velya, a little younger than the assassin, recognizes that Lju is a revolutionary , but still lets himself be sent to Paris. Because he says, wherever the superior Lju appears, there can be no catastrophe.

Katja, one of the two daughters of the house, writes clairvoyantly to her brother Velya to tell him to be careful at home in Kremskoye. If she only thinks of Ljus “icy eyes”, she trusts the stranger to have her beloved papa killed. Welja thinks that is impossible. Pure theorists like Lju usually did not act. Katja sticks to her clear aversion to the stranger. She writes to her father to please send his secretary away. She can't stand him.

Quote

Lju, the connoisseur of people: “... only God can change a person; or not even God! "

reception

  • Brekle briefly reviews the text.
  • Staitscheva emphasizes Ricarda Huch's " romantic " interest in revolutionaries and calls Secretary Lju a petty-bourgeois revolutionary.

Adaptations

radio play

Feature films

Book editions

First edition

  • Ricarda Huch: The last summer. A story in letters. German publishing house Stuttgart and Leipzig 1910

Further editions

  • Ricarda Huch: The last summer. A story. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1920. Insel-Bücherei No. 172
  • Ricarda Huch: The Gold Island and other stories. Selected and provided with an afterword by Wolfgang Brekle (contains: The Gold Island . The Huguenot . Devils . Patatini . Fra Celeste . The end of the world . The Jewish grave . The last summer ). Union Verlag, Berlin 1972 (Licensor: Atlantis Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau and Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main), 376 pages (edition used)

literature

  • Marie Baum : Shining lead. The life of Ricarda Huch. 520 pages. Rainer Wunderlich Verlag Hermann Leins , Tübingen and Stuttgart 1950 (6th – 11th thousand)
  • Helene Baumgarten: Ricarda Huch. About her life and work . 236 pages. Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1964
  • Emilia Staitscheva: The image of Russia in Ricarda Huch's poetic work . P. 83–114 in Hans-Werner Peter (ed.), Silke Köstler (ed.): Ricarda Huch (1864-1947). Studies of their life and work. Anniversary ribbon for the 50th anniversary of her death on the occasion of the international Ricarda Huch research symposium from 15.-17. November 1997 in Braunschweig. 185 pages. PP-Verlag GmbH, Braunschweig 1997, ISBN 3-88712-050-7

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ Follow-up editions published in 1931, 1933 and 1950 (Insel-Bücherei Sammlung Dr. Steiner ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this notice. ). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.insel-buecherei.eu

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baumgarten, p. 230, penultimate entry and Baum, p. 518, 12th entry
  2. ↑ Staitscheva, p. 95, 4th Zvu and p. 98, 14th Zvo
  3. ↑ Staitscheva, p. 97, 6th Zvu
  4. ↑ Brekle, p. 371, 4. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 326, 6. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 313, 13. Zvu
  7. ↑ Brekle in the afterword of the edition used, p. 370, 5th Zvu
  8. ↑ Staitscheva, pp. 95-101
  9. ↑ Deutschlandfunk on February 21, 2004
  10. ↑ The film in the IMDb
  11. ↑ PP as in practical philosophy