The little passion
The Little Passion is a development novel by Ernst Wiechert that was published in Berlin in 1929. The text has been translated into Polish .
The Passion giving the title is to be understood as the suffering of the young hero John (as the Evangelist is called). The novel closes with a grand gesture. After successfully graduating from John Karsten neither poet wants (could as the reader might hope) still Bauer are, but he is Jura study. The simple reason: law must remain law in the world.
action
Johannes Zerrgiebel is actually the name of the young hero from a Protestant region in East Germany . But the mother Gina Zerrgiebel, née Karsten, had visited the neighboring farm of her widowed father with her little son and entered the name Johannes Karsten in the family Bible on her wedding day.
Gina had previously been abandoned by a young teacher from the neighboring village. The girl had later forced the court clerk Albert Zerrgiebel, a little civil servant, who sees himself surrounded by "studied pack" on duty, the yes word; a blatantly wrong decision as to how the course of action should turn out. The widower brings his son Theodor - a school child of around ten - into the marriage. Both Zerrgiebels really can't show a single good trait.
Gina leaves her father's farm and moves into her husband's house as Mrs. Zerrgiebel. At Zerrgiebels it smells like ink. Gina shudders at her conjugal duty in the bedroom. Zerrgiebel trains the second woman. For the first time in her life, she made a painful acquaintance with corporal punishment . After six months of marriage, Gina rips out to her father after being hit hard in the face. The old Dietrich Karsten registers the traces of the blows and gives consolation. Gina goes back to her violent warped gable, feels her pregnancy, wonders if she will hate or love her child, and concludes that she will love it. Gina asks Theodor about his deceased mother. The schoolboy's answer is really only one interpretation. Zerrgiebel's first wife hung herself on a hook in the cellar. Even before Johannes was born, Gina didn't give in for the first time. Zerrgiebel threatens a trial of strength: "There are more hooks in the cellar!"
Johannes has the dreamy from his mother. The boy did not follow his father; is neither quick-tempered nor stubborn. One resistance of Gina follows the next. The woman doesn’t give the farmer's thaler demanding gable from her private box and retires with Johannes to her own bedroom. That blocks Gina from inside from Zerrgiebel. The locked out marvels at his newest sensation. It is as if he felt inferior to Gina and Johannes.
In the village school, Johannes endured the main teacher Meinhart Knurrhahn, a whipping teacher, for three years. Johannes has to write a hundred times: "I have to keep my mouth shut in class." And it hits the cane on the outstretched hand. “This is a slaughterhouse,” Johannes comments aloud. The boy inherited resistance from his mother.
Johannes protects his schoolmate Klaus Wirtulla, a little bed wetter. He does not want to allow the weak railway master's son to be beaten both by Knurrhahn and at home. Johannes partially implements the project. From then on Klaus gets away with slapping his mother in the face. Johannes befriends the unhappy forty-year-old childless Mrs. Knurrhahn. Not all teachers make students tremble. Teacher Bonekamp, for example, cannot prevail. Logically, he is transferred to a remote border village because of unsatisfactory work. Before that, he says goodbye to Gina. The woman kisses his forehead. In previous encounters, the two had discovered something in common: restraint as a basic feature of their nature. Johannes inherited this characteristic too. Even his adult friends in and in the neighboring forest and in the pond landscape there want to know that their Johannes will one day become a poet.
Johannes' paternal grandfather comes to visit. He wants to stay longer and introduces himself with the assumption that Mrs. Knurrhahn had a relationship with the teacher Boonekamp. Johannes quickly finds out that the old man suits his father and stepbrother. “If all three of them want to die in one day,” he wishes.
Unbearable - on the train ride to the high school in the district town, Johannes has to sit next to his father every working day. In addition, Theodor became an Eleve in the post office of the same small town. So the high school student made the mother live outside the home and stayed in the Pinnow nursery a little outside the city. Mr. Pinnow, a Baptist , likes to philosophize. Mrs. Pinnow, who calls her guest "Johanneschen", swings the scepter.
The teaching staff at the grammar school, which Johannes attended for nine years, is divided into reserve officers and civilians. In the place of Knurrhahn is now the head teacher Dr. Weishaupt entered. Johannes and little Klaus Wirtulla attend the same class. Dr. Weishaupt punishes Johannes with a cane. The boy won't let himself get down. Count Percy Pfeil, a classmate, puts a stop with "This is disgusting". The whipping pedagogue does not want to turn the son of the district captain of the garrison into an enemy. Johannes cannot hide the damaged hand from Mrs. Pinnow. The woman knows Weishaupt very well. She goes and talks to him Fraktur. After the interview, Johannes is no longer beaten.
At the age of 14, in the lower second , Johannes wrote by far the best essays. Friend Klaus, however, is last in class. Weishaupt certifies the boy “a long line”. Johannes fights with the stepbrother when he makes an allusion to Bonekamp and Gina. Professor Luther, one of Johannes' teachers from the civilian category, manages the miracle straight away. He inspires the closed high school student to talk.
Counterfeit money is circulating in the town. To make matters worse, one theft follows another. The vigilante can not find a thief. Johannes comes across the thief Theodor and his hamster bed by chance. The magistrate Ziegenspeck is delighted when Johannes reports the stepbrother. Theodor blames Professor Luther in vain. Fortunately, the police and judges drop the suspicion of Johannes' complicity. He's allowed to go. Theodor names his father Albert Zerrgiebel as the forger he is looking for. The grandfather Zerrgiebel is arrested as the third member of the family after a successful police search. The old gentleman was involved in printing counterfeit money in the basement at home. Both men are imprisoned for three years each. Theodor has to go to prison for two years. The court secretary Albert Zerrgiebel succeeds in writing to a proud number of dignitaries in the small town, whom he wants to expose in three years. As a secretary, the blackmailer collected material on women who commit adultery and other unsecured offenders for years. Senior teacher Dr. Weishaupt had to tremble for three years as a recipient of letters.
When Johannes received the Dr. When Moldehnke visits because of an unpleasant cut, the doctor is away from home. Lisa Moldehnke, the doctor's wife, takes the almost 17-year-old boy aside and confesses to him her precarious position as an adulteress. Johannes lets himself be persuaded and goes to see his father in prison. Of course, the blue-eyed visitor is laughed at by his locked away father.
Gina has left the empty house and has returned to the Karstenhof. She advises the son to change high school. Johannes doesn't get involved. Weishaupt chases his student out of class as the son of a forger. Count Percy Pfeil shows his solidarity with Johannes. Both leave the classroom together. Professor Luther and grandfather Dietrich Karsten stand up for Johannes. The student can continue to attend the grammar school. Johannes and his mother are allowed to drop the name Zerrgiebel and take the name Karsten. Johannes falls in love with Lisa Moldehnke; more precisely - the lady seduces the boy. The unequal pair of lovers - at least in terms of age - becomes careless over time. Dr. Moldehnke finds out about the recent adultery of his wives - this time with the “son of a convict”. Johannes wins the duel.
The lovers on the hasty escape: Johannes in turn lets Professor Luther help him. Lisa Moldehnke is traveling and Johannes is now switching to high school in the provincial capital. The horned doctor had complained to Johannes' headmaster.
Quote
- Dietrich Karsten, Johannes' grandfather, to his grandson: "Don't be afraid of people."
shape
Much happens in the thirteen chapters of this black and white painting. The narrator sometimes thinks aside and occasionally showered the reader with inserts full of pathos. The constructed plot escalates into a fairytale in places. As soon as things get really exciting, the narrator always switches from the past to the present. How Ernst Wiechert described Johannes' sexual intercourse with his doctor's wife in 1929 - that may seem like involuntary humor to some readers in the 21st century.
Text output
- Ernst Wiechert: The little passion. Story of a child . Deutscher Bücherbund, 1929. 302 pages.
- Ernst Wiechert: The little passion. Novel. Welt im Buch, 1954 (Licensor: Verlag Kurt Desch, Munich). 320 pages (used edition).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chapters 1 to 6 online at ernst-wiechert.de ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Edition used, p. 149, 16. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 151, 4th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 50, 7. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 121, 14. Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 102, 12. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 142, 16. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 170, 5th Zvu
- ↑ Edition used, p. 177, 13. Zvo
- ↑ Edition used, p. 288, 12. Zvu and p. 291, 8. Zvo
