The writings of the forest schoolmaster

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Peter Rosegger around 1865

The writings of the forest schoolmaster is a novel by the Austrian writer Peter Rosegger , which was published by Gustav Heckenast in Pest in 1875 .

This “ dichotomy of world and flight from the world” tells of “a poor, rich, fertile and selfless life in the seclusion of the forest”. The Winkelsteg forest school master Andreas Erdmann survived the pastor Father Paulus, who died there on March 22, 1832 - that is a renegade priest, called Einspanig - by over thirty years.

Emergence

Wagner goes into the genesis of the novel. Rosegger worked on the text for two years. At the instigation of his sponsor Adalbert Svoboda and his publisher Gustav Heckenast, the troubled author had rewritten some passages three times. Svoboda wanted the French novel as a model. Heckenast had something against the diary form of the text.

Frame narration

In the summer of 1865, an anonymous first-person narrator travels the Alps around the raging corners as a tourist, so to speak. He wants to climb the gray tooth. However, because of the bad weather, he is stuck in the mountain farming village of Winkelsteg on the banks of the above-mentioned roaring mountain stream and, out of boredom, arranges the writings of the missing schoolmaster Andreas Erdmann in two rainy days. Erdmann had titled the papers The writings of the forest schoolmaster. This first-person narrator, who ultimately acts as the editor, claims: "They are all game shooters" and means the Winkelsteg residents. For example, they had fled from military service. Only four leagues away, in the village of Holdenschlag, does the more civilized life begin.

Ultimately, the editor manages to climb the Gray Tooth. Up there he finds the frozen Erdmann in the snow and ice. He carries a sheet of paper with the last entry in his diary. It reads in shaky script: “Christmas Day. I saw the sea at sunset and lost my sight. "

Internal narration

The second first-person narrator in the novel has a name: Andreas Erdmann.

prehistory

Andreas Erdmann, born in 1790 as the son of a salt works official, lost his parents at an early age. His aunt Elise, a wealthy player, has no ear for the boy's need. An umbrella maker takes him as an apprentice. When the master died, Andreas found accommodation with a gentleman as a handyman in his library. The Lord enables Andreas to attend a scholarly school in Salzburg . There Andreas found a friend among the students - the clothmaker's son Heinrich. This gives Andreas a teaching position in the noble house of Baron von Schrankenstein. Andreas has to teach Hermann, the son of the baron, and adores the unapproachable daughter of the house in hopeless love. In 1808, Andreas made himself unpopular through thoughtless speech in front of the teaching staff of the school of scholars and promptly failed the next main examination. He takes the section from Baron von Schrankenstein, goes to Innsbruck to Andreas Hofer and fights in his ranks against Bonaparte in 1809 . After three years in captivity with the French, he changed sides; takes part in the ranks of the Grande Armée in the Russian campaign and survives that "winter trip through Russia". In 1813, still fighting on the wrong side, Andreas shot his best friend in the battle of Leipzig , the studios Heinrich, who was fighting on the side of the Austrians . “Andreas!” Was the death cry of the “enemy” that had been hit. Desperate Andreas smashes his rifle, this murder weapon, on a stone and in his anger splits the skull of the first French officer who comes across with a blow of his sword. Such hasty atonement does not help. The remorse remains. Andreas sees only one way out. He wants to atone in deep wilderness as a hermit. Back in Salzburg, the returnees met Freiherr von Schrankenstein. The nobleman owns forests in the Alps and is looking for a teacher for the children of his farmers and wood people. Andreas accepts; in 1814, after a three-day journey, reached the mountain farmers' settlement of Winkelsteg.

1814 to 1864 in Winkelsteg

First, Erdmann hides the reason for his arrival from the angle bars. He makes himself useful; weaves baskets, sharpens axes and saws on wooden clubs, but also indulges in one or the other excursion. In particular , the newcomer tries occasionally to climb the glaciated Grauer Zahn - this is the highest point in the area. The wild Eisschründe on the Bergstock initially stand in the way of conquering this enormous serrated crown in the middle of the Alpine desert on the first attempt. Andreas doesn't give up. Because from the top of the Alps he wants to see the sea and also see Heinrich's grave in distant Saxony .

No pastor cares about the Winkelwäldler - these illiterate people. Andreas fights to build a church for the "scattered, distracted people". The church is supposed to be in place before the school is built. The Waldherr Freiherr von Schrankenstein sits far away in his Salzburg palace and does not move on the matter. He's finally sending inspectors. The poor in Winkelsteg want money instead of the church. The Lord God should live in the Winkelwald under the open sky.

Over time, Andreas arrives at the angle bars. They already call him Redl. He gives the residents family names. The Church denies the poor the marriage blessing. Although Andreas is not a pastor, he performs the wedding of the poacher Berthold with the alpine girl Aga - without a church in the green forest. Aga gives birth to a girl. The “pastor” baptizes the child with the name forest lily.

The Winkelsteg Church is built. The Holdenschlag pastor is indeed ordained, but then the baptized and the dead - as before - must be brought to Holdenschlag. The Winkelsteger could well imagine Redl as a pastor. Andreas catches Einspanig reading mass at the altar. Andreas does not want to report the incident if the "preacher" explains himself immediately. Einspanig soon confesses to him that he was a gentleman's child. The mother died when he was born. His teacher, a Jesuit , was persecuted. Consecrated to the priest of the Fathers of Faith , the Einspanig went to Rome as Father Paul and rose as the Pope's diplomat in a western country to the confessor of the king there. Rome answers disobedience in office with a transfer to the East Indies. Paul endured the heat for four years and flees to Europe on a French ship. In his home country he has to prove himself missionary as punishment in certain parish churches. When the itinerant preacher Paul refuses to absolve a confessional from his sin because of the significant guilt, the sinner hangs himself. Then Paul turns his back on his congregation, flees the world and seeks self-redemption in the wilderness on the banks of the raging corners. Paul succeeds. He cures the boy Lazarus from his innate rage after a long effort . And at the request of one of the cornerstones, he finally read mass in the new church on the pier. Andreas forgives the Einspanig, this second holy Jerome . In 1820 the Einspanig was appointed pastor of Winkelsteg. Poverty remains in the village. Not even a gravedigger can be fed.

The forester speaks ill of Hermann von Schrankenstein. Andreas, who knows his former student, doesn't want to hear that. One day the redeeming news will come. The future forest lord Hermann von Schrankenheim is honest.

The first-person narrator, Andreas, leaps in time over ten years into the year 1830. Why? Well, Andreas no longer had to share papers because he had found a friend in the new pastor. And the construction of the new school building had taken up all of Andreas. He is also a choir supervisor and has to make music.

The Einspanig has turned to the forest ruler in vain about peasant liberation. The burden of the fief remains. And the yoke continues to push in poor soil. Like every Winkelsteger, Andreas remains very poor. The late Aunt Elise gambled away Andreas' inheritance during her lifetime. The schoolmaster forgives the relatives who have passed away. An epidemic is rampant in the Winkelwoods. The pastor dies. He had been infected in the homes of the sick. The Einspanig fell asleep "like a smiling child".

In May 1832 Hermann becomes the new forest lord. On this occasion, he cancels the angels' debts for several years. The new master is said to be sickly. The forest lily sends him medicinal herbs to Salzburg. The baron thanks him with a visit. Andreas is summoned to the tour guide at the place of arrival in Grabenegg. Two years later - in 1837 - Hermann reappears and marries the forest lily in the Winkelsteg church. Although the gentleman at the lake has a summer house built in the Gesenke, he travels with his young wife to his Salzburg palace. The residents remain impoverished as ever.

Lazarus, grown up to be a man, acquires the Winkelsteg inn with his wife Juliana.

In the spring of 1848, revolutionaries storm the palaces. Hermann's aloof sister flees to Winkelsteg. The lady carries on life in Salzburg; defamed the forest school master as a poor eater who ate the crumbs from her father's table at the time.

In July 1852, says Andreas, the Winkelsteg farmers are finally released from serfdom . But Andreas is disappointed. Since the peasants have been free, it is as if they no longer know him when they meet him. At Christmas 1864 the forest school master, who had been suffering from an eye disease for a long time, had a young teacher as his successor. The retiree climbs the gray tooth, sees the sea in the evening light and loses sight. Blinded, the forest school master fixes his last experience with a trembling hand and freezes to death on the mountain the following Christmas Eve.

Self-testimony

  • Letter dated May 13, 1874 to Gustav Heckenast: “The forest school master also differs very significantly from my previous works in terms of content ... The real hero of the book is this pastor [Einspanig]; he towers higher than the schoolmaster [Andreas Erdmann]. The main thing is neither the pastor nor the schoolmaster, but the community [Winkelsteg], around which everything revolves. "

reception

Forest school Alpl
  • Hubert Lendl from Graz explores the question of where in the Alps Winkelsteg is actually hiding and comes up with some autobiographical issues: The forest school master Andreas Erdmann could have been modeled on Rosegger's first teacher Michael Patterer. The latter was expelled after the 1848 revolution and taken in by the Alpl farmers. Rosegger himself has always remained a forest school master: in 1902, his forest school in Alpl was opened. Lendl sees the persistent limitation of the milieu as the cause of Rosegger's "worldwide success": Rosegger always stays close to the description of the lowest social classes of his Alpine homeland.
  • The philanthropist Erdmann - nature mystic, enlightener and Christian at the same time - believe in the creation of a new paradise through people of good will in the Winkelsteg alpine wilderness. At the same time Erdmann appears as a critic of the Winkelsteger partnership he created. Fearlessly and carefree, he violates rules when they seem inhumane to him or when he does not know how to help himself in the loneliness of the forest - left alone by his Salzburg forest lord and the official church.
  • Criticism of civilization : Wagner assumes Andreas Erdmann's Robinson Island . In 1943, Latzke named the remote Winkelsteg forest loneliness that way, alluding to Rosegger's Defoe reading . Erdmann, cut off from all the blessings of culture, must start over like a shipwrecked man. According to Vischer, every Robinsonade can also be viewed in a higher context as an attempt to form society à la Rousseau .
  • Social criticism : Wagner aptly stated
    • "What the novel calls› wilderness ‹is feudal property with submissive dispossessed."
    • The Winkelsteg peasants were set free in 1852 "after they did not fight for their rights in the year of the revolution , but instead gave refuge to the aristocratic owners."

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

  • Friedrich Theodor Vischer : Aesthetics or science of the beautiful. Stuttgart 1857, § 881, p. 1313
  • Rudolf Latzke : Peter Rosegger. His life and work . Vol. 1: The young Rosegger. Weimar 1943, pp. 234-260
  • Hanna Bubeníček: land surveying. Peter Rosegger's characters between utopia and failure on the edge of the provinces. An attempt at topography . Chapter Silhouette , p. 148 in: Uwe Baur (Ed.), Gerald Schöpfer (Ed.) And Gerhard Pail (Ed.): "Foreign made?" The folk writer Peter Rosegger . Böhlau, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-205-05091-6
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1
  • Joseph Berlinger : “I have to see the sea.” A trip with Adalbert Stifter. Morsak Verlag, Grafenau 2005, ISBN 3-86512-005-9 . Info about the book

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ = Goethe's day of death.
  2. ↑ Einspanig = the lonely, the hermit from the rock valley.
  3. ^ Adalbert Svoboda, editor of the Grazer Tagespost .
  4. ↑ Rosegger honored donors . As is well known, a lifelong dream of the Bohemian founder was the sight of the sea (see for example Berlinger). Sprengel thinks that the influence of Stifter on Rosegger's development can be seen most clearly in the forest school master (Sprengel, p. 196, 21. Zvo).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ First edition in the DTA
  2. ^ Wagner in the afterword of the edition used (1993), p. 348, 20. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 336, 12. Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 223, 13. Zvu
  5. ^ Wagner in the afterword of the edition used (1993), p. 344
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 66, 8th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 335, 7. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 147, 2nd Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 287, 10. Zvo
  10. ↑ Peter Rosegger, quoted in Lendl in the foreword of the 1979 edition, p. 7, 4. Zvo
  11. ^ Lendl in the foreword to the 1979 edition of the novel, pp. 5–9
  12. ↑ Bubeníček, p. 150, 9. Zvo and p. 152, 7. Zvo
  13. ^ Wagner in the afterword of the edition used (1993), pp. 341-380
  14. ^ Wagner in the afterword of the edition used (1993), p. 368, 14. Zvo
  15. ^ Wagner in the afterword of the edition used (1993), p. 369, 7. Zvo