The Chronicle of Sperlingsgasse

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Chronicle of Sperlingsgasse ( 1856 ) is a novel by Wilhelm Raabe .

overview

Raabe begins the work on November 15, 1854 and completes it around August 10, 1855. At that time he lived in the center of Berlin in what was then Spreestrasse, from where he also wrote the novel and that of the now defunct Sperlingsgasse des Romans served as a model - accordingly, it was actually renamed Sperlingsgasse in 1931 . It is Raabe's first novel, which he published under the pseudonym "Jacob Corvinus". The chronicle itself takes place almost at the same time as it was written, it begins in November 1854 and extends over half a year. It is divided into 21 diary-like entries.

content

The fictional author and narrator of the chronicle is the old Johannes Wacholder , who uses a period of time that extends from winter to spring, his own story like that of the people on that street - Berliner Sperlingsgasse - in which he too is renting a house lives to write down:

“I'm old and tired. It is the time when memory takes the place of hope. "(12)

As a result arises as a quite heterogeneous, partly nested, partly achronologisch orderly chronicle , in the no uniformity, but from inner necessity on the film of the 1850s, out of the gloom everyday suffering and misery to an ultimately happiness and idyll co-determined lanes paintings developed that is capable of warming the author in old age, if not justified. The love story at the center of the chronicle shows that this 'necessity' extends beyond remembering the old as the last source of life .

It is love that the author and his old child friend Franz Ralff harbored for Marie and that the juniper (melancholy tinged) also maintains when friend Franz had long since prevailed, Franz and Marie had long since become a couple and the connection resulted in a daughter named Elise had emerged. After the early death of Marie, which was quickly followed by that of her father, the friend, as "uncle" Wacholder, became the guardian and tutor of the orphaned daughter. Before his death, the painter Franz Ralff had completed the portrait of his wife and, for the sake of the child, also initiated the friend into the family tragedy that once happened to his mother Luise and was given to him as an obligation: As a young girl, the mother was in the absence of the Brother has been desecrated by a count Seeburg. The result was Franz, whom the mother's brother, Andreas, then raised after the mother's grief - meanwhile the disgraceful count had disappeared. (39ff.).

The story finds a parallel when "Uncle" Wacholder and Mündel Elise meet a woman at Maria's grave (67), Helene Berg, who reveals herself not only as a neighbor in Sperlingsgasse, but also as the impoverished daughter of Count Seeburg (100ff .). From her marriage to the late Doctor Berg, she has a son Gustav, who is to become Elish's husband at the end of the chronicle (161ff.) - with which the demand for Franz's uncle Andreas' last words - "... look for him" - without research is fulfilled.

For Franz Ralff, the demand that cannot be fulfilled even in death to "bury your full heart and seek - to forget!" (73) is resolved in the memory that runs counter to forgetting and brought into a historical context through loyalty to the "fatherland" (cf. 142f.). The image (158), which was based on migration and change of rule among peoples, culminates not in the grand draft of the story, but in the individual fate of the family of the shoemaker Burger, from whom "... a whole passion story could be read from his face" (159) and now Driven hunger and misery into emigration and gave the term "fatherland" a completely different taste: a country that becomes "motherland", home as a longing felt from afar, which arises from the need, the need and lack of care of the Had expelled authorities from this very country.

At the end of the chronicle, which still addresses some of the misery and need, war and death, it seems “What was dead becomes alive; what was a curse becomes a blessing "to apply as present factuality for Gustav and Elise," the sin of the fathers is not haunted in the children ... "(100). But the message remains addressed to everyone as hope and also as Franz Ralffsche's non-obligation.

style

The narrator in the Chronicle of Sperlingsgasse is himself involved in the action as a character. The chronicle consists of many retrospectives, stories from third parties, letters and memories. Through this "mixing of time" as well as digressions and inserted episodes, which are not always arranged chronologically, a complex narrative structure emerges, which already foreshadows Raabe's later major works such as Stopfkuchen . The language in the chronicle seems idiosyncratic and sometimes a bit tricky.

( Quoted from: Wilhelm Raabe, Works in Two Volumes , ed. by Karl Hoppe, Volume 1: Erzählungen , Zürich undated )

expenditure

  • Wilhelm Raabe: The Chronicle of the Sperlingsgasse. Stage, Berlin 1857 ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive ).
  • Scientific edition: Wilhelm Raabe: The Chronicle of the Sperlingsgasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965 (= Complete Works, Vol. 1). [So-called. "Braunschweig Edition"]
  • Reading edition: Wilhelm Raabe: The Chronicle of the Sperlingsgasse. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1995. ISBN 3-548-23759-2
  • Audiobook edition: Wilhelm Raabe: The Chronicle of the Sperlingsgasse. Audio book productions, Marburg / Lahn. ISBN 3-89614-110-4

literature

  • Andreas Blödorn: The Chronicle of the Sperlingsgasse. In: Dirk Göttsche / Florian Krobb / Rolf Parr (eds.): Raabe manual. Life - work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, pp. 56–62.
  • Dirk Göttsche: Time reflection and time criticism in the work of Wilhelm Raabe. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Raabe: The Chronicle of the Sperlingsgasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1965. Comment p. 428
  2. ↑ Ulrike Koller: Afterword, in: Wilhelm Raabe, Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse . Reclam, Stuttgart, p. 209 .
  3. ^ Hermann Helmers: Wilhelm Raabe . Stuttgart 1968, p. 72 .