The Vulture Wally (novel)

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Book cover of the 1921 edition

The Geier-Wally is a novel by Wilhelmine von Hillern from 1873, which, among other things, uses an episode from the life of the Tyrolean Anna Stainer-Knittel in literary terms.

Emergence

In 1870 Wilhelmine von Hillern saw Anna Stainer-Knittel's self-portrait in a shop in Innsbruck , which she shows on an adventure she had when she was 17. At that time, Anna Stainer-Knittel had gutted an eagle's nest on a rock wall hanging from a rope, which, although common to protect flocks of sheep, was actually a job for men. Since they refused to do so after an accident that was barely prevented in the previous year, Anna Stainer-Knittel's commitment had to appear all the more daring. Wilhelmine von Hillern then went to Elbigenalp, the hometown of Anna Stainer-Knittel, and inquired there about what was known about this woman. Wilhelmine von Hillern created a dramatic homeland novel from the actual event, in which the female main character, who was given the name "Walburga Stromminger", refuses to accept the conventions of femininity and spends her youth as a tomboy in rough nature.

action

Walburga Stromminger - the pretty daughter of the richest farmer in the valley - was the only child who grew up alone with her ambitious, proud, but also hard-hearted father; the mother died shortly after the birth. The father sees Wally as the heiress of the farm and brings her up as hard as a boy.

When a lamb vulture builds its nest in a rock face above the valley, none of the young men from the village dares to approach the nest. Farmer Stromminger laughs at the cowards and in front of the whole village lets his own daughter down on a rope into the rock face, where Wally, armed only with a knife, clears the nest under the furious attacks of the vulture. When the child is scratched and bleeding with the chick in his arms, he gets the only kiss he has ever received from his father - not out of pity, but out of pride in his daughter, who shamed all the boys in the village with her courage . She raised the chick as a pet and has been called "Geier-Wally" ever since.

At her confirmation, the 16-year-old met the young Joseph Hagenbach; he has just killed a bear that threatened the neighboring valley. All hearts fly to the dashing "Bear Joseph" and Wally falls in love with him at first sight. Only old Stromminger, who had already had trouble with Joseph's late father, doesn't like the boy and leaves the party prematurely after a brief argument with his daughter. When she cries for the first time since childhood on the way home, he beats her with a stick.

For economic reasons, Stromminger wants to marry off his daughter to Vinzenz Gellner, a dark, withdrawn fellow who has been chasing her for a long time. Wally refuses. Since the father cannot force her, he banishes her all summer to the Hochjoch , a high alpine pasture between rock and ice , where the young girl is completely on her own as a shepherdess and goatherd. She is only allowed to take her vulture "Hansl" with her.

By the time she returned in autumn, the farm had changed: her father fell ill and brought Vinzenz Gellner over, who is now in charge of the regiment. The faithful old maid Luckard, who had replaced Wally's mother, was chased from the farm with disgrace and disgrace after an argument and died of grief before Wally's return. According to the farmer's wishes, Wally is now to be kept like a "feed maid": subordinate to everyone else, without access to the residential building, she is to sleep with the cattle. When Vinzenz brutally abused the aged servant Klettenmaier, Wally lost all self-control and knocked him down with the blunt side of an ax. In the tumult that followed, in the course of which she was to be locked in the cellar, she threw a burning log into the haystack and used the efforts to extinguish the fire to escape.

Wally finds consolation and encouragement from the wise pastor of the neighboring village of Heiligkreuz , who recognizes the good core in the tomboy who has been brutalized by all the mistreatment. But even he cannot offer her a place to stay; she flees further into the neighboring valley, where she - with her vulture on her shoulder and the call of a "murder burner" hurrying ahead - struggles as a day laborer and gradually degenerates into a beggar. When winter sets in, she is finally rescued from freezing to death by the three righteous Klotz brothers in the high-altitude group of the Rofenhöfe and nursed back to health. The brothers take them in over the winter.

Meanwhile, the pastor of Heiligkreuz patiently talks to old Stromminger until he at least agrees to let Wally go back to work on the Hochjoch for the next summer. The Klotz brothers don't want to let them go; they loved the powerful, straightforward, young woman from the bottom of their hearts. But for all her gratitude, Wally cannot return her love; Despite the events, she still dreams of "her" Joseph, who knows nothing about it and has barely got to know her. In order not to hurt the good men unduly, she accepts the offer and goes back to the Hochjoch.

In a summer storm, Joseph Hagenbach suddenly comes to Wally's wasteland. He has helped a young woman who was injured in the storm out of the mountain difficulties and asks Wally to give her refuge and strengthening before the further descent. The "Bear Joseph" has no idea what is going on in Wally during the conversation. He only knows the rumors about their alleged ferocity - and is promptly confirmed when Wally's Vulture attacks him in a sudden fit of unpredictability during his stay in the hut. Wally can only with difficulty stop the hunter from shooting the animal. Without understanding, Joseph leaves with the strange woman and leaves his admirer alone in despair.

Over the winter, in dire need, Wally hired herself out as a maid in neighboring valleys until the weather enabled her to return to the Hochjoch. Only the following, third summer up there finally brings the turning point: the father has died, Wally returns to his father's farm as sole heir. But during the agonizing years she has become utterly harsh and aloof. The hypocritical friendliness of the people towards the now rich woman disgusts her; she is so cold and moody that in the end she is just as feared as her father was formerly. Only the old, deaf farmhand Klettenmaier still has her trust.

Nevertheless, almost all the young men in the valley are courting the beautiful, rich, young woman. But she lets them down with a sneer. Aware of her physical strength, she adopts the adage that only those who can force her to kiss her are the right ones for her. A lot of people try - it almost becomes a kind of sport - but nobody makes it.

Wally is still secretly waiting for Joseph Hagenbach; but he doesn't seem interested in her. When she is told that he has a love affair with the maid Afra, whom he had rescued from the mountain difficulties at Wally's hut the previous year, Wally is furious with jealousy. On the occasion of the Corpus Christi procession, she insulted and slandered the good maid in front of everyone - and with her also Joseph as someone who needed to find a slut.

Before the feast for Peter and Paul, Joseph has Wally sent to invite her to a dance. Wally falls for it promptly; she understands this as a proposal and does not notice that Joseph only wants to avenge himself with an ugly prank for the disgrace she has suffered. He picks up the woman floating in seventh heaven, dressed up as if for a wedding, with pomp and great escort from the courtyard and leads her into the ballroom. There, before the first dance, Joseph asks her to kiss her. She wants to fall into his arms, but he refuses: he doesn't want the kiss as a gift, she should fight back. She does him a favor, successfully defends herself before she finally lets him win. When Joseph finally “stole” her kiss, he leaves her standing in front of the cheering festival community and goes out of the hall - to Afra.

Wally is blind with anger and shame. In her desperation, she vows to marry the person who throws the bear Joseph dead at “his” Afra's feet. Neighbor Vinzenz Gellner, who still languishes in vain for her, hears it. At night in her room Wally heard two shots; a gloomy foreboding attacks them. She rushes over and meets Vincent, who is just coming back from the forest with a rifle. He confesses that he shot Josef and then pushed him down into a rock. Wally pulls him back there to throw himself down and drag the unfortunate man with him to his death. A cry for help can be heard from below: Josef is still alive. Wally lets go of Vincent and runs into the village to get help. With poorly braided ropes, she lets herself abseil down into the depths in a breakneck relief operation in order to save the meanwhile unconscious. It succeeds.

While Joseph is being nursed back to health in Wally's farm, Wally, eaten away by remorse, retreats to the barren solitude on the Hochjoch. She left the care to Afra and bequeathed the farm to Joseph so they could marry. She only wants to die herself - not by her own hand, the pastor has forbidden her. But through merciless harshness towards herself she hopes for God's forgiveness and an early, merciful death.

After two months Wally is already very weak. She is lying in the grass somewhere above the hut, indifferent to her melancholy thoughts when the bear Joseph comes up from below. He has finally recovered and is dying to tell his savior the truth: Afra is not his lover, but his half-sister, which was kept a secret out of consideration for his mother. Joseph had avoided Wally because of all the rumors about her. But during the scramble for the kiss in the ballroom he suddenly fell in love with her; he felt sorry for his shameful prank, and that night he had gone to Wally's court to beg her forgiveness and to confess his love to her. Vincent had attacked him on the way there.

The two forgive each other, return to the farm and live together for a few more happy years.

"Wally and Joseph died early, the storms that rattled them had loosened the roots of their lives."

So the author writes in the end.

reception

Shortly after its publication, the novel was translated into eight languages ​​in book form (today there are 11 languages) and was the first German novel after the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71) to be published in France in the Revue des Deux Mondes in excerpt and later translated by Hachette (under the title La fille au Vautour ). Wilhelmine von Hillern wrote a play of the same name based on her novel in 1880, which was performed on numerous German theaters from 1881. Theodor Fontane saw the play on October 8, 1881 in Berlin. In his detailed review, he praised the fact that “right people say the right thing and do the right thing, and do the right thing at the right time and in the right place,” but also emphasizes that the piece “more in the series of comets than in the the permanent star should be placed ". Later he compared the advantages of Geierwally to the play Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen by Franz Grillparzer . He found the former to be superior because of its "dramatic potency".

In 1892, the lyric opera (was dramma lirico ) La Wally by Alfredo Catalani listed, which is also based on the novel. In addition, Die Geierwally (musical) was created in the 20th century , a Styrian musical by Reinhard P. Gruber with music by Andreas Safer and Reinhard Ziegerhofer . It combines folk music, jazz and pop.

In the 20th century, the material was filmed several times based on Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel:

The story as such is linked to the mountain home of the Geierwally and is suitable for open-air performances at special locations. That is why the Austrian actor and author Felix Mitterer wrote a theatrical version of the story, which premiered in 1993, when the "Geierwally open-air theater" opened in Elbigenalp. The highly acclaimed German premiere of Mitterer's new version for the Luisenburg Festival took place in 2005 on the unique Luisenburg rock stage near Wunsiedel. D: Michael Lerchenberg, M: Gundolf Nandico, with Barbara Romaner as Geierwally and Toni Schatz as Bärenjosef.

In retrospect, Wilhelmine von Hillern assessed her novel Die Geier-Wally as rather mediocre in comparison to her later works, which she felt as “deeper and more psychologically worked through problems” that “cannot be compared with the impulse of youthful creativity”.

“Up at Adler's height ... on the dizzying slope stood a girl, looking up from the depths no bigger than an alpine rose, but sharply outlined against the light-blue sky and the shining peaks of ice on the farther. She stood there steady and calm, just as the high winds tore and tugged at her, and looked down into the depths with no fear of heights (...) Her courage and strength were unlimited, as if she had eagle-faced, craggy and inaccessible mind, like them sharp-edged rock peaks where the vultures nest and tear the clouds of the sky ... "

- Text sample from Die Geier-Wally

Book editions

Dramatized version
  • The Vulture Wally. Play in five acts and a prelude “Die Klötze von Rofen” based on their novel of the same name. Lehmann, Freiburg / Br. 1880 ( digitized in the Coburg State Library )

literature

  • The Vulture Wally. Hans Haid about a mysterious "strong woman" in the Ötztal Alps. In: Die Wildspitze, 6/2014, pp. 86 and 88 ( online at issuu.com)
  • Susanne Päsler: The Geier-Wally. A fictional character in the mirror of her popularity. In: Augsburger Volkskundliche Nachrichten, 01/1995, pp. 24–37 ( PDF 5.5 MB at OPUS - Augsburg University Publication Server)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Das Kalenderblatt, a radio broadcast from Bavaria 2, broadcast on July 27, 2009
  2. ↑ Edelgard Spaude: Wayward Women in Baden , Rombach, Freiburg 1999, ISBN 3-7930-0890-8 , p. 48
  3. ^ The Geierwally (1921). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  4. ↑ The Geierwally (1940). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  5. ^ The Geierwally (1956). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Die Geierwally (1967). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Die Geierwally (1987). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  8. ^ The Geierwally (2005). Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  9. ↑ Forming Spirits, p. 48.
  10. ↑ Die Geier-Wally first appeared in 1873 as a serial novel.