Eugénie or The Civil Time
Eugénie or Die Bürgerzeit is a novel by Heinrich Mann published in 1928.
Gabriele West, the wife of the consul Jürgen West, gets involved in little escapades with her neighbor, the speculator Heinrich Pidohn. The young mother pulls back every time - just in time. Consul West is ruined in risky stock market deals with the same speculator. The wheeler Pidohn is arrested. Mayor Reuter promises help to the stumbled consul. Gabriele wants to come to her senses.
action
The novel is set at the end of the founding years - more precisely, in the summer of 1873 - in a northern German port city. Gabriele, the 22-year-old mother of 5-year-old Jürgen West, the "spoiled lady", feels, having grown up in Bordeaux , a stranger among many Germans. Boredom plagues “the daughter of the south”. Most of all, she would like to go down to the harbor and put to sea “with a ship” - home to Bordeaux. Little Jürgen is looked after by the staff. In youthful exuberance, the pretty woman passes the time in the garden with Lieutenant Fritz von Kessel and Lieutenant von Kühn. To the displeasure of the host, consul Jürgen West, the two "lieutenants" court her. You rock the lady.
Gabriele “kissed von Kessel on the shoulder”. Emmy Nissen, also 22 years old, Gabriele's cousin, does not at all agree with the brawl, which is degenerating into the unseemly. The two officers, these incorrigible fighting cocks, go so far that they duel with the saber over Gabriele. "A wound to the right arm" makes von Kessel "incapable of fighting". Emmy seizes the opportunity. The girl has not yet had a husband. And much worse - cousin Gabriele simply snatched the consul, the good match, away from her. But Emmy is wealthy, as is 25-year-old von Kessel. “I want to marry Lieutenant von Kessel,” she decides. Emmy fights for the lieutenant, tells him that Gabriele, whom he loves, flirts with all kinds of men. Emmy surreptitiously suggests to the officer that you could exchange Emmy's “pretty big good” so that it lies next to his. And already there is an engagement. And Gabriele already has one less admirer.
But there is still Mr. Heinrich Pidohn behind Gabriele's hedge. The neighbor is "about to become the great man that the whole city greets". Good-natured and innocent, as the consul is, he lets the fraudster close, does daring business with him in order to become “wealthy” and in the process loses all his fortune. Before the consul's ruin is so far, Pidohn simply reaches over the hedge and separates his dog from the screaming little Jürgen so that he is not attacked any further. Gabriele feels that Pidohn is a bad person, is her “enemy”. The woman investigates her suspicion and finds it confirmed. “When it gets dark, disguised”, she slips “into forbidden areas” and sees with her own eyes: Pidohn cannot be an honest businessman. How repulsive and yet so tingly! Gabriele offers Pidohn a role in the play that is to be practiced at her home and will soon be practiced. One Sunday, when Gabriele is plagued by boredom again - the consul is playing in the gentlemen's company Bézique - she lets Pidohn persuade her to take a carriage ride to the beach in Suturp. In private - only the coachman is sitting on the box in front - Pidohn gives Gabriele a test of his acting talent: Pidohn was a “convict”, who presumably killed his fellow inmate. Gabriele can only just fend off a "frontal attack" by Pidohn when he tries "unskilled" to "embrace her with his whole arm". The novel culminates in a theater rehearsal, which Gabriele, "bared" and Pidohn, this time overheard by the jealous consul, complete in Gabriele's bedroom. "He [Pidohn] follows her around the room" and scolds her as an "adventurer", but luckily nothing happens again. In addition, Gabriele knows what is proper. You and the consul “have” their “son”. But she convinces herself that “her bad lust” initiated the “life-threatening business” of her husband.
When the rehearsed play is finally performed in front of an audience - invited citizens of the port city - in the consul's estate, the “honorable merchant” Pidohn has already been arrested for fraudulent speculation on the stock exchange. The author of the play inevitably slips himself into the suddenly vacant role of the prisoner. Only the attentive reader will initially know about this operational reshuffle. Citizens ruined on the stock exchange disrupt the open-air performance and deprive the consul, the supposed “accomplice” of Pidohn, of his trust as “chairman of the citizens' council”. “Just because of Pidohn” they had chosen him and now this: “ Price fall ”. The established merchant families find it regrettable that the consul needed a Pidohn "in order to be honored". The consul flees headlong to Suturp. Gabriele suspects that her husband is fleeing to sail up and away without her. The little son Jürgen had also fled the house a few times into the garden and further away because, the young mother is firmly convinced, he “didn't feel loved”. For his part, the consul fears that he will lose Gabriele as he lost his fortune. Consul West has a mess - the stunned reader suddenly becomes aware of a relationship with Frau Oberstleutnant.
The citizens of the port city are a community, grown together over the centuries of the “civil time”. Pidohn, the stranger, the intruder, cannot counter it. Common family history connects against the fraudster. The consul is brought back to the city by a loyal man and gets away with a black eye. Although he loses his office, he is given the choice of either “getting by in modest circumstances” or “leaving the city”.
Eugénie
The author of the play, which is performed in front of the citizens of the port city in the consul's estate, is the local old poet Professor von Heines. This poet “has genius”. Because he is adored by Gabriele, who speaks French with him, he picks up a pen, taken with himself. The piece, more of a side work of the “Herald of the United Nation”, takes place after the Battle of Sedan (September 1870). Napoleon III , Emperor of France, is a prisoner of King Wilhelm of Prussia . The Empress Eugénie penetrates the Prussian King to free her husband.
| Fictional character | Role in the play | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Consul Gabriele West | Empress Eugénie | ||
| Emmy Nissen | Lady-in-waiting of the Empress | ||
| Heinrich Pidohn | Napoleon III | ||
| Lieutenant Fritz von Kessel | French Chamberlain | ||
| Lieutenant von Kühn | King Wilhelm | ||
| Consul Jürgen West | General, adjutant to the king | ||
The civil time
The audience of the theater performance, including Mayor Reuter, commented on the events on the stage. The mayor thinks that King Wilhelm “gave the bourgeoisie shine” and that the “reverently beloved ruler” has “all his power” from the bourgeoisie. The word "Bürgerzeit" occurs exactly once in the text of the novel. Mayor Reuter again said it when he emphasized the centuries of dominance of the citizenry in his city.
Quotes
- "The defeated have always been wrong."
- "We have nothing, but we have each other."
Testimonials
- In October 1927 Heinrich Mann said in the Dresdner Nachrichten : “I am working on a petty-bourgeois novel, which means that it is not set today. After childhood memories I want to show the reader, who still calls himself bourgeois in vain, how the bourgeoisie used to be. It looked very different from what you think now. "
- On February 13, 1928 to the French Felix Bertaux : “The little novel is easy to read. He has his moral teaching, even if not of high spirituality. "
- On March 26th, 1928 to Emil Faktor : “I am in full work, my novel should be finished. It is historical, so to speak, because the days of my childhood are historical, and how. "
reception
-
Anger thinks
- the place of action is the author's birthplace: Lübeck .
- the author portrays the Lübeck poet Emanuel Geibel in the figure of Professor von Heines with good-natured derision .
literature
- Primary literature
- Heinrich Mann: Eugénie or the civil time . Novel. Volume 9: Heinrich Mann: Collected Works. Pp. 189-382. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin and Weimar 1975
- First edition
- Heinrich Mann: Eugénie or the civil time . Novel. Berlin-Wien-Leipzig, Zsolnay 1928. 320 pages
- expenditure
- Heinrich Mann: Eugénie or the civil time . Novel. Frankfurt a. M. and Hamburg. Fischer-Bücherei 1967. 167 pages
- Heinrich Mann: Eugénie or the civil time . Novel. With the afterword A bourgeois fairy tale by Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow . Frankfurt a. M. Ullstein 1981. 244 pages
- Secondary literature
- Klaus Schröter: Heinrich Mann . P. 108. Reinbek near Hamburg 1967, ISBN 3-499-50125-2
- Sigrid Anger: Post Comment . In: Heinrich Mann: Collected Works , Volume 9. P. 383–397. Aufbau-Verlag Berlin and Weimar 1975
- Volker Ebersbach : Heinrich Mann . P. 221. Philipp Reclam jun. Leipzig 1978, 392 pages.
- Helmut Koopmann in: Gunter E. Grimm , Frank Rainer Max (eds.): German poets. Life and work of German-speaking authors . Volume 7: From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century . S. 34. Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-15-008617-5
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A-Z . P. 410. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8
Web links
- Heide Eilert: The artist as a moralist Comments on the novel in: Helmut Koopmann, Peter-Paul Schneider (Ed.): Heinrich Mann: His work in the Weimar Republic . P. 211ff. Lübeck 1981: 305 pages, ISBN 3465015789
- Publication of the novel in continuation parts in the Vossische Zeitung in 1928.