The Mondscheingasse
The Mondscheingasse is a novella by Stefan Zweig from 1922.
action
The narrator has landed in a small French port town and bridges the waiting time for the missed night train to Germany by exploring the moonlit streets of the port district. He ends up in a pub where the waitress orders a beer at the same time and - cuddling the wrong way - sits next to the guest. This spent, German-speaking woman treats a second guest rather harshly; scolds him a miser. The constant, intensifying attacks on that guest become too much for the narrator and he finally leaves the restaurant. Outside in Mondscheingasse, the person insulted approaches the narrator and tells his story.
The waitress is his wife. Four years ago they had lived together in Geratzheim in Hesse . At that time Hessian was still wealthy and had taken the very poor woman as his wife. She had to ask him for every dress, every ribbon. He liked that. He had made her beg for money over and over again. One day she ran off to Berlin with a soldier. Her lover had let her sit. The Hessian had followed her to Berlin and later waited for her return from Argentina in Amsterdam. During the private reconciliation ceremony, there was another quarrel over a small matter relating to the money. She fled again.
After months, the Geratzheimer finds the half of the marriage at the scene of the action. The whole Mondscheingasse is laughing at him when he waits for his wife in front of that entertainment venue. He bought a knife with the last of his money. He shows it to the narrator and asks him to speak to the waitress. The narrator cannot find Mondscheingasse again in daylight. But when he walks from the hotel to the night train in the moonlight, he passes the alley. The Geratzheimer is of course waiting in front of the bar again. The narrator remembers the unfortunate's request and wants to help him. At the last moment the traveler, who wants to catch his train, hesitates and notices, by continuing his way to the station, how the Hessian man with something flashing in his hands, vehemently penetrates the entertainment venue. Were the last coins in the husband's hand or his new, drawn knife flashing?
filming
Michel Piccoli , Niels Arestrup and Marthe Keller play in Édouard Molinaro's film “La Ruelle au clair de lune” (German title: Die Mondscheingasse ) (French premiere on November 10, 1988), which is partly based on the text .
literature
Used edition
- Stefan Zweig: The Mondscheingasse. In: Novellas . Vol. 2, pp. 295-317. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1986 (3rd edition), 532 pages, without ISBN, licensor: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main
Other issues
- Stefan Zweig: The Mondscheingasse. Collected stories ( Burning secret . Story in the twilight . Fear . The gunman . Letter from a stranger . The woman and the landscape . The Mondscheingasse. Fantastic night . The sinking of a heart . Confusion of feelings . Twenty-four hours from the life of a woman . Buchmendel . Leporella . The equal-dissimilar sisters . Chess novella ). Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1989 (Fischer Taschenbuch 9518), ISBN 3-596-29518-1
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Edition used, p. 531
- ↑ The Mondscheingasse . TV SPIELFILM Verlag GmbH. Retrieved March 13, 2019.
- ↑ French La Ruelle au clair de lune
- ↑ La ruelle au clair de lune in the Internet Movie Database (English)