Owl Pentecost

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Owl Pentecost is a story by Wilhelm Raabe that was written in the spring of 1874 and published in Westermann's monthly magazine in 1875 . The text was published in book form in 1879 in the second volume of the “Krähenfelder Stories”, also by Westermann in Braunschweig.

content

On May 22, 1858, Legation Councilor Alexius von Nebelung and his neighbor, the Grand Ducal Darmstadt Commercial Councilor Florens Nürrenberg, quarreled in Frankfurt am Main . The Kommerzienrat scolded the blessed father of the country, Prince Alexius the Thirteenth, who was employed by the diplomat von Nebelung during his lifetime, for a herring. In return, the Legation Council denigrates Nürrenberg's hometown Rottweil am Neckar as a donkey stable.

The son of the Kommerzienrat, the young professor of aesthetics Dr. phil. Elard Nürrenberg and the Legation Councilor's daughter, Miss Katharina Nebelung, called Käthchen, are madly in love. The couple secretly got engaged, but immediately fell out when it came to the fathers, "this old rabble". Käthchen wants to be a good daughter and cannot accept Elard's word about the rabble. The girl is leaving. It picks up its aunt from the train station. Karoline von Nebelung, called Lina, the sister of the Legation Councilor, returns from America after a twenty-year absence from Germany. The born aristocrat had run away from the Germany of her youth and worked in America as " Governess ". First, Aunt Lina has to comfort her niece at the train station. Käthchen regrets his wickedness. Elard "went away in resentment".

Käthchen's father has good reason to send his daughter to see the sister returning home. The Legation Council was involved in the expulsion of Lina thirty years ago. Alexius von Nebelung does not want to be seen at home, goes on a Whitsun excursion in the direction of Isenburg and stops on the way. In the bar he meets the good boyfriend and student friend Fritz Hessenberg. The widower Fritz, father of three adult children, is away on business. In Romanshorn on Lake Constance in Switzerland free, he runs as a tanner a flourishing leather business. Thirty years ago, Alexius von Nebelung had kept the record of the conviction of the law student and fraternity member Hessenberg to several years of imprisonment. The then 19-year-old Lina had confessed to her beloved Fritz and had been expelled from the house by her mother.

The legation counselor, bearer of the Order of Alexius, certainly does not dare to go home with Fritz, the former traitor to the fatherland, whom he arrested at the time and then did not see for more than twenty-six years. But the ex-demagogue Fritz forgives his former companion and at least wants to greet Lina. The youth friends are on their way. The former state criminal and traitor wants to turn back shortly before the front door; would rather wait for the bright Pentecost Sunday for the courtesy visit. Late at night you don't make a visit to a lady who has just arrived from overseas. But the legation councilor needs reinforcements and urges Fritz to go with them.

The reception is extremely warm. Brother and sister are in each other's arms. Lina has since made friends with the old arguing Nürrenberg. The Kommerzienrat has visited the returned Fraulein and Käthchen and tirelessly done preparatory work for the happy ending. Elard and Käthchen become a couple. Raabe writes: “Elard and Käthchen saw and heard nothing; they were carried by a pink, illuminated cloud, and arm in arm they floated into paradise. They did not allow themselves to be disturbed by what was going on around them, and no one made the appearance of blowing the golden-red cloud from under their feet and calling them back to reality and to the ground. "Lina confesses to old Nürrenberg with a laugh:" You are the man I hoped to find in Germany. ”Fritz then gives Lina a warm, casual welcome. Lina returns the greeting sadly. The Legation Council looks stupid.

shape

The plot spans a couple of hours on a Pentecost Sunday evening. Any consideration cannot be taken: “We do not get involved in anything that relates to the demands of the reader on the story. What we have to do, we know, and what we have to say, too, and this is completely sufficient for us. ”Many a panning hits the reader prepared:“ We now turn to him [the Kommerzienrat] once more to discuss the events in to make his honest soul clear to us in its development up to this moment. "

In an amusing tone, the narrator suggests the parallel between Elard and Käthchen and Romeo and Juliet :

"Dear Käthchen," whispered Montague's son.
“O Elard!” Breathed Capulet's daughter.

In the second half of the 19th century, however, the tragedy from the 16th century can only be dealt with prosaically in the form of a comedy .

"Owl Pentecost" is a Westphalian expression and corresponds to the Saint Never Day . Lutz Röhrich brings in the lexicon of proverbial idioms the example "up Ulepinxte (Owl Pentecost), when de Kräjjen op'm Ise danset". Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Wander already mentions this example (with a different spelling) and a variant with goats dancing on the ice instead of crows with reference to Firmenich . The Germanist Hannelore Burchardt, on the other hand, interprets the title as an ostensibly sunny festival, but the devilish powers - here Prince Alexis XIII. and the Nebelung family, who narrow-heartedly destroyed the happiness of Lina and Fritz - made it an unhappy Pentecost.

reception

  • Raabe was shaking up space-time boundaries and wanted to question reality.
  • Burchardt examines the role of the fictional narrator, who is neither a first-person narrator nor to be equated with Raabe.
  • Butzmann gives the exact location of the action in Frankfurt am Main with a street map based on reconstructions by Fritz Hartmann from Frankfurt.
  • Meyen refers to further leading works: Fritz Hartmann, Käthe Bothe, Gustav Plehn (Wolfenbüttel 1925, 1930, 1932), Wilhelm Fehse, Rosemarie Mushake (Braunschweig 1937, 1961) and Reinhold Hardt (Stuttgart 1958).

literature

First edition

  • Owl Pentecost . Pp. 1–112 in vol. 2 of the “Krähenfelder Stories”. Westermann, Braunschweig 1879

Used edition

  • Eulenpfingsten , pp. 187–284 in: Fritz Böttger (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe: Deutsche Scherzos. Six stories . 707 pages. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1962

expenditure

  • The story appeared in the “Krähenfelder Stories” in 1897, 1902, 1907, 1915 and 1934. Meyen names seven other editions.
  • Owl Pentecost . Pp. 355–447, with an appendix, written by Hans Butzmann, pp. 506–521 in: Gerhart Meyer (arrangement), Hans Butzmann (arrangement): Meister Autor . To the wild man . Höxter and Corvey . Owl Pentecost . (2nd edition provided by Karl Hoppe and Rosemarie Schillemeit) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973. Vol. 11, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 in Karl Hoppe (ed.), Jost Schillemeit (ed.), Hans Oppermann ( Ed.), Kurt Schreinert (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 312, entry 43
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 658, 10. Zvo
  3. ^ Butzmann in vol. 11 of the Braunschweig edition, p. 511
  4. ↑ Elard on his work as a scholar in Heidelberg: “This semester I read publice about the Sturm und Drang period in German literature; privatissime about the sculptures from the temple of Zeus Panhellenios on the island of Aegina and as professor extraordinarius cultural history of the Arabs in Spain . ”(Edition used, p. 264 middle)
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 261, 9. Zvo
  6. ↑ Oppermann, p. 97, 17th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 216, 5. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 249, 7. Zvo
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 211, 15. Zvo
  10. ↑ Lutz Röhrich: Lexicon of the proverbial sayings . 5th edition. tape 1 . Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-451-05200-8 , p. 1171 .
  11. ^ Wander : German Sprichwort Lexikon
  12. ↑ Hannelore Burchardt: Wilhelm Raabe's “Eulenpfingsten”. A language analysis with special attention to the attitude of the fictional narrator . In: Jahrbuch der Raabe-Gesellschaft 9 (1968), pp. 106–135, here p. 132 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  13. ↑ Oppermann, p. 97, 15. Zvu
  14. ↑ Burchardt, pp. 106-135
  15. ↑ Butzmann in vol. 11 of the Braunschweiger edition, p. 510 and page between p. 512 and 513
  16. ↑ Meyen, p. 330
  17. ^ Butzmann in vol. 11 of the Braunschweig edition, p. 511
  18. ^ Butzmann in vol. 11 of the Braunschweig edition, p. 511
  19. ↑ Meyen, pp. 69-70