Gorm Grymme

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King Gorm erected this monument for Thyra his wife, the ornament of Denmark.
Jelling rune stones

Gorm Grymme is a ballad by Theodor Fontane . It was written in 1864 in connection with the two trips the author made to Denmark in the year of the German-Danish War , in May and September 1864. On December 3, 1864, it was read out at the annual foundation festival of the Tunnel over the Spree Association as part of a competition and was awarded the Association's Prize, which Wilhelm von Merckel, who died at the end of 1861 , had donated with a legacy . After the Cotta'sche Morgenblatt had rejected it for educated classes , the poem appeared in print for the first time in 1872 in Julius Rodenberg's magazine Salon for Literature, Art and Society .

content

King Gorm rules over Denmark,
he rules the thirty years,
his mind is firm, his hand is strong,
only his hair turned white,

King Gorm loves his only son Jung-Harald more than anything. On his 15th birthday, he announced who should ever tell him that his son was dead is dead. Soon the son is going on a Viking train with 300 ships . Only three of them return without Jung-Harald. Nobody dares to bring the news of his death to the king. That is why Queen Thyra Danebod dresses in black and hangs black carpets in the hall of the castle. When the king sees this, he understands that his son has died and speaks it himself.

He sat down where he stood,
a gust of wind blew through the house,
the queen held the king's hand,
the lights went out.

About content and form

According to legend, Gorm , who is considered the first king of Denmark, died out of grief over the death of his son Knut or even took his own life. Fontane turns it into the story of a "grim" king who conjures up a kind of invocation on the integrity of the crown prince, his only child, and when he dies anyway, to a certain extent condemns himself to death.

The ballad has ten stanzas, the verses are mostly iambic . Colors play a special role, anaphora (verse 2) and alliteration are used.

Web links

Wikisource: Gorm Grymme  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Blum: Humanistische Reisen , Munich 2002, p. 216 books.google.de ; s. also note on Fontane's diary from Denmark
  2. "tunnel" -Lesungen in Theodor Fontane: All novels, stories, poems, Legacy and . 6th volume, ed. by Helmuth Nürnberger. ISBN 3-446-11456-4 . P. 1254 books.google.de
  3. Volume 5, Vol. 10, Issue 9, pp. 283 f. In addition, Fontane's letter to Rodenberg of April 4, 1872, in: Fontane, T .: Werke, Schriften und Letters. Section 4/2 Letters 1860-1878 Ed. Walter Keitel, Helmuth Nürnberger , Otto Drude a. a. Hanser 1979. p. 406 books.google.de . See also Theodor Fontane: Correspondence with Friedrich Eggers , ed. by Roland Berbig (1997), p. 427 fn. 11 books.google.de