The marzipan
The Marzipan Liese is a crime novella with elements of a ghost story by the Austrian writer Friedrich Halm from 1856, which is based on a true story. The murder of an old woman for the sake of her money and the cruel punishment of the murderer by fate are depicted.
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Halm's story takes place in Hungary shortly after the Peace of Szathmar (1711). The successful businessman Paul Horváth picks up the young Franz (Ferencz) Bauer from Vienna from the street and temporarily hires him as a clerk. Ferencz quickly rose to the position of accountant in the merchant's house because of his outstanding skills and earned the trust of his employer and his 17-year-old daughter Czenczi, to whom he also gave German lessons.
The rise of Ferencz arouses the envy and vigilance of the conductor Antal, who soon has strange things to say about the newcomer: The latter cannot get the originals of his certificates, which are supposed to be in Vienna, and always withdraws the pretext of gout attacks and eye problems when there is a visitor in the merchant's house. The good-natured Horváth, however, ignores all warnings. One evening, a businessman friend of mine, Steidler, arrives at Horváth's house. Ferencz, who pretends to have particularly bad seizures this time, has to attend dinner on the orders of his master and appears with his face covered. During the evening conversation, one comes up with criminal cases, and Horváth says that every crime must necessarily be solved at some point, because “ nothing is so fine-tuned, it comes to light in the sun ”. In order to refute this, Steidler reports on an unsolved murder, the more detailed circumstances of which he witnessed himself. About three years ago in the little town of Bruck he had seen a young man courting an ugly woman of about 70 years of age. The old woman was the rich widow of a gingerbread baker, lived on lending money on usurious interest and was generally only called the marzipan liese. When asked, he learns that the young man hopes for the speedy death and the rich inheritance of the old people so that he can then marry a young woman himself. A few days later, the Marzipan Liese was found murdered, and the opening of the will reveals that she left all her fortune to the city for charitable purposes. The young man is in despair, after three weeks his clothes are found on the riverbank, which gives rise to the assumption that he had committed suicide. Although he is suspected of murder, there is no evidence. The search for the killer of the marzipan leek remains fruitless.
During the story of Steidler, Ferencz suffers a weakness and has to leave society. Czenczi shows that she is more than appropriately concerned about him, which causes her father's anger. He now wants to put an end to the looming relationship between his daughter and his accountant and orders him to leave the house today. Instead of following this order, however, Ferencz persuades Czenczi to flee together. The first day of an announced business trip for the father is set as the date. Ferencz apparently leaves the house, but secretly turns back and is accommodated by Czenczi in a normally unoccupied basement room that can only be opened from the outside, where he is supposed to wait for the day of his escape. Unfortunately for the lovers, the father postpones his departure further and further, so that Ferencz, poorly cared for by Czenczi, has to stay in his hiding place longer than planned. The situation is so straining on Czenczi's nerves that one night, when she wants to bring Ferencz food again, she thinks that she comes across the marzipan tile on the cellar stairs, which denies her access to the cellar. Czenczi then fell into a violent nervous fever and struggled with death for seven days and nights. When she wakes up, she thinks that she has only slept one night and asks her cousin to take care of the prisoner in the basement. At that moment Horváth realizes what has happened, he falls into the cellar and finds the terribly disfigured Ferencz, who has put an end to his life himself by opening his wrists in order to avoid the impending starvation.
Czenczi has a severe relapse but survives while her father dies of grief. She sends the papers that Ferencz left behind to Steidler, whose research reveals beyond doubt that Ferencz, alias Anton Lenhart, was the murderer of the marzipan lily. Czenczi dedicates all of her belongings to a monastery and then takes the veil herself in order to pray for the murderer for the rest of her life.
History of origin
Little was known during the poet's lifetime that Halm, who was known almost exclusively for his numerous stage works , some of which surpassed Grillparzer's fame , had also produced great achievements in the field of novella. His novellas appeared in book form only after his death in the 11th and 12th volumes of the complete edition arranged by Faust Pachler and Emil Kuh . The novella Die Marzipanliese first appeared in 1856 in the weekly magazine Unterhaltungen am domestic stove published by Karl Gutzkow , but received little attention. The marzipan slice is based on a true story that was told to the poet by Faust Pachler: the murder of an old woman, the murderer's flight to Hungary, his love for the daughter of his employer, the hiding of his lover in the cellar and the girl's sudden illness and the death of the beloved in the basement correspond to the facts.
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Like the other short stories by Halms, this one also has a grim basic trait. The true connections are initially only hinted at and gradually revealed to the reader until they are certain. The artful structure of the novella with Steidler's internal narrative almost exactly in the middle is also admirable , whose connection to the framework only becomes clear in the last third.
The story, which was influenced by Heinrich von Kleist and Italian novelists , is considered a “masterpiece” and one of the “pearls of German-language storytelling”.
literature
- Friedrich Halms selected works in four volumes. Edited and with introductions by Anton Schlossar . Leipzig undated (1904)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cf. Anton Schlossar : Introduction to Volume 4 by Fr. Halms selected works
- ^ Fritz Martini : German literary history from the beginnings to the present. Stuttgart 1978, p. 389; Kurt Vancsa: Halm, Friedrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 7, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1966, ISBN 3-428-00188-5 , p. 569 ( digitized version ).
- ^ Friedrich Kummer: German literary history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Dresden 1924, p. 436.
- ^ Herbert Pochlatko, Karl Koweindl: Introduction to the literature of the German-speaking area from its beginnings to the present. Vol. 2 1963, p. 202.