The ancestors

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Die Ahnen is a historical cycle of novels by Gustav Freytag , published in six volumes from 1872 to 1880 by Verlag Salomon Hirzel in Leipzig , which extends from the Migration Period to the present and thus spans 1500 years. The individual novels tell the story of an initially aristocratic and later bourgeois family, whose royal ancestry is reflected in the unconsciously traditional family name of König, in eight time segments that are repeatedly linked to one another in terms of motifs.

Like Felix Dahn's Ein Kampf um Rom and Victor von Scheffel's Ekkehard , The Ancestors belong to the genre of the so-called professorial novel, which is determined by historical and topographical fidelity and aims to convey historical knowledge to a broader public. Freytag, who received his doctorate in 1838 with a dissertation “On the beginnings of dramatic poetry among the Teutons” at the University of Breslau and then taught here as a private lecturer , undertook to create a picture of history “from below”, as it were, in the less prominent Connect individuals as actors in historical events with the great personalities of the time. “In contrast to F. Dahn and other Wilhelminian authors, the continuity of national unity in the ancestors is not based on the spectacular deeds of individual great historical personalities, but on the everyday, inconspicuous achievements of a collective. Freytag rejected the exaggerated personality cult of his epoch, just as he maintained a certain reserve with Bismarck throughout his life. The remarkable success of the ancestors (up to 1900 there were 27 editions with around 70,000 copies) is related to the synthesis of a liberal conception of history and the then popular biological evolution theory of Darwin . ”In contrast, the (self) critical assessment is in Freytags Self-published literary history by Eduard Engel surprisingly, according to which the series of novels "Despite some beauties in detail ... has only achieved a respectable success" and "no longer belongs to the living literary possession", "if it ever belonged to it" by "a full revival of the past as in Scheffel's Ekkehard Freytag failed ”.

The ancestors , Volume 3
(first edition 1874)
The Ancestors , Volume 3, 1874

Emergence

The immediate impetus for the creation of the work was Freytag's participation as a war correspondent in the Franco-German War 1870–71. In line with this experience, episodes of armed conflicts dominate the work. “The powerful impressions of those weeks continued to work in the soul; Even while I was walking along the highways of France in the throng of men, horses and wagons, I kept thinking of the incursions of our Germanic ancestors into Roman Gaul, I saw them swimming over the rivers on rafts and wooden shields, and heard the hurray of my countrymen from the fifth and eleventh corps the hara shout of the old Franks and Alemanni, I compared the German way with the foreign one, and reflected how the German warlords and their armies have changed in the course of the centuries up to the national arrangement of our warfare, the largest and the most most peculiar formation of the modern state. - From such dreams and from a certain historical style, which my invention had come from the experiences of 1870, the idea for the novel The Ancestors gradually arose . ”The date of creation at the time of the establishment of the empire of 1871 is also expressed in the idea of ​​the German nation building , which runs through the individual parts of the work as a leitmotif.

action

Ingo and Ingraban

In the first part of Ingo and Ingraban , the Vandal King Ingo, expelled from his homeland east of the Oder, took part on the side of the Alemanni in the Battle of Strasbourg in 357 against the Roman Emperor Julian . On the subsequent escape he arrives in Thuringia , where he meets the princess Irmgard and - after being kidnapped - marries. Together with Thuringian settlers, he founds a settlement on the "Bach of the (Germanic goddess of fate) Idis" called Itz near the later Veste Coburg (named here as Idisburg) . The refusal to submit to Thuringia's claim to rule leads to the catastrophe and the death of Ingo and Irmgard when their castle is destroyed. Her one year old son is rescued from the burning castle by the servant Frieda.

The second part of the story begins in 724 during the Frankish missionary work in Thuringia and the founding of the Ohrdruf monastery on the Ohra by Bonifatius . The argument with the resident Sorbs , whose main castle is located in Ebersdorf , plays a role . Ingraban / Ingram, a descendant of Ingo, succeeds in freeing his bride Walburg from being held hostage in Sorbs. After he, too, had converted to the Christian faith, thirty years later he finally followed Boniface in 754/755 on his mission to the Frisians , where he found death with him.

The wrens' nest

"In the nest of the wrens , the main part of the mansion around the Drei Gleichen lies , foothills of the Thuringian Forest up to the vicinity of Erfurt , in a region where the village names that end in 'live' 'predominate." The headquarters of the family, the now bears the derisive nickname “Reguli”, “little kings” or “wrens”, is identified with Ingersleben (here called “Ingramsleben”) near Erfurt.

The story begins in 1003 at the height of the consolidation struggles of Emperor Henry II in the Hersfeld Abbey , whose convent and abbot themselves are at odds over the question of succession. Immo, destined for church service and receiving his school education here, managed to escape from the convent in order to take part in the dispute on the imperial side in the period that followed. In the Schweinfurt feud between Emperor Heinrich and Hezilo, the margrave Heinrich von Schweinfurt , Immo proved himself at the siege of Sulzbach Castle , where he freed his lover, the Hessian count's daughter Hildegard. Since this was intended for entry into a monastery, its abduction followed the Mühlburg near Erfurt, which is mentioned here in the family's possession . After Immos was subsequently condemned by the emperor and the castle was taken, he was pardoned and reinstated in possession of the castle.

The brothers from the German house

The story The Brothers of the German House begins in 1226 under the Thuringian Landgrave Ludwig IV , “the Holy”, and his wife, called “Frau Else”, St. Elisabeth . The main character of the story is Ivo, who lives in Ingersleben, who has devoted himself to love of love , tournaments and minnesong , while his uncle, Count Meginhard, lives as a robber baron on Mühlburg , which at the same time contrasts ideal and reality of feudalism . On a “Mairitt” to the tournament in Erfurt, which brought him knightly honor and economic damage at the same time, he met the knights of the Teutonic Order for the first time , whose Christian willingness to sacrifice impressed him. By Hermann von Salza , it can be in the crusade of Frederick II. To Jerusalem recruit. In Akkon , the seat of the Teutonic Order, he became the personal confidante of Emperor Frederick II , on whose behalf he carried out a diplomatic mission and was taken prisoner by the Ismaili assassins . Freed from his servants, he is brought home by Friderun, the daughter of the judge of the village of Friemar near Gotha, to find out that his property has been embezzled during his absence. When both are trapped in the persecution of the proto-reformatory Cathars under Konrad von Marburg in Hof Ingersleben, Ivo and Friderun sign up for the Teutonic Order. Together with Landmeister Hermann von Balk , they took part in the founding of the city of Thorn in 1231 as part of the eastern colonization in the Kulmerland .

Marcus King

The story of Marcus König begins in Thorn in 1519, where the eponymous hero is established as a respected patrician and member of the Arthurian court . After the city had broken away from the rule of the Teutonic Order around 1454 and submitted to the Polish king, the Polish attempt to integrate the remaining order state also led to a military conflict between King Sigismund I and Grand Master Albrecht von Brandenburg-Ansbach , which with the Armistice of Thorn in 1521 and - after the introduction of the Reformation - ended in the Treaty of Krakow in 1525 with the recognition of Albrecht as secular Duke in Prussia . Marcus König, who had supported the Grand Master with his fortune to regain the rule of the Teutonic Order over Thorn, turns away disappointed and leaves the city.

At the same time, the author follows the love story of the young Georg König, named in a humanistic way after the heroic Roman consul Regulus , with the Magister's daughter Anna Fabritius , who comes from Saxony . In the turmoil caused by the burning of Protestant books at St. John's Church , Georg stands up for her father, but is able to escape from prison while the master's family is expelled from the city. Together they come into the power of a Landsknechtshaufens in the service of the German Order , whose ensign Georg is forced to. The marriage with Anna, who was named after the city founder of Rome, Romulus , was finally sanctioned by Martin Luther . Marcus König, reconciled by Luther, finally dies at the Coburg Fortress.

The impoverished knight Henner Ingersleben, who was in the service of the Order, a descendant of the unfree servant of the family who appeared in the previous story, who now claims in return that their ancestors were once servants, is described as an example of social mobility and the shift in values been to his family court.

The siblings

The fifth story, Die Geschwister, is again divided into two parts and deals with the story of two military people from the family. The first, "Der Rittmeister von Alt-Rosen", begins in 1647 towards the end of the Thirty Years' War . The main characters are Bernhard König, who serves as Rittmeister in the Saxon-Weimar regiment of General Rosen , and his sister Regine, who is with him in the train. Instead of negotiating with the warring parties France and Sweden, the regiment decides - after elimination of the previous officer corps - to commit to Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg , who, however, refuses the offer, whereupon the regiment turns to the in subordinate to the Swedish service counts of Königsmarck . In a village on the Thuringian Rennsteig , Judith Möring's siblings are brought to safety from an attack by marauding mercenaries. While Regine is transferred to the ducal court for supposed prophetic abilities, Judith is suspected of witchcraft and finds herself exposed to the witch hunt, but is freed by Bernhard in a nightly attack. Both spent the last year of the war peacefully in a patrician castle near Nuremberg , where their son Bernhard Georg was born. Finally they take part in the Swedish siege of Prague (1648) , after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia , they move from here to the inherited estate of Judith in Silesia , where they are shot by a rival while entering. The rescued child is raised by Bernhard's sister Regina, who is married to a pastor near Gotha.

In "The Freikorporal bei Markgraf-Albrecht" is the son Bernhard Georg König, who had spent his military service as field preacher under Field Marshal Lottum in the army of the English King William of Orange in the Dutch-French War (1672–1678) and at the siege von Namur (1695) had participated in the Brandenburg contingent under General Friedrich von Heiden , married to a wealthy Leipzig merchant's daughter and settled as a manager of an estate in Lusatia . Their two sons, Friedrich and August, are earmarked for spiritual careers and military service, depending on their different characters. While Friedrich was studying at the University of Leipzig , August joined the Prussian infantry regiment Margrave Albrecht , where he was made a free corporal , but had to experience the rigor of Prussian discipline. In the meantime, Dorothea von Borsdorf, with whom both brothers are equally in love, stays with relatives in Thorn, where she witnessed the Thorner Blood Court and the ethnic conflicts between Germans and Poles in 1724 . Friedrich, who is supposed to bring her home from Thorn, is forced into Prussian military service by a recruiter from Prince Leopold von Anhalt-Dessau , but dismissed by Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia with the obligation to stand by as a substitute for his brother August. When the latter changes to the Saxon service as a lieutenant because of the tensions between the Prussian king and August the Strong , the expected scandal occurs, whereupon his brother Friedrich makes himself available to the king. Dorothea's intervention, who decided in favor of Friedrich, brings his appointment as field preacher in the Margrave Albrecht regiment. Brother Albrecht fell as a Saxon captain in the battle of Kesselsdorf in 1744 , while Friedrich and Dorothea were living in a rectory in the Brandenburg region at that time.

From a small town

“In the last story from a small town ”, Freytag testifies to himself, “impressions that came to the Silesian in his youth are used carelessly and abundantly. In the lonely parsonage with its old wooden church, which stands next to a pagan ring wall, you can find the village of Wüstebriese near Ohlau , in which my mother's father was a pastor. "The place of the action is described as" ... a sizable district town in the lowlands of the Silesian Oder, in the middle a wide market square, the ring, on it the town hall. Four main streets ran from the corners of the market to the two gates. ... The whole thing was surrounded by a wall, over which the gate towers still towered; everything is pretty regular, as if set up from a kit by clever giant boys. ”The story begins in 1805 and spans the time of Napoleon's conquests and the subsequent wars of liberation .

The main character is the doctor Ernst König, a grandson of the military chaplain and pastor Friedrich König. In a neighboring parish village, which has been desolate since the Thirty Years' War and is identical to the parish village of Judith, he gets to know the pastor and his daughter Henriette, and the "ring wall of the vandals", which is located next to the village, also refers to the legendary origin of the family which the hero of the story unconsciously comes across here. The Prussian mobilization and the battle of Jena fall into the idyll , as a result of which the place is occupied by the French officer Dessalle, who for her protection, but without her consent, becomes engaged to Henriette. Ernst König joined the Silesian Resistance as a military doctor in the County of Glatz under the Governor General of the Province of Silesia , Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Götzen , who managed to hold the town and fortress of Glatz until the peace of Tilsit and thus save Prussia. When Henriette returns, he is warned of his imminent arrest and flees across the border to Bohemia, where he joins the Duke of Braunschweig's troops. Napoleon's Russian campaign affects the region, with the fleeing emperor sarcastically reading the book Dr. Katzenberger's bathing trip is presented by Jean Paul . In his entourage there is also, wounded, Dessalle, who has meanwhile advanced to colonel, who is looked after by Ernst König and who, after convalescence, allows himself to be transferred to the rectory. That of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. In 1813 in Breslau the call to my people to form a militia was also followed by König. There is a clash between König and Dessalle, who renounces Henriette.

End of the ancestors

The end of the ancestors is represented in a separate chapter . "The main thing for me in the small plot of the end was to present the poetic idea that connects the individual stories again and to use the same place where the catastrophe of the first story took place, to close the whole thing. ”This time it is Viktor König and his sister Katharina who are at the center of the story. During his studies at the University of Breslau, Viktor, who belongs to one of the fraternities that emerged from the Wars of Liberation , the "Vandals", comes into conflict with the senior of the "Thuringia", Richard Henner von Ingersleben, the son of a previously mentioned retired Major Henner. The conflict is carried out in a duel , which results in the relegation of both opponents. Freytag, who was himself a member of the Borussia Breslau student union , processed autobiographical traits clearly enough in this section. Viktor König concludes his studies at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin with an art-scientific dissertation on Aristotle , which is immediately followed by an appointment to a professorship. When he visits home, he is told that his sister Katharina is engaged to Henner. It was only during the March Revolution in Berlin in 1848 that Henner, who was now working as a journalist, and Viktor, who was wounded in the barricade fight, were reconciled. After the introduction of the freedom of the press , after Viktor also gave up his academic career, both decided to found their own magazine. By marrying Valerie, the daughter of Chamberlain von Bellerwitz, he also proves the end of the class division that has permeated the book as a theme. A last section, already at the time of the Danish War of 1864, and thus immediately before the founding of the Empire in 1871, leads in the archive of the Coburg Fortress - there Ingo's first story had its dramatic end - to the discovery of the Luther Bible with the dedication to Marcus König and the revelation that the French Colonel Dessalle is a member of the royal family, in order to at the same time span the span of one and a half millennia back to the starting point.

effect

"While literary criticism largely distanced itself from this 'cultural history in the form of a novel' (this is how Fontane referred to " The Ancestors "as a" product of decadence in the era of Wilhelminism "), the response from readers was enormous".

Works based on Freytag's novel cycle Die Anhnen

The first part of the ancestors , Ingo , who has the greatest dramatic density of all the stories and in many ways reminds of Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen , experienced several stage adaptations as opera or drama after Freytag's death:

  • Ingo . Great opera in 4 acts. Text based on the novel of the same name by Gustav Freytag. Music by Philipp Bartholomé Rüfer (op. 35). Piano reduction by Max Reger . Music printing. Thelen, Berlin 1895.
  • Ingo . Opera in two parts (4 acts) based on Gustav Freytag's novel. Edited and set to music by Bernhard Scholz . Complete text of the opera. Self-published. German cooperative of dramatic authors and composers, Leipzig (approx. 1898).
  • Ingo . Dramatic moral image from the German past. Adapted from Gustav Freytag's novel of the same name by Max Ringer . Publishing house for new literature and art. Vienna - Leipzig 1904.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dietmar Goltschnigg: pre-industrial realism and literature of the period . In: Viktor Žmegač (ed.): History of German literature from the 18th century to the present . Volume II / 1. Beltz, Athenäum, Königstein 1996, p. 68.
  2. ↑ Eduard Engel : History of German literature in the nineteenth century and the present . 5th edition, G. Freytag, Leipzig 1913, p. 228.
  3. ↑ Gustav Freytag: Memories from my life . Hirzel, Leipzig 1887, pp. 658f.
  4. ↑ Gustav Freytag: Memories from my life . Hirzel, Leipzig 1887, p. 666.
  5. ↑ Gustav Freytag: Memories from my life . Hirzel, Leipzig 1887, p. 671.
  6. ↑ Gustav Freytag: Memories from my life . Hirzel, Leipzig 1887, p. 673.
  7. ↑ Manfred Orlick: On the 200th birthday of Gustav Freytag. In: literary criticism 2016 [1]