A spring

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A spring is a novel by Wilhelm Raabe that was written from 1856 to 1857 and appeared in the Deutsche Reichs-Zeitung in the summer of 1857 . The book was published in the same year by Vieweg in Braunschweig .

The novel is set in the spring of the 1950s for almost two months in Berlin. Klara and Georg's love is put to the test.

content

19-year-old Klara Aldeck was born as the daughter of the organist at St. Gereon. She lost her mother at the age of 5 and was orphaned at the age of 12. After the aunt died, the beautiful girl worked as a cleaner for a large shop on Königsstrasse. Klara is protected by the natural scientist Dr. Justus Ostermeier, a 65-year-old bachelor. In Klara's neighborhood lives the doctor Dr. Hagen. In the attic of the tenement house lies a dying woman who had left the doctor.

Dr. Ostermeier also supports the young philologist Georg Leiding. Klara learns in Dr. Ostermeier's apartment Georg and his blind sister Eugenie know. The siblings are orphaned and impoverished. Georg and Klara get engaged.

Immediately after her appearance in the opera house, the famous singer Alida meets the doctor Dr. Hagen. The young artist confesses to him that she loves her childhood friend Georg Leiding. During his travels, Dr. Hagen met the young girl years ago in Via Maligna in Rome. Alida - actually Lida Meyer - knows Georg and Eugenie from their foster father Professor Leiding. The celebrated singer, lonely during guest tours across Europe, is unhappy. Dr. Hagen wants to take care of Alida like a daughter, because she is like the dying woman in the attic.

Georg is sure of his love for Klara. He doesn't think that Klara could forget him and Eugenie the way Alida forgot her step-siblings. After Alida has visited the siblings, however, Eugenie is horrified. She begs her brother not to leave Klara. Klara quickly senses that Georg no longer loves her. When Klara passed out in the Cathedral of St. Gereon, the former Minister von Hagenheim had her brought to his palace. The nobleman lost his wife and all three children. Klara is to take the place of the deceased daughter. Georg knows he is responsible for Klara's illness. Eugenie goes to the palace and takes part in the nursing.

Dr. Hagen - so it turns out - is actually Count Richard von Hagenheim, one of the old minister's two sons. The Count tells Alida that the dying woman in the attic is her mother Angela Viti. He loved the beautiful dancer Angela in Italy. Richard's older brother Walter, sent away by his angry father at the time, was - like Richard - addicted to the capricious, domineering dancer Angela and had fathered Alida with her. Walter died during an argument between the brothers over Angela. The ex-minister then cast Richard out. The retired minister later lost his only daughter to illness.

Shortly after Richard von Hagenheim, Alida and Georg have entered the attic, the dancer Angela dies. Richard is reconciled with his father and goes to Italy with Alida. While Klara is recovering from the faint, Georg approaches her carefully.

shape

The narrator calls “this spring story” “confused histories”, describes himself as “Biographer Klärchen Aldecks” and frankly admits in the third of the twenty-seven chapters: “Will I get it under the hood myself? - I dont know. But I know that it will cost me a lot of trouble and hardship before I lock the tomboy in this little book! "

Quote

  • Raabe mocks himself and the revolutionaries when the narrator remembers the year 1848, “when we ran so gracefully against the wall”.

Testimonials

  • In a letter dated April 3, 1873, Raabe called the novel “a quadruped”.
  • On August 7, 1908, Raabe admits that his two attempts at improvement in 1869 and 1903 could unfortunately not have saved the text.

reception

  • Levin Schücking stated in 1858 that the figures appear harmless, even childish.
  • On October 25, 1860, Hermann Marggraff expressed the above observation more cautiously, but just as unequivocally: Raabe strikes “often too soft notes”.
  • Vieweg does not accept Raabe's next work - “ The Children of Finkenrode ” - because not even a hundred copies of “Spring” at the end of July 1858 had been sold.
  • The linear time continuum in the novel is listened to from Dickens . Fuld tears the novel down as pompous, sentimental and harmonizing to the point of lying.
  • Fuld's devastating verdict from 1993 also points out that consumer tastes have clearly changed since the second half of the 19th century. In 1872, for example, Jensen still favored “spring” over “ Dräumling ”.
  • Meyen counts fourteen meetings up to 1958.

expenditure

First edition

  • “A spring. By Jakob Corvinus, author of the 'Chronik der Sperlingsgasse' “428 pages. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1857

Used edition

  • A spring. First version . Pp. 173-433. With an appendix, written by Max Carstenn and Karl Hoppe , pp. 475–509 in Karl Hoppe (arrangement), Max Carstenn (arrangement): Die Chronik der Sperlingsgasse . A spring. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1980. Vol. 1 (2nd edition, obtained by Jörn Dräger), ISBN 3-525-20103-6 in Karl Hoppe (ed.), Jost Schillemeit (ed.), Hans Oppermann (ed. ), Kurt Schreinert (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.

Further editions

Meyen gives nine editions.

literature

annotation

  1. ↑ squirming: gossiping, chatting.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 308, entry 3
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 477, 19. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 483 above
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 416, 3rd Zvo
  5. ↑ Fuld, p. 75 and p. 106 below as well as the edition used, p. 194, 14. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 198, 7th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 272, 9. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 482, 14th Zvu
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 482, 12th Zvu
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 480, 14. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 480, 5th Zvu
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 481 middle
  13. ↑ Oppermann, p. 54, 13. Zvu
  14. ↑ Fuld, p. 106, 4th Zvu
  15. ^ Fuld, pp. 106-108
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 482, 17th Zvu
  17. ↑ Fuld, p. 257, 4th Zvu
  18. ↑ Meyen, pp. 333-335
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 483, entry B
  20. ↑ Meyen, pp. 71-72