Griseldis (Courths-Mahler)

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Griseldis is a novel that Hedwig Courths-Mahler published in 1917 for Rothbarth-Verlag in Leipzig and which, like all of the works by this author , is classified as trivial literature . The horror , crime and romance novel is an adaptation of the Griseldis material .

plot

The location of the action is the fictional, rural German count's seat Treuenfels, the time is the author's present, i.e. the 1910s. Count Harro von Treuenfels had brought a bottle of poison with him from a trip to India for the beautiful container that he believed to be kept in a secret compartment of his desk until his wife Alice was found dead in her bed one day. Since the poison from which she died obviously came from his possession and he had a motive for the crime in view of Alice's shrill joie de vivre and unfaithfulness, Harro had come into custody and before the court, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. His peers, including his close friend, Baron Fritz Dahlheim, then cut him. Only two people remain loyal to him: daughter Gilda and cousin Beate, who also lives in the house. Beate, an elderly maid, has fallen into obsessive love for her cousin and is now hoping to finally win him over.

Since Gilda's French teacher had run away after the scandal, a replacement is sought. The choice falls on Freiin Griseldis von Ronach. Until recently she had lived with her father, a major who had been discharged prematurely from the army and had been bitter since then, and she had sweetened the last years of his life with her freshness and bravery. Since he left her penniless, she now works as a partner in the noble women's monastery of St. Marien. There she not only spreads happiness among the canonesses, but is also always taken into trust by the superior, Countess Anna Salitz-Halm, in the event of family grief. This troubled family includes the distantly related Harro, among others. Due to the proximity to the superior, Griseldis is very familiar with his story from the start. And not only that: the first time he looked at his photograph, she fell passionately in love with him.

When Griseldis moves into Treuenfels Castle, cousin Beate rightly sees her as a rival for Harro's love and welcomes her with great coldness. Not so with Harro, who immediately feels attracted to her, an attraction that intensifies when Griseldis confesses that she firmly believes in his innocence. From then on, Griseldis has only one goal: to make Harro happy again by proving his innocence. A dream leads her on to the first clue: the causes of Alice's death have something to do with her bedroom. In her own room, which is directly above Alice, Griseldis discovers a hidden shaft behind a gold frame.

In Harro's favor, Griseldis is not only active as a criminalist, but also as a diplomat: While out for a walk, she surprisingly meets Tilly, an old friend who tells of her engagement to Fritz Dahlheim. At Griseldis' request, Tilly promises to stand up for Harro with her fiancé. Griseldis continues her research and has Harro show you the castle tower that is adjacent to the bedrooms, but is unused and difficult to access. Inside she discovers a gold frame, which apparently offers access to a hidden shaft just like the frame in her own room. When she explored Alice's bedroom for the first time, she discovered there, too, directly above the bedside table, a secret opening to the shaft. She studies the castle's chronicle and discovers that a long time ago an ancestor had laid a secret passage between the tower and the bedrooms.

Griseldis' diplomatic intervention is successful: Dahlheim resumes his friendly contact with Harro. He declares his love for Griseldis and asks her for her hand. Griseldis fears that he will regret the relationship with an impoverished woman after his rehabilitation and says yes, but asks him to respite. First she wants to rehabilitate him. In order to spare Beates feelings, Harro wants to get her out of the house before he marries Griseldis. Beate reacts to the suggestion to live elsewhere, but with desperation and creates a scene for him in the course of which she also confesses her love for him.

Griseldis continues her secret investigation and not only discovers the entire secret passage between the tower and the bedroom, but also a ring that Beate lost in it. It was the jealous cousin who poisoned Alice's night potion. Beate has noticed Griseldis' rummaging around for a long time and now locks the adversary who threatens to convict her in a secret passage. Then she poisons herself with the remaining poison in the bottle.

When Harro notices that Griseldis is not there, he initially suspects her at Dahlheims, but then learns that she was not there at all. A feverish search begins and ends happily: Harro finds Griseldis and is able to free her. Beate lies dead in her room. Tilly and Fritz get married, and now nothing stands in the way of Harros and Griseldis' happiness together.

Publication history and reception

The Griseldis material was already widespread in the Renaissance and has been reworked again and again, most recently by Gerhart Hauptmann ( Griselda , Lustspiel, 1909).

Courths-Mahler published her Griseldis in 1917 (according to some sources: 1916) with the Leipzig Rothbarth Verlag. A Swedish edition followed in 1919 and a Finnish edition in 1924, to which English and other translations were later added.

For the television series “Die Welt der Hedwig Courths-Mahler”, Peter Beauvais staged an adaptation of Griseldi in 1974 with Sabine Sinjen , Klaus Barner and Tatjana Iwanow in the leading roles.

Expenses (selection)

literature

  • Katrin Baumgarten: Hagestolz and old maid. Development, instrumentalization and survival of clichés and stereotypes about the unmarried . Waxmann, Münster a. a. 1997, ISBN 3-89325-514-1 , pp. 123–140 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Griseldis in "WorldCat". Retrieved February 28, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Griseldis in the Internet Movie Database (English)