A pale blue women's font

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A pale blue women's handwriting is the title of a story by the Austrian writer Franz Werfel, written in 1940 in Sanary-sur-Mer and Lourdes and published in Argentina in 1941 .

It is a story about the betrayal of a love, a psychogram of an opportunist and a historical document about the latent anti-Semitism in the First Republic .

content

In Austria in 1936, barely two years before the "Anschluss" to the German Reich under Hitler, 50-year-old Leonidas proudly looks back on his life so far. His father was a poor high school teacher. The dance-loving son, who cut an excellent figure in his inherited tailcoat, has risen to the highest circles in Vienna by marrying the beautiful heiress Amelie Paradini . As section head in the Ministry of Education , he belongs to the country's political elite.

On his birthday he received a letter in pale blue women's handwriting. It is a letter from the Jew Vera Wormser, the love of his life. A short but intense love affair 18 years ago in Heidelberg connects the two. Now Vera, who is currently in Vienna before taking up a job in Montevideo , writes that a “talented young man of 17 years”, apparently his son, could no longer attend grammar school in Germany “ for known reasons ” . She asks "the head of the section" to find him a place in a good school in Vienna.

Leonidas is thunderstruck and reads the letter in the toilet to avoid the curious looks of his wife. He remembers Vera, their short relationship and above all his lies - and his guilty conscience awakens.

In the first moment he wants to be brave to confess his love and his "largely Israelite" son. In a cabinet round, the otherwise opportunistic official even endangered his professional position when, against the spirit of the times, he campaigned for a Jewish university professor.

During the lunch break, the picture changes: Leonidas comes home to the Hietzingen villa and is asked about the letter by his wife, who suspects him of infidelity. He gives it to her; she does not see the meaning between the lines and tearfully apologizes for her jealousy. Now the time would have come for a confession, but he lets it by, less out of cowardice than out of convenience.

When, at a subsequent meeting with Vera at the Parkhotel Schönbrunn , it became clear that this 17-year-old was not his son at all, but that of a friend of Vera's, Leonidas took refuge again in his slippery conformism, abandoned the Jewish scholar and will be Carry on a self-satisfied life like before that day. However, he learns that he actually had a son, Vera, who unfortunately died at the age of two. He had torn up Vera's letter about it at the time without reading it.

On the same evening Leonidas (in the last scene of this novella) sits with Amelie in a box of the State Opera ( Der Rosenkavalier is performed by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal) and falls asleep. While he ... sleeps, Leonidas knows with unspeakable clarity that an offer to save him has been made to him today, dark, subdued, indefinite, like all offers of this kind. He knows that he has failed. He knows that a new offer will not be made again.

filming

The story was filmed in 1984 by Axel Corti as Eine paleblaue Frauenschrift (with Friedrich von Thun in the leading role). The TV film received several awards.

literature

expenditure

Research literature

  • Palaver, Wolfgang : Grace and guilt in Franz Werfel's novel "A pale blue women's font" . In: Religion - Literature - Arts. A dialogue . Edited by Peter Tschuggnall. Salzburg 2002. pp. 202-216.
  • Pape, Matthias: “Depression over Austria”. Franz Werfel's novella "A pale blue women's writing" (1940) in the cultural memory of Austria . In: Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 45 (2004) pp. 141–178.
  • Pfanner, Helmut: Dealing with the past twice: Franz Werfel's novella "A pale blue women's font" and its adaptation by Axel Corti . In: Literature for readers 26 (2003) issue 1. pp. 28–36.
  • Trabert, Florian / Stuhlfauth-Trabert, Mara: Franz Werfel “A pale blue women's font” (1941) . In: The German exile literature 1933 to 1945. Perspectives and interpretations . Edited by Sonja Klein and Sikander Singh. Darmstadt 2015. pp. 136–151.
  • Wagener, Hans: judgment on a life lie. On Franz Werfels "A pale blue women's font" . In: bridges. Germanistic Year Czech Republic - Slovakia . NF 3 (1995) pp. 191-208.
  • Wagner, Michael: Literature and National Identity. Austria consciousness with Franz Werfel . Vienna 2009. [ibid. Pp. 303-318.]
  • Weber, Alfons: Problem Constancy and Identity. Social psychological studies on Franz Werfel's biography and work - with special consideration of the exile stories . Frankfurt a. M. 1990. [ibid. Pp. 44–61.]

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