The cave children

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Die Höhlenkinder is a trilogy of young people's books by the Bohemian writer Alois Tlučhoř, which he wrote under the pseudonym Alois Theodor Sonnleitner .

The trilogy consists of the volumes

  1. The cave children in the secret ground (1918)
  2. The cave children in the pile dwelling (1919)
  3. The cave children in the stone house (1920)

action

The three-part story begins in 1683, after the Thirty Years' War . The three-year-old orphan Eva lives with his grandmother, the "Ahnl", in the Stodertal north of the Dead Mountains . After a storm, she is suspected of witchcraft and flees with the girl on her shoulders to her brother Hans, who lives as a charcoal burner in the forest in a side ditch of the Eisack Valley . Again she is charged as a witch. The great-uncle (called "similar" in the book) knows a hidden place which can only be accessed through a dangerous gorge and which is therefore avoided by people, the "secret reason". She fled there alone for a few months. When she returns to her brother, she brings with her the orphaned boy Peter, who is about two to three years older than Eva and makes friends with her. The two have to help the foster parents with their daily work, in the house and the stable, tending the goats, collecting berries, mushrooms and edible roots.

When they were ten or thirteen years old, the "Ahnl" was suspected a third time of being a witch, and now all four of them were fleeing from the henchmen of the Merano jurisdiction in the "secret reason". From the geographical, geological (a mica slate heap , granite chunks, etc.) and astronomical hints (in winter the sun rises over Monte Cristallo ) it can be concluded that Sonnleitner thought his "secret ground" in the Sarntal Alps .

The similiar is killed by a stone avalanche during the nightly ascent through the gorge, she dies a little later of exhaustion. Alone without any tools, completely cut off from the outside world, completely on their own, the children are forced to eke out their lives in the manner of prehistoric men.

Based on the description of the résumés of the two children, Sonnleitner lets the development of mankind from the Stone Age through the Bronze Age to the Iron Age pass the young reader in fast motion. Peter and Eva know the devices and tools used in everyday life at that time. They know which wild plants, berries and mushrooms are edible and which are not - now they “only” have to try to make the devices, tools and weapons necessary for survival from the materials that nature offers them, and to make food in their closed valley , the “secret reason”.

Their temporary shelter is a cave, a tree struck by a lightning strike gives them the first fire. A few years later there is an extreme thaw and the dwelling cave is flooded. They move first to an earth hut and then to stilt houses. Eventually, Peter smokes out a bear den to kill the bears that live there. In front of the cave he builds a stone house on the sunny Leiten, from which the author derives his pseudonym. With the exception of a few hints, Sonnleitner, in which the taboos of the previous turn of the century are caught, in his civilization parable dispenses with the representation, indeed only mention of physical processes. Although they have to eat, they never have to perform a need, they do not (as the earliest families of Homo sapiens, however, did) make an exit. A credible character drawing of the adolescents is also partially omitted. Puberty only appears in hidden clues. Eva's first menstruation is hinted at in the second volume (in the chapter "Lenz") and described as a "feeling of physical weakness and signs of a serious illness". Only when they are of legal age do they promise each other marriage in a kind of ancestral cult ceremony. Peter only notices his Eve's pregnancy when he comes home from the hunt in the stone house and she has given birth to their son Hans. When he grew up, he finally found a way out of the Secret Reason and a wife. The history of mankind continues.

filming

In 1962, the German director Peter Podehl filmed the novels for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) as a twelve-part television series in black and white. The first two episodes were broadcast consecutively on November 15, 1962. He moved the film plot from the Thirty Years' War to the Second World War . Götz Burger played to Peter , Claudia Podehl the Eva , Eric Jelde the grandfather ; Gernot Duda played a partisan leader and Peter Brand a sergeant.

In 1982 the Italian director Marcello Aliprandi filmed the stories again as a ten-part series under the title I Ragazzi della valle misteriosa , which was again titled in German as Die Höhlenkinder . They ran for the first time on January 3, 1985 on ZDF . Veronica Logan played the Eva and Kim Rossi Stuart to Pietro .

expenditure

The first edition 1918/1920 was published several times in full and in revised versions, for the last time in 2015 by Belle Epoque Verlag, Berlin.

  • The cave children. In the secret ground / in the stilt house / in the stone house . Illustrated by Fritz Jaeger and Ludwig Huldribusch. 64th edition. Kosmos Verlag, Stuttgart 2004. ISBN 3-440-10117-7
  • The Cave Children - The Complete Trilogy . Fair Price Classics 2010. Kindle edition

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