The Queen of Borneo

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The Queen of Borneo is the title of a fragmentary novel that the future King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia wrote as Crown Prince . In any case, the work is being discussed today under this title; Friedrich Wilhelm himself headed his text The story of Prince Feridoun with the Queen of Borneo .

Friedrich Wilhelm IV, shaped by the great currents of Romanticism and the Awakening Movement , wrote his novel in the period from September 1, 1816 to March 24, 1817. Formally, the work, which Friedrich Wilhelm himself called a Schwank , is structured as a letter novel : the recipient of the letters is Charlotte , the sister of the Crown Prince, later as the wife of Nicholas I Empress of Russia should be.

Summary

The action begins in Paris in 1814. After the victory over Emperor Napoleon , the victorious troops move into the metropolis on the Seine . Among them is the Prussian heir to the throne. He meets an envoy from the royal court of Borneo who is looking for a godfather for the king of Borneo after he converted to Christianity. The Crown Prince shows himself ready to take on the task, but only when he has seen a portrait of Magdalene, the convert's daughter. So Friedrich Wilhelm travels to Borneo. After a reminiscence of Dante's paradise , it is baptized. In addition to the budding love story between Friedrich Wilhelm and Magdalene, there is a description of a rebellion by princes who do not want to come to terms with the king's conversion. The rebellion is put down, but mercy is shown to the rebels, whereupon they now profess Christianity themselves. Now the entire plot can concentrate on the love story. The Crown Prince gets into a conflict between his love for Magdalena and his duty as the future King of Prussia. However, this conflict is no longer carried out in the factory; The novel breaks off in the last letter to Charlotte with the accusation that she does not believe the story of Friedrich Wilhelm.

reception

The novel of the Crown Prince was long forgotten, as the not easy to grasp personality of this monarch only attracted the increased interest of historians since the 1980s. Ernst Lewalter undertook a first analysis of the work with reference to the world of ideas of the young Friedrich Wilhelm in his biography Friedrich Wilhelm IV. - Fate of a Spirit , published in 1938 . The work finally found an almost affectionate first publication in 1997. The editor, Frank-Lothar Kroll , concluded his observations with the sentence: In this respect, “The Queen of Borneo” proves to be a veritable source for understanding the complex personality of perhaps the strangest Hohenzollern King: only a small facet, a marginal sidelight - no more, but also no less.

literature

  • Friedrich Wilhelm IV: The Queen of Borneo. A novel . Nicolai-Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-87584-638-9 (Monumenta Brandenburgica)
  • Frank-Lothar Kroll : Friedrich Wilhelm IV. As a poet. About the fragment of the novel “The Queen of Borneo” , in: Ders .: Das Geistige Prußen . Schöningh, Paderborn 2001, ISBN 3-506-74829-7