The last one on the scaffold
The last on the scaffold is a novella by Gertrud von Le Fort , published in 1931. The young, fearful Blanche de la Force courageously picks up the pious chant of her former sisters, the Carmelites of Compiègne , at the guillotine and thus raises her weak voice against the bloody one Terror of the revolution.
time and place
The novella is based on a historical event : on July 17, 1794, the sixteen Carmelites of Compiègne were guillotined. They were buried in the mass graves of the Cimetière de Picpus . As Märtyrinnen they were in 1906 by Pope Pius X beatified . The novella deals with the events from May 30, 1770 to July 17, 1794 in Paris and in the Carmelite convent of Compiègne .
action
During the accident with the fireworks at the wedding of Louis XVI. the state coach of the Marquis de la Force gets into a tumult. The distraught marquise reaches her palace on foot with torn clothes, comes down too early and dies.
Her daughter, the half-orphan Blanche de la Force, turns out to be very anxious. Blanche is supposed to get married at sixteen. But the girl wants to become a nun . Her father, the Marquis de la Force, who loves freedom, is against it, but cannot assert himself.
Blanche joins the Carmel of Compiègne. Her novice mistress becomes mother Marie de l'Incarnation , the illegitimate daughter of a prince of France.
In 1789, after the victory of the revolution , an overzealous commissioner inspected the monastery. He threatens both women with death. Marie glows “like a cherub ” in the face of threatened martyrdom . The other sisters are also preparing for martyrdom. When the church property is confiscated by the National Assembly , the nuns prove to be great sufferers. They reinterpret the adversities associated with the revolution as joy and live “poor as in Bethlehem”. The whole convention , headed by Mother Marie, praised martyrdom, but Blanche is afraid. Mother Marie has absolutely no understanding for faint-heartedness.
The reprisals of the revolutionary government are becoming more oppressive. The nuns should take off their habit . Blanche cannot withstand the pressure and flees. Blanches' father writes to the prioress of the monastery that Blanche is ill.
Blanche's father is imprisoned and slain in prison by the revolutionaries. Blanche is leaning against the dungeon wall behind the dead man. The girl falls under the control of the terrible " September mothers ". Those, named after the days of horror from September 2 to 6, 1792, are market women who drag Blanche through the streets of Paris.
Mother Marie in Compiègne is happy that after Blanche's flight there are no more weak women in the monastery. The authorities of the revolution cite her to Paris. Your state pension is to be liquidated. When Marie sees the unfortunate victims being carted to the guillotine , she suddenly understands what fear of death means and throws herself into the crowd because she thinks she saw Blanche among the women who follow the cart to the scaffold. When mother Marie wants to return to Compiègne, the Paris city gates are closed. Marie, “the soul of everyone's will to sacrifice”, sees herself excluded from the sacrifice of martyrdom.
Meanwhile, the entire Compiègne convent is arrested, taken to Paris and executed. The noble letter writer, camouflaged with the cockade , experiences the martyrdom of the sixteen nuns of Compiègne as a spectator. The pious singing of the nuns silences the bloodthirsty crowd. But then the letter writer hears the miracle. Marie's voice "passes over to another". Blanche is the last to raise her voice from the crowd of September mothers on the scaffold. The face of the formerly fearful is "completely fearless". Blanche continues singing until she is killed by the rabble. Marie, on the other hand, is the only one of the nuns to get away with her life.
shape
The novella is written as a letter from an aristocrat to an anonymous émigré. The letter is dated "Paris, in October 1794". The anonymous letter writer does not talk about all the events, but ignores some things, such as Blanche's escape from the monastery, and carefully distances himself from rumors. He would like z. B. soberly report the events immediately before Blanche's birth.
Edits
Georges Bernanos wrote a screenplay based on the novella in 1947, which was filmed in 1960 under the title Le Dialogue des Carmélites (Eng. The sacrifice of a nun ). Jeanne Moreau played the mother Marie in this film, Pascale Audret the Blanche. As early as 1951, the manuscript for a play by Bernanos was premiered posthumously as The Gifted Fear in Zurich. On the basis of this text, Francis Poulenc created the libretto for his opera Dialogues des Carmélites , which premiered in 1957 at La Scala in Milan .
literature
- Gertrud von Le Fort: The last one on the scaffold. Novella . Reclam No. 7937, Stuttgart 2005. 79 pages, ISBN 978-3-15-007937-9
- Karina Binder: Not to be hated, I am there to be loved. The role of women in Gertrud von le Fort illustrated by the works “The Last on the Scaffold”, “The Woman of Pilate” and “The Court of the Sea” . Thesis. Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, 2013 ( Online [PDF; 1,2 MB ]).
- German literary history. Volume 9. Ingo Leiß and Hermann Stadler: Weimar Republic 1918–1933 . Pp. 96-103. Munich, February 2003. 415 pages, ISBN 3-423-03349-5
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A-Z . S. 381. Stuttgart 2004. 698 pages, ISBN 3-520-83704-8
Individual evidence
- ↑ Portrait of the film on mynetcologne.net
- ^ Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold , Robert Maschke: Handbuch der Oper , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-32526-7