The band of robbers

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The band of robbers is the title of a novel published in 1914 with autobiographical features by the writer Leonhard Frank . It tells the story of the development of a rebellious young man from Würzburg into an artist.

overview

The focus of the novel is the development of Michael Vierkants from a petty-bourgeois relationship to an artist: in the first part, his Würzburg childhood is told together with the "band of robbers" of his own age and the society of the city at the end of the 19th century. portrayed; in the second part he breaks off his apprenticeship as a locksmith and leaves Würzburg. He moves through Germany and finances himself with odd jobs. Then he begins to paint and studies at the art academy in Munich. In the bohemian milieu he gets into an intrigue and commits suicide.

contents

Rebellion and dreams of freedom

The first part of the main plot takes place in Würzburg in 1899. Twelve fourteen-year-old apprentices have formed a "band of robbers" based on the model of Karl May's Winnetou novels: Michael Vierkant (Oldshatterhand), Andreas Steinbrecher (Winnetou), the one-eyed Georg Bang (falcon's eye), the orphan Theobald Kletterer (red cloud), Hans Lux, (King of the Skies) and Hans Widerschein (scribe). The leader is the innkeeper 's son, Oskar Benommen (pale captain). Your storage place is an underground passage in the vineyards. There they hide stolen grapes, cigars and an old revolver. At Schiller's drama The robbers and Indian stories ignites their imagination: In their adventure romance they dream of Würzburg burn down, together with the tyrannical teacher lean to emigrate across the ocean to North America, there to live a free life, to do great things and mighty and terrible actions against the hated whites to free the Indians. So they rebel playfully against the patriarchal-hierarchical norms of their time and process their frustration e.g. B. Kick against the sadistic teacher and the tough master, with whom Michael is in training. Their struggles are directed against them. So they steal grapes from the royal vineyards, master glazier Johann Jakob Streberle reports them and a court hearing takes place. In this context, the author denounces the double standards of society: When Steinbrecher's sister has a child by the chaplain, the clergyman is transferred to a parish outside Würzburg, with his lover as housekeeper. Mother Steinbrecher falls ill with shame over the fall of her daughter and dies of pneumonia.

Gradually there is tension between the gang members. The "captain" and the "clerk" riot in Georg's room, whereupon he separates from the group. The gang falls apart and the members go their own way. Their dreams are disillusioned by the experiences and messages of failed emigrants that are faded into the main plot of the novel. For example, Oskar's brother, who wanted to work as an engineer in the USA, couldn't find a job there and returns penniless. His mother feels this is a disgrace. The confused son fantasizes about building a new bridge over the Main, is admitted to the psychiatric ward and dies there after a month.

A new storyline begins with Michael Vierkants' disappearance from Würzburg. After harassing his master Tritt, he set fire to the hiding place of the band of robbers on the Schlossberg before leaving the city. On his way to America, however, he did not get out of Frankfurt and Dresden, where he worked as a helper in a bicycle factory, and returned to his hometown after a year because of his bugged accommodation.

Development into an artist

Due to his sister's connections, Michael is employed as a servant in the Würzburg Juliusspital and begins to paint cityscapes in his free time. He befriends a small group of artists. The painter Franziskus Grünwiesler instructs him. You live in an empty house and play a little bohemian . After jealousy in the group, Michael left Würzburg and moved to Munich, where he was accepted into the Royal Academy of Fine Arts . In Munich he got to know the free life of the artist scene, among other things. by a mentally ill painter who lures him into her studio.

Michael sees some of the former “robbers” again during their visit to Munich: Hans and Oskar have their friends with them: Liesl and the Würzburg landlord and baker's daughter Käthchen Schlauch. Theobald wants to become an actor, but he doesn't get an audition date. Then the paths of life separate for good. After the phase of youthful rebellion, the people of Würzburg return to petty bourgeois life and take on the roles of their fathers and teachers, meet in the well-known wine tavern “To the Three Crowns” or for skat in Oskar's “Black Whale of Askalon”, where they join him the third child pregnant woman to be served.

Michael, on the other hand, continues on his own path and becomes a good painter, but gets caught up in an intrigue story in the artistic environment. On a trip to Genoa he received a letter from his painter friend Franziskus Grünwiesler. This asks him for his advice. He stole 6,000 marks from his aunt and fears the consequences. Michael suggests that he threaten his aunt to shoot her if she reports him. After his return to Munich, he discovered that Grünwiesler had only faked the described case in order to report him with an incriminating letter of inciting predatory extortion and thereby avenge himself for an old dispute between them. During the interrogation by the forensic psychiatrist Dr. Karl Robert can relieve Michael with the stored letter from Grünwiesler. Nevertheless, he has suicidal thoughts and shoots himself with the old "robber" revolver. His landlady finds his body when she brings the prosecutor's notice that the criminal case against him has been dropped. The next day the newspapers reported that the art student Michael Vierkant had been awarded the first prize by the academy.

In the novel, Michael's educational path is accompanied by a similar, older and experienced “stranger” who guides him as a mentor. Perhaps he is speaking as the author's representative considering his younger stage of development.

shape

In the 5th chapter of his autobiographical novel “Links where the heart is”, Franks has his deputy Michael describe his idea of ​​the novel: In his novels “everything is different [...] than it was in reality”, and yet “everything is just like in reality ”. One cannot “write a true report of reality” in the novel, because the reproduction of ten minutes alone requires a few hundred pages. Accordingly, the “act of transferring reality into art” is about the representation of “inner truth”: “Only the inner image that one has of the character in the novel, the setting, the situation, is true, and there appears mysterious ones Make everything as it was in reality. "

Instead of writing extensive 300 to 400 page novels, he wanted “to describe in clear, simple language with the appropriate words only the essentials of the scenes and situations, only the characteristics of the characters [...] and yet a calm flow of the apparently self-created History [...] achieve. Then this newly created reality, of which nothing previously existed, seems natural to the reader like reality. "

"The novelist who leaves out a lot in a [...] Spartan way and yet leaves nothing, is entitled to envy the miner." Michael Vierkant describes the laborious process of a shortened novel using the example of the "band of robbers", the beginning of which he worked out in three months quoted: "Suddenly the wagons rolled inaudibly on the bumpy pavement, the citizens gesticulated, their lips moved - you couldn't hear a sound, the air and houses trembled, because the thirty church tower bells of Würzburg rang together for the Saturday evening service. And from all of them the big bell of the cathedral sounded mighty and far-reaching, held its own until the end and faded away. The conversations of the citizens and the footsteps of a detachment of dusty infantrymen marching across the old bridge became audible again. Evening sunshine lay over the city: a ball of red cloud hung over the gray fortress on the summit, and in the steeply sloping royal vineyard the headscarves of the winegrowers glittered - the grape harvest had begun. It smelled of water, tar and incense ” . From this ambivalent mood, the author develops his social criticism and uses the ambience to illustrate the formative forces of the environment on the children: “Catholicism, the monasteries, monks and priests, the narrow curves of the alleys with the damp shadows, the Gothic churches, the high, gray walls, from which gothic grimacing images suddenly jump, all of this together affects people from their youth. Such a city produces bad guys who had to confess their sins when they were seven years old. Foolish, religiously insane, ambitious, hunchbacked, secret murderers, cripples, ascetics, child molesters ... also artists. And people like the teacher Mager ... "

Paul Schlenther , an advocate of the naturalistic direction, praised the book as a naturalistic novel in his review . Other critics discussed the classification "naturalistic, neo-romantic , impressionistic or expressionistic ". The author wonders whether he has "mysteriously become a mediator for a new direction through the flow of time."

The assignment is not easy: in terms of the content of the main character, a development novel, the course of the plot is not continuous, but broken down into a series of episodes with independent plots. If this is reminiscent of impressionistic representations, the realistic characterization of the people with their dialect-colored language resembles popular, naturalistic descriptions of the environment. In addition, there are surrealist traits through the appearance of the “foreign”.

Autobiographical references

The protagonist of the "band of robbers" is called Michael Vierkant, as is the main character in Frank's autobiographical novel "Links, where the heart is". In both novels, the main characters go through similar stages of development as the author Leonhard Frank: School and teaching in Würzburg. Aid work in various places, art studies and bohemian life in Munich. In “Herz” the author also tells of his re-encounter with his childhood “robber comrades” at a carousing party after his return from 17 years of exile.

Frank wrote another novel, in which he processed his youthful experiences: "The cause" is an argument with his "soul murderer", the teacher, called Dürr or Mager, who was written by the unsuccessful return of the writer Anton Seiler in revenge for the city Humiliation is murdered. The investigation of the causes of the crime leads to the indictment of the school system of the Wilhelmine Empire.

reception

In the "Heart", Michael, on behalf of the author, describes the reception of his first novel, for which the publisher Georg Müller paid him a monthly pension of 220 marks. His breakthrough came with the award of the Fontane Prize (1914). Then the owner of Insel Verlag Kippenberg acquired the publishing rights for 20,000 marks, for which he was able to buy a house with a garden in Zurich. "Die Räuberbande" is to this day the author's most successful and best-known book, which, like the "Men's Quartet", has been translated into many languages ​​and made into a film. Frank describes the "Quartet" as his "most beautiful book [...] in which humor and tragedy go arm in arm through human life." Walter Jens and Marcel Reich-Ranicki included "The Robber Gang" in their twenty-volume " Library of the 20th Century ”(1987–1990).

Sequels

The Ochsenfurt men's quartet

In 1927, Frank tells the further fate of the former rebellious youths dreaming of freedom in his novel “Das Ochsenfurter Männerquartett”. The action takes place more than ten years after the "robbers". The protagonists have become solid citizens and fathers of families and have achieved modest prosperity as self-employed or employees, now inflation has made them unemployed and the old "robber captain" Oskar Benahm came up with the idea of ​​being the impresario of a men's quartet with the singers Georg Bang, Theo Kletterer, Hans Lux, Hans Widerschein to perform in the surrounding villages and earn their living with the income. But before her successful appearance at the end of the novel, the financial circumstances change in her favor: one is acquitted of the suspicion of murdering his financier and receives back his pledged inn, another inherits his deceased aunt, a third marries a rich widow.

Relatively unaffected by the worries of the adults, the children lead their own lives. The rascals play their tricks and dream of great adventures. Theo's son Thomas falls in love with the Lux daughter Hanna, but he and the ophthalmologist Dr. Hoof a rival. Hanna is first impressed by the more mature hoof, then decides in favor of her peer and a love affair develops on the banks of the Main at night.

Three out of three million

Five years after the "Men's Quartet", Frank wrote the novel "Von Drei Mio. Drei" (1932). The action takes place at the time of the great global economic crisis in the early 1930s and tells the fate of three former “robbers”: a clerk, a tailor and a factory worker (with a glass eye) leave their hometown on the Main and travel by ship to Buenos in search of work Aires , get caught up in a civil war there and return to Würzburg unsuccessfully.

Adaptations

Film adaptations

  • The band of robbers was filmed in 1929 under the direction of Hans Behrendt .
  • The two novels Das Ochsenfurter Männerquartett and Von three million three were broadcast in 1979 as a two-part GDR television film under the title Ende vom Lied . The author and director Jurij Kramer changed the harmonious folk outcome of the action in the “Men's Quartet”, shifted the focus to the social and economic issues and linked it with the second part “From three million three”.
In the first part, three former “robbers”, Oskar, Hans and Georg, are bankrupt and unemployed due to the global economic crisis at the end of the 1920s. The fourth, Theo, lives on the income from his gardening, v. a. of grave bundles. He suggested that the friends perform as the “Ochsenfurt Men's Quartet” in neighboring Ochsenfurt in order to earn a living, but they found little public response and were also involved in a murder case.
In the second part, three out of three million unemployed, the three go looking for a job. They emigrate to Argentina, where they get caught up in a revolution that has broken out because of the unemployment that also prevails there and lose Hans. Demoralized by their failure, Oskar and Georg return to Germany after a two-year odyssey. In Berlin backyards they sing in duets, but they are again subject to the social and economic conditions and wander back to their Franconian homeland as beggars.

Radio plays

  • In the same year the BR produced the sequel under the title Das Ochsenfurter Männerquartett . Here, too, Kurt Brüggemann wrote the music and Helmut Brennicke directed. The 74-minute version was first broadcast on May 22, 1956.

Individual references and comments

  1. ↑ in Georg Müller Verlag, Munich.
  2. ^ Structure Verlag Berlin Weimar 1959, dtv Munich 1963.
  3. ↑ in: "Left where the heart is", chap. III.
  4. ↑ in: "Left where the heart is", chap. III.
  5. ↑ in: "Left where the heart is", chap. IX.
  6. ↑ Leonhard Frank: "Left where the heart is", chap. V.
  7. ^ Insel Verlag Leipzig
  8. ↑ Producer: Hermann Fellner, Josef Somlo. Script: Leonhard Frank, Franz Schulz, Hans Behrendt. Stage design: Oscar Friedrich Werndorff. Camera: Otto Kaunturek. Actors: Paul Hörbiger , Leonhard Frank, Gustl Gstettenbaur , Martin Herzberg, Fritz Draeger, Kurt Zarewski, Ilse Baumann, Kurt Katch , Otto Kronburger , Marija Leiko and others.
  9. ↑ Direction and screenplay: Michael Verhoeven. Camera: Xaver Schwarzenberger. Editor: Helga Borsche. Music: Josef Berger. Roles and actors: Oskar Benommen (Klaus Knuth), Schreiber (Peter Matic Schreiber), Falkenauge (Fred Stillkrauth), Hans Lux (Gerd Baltus), climber (Michael Gahr), Thomas (Rainer Will), Hanna (Katherina Jakob), Nina Huf (Christine Kaufmann), Dr. Huf (Jan Niklas), woman dazed (Gloria Doer), examining magistrate (Alfred Edel) and others.
  10. ↑ Direction and screenplay: Jurij Kramer. Camera: Hans Heinrich. Editing: Ursula Rudzki. Music: Uwe Hilprecht. Roles and actors: Oskar Benommen (Wolfgang Dehler), Klara Benommen (Annemone Haase), cutthroat (Steffie Spira), Schreiber Widerstein (Wolfgang Greese), Hans Lux (Hans Teuscher), Falkenauge Manger (Fred Delmare), Theobald Kletterer (Peter Kalisch ), Heinrich Christian Hub (Peter Aust), Detective Inspector (Alfred Struwe), Hanna Kletterer (Viola Schweizer)
  11. ↑ https://www.filmeule.com/film/5103-ende-vom-lied-das-ochsenfurter-mae ...
  12. ↑ The speakers include: Peter Haupt (Der Hauptmann), Horst Gerlach (Old Shatterhand), Jürgen Micksch (Winnetou), Michael Verhoeven (Der Schreiber), Erich Ostenried (Red Cloud), Jochen Neuhaus (Falkenauge), Peter Trestler (Creeping Schlange), Hans Joachim Quitschorra (King of the Air) and Fritz Rasp (Teacher Mager). ARD audio game database (Die Räuberbande, BR 1956)
  13. ↑ The speakers include: Hans Magel (Oskar Benommen), Ernst Fritz Fürbringer (Hans Lux), Joachim Teege (Georg Manger, called Falkenauge), Alois Maria Giani (Karl Wiederschein), Harald Bender (Theobald Kletterer), Else Quecke ( Mrs. Kletterer), Michael Heltau (Thomas, both son), Gertrud Kückelmann (Hanna Lux), Elisabeth Goebel (Mrs. Lux) and Peter Lühr (Dr. Heinrich Christian Huf). ARD audio play database (The Ochsenfurt Men's Quartet, BR 1956)