The woman with the carbuncle stones

A page from the publication in the gazebo .

The woman with the carbuncle stones is a novel (family drama, horror novel, romance novel) that E. Marlitt published in 1885 as a serial novel in the " Gartenlaube ". The illustrations are by Carl Zopf . The first book edition followed in the same year in the Leipziger Gartenlauben-Verlag Ernst Keil .

The novel tells the story of the young Margarete Lamprecht, who after the death of her father discovers and reveals a secret about his father: after the death of the first wife, he had another marriage, hidden from the world.

action

The action takes place in an unmarked city on the edge of the Thuringian Forest .

Chapters 1-6. The Lamprechts merchant family is so wealthy and respected that they are called the “Thuringian Fuggers”. The ancestor Justus Lamprecht had to swear to his wife Judith on her deathbed not to remarry. Justus, however, was not made for widowhood and had married again, his ward Dorothea, whom he had immortalized in a portrait with ruby stars in her hair. The fact that the beautiful Dore died a little later, in 1795, in childbed, was interpreted as the revenge of the betrayed dead Judith, and some have seen the "woman with the carbuncle stones" since then as a ghost haunted a wing of the family estate that is no longer inhabited.

Almost a century later, Balduin Lamprecht, Justus' great-grandson, runs the family business, now a porcelain factory. Balduin is a widower with two young children: the feeble Reinhold and the somewhat older Margarete, who is known as the "Wild Bumblebee" because of her by no means ladylike self-will and temperament. A relative, Aunt Sophie, Baldwin runs the household and replaces the mother of the children. The household also includes the “Amtsrats”: Balduin's father-in-law and his second wife, who brought their son, Herbert, a high school student, into the marriage. Herbert and Margarete have a neck-and-neck relationship; Margarete in particular can not meet Herbert, who is de iure her uncle, without making a certain mockery of him.

Balduin Lamprecht - just like his ancestor Justus - had to give his wife Fanny, who died early, the fatal promise to remain unmarried. Like Justus, Baldwin had fallen in love again, namely with Blanka Lenz. The "Amtsratin" had thwarted this relationship and referred to the sad fate of the woman with the carbuncle stones. In fact, however, Blanka, the daughter of an impoverished painter, is just not posh enough for her as a new relative. The councilor is a regular at court and is a thoroughly superficial and arrogant person. She ensures that Blanka is sent away, but cannot prevent Balduin Blanka's parents from leaving an apartment in the adjoining packing house and from Margarete becoming close friends with the family.

When Margarete, like many of the servants before, sees the woman with the carbuncle in the unoccupied side wing of the house and does not allow herself to be talked out of this observation, she is sent to a boarding school for upbringing.

Chapters 7-14. Ten years later. Margarete, now a young woman, visits her parents' house. After her time in boarding school, she was accompanied on archaeological journeys by a relative, a professor and historian. Herbert has become an administrative officer and district administrator. He brings Heloise von Taubeneck to the house, the beautiful but not too clever niece of the Duke. The councilor turns over with enthusiasm at the prospect that her son could make such an interesting game. There is also a distinguished applicant for Margarete, Herr von Billingen-Wackewitz; Margarete rejects his letter of marriage proposal.

Chapters 15-20. Baldwin dies unexpectedly of a stroke. A new person, with whom Balduin had evidently been in a close relationship, is Max, the angelic little grandson of the Lenz couple, who is gifted with a wonderful singing voice and who now also live in the packing house; Blanka is apparently missing, what relationship she has with Max is completely unclear. While Reinhold tries to keep the strange child away, Herbert tentatively allows him to say goodbye to the deceased. This lack of prejudice makes an impression on Margarete, and for the first time the two get closer.

Chapters 21-27. After Baldwin's death, Reinhold takes over the company and soon leads it with business acumen and merciless toughness. All those affected hope that Baldwin's will will bring a surprise and that Reinhold will somehow be disempowered. The will then turns out to be completely uninteresting and merely confirms Reinhold as heir. Father Lenz, who had been hoping for a revealing will, now takes Herbert into confidence: Baldwin had loved Blanka and married in London. After the birth of their son, Max, she died. Max was raised first in London, then in Paris, until Baldwin finally brought him to the packing house. Later Margarete will also discover that her father had met Blanka again and again before London in the side wing of the house, which is connected to the attic of the warehouse by a secret door - hence the "ghostly apparitions" in the windows of the side wing.

Reinhold, who sees his inheritance threatened, considers Lenz's revelation to be a lie, especially since the latter cannot offer any proof. Herbert suggests examining the side wing of the Lamprecht house more closely. In the secret compartment of a desk, he and Margarete not only find a portrait of Blanka in ruby ​​jewelry, but also documents that unequivocally prove Balduin's marriage to Blanka and his fatherhood to Max.

Chapters 28-29. Margarete, who has been more and more unhappy about Herbert's supposedly impending engagement to Heloise, reveals her feelings to him. Herbert declares his love for her and reports: Heloise is not getting engaged to him at all, but to the Prince of X. Herbert had acted as a mediator in the initiation of the connection on a secret mission.

Publication, reception and impact

The woman with the carbuncle stones is the last work that the author, who died in 1887, was able to complete. When she died, she left behind the unfinished manuscript for a novel Das Eulenhaus (1888), which was completed by Wilhelmine Heimburg .

In addition to the German original edition, there are also Danish, Norwegian, English and Russian translations.

The first film adaptation was made in the silent film era: in 1917 a version staged by Georg Victor Mendel for the National Film Company with Edith Meller , Erich Kaiser-Titz and Olga Engl appeared . In 1985, a TV version staged by Dagmar Damek for ZDF followed , in which the main roles were played by Irina Wanka (Margarete), Martin Maria Blau (Herbert), Christian Quadflieg (Balduin) and Agnes Fink (Amtsratin).

Expenses (selection)

• The woman with the carbuncle stones . Wedge, 1885.
• Ladies med karfunklerne . HLH Had, Copenhagen 1885 (Danish edition).
• The Lady With the Rubies . MA Donohue, Chicago 1890 (English edition).
• The woman with the carbuncle stones . Das Beste Stuttgart, 2001 (hardcover).
• The woman with the carbuncle stones . Musaicum Books, 2019, ISBN 978-80-272-5654-9 (paperback edition).

Web links

Wikisource: The woman with the carbuncle stones  - sources and full texts

• The woman with the carbuncle stones as online full text at Zeno.org
• The woman with the carbuncles as a free audio book at LibriVox