Gustav Adolfs Page (novella)

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Conrad Ferdinand Meyer

Gustav Adolfs Page is a 1882 published tragic novella by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer , in a fictional in most parts of action is told by one as a boy clad girl as a Page in the service of the Swedish king and military commander in the Thirty Years War Gustav II. Adolf occurs .

action

King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden

The action takes place in 1632 during the Swedish campaign in and around Nuremberg and near Lützen and is divided into five chapters.

  1. The Nuremberg merchant Leubelfing received a letter in which King Gustav Adolf asked him to send his young son August to the royal service as a body page - Leubelfing had once lightly promised the king this. August, however, like his father, is a frightened shopkeeper, and he dreads the proven life-threatening position. August's orphaned cousin Gustel is quite different, a wild, adventurous girl who loves the King of Sweden enthusiastically. Now the waiting Swedish officer is given the boyish Gustel in men's clothes as Leubelfing's son, while the real August Leubelfing is sent incognito under the original family name Laubfinger to Leipzig.
  2. In Gustav Adolf's camp, Gustel is almost a constant companion of her idol, wins his full trust and tries to keep her true female identity a secret.
  3. A Slavonian woman named Korinna, the mistress of the Duke of Lauenburg, who is married to a cousin of the Swedish Queen , is waiting in the king’s anteroom . Gustavus Adolphus had her arrested out of moral indignation at the continued adultery. She quickly recognizes the gender of the curiously approaching page. When Gustav Adolf Korinna was given the choice of being extradited to her father or sent to Sweden, she committed suicide. The king is even more angry about German nobles allied with him, who unceremoniously robbed a bunch of peasants who had fled from the Catholic side to the Swedish camp - with their subjects, the Lauenburger as spokesman, they as German imperial princes could ultimately do as they please. Gustav Adolf gives a crude sermon to the nobility. After the king's departure, the Lauenburger scoffs at the foreign king and wishes him doom, but is left alone by his peers. Gustel notes with horror that the Duke's voice closely resembles hers.
    Gustav-Adolf-Gedenkkirche Meuchen
  4. In the evening an envoy from the Wallenstein troops comes to the king's camp and casually asks Gustel to try on a small glove that fits her like a glove. When the king arrives, the ambassador identifies himself as Wallenstein himself. Gustel overhears the conversation from the next room. Wallenstein reveals to the king that at noon on the same day an auditor from the Protestant camp for an inheritance had spoken out loud during his afternoon nap, namely that he wanted to kill the Swedish king because he had suffered an insult. He himself wanted to warn him and also point out that his page had the same voice as the dream speaker and that the little glove that his guest had forgotten with him would also fit him. The king initially rejects the suspicion, but when he asks his page questions about his stay during the day in an evening conversation, Gustel runs away in despair. On the run, she reaches the Swedish Colonel Åke Tott , who recognizes in her the daughter of his deceased comrade in arms, Captain Leubelfing. Towards the end of the summer Gustav Adolf raised his camp near Nuremberg and looked for the battle in Saxony. On the eve of the Battle of Lützen , Gustel reunited with him to protect him. Together with the Duke of Lauenburg, she accompanies the king into battle.
  5. When the pastor of the village church in Meuchen opens the door at night, the seriously wounded page is standing there, carrying the body of the Swedish king on his horse. Both Colonel Ake Tott and Cousin Laubfinger arrive by chance. As he dies, Gustel reveals that the king was shot by the Duke of Lauenburg in the fog. The king and page are laid out side by side in the village church.

Motifs

City Church of St. Wenzel in Naumburg (Saale)
  • Figure drawing: Almost all the characters carrying the plot are clearly characterized by the author as positive (Gustel, Gustav Adolf) or negative (Lauenburg, Laubfinger). Only secondary characters (Korinna, Wallenstein) remain ambivalent. The difference between the god sent King of Sweden and the diabolical Duke of Lauenburg is particularly evident.
  • Swap of gender roles: Apart from the shining hero Gustav Adolf, it is the female characters Gustel and Korinna who display the “typically male” traits of courage and determination, while the other male characters are fearful (father and son Leubelfing) or deceit (Lauenburg) stand out and have feminine elements in their physique.
  • Confessional polarization: The novella, written at the time of the Kulturkampf raging in the German Reich , but also in Switzerland , takes a clear stand here. Evangelical righteousness appears to be exemplary in various places. In the tradition of the Protestant tale of the "Lion of Midnight" , the King of Sweden is portrayed as a pious, just and incontestable saint and in some parallels to Jesus Christ (entry into Naumburg compared with Jesus entry into Jerusalem ; death announcement to faithful before the battle of Lützen) as downright messianic. The German Empire is referred to as the "Protestant Empire", "it cannot possibly belong to the Habsburgs any longer". In contrast, Catholicism has negative connotations and is associated with cunning (seduction of the king's daughter Christel to the rosary by a disguised Jesuit ), obstinacy (Korinna) and superstition (Wallenstein).

Historical background

The Leublfing coat of arms in Scheibler's book of arms

When writing the novella, Meyer relied largely on historical figures of the time:

  • The Swedish King Gustav II Adolf
  • According to a grave slab in the St. Wenceslas town church in Naumburg, Gustav Adolf actually had an 18-year-old page named Augustus v. Leubelfing , who was fatally wounded in the Battle of Lützen . According to legend, he was one of eight companions of the Swedish king, who are said to have been killed by imperial horsemen at his side. Previously, Leubelfing had allegedly tried to help the wounded king back on his horse, but was fatally hit by three stitches himself. Rescued from the battlefield, despite medical help, he died a few days later. Meyers repeated reference to the page as "dog" or "little dog" (also in comparison to the "lion" Gustav Adolf) refers to the small dog (or Bracken ) in the coat of arms of the Lower Bavarian noble family Leublfing .
  • A Johann von Leubelfing was city bishop of Nuremberg in the Thirty Years' War and a colonel in Swedish service in 1632 and could have been the godfather of Gustes father or uncle, but he was neither a war-shy businessman (like the uncle) nor died early (like the father) he lived until 1648.
  • The Duke of Lauenburg in the novella most likely refers to the Lauenburg Prince Franz Karl von Sachsen-Lauenburg , who fought as a general in the Thirty Years' War on different sides at different times. He had married the widowed Brandenburg princess Agnes von Brandenburg in 1628 , a great-aunt of Gustav Adolf's wife Maria Eleonora von Brandenburg , who died in 1629, so that Franz Karl was unmarried at the time of the novel. Franz Karl was in the service of Sweden at the time, took part in Gustav Adolf's campaign in southern Germany and, after his death, approached the imperial side again. The characterization of Lauenburg and the murder plot should have come from Meyer's poetry.
The Swedish general Åke Tott
The imperial general Wallenstein
  • Åke Tott was a Swedish general in the Thirty Years War.
  • Wallenstein was the imperial commander in chief in the second half of the Swedish campaign . Through his field camp near Nuremberg, he forced Gustavus Adolf to camp there in defense of the city allied with it.

Origin and reception

Meyer used elements of Goethe's Egmont in his work , but also unworked ideas from Heinrich Laube (including a girl as a page, Lauenburg) and based the historical framework on August Friedrich Gfrörer's historical representation of Gustav Adolf. The original layout as a drama can still be recognized by the structure of the novella, right down to the division into chapters. According to Meyer's own account, the drafting of the novella happened very quickly. thought carried out without interruption ».

While the novella was very successful with the audience, the work was received rather negatively in the criticism, with particular criticism of the many narrative tricks and improbable twists in the plot.

The novella was filmed in 1960 by Rolf Hansen under the original title Gustav Adolfs Page , whereby the plot was significantly modified.

literature

  • Christof Laumont: Chapter VI: One is unthinkable without the other: Gustav Adolfs Page. In: Every thought as a visible form: Forms and functions of allegory in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's narrative poem. Wallstein, Göttingen 1997, pp. 195-214.
  • Sjaak Onderdelinden: Afterword. In: C. F. Meyer: Gustav Adolfs Page. Reclam, Stuttgart 1977, pp. 65-78.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tomb slab for the page of King Gustav Adolf of Sweden, August von Leubelfing Image Index of Art and Architecture, accessed on March 9, 2018.
  2. ↑ Dr. Eugen Geiger: CF Meyers Page Leubelfing , in: The Alps: Monthly for Swiss and General Culture , Volume 6 (1911-1912), Issue 12, pp. 713-720, here p. 715 , accessed on November 14, 2019.
  3. ^ Johann Eduard Hess: Gottfried Heinrich, Count of Pappenheim . Leipzig 1855, p. 280
  4. ↑ Bernd Warlich: The Thirty Years' War in personal testimonies, chronicles and reports - Leubelfing, Johann von (2010) Retrieved on March 9, 2018
  5. ^ Johann Samuel Ed .: General Encyclopedia of Sciences and Arts in alphabetical order. Volume 48, J. f. Gleditsch, 1848, p. 94 ff. ( Digitized version ).
  6. ↑ Onderdelinden: Afterword. 1977, p. 66 ff.
  7. ↑ Onderdelinden: Afterword. 1977, p. 67 ff.