Dietegen
Dietegen by Gottfried Keller is a novella from Volume 2 of the collection of novels The People of Seldwyla and was first published in 1874.
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The novella takes place at the time of the Burgundy and Milan Wars in the two fictional Swiss cities of Seldwyla and Ruechenstein. In Ruechenstein is orphan Dietegen that to be quite loose Verdingkind held slave-like, unjustly accused of stealing a crossbow and hanged. Küngolt, a girl from Seldwyla, discovers that the boy is still alive in his coffin. According to Ruechenstein's legal system, life is given to anyone who survives an execution. Dietegen grew up from now on with Küngolt's father, the forest master of Seldwyla, and her mother. Küngolt sees him as her future husband and treats him like her property.
After her mother's death, the cousin Violande moves into the forester's house, wants to marry the forester and tear the children apart. She succeeds when Küngolt incites a group of Ruechensteiners with an aphrodisiac from Violande's possession to violence in which one is killed. That same night Violande seduces the drunken forester into marriage. Küngolt is brought to justice in Seldwyla and has to do one year service with the cemetery keeper. Dietegen still takes care of her there, but he no longer loves her.
Together with his foster father, he takes part in the Battle of Grandson , in which the forester is killed. Dietegen also takes part in spontaneous, unordered excerpts, such as the procession of the foolish life of 1477, and, having become rich and vain, returns home. While still in the camp, he learned from Violande, who was self-conscious, that Küngolt had fallen into the hands of the draconian Ruechensteiners and that he was to be executed. Only a quick marriage could save her. Dietegen overcomes his moral prejudice against the " prostitute ", goes to Ruechenstein and protects Küngolt from death. He took part in the Milan campaigns, in which he fell, but the marriage resulted in a "numerous sex".
Emergence
The novella was written in the first half, until the forester's death, from 1860 to 1862. The second part was not written until 1873. Keller was inspired by two legal sources at Melchior Schuler:
- Volume I, p. 404 f. (under Lucerne): A boy who was still young, but had already stolen a lot, was sentenced to death by a rope in 1473; they prayed for him for his youth, and now he was to be drowned - by grace, they said! The executioner threw him into the river and pulled him out at the designated place, cut his ties and left him dead. The city servants put him in a coffin that had a crack; Boys looked through it and found that the mouth moved; Women heard this, hurried to it, broke open the coffin, found life in the boy and carried him to the hospital; then he came to himself, lived a long time, became an honest man, took a wife and had beautiful children.
- Volume III, p. 469 f (under Solothurn): The council condemned a child murderer to death in 1632. Then a young man from Regensburg offered to marry her. According to ancient custom, at the intercession of the clergy, life was given to you; the couple were married in the town hall and then banished forever.
swell
- Melchior Schuler: The deeds and customs of the Confederates , Volume I-III. Zurich (Mrs. Schultheß), 1841
expenditure
- Gottfried Keller: Dietegen . In: Complete Works , ed. by Jonas Fränkel , vol. 8, Bern 1927. Editorial notes by Fränkel: pp. 471–481
Individual evidence
- ^ According to Jonas Fränkel: Editorial note on Dietegen p. 471
- ↑ Schuler p. 469 f