A Christmas Carol

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Title page of the first edition of A Christmas Carol , colored illustration by John Leech

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas (literally a Christmas carol in prose, or a ghost story for Christmas , in German usually a Christmas story) is one of the most famous stories by Charles Dickens . It was first published on December 19, 1843, with illustrations by John Leech .

The story is about the moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge, an old, grumpy curmudgeon who, in a single night, receives a visit from his late partner Jacob Marley and then from three other ghosts who ultimately help him to change his life. The book contains strongly socially critical tones with which Dickens wanted to denounce the grievances in the United Kingdom in the 19th century .

action

A Christmas Carol is divided into five stanzas ( English staves ).

Verse I: Marley's ghost

Marley's ghost

The story begins with the simple statement that Jacob Marley is dead. The reader is informed that Jacob Marley was the business partner, companion and only friend of the protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge until he died seven years ago on Christmas Eve. Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge as a person who is full of cold and spreads cold everywhere, as extremely stingy and greedy. After Marley's death, Scrooge is the sole owner of the Scrooge and Marley department store and employs one employee, Bob Cratchit.

As every year, Scrooge's nephew Fred visits his uncle again this year to invite him to Christmas dinner and to wish him a "Merry Christmas!" Scrooge refuses both the invitation and the good wishes and even Christmas itself completely - angrily he replies to his nephew: “Pah! Stupid stuff! ”( English “ Humbug ! ” ), Which can be seen as a typical phrase for Scrooge. On the same evening Scrooge visit two “handsome gentlemen” who ask for donations for the poor population. Scrooge does not allow himself to be softened, he asks rhetorically whether there aren't any prisons and workhouses and whether there aren't already laws to support the poor. Of course all of these exist, so Scrooge is certain that by paying his taxes he has more than done his duty.

In the evening Scrooge goes home; When he tries to open the door, he briefly sees the face of his deceased friend Marley on the door knocker, but does not want to believe it and enters the house. Everything seems normal there until the ghost of Marley appears to him. The ghost is hung from chains, on its chain are utensils of business life: money boxes, purses and the like. Marley's ghost declares that he forged this chain himself during his lifetime. Because he was not among people his whole life, but had only given himself to his greed for money, he must now, after his death, go as a spirit among people; the chain acts as a symbol for this. The ghost points out to Scrooge that Scrooge himself also had such a chain, both chains were of the same length seven years ago, but now Scrooge's chain has become considerably longer. The ghost leaves the troubled Scrooge with the hint that three more ghosts would visit him to save Scrooge. The first stanza closes with Scrooges going to bed.

Verse II: The First Spirit

The first ghost
Mr. Fezziwig's Ball

After Scrooge wakes up in the middle of the night, the first of the three ghosts appears to him. Dickens describes him as a comical figure, child and old man at the same time. In a soft voice, he introduces himself as the “ghost of Christmas past”. The ghost leads Scrooge through his past, starting with little Scrooge, who had no friends in his childhood and at Christmas, rejected by his family, sat in school reading children's books. Scrooge is touched by the scenes of his childhood.

The further path through Scrooge's Christmas past shows Scrooge as a young man who learned his future profession from Mr. Fezziwig, a department store owner. Scrooge and the ghost attend a company Christmas party, which makes it clear to Scrooge how little (financial) effort can make people very happy.

Another stop on the journey is Scrooge in his prime, when he literally exchanged his great love for a love of money. Scrooge appears shaken in the presence of the ghost, he doesn't want to see any more of the past, just go back home. Nevertheless, the ghost shows him another scene: his former fiancée in an idyllic Christmas scene with children and husband. Scrooge is broken and begs to be able to go back home. Scrooge returns home and is dead tired.

Verse III: The Second Spirit

The second spirit

Now the second of the three ghosts visits Scrooge. He calls himself the "spirit of this year's Christmas night". He makes it clear that there have already been over 1800 of his kind - meaning that there has been a new "Christmas spirit" every year since the birth of Christ. Scrooge also takes the “spirit of this year's Christmas night” on a tour through the streets of London, where they experience the Christmas atmosphere and finally stop in front of a bakery. There the ghost shows Scrooge that he can end an argument with a few splashes of special water and make food taste like Christmas. That should explain why everything tastes so good to us at Christmas and why there is a lot of harmony with little argument.

It was only on this journey with the spirit of this Christmas that he got to know the scribe Robert "Bob" Cratchit and his family better. Scrooge's employee and his wife have a few children, with one child being highlighted: the crippled Tim Cratchit is very small, can only get around on a frame due to his disability and it appears that he is due to malnutrition and poor (medical) care would die soon. Here a real change in Scrooge's character becomes apparent: He asks the ghost if Tim has any more time to live - but the ghost has doubts. Scrooge shows compassion, and the ghost reminds him of his own words in the past: Scrooge had said Tim should die better to lessen the overpopulation. Despite their poverty, the Cratchits celebrate a nice Christmas and Bob Cratchit even toasts his employer - after all, it's Christmas.

Scrooge experiences another Christmas scene with the ghost, this time with his nephew Fred, who has fun in good company telling about stubborn Scrooge and making fun of the expression "Stupid stuff!" After dinner, the company around Fred plays games, including the following: Someone comes up with a term that the others have to guess - queries can only be answered with yes or no. That something is, according to the answers, a living animal that you see on the streets of London that no one would eat, which sometimes grunts and grumbles - what is meant, of course, is "Uncle Scrooge", a royal amusement for Fred and the others.

The third stanza ends very symbolically. The ghost leaves Scrooge with two children, whom he hid under his cloak until then. The names of the two already point in a certain direction, they are called "ignorance" and "lack". When asked by Scrooge, the spirit declares that they are not its own but children of humanity. Scrooge is reluctant to accept the children. He asks if they have no place to stay; the ghost answers again with a counter-question, which again represent Scrooge's own words: "Are there no prisons, workhouses?"

Verse IV: The Last Spirit

The last ghost

The last of the three ghosts appears to Scrooge without saying a single word. It is up to Scrooge to conclude that it is the “spirit of Christmas to come”. The ghost leads Scrooge through the streets of London again. The two listen to a group of businessmen talking. The men talk about the death of an undisclosed person who appeared to have amassed some money but who no one liked. Scrooge and the ghost can overhear another conversation: Here, too, it is about the "old knauser" who has died. It has long been clear to the reader that it can only be about the deceased Scrooge - but he himself is either clueless or simply does not want to admit it. He hopes to see with the spirit a scene in the future in which he himself appears and, now converted to a good person, does something good.

Instead, the ghost leads him to a dark part of the city, more precisely to a poor area and in this area to a shop whose owner buys all goods. Some people have turned up at "old Joe" and it quickly becomes clear that they want to sell him goods that they stole from the house of the mysterious, dead man. Not one of those present showed guilt even when a woman sold the bed curtains and the death shirt that she had stolen from the corpse lying on the bed. It is made abundantly clear to the reader how unpopular the dead must have been. Scrooge shows the first approach to knowledge the next moment, when he stands with the ghost in the death room and is asked to look under the shroud - which he does not want to do and in the end does not do either. Scrooge begs the ghost to show him a person who shows emotions about the dead man. All he then sees is a couple worried about an unpaid loan to the dead and relieved by the death of their creditor. Naturally, since Scrooge did not want to see this, he asks the ghost to show him sadness caused by death; But the following scene is also supposed to stir him up rather than calm him down: Scrooge and the ghost visit the Cratchit family, who mourn the deceased Tiny Tim.

At the end of the chapter, all ambiguities are cleared out of the way. At Scrooge's request to find out who the dead man is, the spirit of the future shows him a tombstone. Scrooge reads the inscription with horror: Ebenezer Scrooge. Before Scrooge's eyes, who is about to collapse, the ghost disappears into a bedpost. In Scrooge's own bedpost.

Verse V: The End

Ebenezer Scrooge and Robert "Bob" Cratchit

Completely transformed and full of good intentions, Scrooge is back in the real world: without ghosts and alive. Scrooge even manages to laugh, and it is also an event for him to ask a boy what day it is - the boy replies that it is Christmas day  - and Scrooge realizes that everything that happened in the past happened on the one last night had to. He also instructs the boy to buy a turkey twice the size of Tiny Tim and give it to the Cratchit family. The next actions of the transformed Scrooge are first of all an apology to one of the "stately gentlemen" (see verse I ), to whom he makes a generous donation, and finally Scrooge accepts his nephew's invitation to take him and friends with him on Christmas Day celebrate - and both Fred and all of his friends are very happy about Scrooge's presence. The next day Scrooge is very early in his office; his avowed intention: catch his employees arriving late. Scrooge is only joking, of course - after beating Bob Cratchit in the worst possible way, comes the redeeming: “Merry Christmas, Bob!” And he increases his salary.

In the final summary paragraph, the narrator underlines once again Scrooge's change of personality: "Scrooge was better than his word", Tiny Tim would survive, and finally: "God bless each of us".

Film adaptations

The book has been filmed numerous times in films and series. Particularly known are:

Parodic films

Radio play versions

Dickens - Christmas Carol editions - 2020-01-03 - Andy Mabbett - 04.jpg

There are various readings and radio plays of the Christmas Carol in German . There are readings a. by Otto Mellies , Dieter Bellmann and Wolfgang Thierse . Noteworthy radio play versions are:

  • Christmas Eve (Igel Records), Production: Bayerischer Rundfunk 1965.
  • Merry Christmas, Mr. Scrooge! (Titania Media), 2004.
  • Charles Dickens' Christmas Tales by Christian Peitz (HoerSketch), 2008.
  • A Christmas story by David Holy (Holysoft Studios Ltd), 2016.

Audio books

Stage versions

  • A Christmas Carol , theater performance, premiered on December 1st, 2001 in the Schauspielhaus am Staatsschauspiel Dresden, by Gerold Theobalt, director: Holk Freytag, since 2002 in the Palais Großer Garten in Dresden every December
  • From the spirit of Christmas. Musical. Music and libretto :: Dirk Michael Stefan , premiered in 2001 at TheatrO CentrO Oberhausen, since then on a seasonal world tour
  • Christmas Eve. Spoken theater. Speaker and vocal parts (with British Christmas carols): Graham F. Valentine, 2001, again in 2003, in the Schauspielhaus Zürich , location "Pfauen" and in the box of the shipbuilding in German and English. Also as an audio book reading with singing, e.g. B. "The twelve Days of Christmas" or "The Holy and the Ivy". ISBN 9783907877029
  • A Christmas Story. Musical theater. Music: Robert Persché Libretto: Andreas Braunendal . World premiere: December 2009 at TTZ-Graz
  • 2004: the ghosts are loose! Interactive children's theater of the Sturmvogel Theater , world premiere in Reutlingen, since then annual performances
  • 2010: A Christmas Carol - theatrical performance. Theater im Depot in Dortmund, with Cordula Hein, Jörg Hentschel, Thomas Kemper and Sandra Wickenburg
  • 2010: A Christmas carol - performance with children's and women's choirs in Swiss dialect in Bachenbülach, libretto by Andreas Fischer. Annual performances since then.
  • 2012: Ballet by Jaroslaw Jurasz based on Charles Dickens, music by Irineos Triandafillou (World premiere: Nordharzer Städtebundtheater , Halberstadt , November 17th, 2012 for the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens)
  • 2012: A Christmas Carol play by Barry L. Goldman (based on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"). World premiere: November 12, 2012 in the Bonn Theater .
  • 2014: A Weihnachtsgschicht , Bavarian play by Ferdinand Maurer (based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol ). World premiere: December 13, 2014 in the Theater am Burgerfeld Markt Schwaben. http://www.weihnachtsgschicht.de/
  • 2015: humbug? , Play by Angela Heintz (based on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"). Performed by Schaubühne Neunkirchen eV World premiere: December 6, 2015 in the blower hall in Neunkirchen / Saar. http://www.facebook.com/schaubuehne.nk
  • 2017: A Christmas Carol , theater performance, American Drama Group, Schauspielhaus Bochum
  • 2017: The Braunschweig Christmas Miracle , theater performance, comedy on the old town market, Braunschweig
  • since 2017: A Christmas story by Charles Dickens , live radio play with music and slide show, Christoph Tiemann and the theater ex libris
  • 2018: A Christmas story based on Charles Dickens in German spoken and sign language , theater performance in German spoken and sign language , Theater im OP , Göttingen , directed by Miriam Feix and Franziska Karger

Others

  • Based on Ebenezer Scrooge, the American comic artist Carl Barks named one of his most famous characters "Scrooge McDuck". In German this figure was given the name Dagobert Duck . With this Germanization, however, the joke of the name was lost. The affinity of the name to the literary “Scrooge” and the Scottish-sounding surname “McDuck” both indicate the figure's stinginess (which is proverbially attributed to the Scots).
  • The songwriter Aimee Mann refers to Jacob Marley's chain as a metaphor in her eponymous song Jacob Marley's Chain (album Whatever , 1993).
  • The story of Kolja's puppet theater (director: Kolja Wlazik) and the Piccolo puppet theater (director: Gerd J. Pohl) were staged as a puppet show .
  • In 1997 , the Mund Art Theater in Neu-Isenburg near Frankfurt am Main brought Thorsten Wszolek's musical version to the stage under the title Die Mundart Weihnachtsgeschichte . This production ran, like the New York model from Madison Square Garden, exactly ten years and was played for the last time in 2006.
  • The German composer Dirk Michael Steffan also set the work to music as a musical. The Christmas spirit was premiered in November 2001 at the TheatrO CentrO in Oberhausen .
  • The Angry Video Game Nerd also covered the topic in one of his episodes (episode 38).

literature

Web links

Commons : A Christmas Carol  album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: A Christmas Carol  - Sources and full texts (English)
Wikisource: Christmas Eve, translated by Edward Aubrey Moriarty (1844)  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: The Christmas Eve, translated by Julius Seybt (1877)  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.vgdw.de/
  2. ↑ TTZ - Tanz & Theater Zentrum Graz: 2009 ( Memento from March 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Theater center website. Retrieved November 4, 2012.
  3. ↑ Children's theater and evening program | Sturmvogel Theater Reutlingen. Retrieved May 1, 2017 .
  4. ^ A Christmas Carol - Depot Dortmund ( Memento from February 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). Website of the theater. Retrieved November 4, 2012.
  5. ↑ http://weihnachtsmaerchen.ch
  6. ^ A Christmas Carol / Dickens, Charles / Goldman, Barry L. Retrieved December 7, 2018 .
  7. ↑ A Christmas Story - by Charles Dickens. In: Website Christoph Tiemann & das Theater ex libris. Retrieved December 19, 2019 .
  8. ↑ http://www.thop.uni-goettingen.de/winter2018/201812-weihnachtsgeschichte.php