The field preacher Schmelzle's trip to Flätz

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Jean Paul around 1797
* 1763 † 1825

Schmelzle's journey to Flätz is a satire by Jean Paul that was published by Cotta in Stuttgart in February 1808 .

shape

The “circular letter from the presumed catechetical professor Attila Schmelzle to his friends” is framed with the author's preface from June 1807 and the “confession of the devil to a great state servant”. The censors refused to print that confession in 1807. Jean Paul did not experience a reprint of the small work. The cause of the writing failure could u. a. be the arbitrarily placed footnotes. In addition, with the best will in the world, the reader cannot see any connection between Schmelzle's journey and confession, this “innocent calendar appendix”.

The first-person narrator Schmelzle from Neusattel meets on his trip to Flätz - how could it be otherwise - a red-coated stowaway named Jean Paul in the stagecoach. This Emigré or Refugié, however, remains an insignificant secondary character (who does not interfere).

Jean Paul Richter, who in the preface only claims to be the editor of the “voluntary or involuntary piece of pleasure”, describes it as “merely [as] a portrait, a character piece”.

content

Schmelzle presents a - apparently obvious - fact as a rumor: The military chaplain Schmelzle "ran away from important battles". His last affair in this regard was with Pimpelstadt. This regrettable fact was of course not hidden from his highest military superior, the great Minister and General Schabacker in Flätz. Nevertheless, Schmelzle undauntedly travels to the general to submit a petition to the military. The deserter wants to become a professor of catechetics. Schmelzle is driven by his wife Teutoberga, daughter of a wealthy tenant. Bergelchen, as Schmelzle calls his dear wife, would like to make her “low birth” forget, would like to “introduce something and outdo some dignitaries”.

Schmelzle enters the general's anteroom. Schabacker's answer to the petition is regrettably: Schmelzle should go back to hell, as he did with Pimpelstadt.

That can't annoy the survivor Schmelzle in the least. After all, he is better paid with the wealth of his good wife than with ten catechetical professorships.

“So you didn't get anything like that?” The Bergelchen is disappointed and thinks of the “grandiose noble women” in Neusattel, in front of whom she will turn blood red with shame in the church.

Schmelzle wants to remedy the situation. Perhaps Bergelchen will become a counselor for the mountain, building, court, war, chamber, commerce, legation, executioner or devil.

Self-testimony

The Schmelzle is, the comic expert on Jean Paul's most carefully crafted work, "without the slightest debauchery and self-interference".

reception

  • Schmelzle, a “fearful rabbit”, told “with heroic pose” of his “cowardice before the enemy in Napoleonic times”.
  • Jean Paul “caricatures fear, caution and displeasure” in this “psychology of failure, trembling, tremors and arguments”.
  • A ray of hope in this story about a wretched coward is the love of “the courageous Teutoberga”.
  • Ueding attributes Schmelzle, this “master of comic excuses”, in his “always conciliatory amiability” to the “worm” that crawled out of the earth before the “tremendous earthquake of the revolution”.

literature

source
  • Norbert Miller (ed.): Jean Paul: Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle's trip to Flätz with leaving notes; along with the devil's confession to a statesman. in: Jean Paul: Complete Works. Section I. Sixth Volume. Pp. 7-76. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt. License edition 2000 (© Carl Hanser Munich Vienna 1962 (4th, corr. Edition 1987), ISBN 978-3-446-10757-1 ). 1389 pages. With notes in the appendix (pp. 1239–1246) and an afterword by Walter Höllerer (pp. 1329–1370), order number 14965-3
expenditure
  • Jean Paul: The field preacher Schmelzle's trip to Flätz with leaving notes. Rowohlt Leipzig 1912. 119 pages. With 8 etchings by Karl Thylmann . Half leather with gold plating on the back.
  • Jean Paul: The field preacher Schmelzle's trip to Flätz. With leaving notes; along with the devil's confession to a statesman . With an afterword by Kurt Schreinert. Philipp Reclam 1963, 88 pages
  • Jean Paul: The field preacher Schmelzle's trip to Flätz . Insel Frankfurt 1980. 98 pages, ISBN 3-458-32205-1 .
  • Jean Paul: The field preacher Schmelzle's trip to Flätz , with illustrations by Stephan Klenner-Otto . Insel Verlag, Berlin 2013 ( Insel-Bücherei 1375), ISBN 978-3-458-19375-3 .
Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

References to a citation are sometimes noted as (page, line from above).

  1. ↑ Source (1239,10)
  2. ↑ Source (1239.20)
  3. ↑ Source (1239.17)
  4. ↑ Source (1239,24)
  5. ↑ Source (1239,14)
  6. ↑ Source (11.33)
  7. ↑ Source (24.27)
  8. ↑ Source (9.19)
  9. ↑ after Höllerer in der Quelle, p. 1358, 2nd Zvu to p. 1359, 2nd Zvo
  10. ↑ de Bruyn (309: 13-21)
  11. ↑ Ortheil (115: 16-44)
  12. ↑ Schulz (357.4)
  13. ↑ Ueding (172.23) to (173.18)