Eginhard and Emma (Busch)

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Eginhard und Emma is a picture story by the humorous poet and draftsman Wilhelm Busch that appeared in the carnival edition of Fliegende Blätter in 1864 . It is a fictional family episode from the life of Charlemagne . In Busch's work, it is one of the few picture stories that makes reference to political events and ironizes the call for a German empire on the foundations of the Holy Roman Empire . But it also makes fun of the Prussian official state and courtly Catholicism.

content

Wilhelm Busch decided not to relocate his picture story to the Middle Ages. Instead, Emperor Charlemagne lives in an atmosphere that corresponded to Wilhelm Busch's own Low German rural home. Charlemagne only has a spartan bed in an alcove . A chamber pot is ready. The emperor is dressed in a floral dressing gown and has wooden clogs on his feet . At night, the imperial orb and scepter lie next to his pillow and he practices the ABC on a school blackboard. His valet is reminiscent of a caricature by Frederick the Great .

His daughter Emma is dressed in a nightgown and frilled bonnet. Her lover, the tender Eginhard, is reminiscent of the young Ludwig II , the aesthetic king of Bavaria, who had just ascended the Bavarian throne at the time the story appeared. Guards catch the two of them talking . Finally, Karl gives the young lovers his fatherly blessing.

Historical reference

The legend of Eginhard and Emma is handed down in the Chronicon laurishamense , the chronicle of the Lorsch monastery . The storyline inspired Georg Philipp Telemann to write an opera (1728) and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1811) and Helmina von Chézy (1817) to write a drama each.

literature

  • Michaela Diers: Wilhelm Busch, life and work. dtv 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-34452-4
  • Joseph Kraus: Wilhelm Busch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1970 (16th edition 9/2004), ISBN 3-499-50163-5
  • Gudrun Schury: I wish I were an Eskimo. The life of Wilhelm Busch. Biography . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-351-02653-0
  • Gert Ueding : Wilhelm Busch. The 19th century in miniature. Insel, Frankfurt / M. 1977 (new edition 2007).
  • Eva Weissweiler: Wilhelm Busch. The laughing pessimist. A biography . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-03930-6

Web links

  • Eginhard and Emma - Fliegende Blätter No. 970, pp. 45–48, digitized version of the Heidelberg University Library

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weissweiler, p. 138