The Jews of Zirndorf
The Jews of Zirndorf is the second novel by Jakob Wassermann , which was published by Albert Langen in Munich in 1897 .
Anno 1885 in Middle Franconia : The young Agathon goes his way to the happy end in Zirndorf , Fürth and Nuremberg .
content
The text consists of a prelude and the nineteen chapters of the novel itself.
foreplay
In the prelude, a story from the second half of the 17th century, the ancestors of the protagonist are introduced. The year 1666 had been proclaimed by Sabbatai Zewi , the prophet of Smyrna , as the messianic of the Jews . Among the Jews in and around Zirndorf, this prophet and self-proclaimed Messiah had initiated an almost indescribable wave of Messiah expectation.
Now a certain Maier Nathan - a stingy haggler - lived in Fürth with his wife Thelsela. Their daughter Rahel was expecting a child from the Christian studios Thomas Peter Hummel from Erlangen. In her need, Rahel spread the rumor of her virginal conception in Fürth. From her womb the bride of the Messiah of Smyrna would be born. Maier Nathan and Thelsela can hardly believe their luck. The deluded couple does not want to recognize the clumsy deception of their daughter Rahel. The young mother-to-be does not believe in the Messiah from Smyrna at all. The Jews from the area around Fürth can no longer wait for the arrival of the kingdom of God and prepare to "say goodbye to the place of compulsion and contempt". Shortly before the Jews move out, Rahel visits the much-loved Studiosus one last time. The unexpected farewell is just right for the dutiful bumblebee. On their march towards Smyrna, the Jews from Fürth were stopped by Nuremberg soldiers on the way in the middle of the forest. The effects of the violent arguments that followed were devastating in the family of Maier Nathan. Rahel comes down with a premature birth. The young woman gives birth to a boy - the progenitor of the sex from which the Agathon emerges in the following novel. Maier Nathan himself goes mad. Thelsela is forced to return to Fürth with the sick girl, daughter and newborn grandson. The exodus of the Jews from Fürth had been a bad thing anyway. According to reports, the "Messiah" had converted to Islam .
novel
The Jew Elkan Geyer is afraid of the Zirndorfer host Sürich Sperling. The Christian has taken the Jew's promissory notes. During the Rednitz and Pegnitz floods in 1885, the route between Zirndorf and Altenberg was made on boats. During such a trip, the two warring parties meet. The anti-Semitic host deliberately rams the opponent's boat. Elkan Geyer's 17-year-old son Agathon falls into the water. According to the boy's will, the hated perpetrator should atone for that. The duckmouse father, who wants to become a prayer leader against the will of the Zirndorf Jews , urges the son to behave well.
The next morning it is known that Sürich Sperling is dead. It is said that he was killed that night.
Agathon visits the school in Fürth. In this city, Agathon befriends the 25-year-old writer Stefan Gudstikker, a Christian from Fürth. It turns out that in addition to Agathon, Gudstikker had also been to the Zirndorf inn the evening before the murder. Agathon had been tied up, chastised and untied by the host in a private room. Gudstikker is engaged to Käthe Estrich, the pretty and dear daughter of the Zirndorfer brick factory owner . In Fürth, Agathon is allowed to eat something unusable for the table with wealthy Jewish relatives and sometimes spend the night on straw in an attic. During such an overnight stay, Agathon is drawn to the unmistakable noise of a lavish party. At that ball, Agathon's relatives asked Jeanette from her father, the banker Baron Löwengard, to the horror of the guests against her coupling with the unloved fat groom Salomon Hecht and broke up with the father.
About 16-year-old Monika Olifat, daughter of a Jew who recently immigrated to Zirndorf from Poland, makes Agathon a friend.
The rector removes Agathon from his Christian school because of a school essay, although Agathon renounced Judaism in front of the assembled faculty. Elkan realizes that he is harboring a heathen with his son Agathon. Of the teachers, Agathon admires the 29-year-old chemistry teacher Erich Bojesen. He is unhappily married and loves Jeanette. Against the will of the student body, the rector removes his chemistry teacher from teaching because of unworthy behavior.
Agathon reads the story of Sabbatai Zewi in an old book and works miracles himself. For example, he heals his sick mother by the laying on of hands. Thereupon the Zirndorf Jews greet him shyly on the village street.
At the end of the year, Agathon left Zirndorf regardless of her fatally ill father at home. Penniless, with some meager food in his luggage, he marches into the cold winter day. After encounters with the rural population in the area around Nuremberg, Agathon does not profile himself as a Messiah, but he could ultimately be viewed as something similar. How Agathon attains such status is only vaguely suggested. Sporadically he “appears” in the midst of some unheard of event. For example, the Baldewin Estrich in Nuremberg actually made gold. The mob gets its share of precious metal from the alchemist , but wants more. Agathon comes in at the last minute. “He stood there like a wall.” With the new Redeemer comes lightning and thunder. The Church of Christians is on fire. After Agathon has spent a night of love with Jeanette, he settles accounts with Gudstikker - the negative hero in the novel. Gudstikker, that bastard, had made Monika pregnant and abandoned.
Agathon turns its back on Zirndorf and the surrounding area and wants to work across the region. He turns to the liberation of the imprisoned sovereign. But Agathon and his peasant army are too late. The prince sought and found death in the water.
Agathon's wanderings come to an end. He takes Monika and her youngest child and settles in Zirndorf.
Self-testimony
“[...] it was in the summer of 1898, a year earlier I had published 'Die Juden von Zirndorf', as Hofmannsthal approached me one evening in a company of friends to tell me what impression the book was making made him. Without any empty phrases; the certainty of his formulation amazed me beyond measure, I had never heard of such a thing, on the one hand it was so that I felt as if I had been accepted into a powerful secret order, because for the first time I felt an aristocracy in things of art, a sovereignty that Filled me with pride, who was assured of belonging in such a noble and easy way, on the other hand I became aware that this was a discipline based on profound knowledge and that the form was not a professor's term [...] "
Form and interpretation
As already indicated above, the author spreads a dense network of relationships between the characters in a small space. For example, Agathon's mother, Jette Pohl, turned down a marriage proposal from Gudstikker's father at a young age. Or Gedalja Löwengard from Roth is another example. This over 90-year-old father of the banker takes the side of granddaughter Jeanette, has to leave the baron's house and sleeps in his Zirndorfer cousin's barn.
The presentation makes an ambivalent, heterogeneous impression. On the one hand, the messianic Fürth hysteria is ironicized at the beginning and, on the other hand, Agathon is finally presented as a miracle worker.
The text was written by a beginner. Threads of action are spread out in front of the reader and left behind. Father Elkan and son Agathon Geyer take on the murder of the landlord in a private dialogue. The two confessions do not seem credible. Instead of answering such questions, great polemics are celebrated. In it the qualitative comparison of the Jews with the Christians returns in an ostensibly striking speech. Side stories are blown up. Jeanette writes Bojesen from Paris. The unemployed chemistry teacher penetrates the banker and is coldly turned away. Löwengard doesn't want to have anything more to do with his daughter.
reception
- Hesse praises the book against the other publications by Wassermann. As a reason he gives the “enthusiasm” and the “believing love” with which the author wrote about his people. In addition, all the strivings of those “cultural powers” that appear in the book are happily united in the protagonist.
- For Pazi , the plot is sometimes confused and mysticism is sought after. The " Caspar Hauser " should be understood as an alternative to this early text. Writing impulses for the novel are, among other things, ethnic.
- Koester understands Agathon less as a shape and more as a symbol.
- Martini holds the text for early expressionism and emphasizes its social criticism.
- According to Sprengel , the “ Nietzschean superman ” Agathon had the above-mentioned murder of the landlord Sürich Sperling on his conscience. With the prince Ludwig II is meant.
literature
Used edition
- Jakob Wassermann: The Jews of Zirndorf. Novel. 1918. In memory of my father. Salzwasser Verlag, Paderborn 2011, ISBN 978-3-943185-52-2 (reproduction of the edition by S. Fischer, Berlin, anno 1918)
Secondary literature
- Volker Michels (Ed.): Hermann Hesse. The world in book I. Reviews and essays from the years 1900–1910. In: Hermann Hesse. All works in 20 volumes, vol. 16. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1988 (2002 edition), 646 pages, without ISBN
- Margarita Pazi in: Gunter E. Grimm , Frank Rainer Max (Hrsg.): German poets. Life and work of German-speaking authors . Volume 7: From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century . Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-008617-5
- Rudolf Koester: Jakob Wassermann . Morgenbuch Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-371-00384-1
- Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9
Web links
- The text at Gutenberg-DE
- The text at Zeno.org
- Review at sandammeer.at from 2004
- Review (PDF file; 944 kB) by Gabrielle Oberhänsli-Widmer from 2005
Individual evidence
- ↑ Koester, p. 15, 20. Zvo and p. 89, third entry 1897
- ↑ Edition used, pp. 5, 15. Zvu and p. 11, 6. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 42, 9. Zvu
- ↑ Sprengel, p. 378, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 171, 5th Zvu
- ^ Sprengel, p. 379, 6. Zvo
- ↑ Jakob Wassermann: Self-Contemplations. S. Fischer, 1933. Full text online in the Gutenberg project
- ^ Hesse in the " Münchner Zeitung " of December 9, 1904, quoted in Michels, p. 147 below
- ↑ Pazi, p. 47, 2nd Zvu to p. 48, 5th Zvo
- ↑ Koester, p. 19, 6th Zvu
- ↑ Martini, quoted in Koester, p. 19, 2nd Zvu (Koester, p. 91, 4th reference vu)
- ^ Sprengel, p. 378, 5th Zvu
- ^ Sprengel, p. 379, 14. Zvo