Memories of Ludolf Ursleu the Younger

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Memories of Ludolf Ursleu the Younger is the first novel by Ricarda Huch , which was published in 1893 in the Besser bookstore by Wilhelm Ludwig Hertz in Berlin.

The trained lawyer Ludolf Ursleu the Younger retired to the Einsiedeln monastery as a "grouchy old man" and in this retreat tells a story from his youth long ago - the adulterous love of his unmarried younger sister Galeide Ursleu for a married cousin, the lawyer Ezard Ursleu.

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Ludolf's father, the wealthy businessman Ludolf Ursleu the Elder, works in a northern German Hanseatic city. Galeide is not given in a boarding house. Instead, the parents take Lucile Leroy, an educator from French-speaking Switzerland , into the house. Lucile is only a good five years older than Galeide. Both become friends. Ezard and Lucile fall in love. Uncle Harre - that is the brother of Ludolf's father - is against the connection between his son Ezard and the Catholic Lucile. The Ursleus - Ricarda Huch uses the plural the Ursleuen - are Protestants .

Ferdinand Olethurm, Ludolf's great-grandfather on his mother's side, considers Uncle Harre to be “a poorly constructed person”, but on the issue of marriage he agrees with his uncle. The great-grandfather would like to see a connection between his favorite Galeide and Ezard. But Galeide is still a child. Lucile complies with Uncle Harre's demand for a conversion to Protestantism. The young couple is getting married. Their first child is named after his grandfather Harre.

The shops Ludolf Ursleu the Elder are going steeply downhill. Galeide doesn't want to know anything about her economically advantageous marriage. The young lady falls in love with her cousin Ezard. The narrator's mother dies. Among the mourners from Central Germany is Eva, a younger cousin of the deceased. Eva stays and is married to the "much older" widower Uncle Harre. The great-grandfather, who doesn't like Uncle Harre, is initially against the “absurd connection”, but then joins his dear galley, while Eva turns to. Eva gives birth to Heileke, a girl.

The narrator feels drawn to Eva and discusses her stepson's relationship with Galeide with her. In return, he learns from Eva how Ezard poured out his heart to her. Eva thinks about it and puts her older sister Anna Elisabeth at Galeide's side. The opponents Galeide and Lucide are still talking to each other, but Galeide lies to Lucide: She doesn't love Ezard. Galeide realizes she has to leave town. To the disappointment of her great-grandfather, she attended the Conservatory in Geneva .

Ludolf's father, insolvent , commits suicide. Ezard and Galeide meet again for the funeral. Ezard comments on the death of his uncle: “It's the first!” Ludolf thinks the thought through to the end: One of those who are against Ezard's connection with Galeide is no longer.

Anna Elisabeth is leaving. Ezard sells his uncle's house. The great-grandfather and Ludolf have to move out. Galeide goes back to Switzerland. Ezard meets Galeide on one of his business trips. In response to the great-grandfather's moral sermon, Ezard replied, “I love galleons, and she loves me. And I will never, never give up your love ... "

Uncle Harre and Ezard invest most of their fortune in reinstalling the dilapidated urban water pipe. The project is stagnating due to a lack of support from the responsible local authorities. When cholera breaks out in town, the public blames Uncle Harre and Ezard for the incomplete water supply project. Heileke fell ill, but survived the epidemic. Uncle Harre shoots himself. Ludolf's question in the presence of the grieving Ezard about this one of the numerous deaths in the novel is: "... is this the second?"

Eva lives particularly celibate with her child. Lucile turns away from Ezard. Galeide finishes the Geneva Conservatory with success and gives a concert in his hometown, among others. She donates the proceeds to the disease-ridden city. Lucile does not shrink from Galeide; stays in town. After the concert, Galeide and Ezard meet again. The grandfather wants to see “brotherly and sisterly friendship”, but the narrator knows better when he registers the “blissful glimmer of happiness” emanating from the two lovebirds. Indeed, Ezard begs Lucile to consent to the divorce. She refuses. Ezard and Lucile's second child, a little girl, falls ill with cholera and dies. Outrageous - Galeide wishes Lucile dead. Lucile falls ill with the disease and dies. Ezard and Galeide hug each other and cry. Ludolf, looking at the end of his story at crucial chapter ends - also here -: "Ezard and Galeide are dust like them, who died and corrupted for their sake ..."

Ludolf and his sister transfer Lucile's remains to Switzerland. After the funeral, Lucile's mother asks the two guests from northern Germany to stay a little longer. The reason: Lucile's brother Gaspard has got it into his head to marry Galeide. Galeide actually falls in love with the “Swiss farmer”, who is several years his junior. The two guests flee to northern Germany. Gaspard, persistent, thinks about a return visit.

Ezard's business is looking up. He's buying back the uncle's house. The great-grandfather, Galeide and Ludolf move in. Galeide wants to be married to Ezard in church. Gaspard announces his visit. Ludolf wants to write him off. Galeide longs for the new lover. She wants to see him and then die. That's exactly how it happens. Gaspard is coming. Galeide wants to do everything for him; asks if she should jump out the window. The guest affirms. Galeide leaps to death.

The great-grandfather dies at the age of over ninety. Ludolf weeps at his grave like a child. Eva moves in with Heileke to live with her relatives. Ezard moves into Ludolf's father's house with his son Harre and works as a lawyer. Already at the age of fifty, Ezard dies “of a bad cold”.

Ludolf confesses to the reader that he loved Ezard: "This one I would have liked to be!"

Testimonials

Ricarda Huch writes to Joseph Victor Widmann zum Ursleu

  • on July 17th, 1893: "Please keep this my darling a benevolent disposition."
  • on September 17, 1893 after the publication of the novel: "I am not entirely at ease with it ..."
  • and on September 23, 1893, she had "never thought of Nietzsche when writing" her dubious novel ".

shape

The reader from the 21st century may find Ludolf's syntax screwed up. Nonetheless, Ludolf puts the cards on the table right at the beginning of the novel: “I wanted to be a man of the world and I was a goal; I wanted to be someone who knows how to live and I learned nothing but to die prematurely. ”Later he considers himself sluggish and fleeting. The outsider Anna Elisabeth sees through Ludolf; does not consider him capable of making a fortune. Ludolf says he loves Anna Elisabeth and would like to marry her. As an administrative officer, he now receives “a reasonably good salary”, but still has to pay off debts from his student days.

In clear moments, Ludolf not only sees himself as real. So he rates his sister “despite all tenderness” as “extremely coarse and violent nature”.

Ludolf tells side stories - for example, the failed contact with the opposite sex during his four years of study. The beautiful face of his adored Georgine, for example, is disfigured by a “lowly wretch” with “corrosive sulfuric acid ”. The impoverished Russian student Vera eats and drinks at Ludolf's expense and turns out to be married to another starving Russian student. Years later, at the time of cholera (see above), Ludolf still talks about something like an unhappy love. The richly 20-year-old orphaned, wealthy Flore Lellalen admits Ludolf's rapprochement, but then rejects him, travels overseas and dies of cholera.

Major courses of action are usually announced. The nastiness of Lucile's younger brother Gaspard, who at the end of the novel turns out to be one of the spoilers of the Ursley family, is already worked out at the beginning of the novel. And in the 15th of the 34 chapters of the novel, the narrator Galeide and Ezard would like to "call a loving word down into the grave" in advance. When Ludolf accepted the invitation to stay in Switzerland for a longer period of time, he said: "So we stayed to our destruction."

Ricarda Huch makes fun of the Germans' aversion to the French: Galeide should "learn the shyly revered language of ... hated neighbors".

The author of Braunschweig offers realistic images of her familiar Harz mountains, calls "a lanky foxglove plant fully rose-red flowers."

reception

  • Baumgarten claims in 1964: “... like none of her [Ricarda Huch] later novels, this one is a self-portrayal. The correspondence of the main character, whom she calls Galeide, is clear ... Also the external events largely correspond to the facts that characterize the history of the Huch family ... "
  • Adler sees relations with impressionism .
  • Liska comments on the incompatibility and "contradiction", ie on the "heterogeneity" of Ludolf's "judgment"; speaks of the “unpredictability and subjectivity of the narrator”; discusses the history of reception - during which Ludolf's statements "about treason and guilt" primarily served as reference points.
  • Tebben goes into “the highly explosive love affair” Galeide-Ezard, “broken in the prism of the narrated opinion”, and brings Schopenhauer's world as will and imagination into play, as well as his metaphysics of sexual love . In addition, Tebben names arguments from some interpreters from the 20th century.
  • Sprengel mentions Ludolf as a means of distancing Ricarda Huch and his "old-fashioned language".

Book editions

  • Ricarda Huch: Memories of Ludolf Ursleu the Younger. Novel. With an afterword by Günter Adler . 348 pages. Insel-Verlag, Leipzig 1989, ISBN 3-7351-0131-3 (edition used)

See also

literature

  • Marie Baum : Shining lead. The life of Ricarda Huch. 520 pages. Rainer Wunderlich Verlag Hermann Leins , Tübingen and Stuttgart 1950 (6th – 11th thousand)
  • Helene Baumgarten: Ricarda Huch. About her life and work . 236 pages. Hermann Böhlaus successor, Weimar 1964
  • Vivian Liska : Anarchy of Writing: The Topicality of Ricarda Huch's Memories of Ludolf Ursleu the Younger . P. 1–21 in Hans-Werner Peter (Ed.), Silke Köstler (Ed.): Ricarda Huch (1864–1947). Studies of their life and work. Anniversary ribbon for the 50th anniversary of her death on the occasion of the international Ricarda Huch research symposium from 15.-17. November 1997 in Braunschweig. 185 pages. PP-Verlag GmbH, Braunschweig 1997, ISBN 3-88712-050-7
  • Karin Tebben: Ricarda Huch and Schopenhauer: To the Ursleu novel . Pp. 23-47 in ibid
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1
  • Vivian Liska: “The Modern Age - One Woman”. Using the example of the novels Ricarda Huchs and Annette Kolbs . A. Francke, Tübingen and Basel 2000, ISBN 3-7720-2751-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baumgarten, p. 229, penultimate entry
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 38, 2. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 168, 7. Zvo
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 192, 18. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 237, 12. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 253, 3rd Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 257, 6. Zvu
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 317
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 325, 3rd Zvu
  10. ↑ Ricarda Huch, quoted in Baum, p. 71, 1. Zvo
  11. ↑ Ricarda Huch, quoted in Baum, p. 72, 8. Zvo
  12. ↑ Ricarda Huch, quoted in Baum, p. 72, 14. Zvo
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 23, 6th Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 174, 7. Zvo
  15. ↑ Edition used, pp. 44–47
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 103, 7th Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 268, 1. Zvu
  18. ↑ Edition used, p. 19, 13. Zvu
  19. ↑ Edition used, p. 163, 9. Zvo
  20. ↑ Baumgarten p. 23, 5th Zvu - p. 24, 4th Zvo
  21. ↑ Adler in the afterword of the edition used, p. 346 middle
  22. ↑ Liska (1997), p. 13, 13. Zvu and p. 18
  23. ↑ Liska (1997), p. 7, 10. Zvu
  24. ↑ in more detail in Liska (2000), pp. 72–201
  25. ↑ Tebben, p. 32, 1. Zvo
  26. ↑ Tebben, p. 33, 16. Zvo
  27. ↑ Metaphysics of Sexual Love
  28. ^ Sprengel, p. 398, 17. Zvo
  29. ↑ PP as in practical philosophy
  30. ↑ “Die Moderne - ein Weib” Table of contents as PDF