The Brothers (from Saar)

The Brothers is a frame story by Ferdinand von Saar published in 1900 .

content

The frame narrator rests on a walk on the bench near a tenant house and starts a conversation with the farmer. He now tells him his tragic life story.

As the son of a farmer and wax trader, even as a boy he was constantly suffering from the mother's favoring his younger brother. The good-natured father is of no help to him. Franz Xaver, the brother, is sent to secondary school, where he does not come. He joins the military. On vacation, he impregnates his brother's mistress, who is supposed to marry her afterwards. In a house fire, however, the girl dies. The extravagance of the officer who has now advanced to ruin the whole family. The brother ends up in prison for embezzlement, but escapes and remains missing.

After the father, the mother now also dies. The young farmer is now moving with his Johanna to a farm in Moravia, where he is slowly working his way up. Suddenly the brother appears. He insolently demands his admission. But the tenant asks him to disappear, otherwise he wants to report him. Franz Xaver gets angry and shoots his brother with a pistol. He misses him, but the bullet hits the door and kills the young woman standing behind it. Franz Xaver is now being sent to prison, but one day he will be free again and the tenant is afraid of that.

expenditure

• Ferdinand von Saar: Novellas from Austria, Volume 5 . Max Hesse Verlag, Leipzig 1908 (reprint of the Heidelberg 1877 edition)