Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

This article covers the fantasy novel "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". For the film adaptation of the same name, see Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film) .

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ( British original title: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone ) is the first volume in the seven-part Harry Potter novel series by Joanne K. Rowling . The book was published on June 26, 1997 by the British Bloomsbury-Verlag with a first edition of 500 copies, the German translation was published in July 1998 by Carlsen Verlag . As for all other German-language Harry Potter volumes, Klaus Fritz did the translation and Sabine Wilharm designed the cover.

In 1999 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was nominated for the German Youth Literature Prize in the children's book category. The novel sold over 100 million copies in the first ten years, making it one of the most successful books ever. In 2001, the story of the director was Chris Columbus successfully filmed .

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On the night of November 1st and 2nd, a strange-looking old man named Albus Dumbledore appears , a cat who is actually the transformed Minerva McGonagall and the half-giant Hagrid , who brings a small bundle on a flying motorcycle. Together they put a baby in a bundle of linen cloth in front of the door of the Dursley family's house at 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey - the orphaned Harry Potter . The black magician Lord Voldemort murdered his parents Lily and James Potter a few hours earlier. In an attempt to kill the 15-month-old son as well, the killing curse intended for Harry fell back on Voldemort himself and destroyed his body. Harry only left a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.

Harry grows up in the narrow family of his aunt Petunia and her husband Vernon Dursley with their spoiled son Dudley . It turns out that he is no ordinary child because strange things keep happening around him. This is another reason why the Dursleys treat Harry very badly, he has to sleep in a closet under the stairs and has to suffer from the tortures of his cousin.

On July 31, Harry's eleventh birthday, Hagrid brings Harry an acceptance letter from Hogwarts , a castle boarding school for witchcraft and wizardry in Scotland, which awaits him as a new year student. The Dursleys do everything possible to keep him away from this magical future. They are so-called " Muggles " themselves, so they have no magical talent and have always kept from him the fact that his parents were wizards and how they really died. With the courageous intervention of the half-giant Hagrid, gamekeeper and key keeper of Hogwarts, Harry is granted to immerse himself in the world of wizardry. Hagrid first takes Harry to Diagon Alley , a shopping street for wizards in London, to buy teaching materials such as a magic wand , cauldron and books for school. He also gives him a ticket for the Hogwarts Express , which will take students from Platform 9¾ of King's Cross Station from London to Hogwarts on September 1st . On the train ride, Harry meets Ron Weasley and the clever Hermione Granger , who later become his best friends; but also his future archenemy Draco Malfoy , who is accompanied by his cronies Crabbe and Goyle .

The boarding school is housed in a thousand-year-old castle perched on a mountain on the bank of a large black lake. As part of the induction ceremony, the first graders are given a speaking hat to one of the four schoolhouses Gryffindor , Hufflepuff , Ravenclaw and Slytherin , named after Godric Gryffindor , Helga Hufflepuff , Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin , the founders of the four houses and the school Pupils represent a kind of family. Harry, like Ron and Hermione, comes to the Gryffindor house. In his welcoming speech, Headmaster Albus Dumbledore reminds students that there are many rules to be followed. For example, magic is not allowed in the corridors during the breaks and the Forbidden Forest on the grounds of the castle as well as certain parts of the building are taboo. The caretaker Argus Filch and his snooping cat named Mrs. Norris ensure compliance with the rules .

The provocative demeanor of a presumptuous clique of Slytherins around Draco Malfoy soon leads to Harry and his friends not always complying with the school rules. As a result, on the run from the school caretaker Argus Filch, they discover a large, three-headed dog who seems to be guarding something valuable. Her further research reveals that it is the Philosopher's Stone , which is kept and guarded at the school on special instructions from the school principal after an attempt to steal it from Gringott's wizarding bench had previously been foiled .

During the first broomstick practice lesson, Harry is discovered as a real talent and immediately accepted into his house's Quidditch team. During his first game of this schoolhouse ball game against each other, Harry's broom is bewitched and he almost falls. He's growing suspicion that Severus Snape , the Potions Professor, might be behind it on behalf of Lord Voldemort. Voldemort, like Harry's parents, was a graduate of the wizarding boarding school. Now what is left of him seems to want to steal the Philosopher's Stone in order to use its ability and so become immortal.

At Christmas, Harry receives a rare invisibility cloak from an unknown patron that had belonged to his father. On his nightly forays through the castle under the cloak, Harry comes across the mysterious mirror Nerhegeb , which shows him together with his parents.

Hagrid acquires a dragon egg and tries to illegally raise the hatched Norwegian spiked hump Norbert . Harry, Hermione and Ron manage to persuade him to hand the kite over to Ron's brother Charlie , who works in a kite reserve in Romania.

Harry and his friends have no evidence, but Harry's belief that someone wants to steal the Philosopher's Stone is growing steadily. Harry, Ron and Hermione make their way to the hiding place of the stone at night to be the first to reach it. You have to solve various puzzles and overcome traps: After you have passed the three-headed watchdog Fluffy and freed yourself from a devil's noose, Harry has to catch a key from the air on a broom to unlock the next door. When crossing a magical giant chessboard in which the three play as pieces, Ron sacrifices himself to enable the other two to advance. In another room lies an already overwhelmed troll and in the next room Hermione solves a potions puzzle, but has to stay behind herself.

To his astonishment, Harry does not meet Severus Snape at the destination, but rather Quirrell , the fearful professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts. As it turns out, Lord Voldemort has taken possession of Quirrell's body: on the back of his head, hidden under his turban, he reveals the face of Voldemort. After looking in the mirror, Harry suddenly has the coveted stone in his pocket and does everything in his power to keep it away from Quirrell / Voldemort. Quirrell tries to overwhelm Harry, but every time he touches Harry, burn blisters spread on his skin and he seems to be in excruciating pain. Although Harry's scar hurts terribly, he can bring Quirrell down and then passes out.

Harry comes to in the hospital wing. From Albus Dumbledore he learns a number of backgrounds, including the fact that Voldemort could not touch him because his mother had once sacrificed her life for him and thus helped Harry to achieve a very powerful protection against Voldemort. Nor did Severus Snape seek Harry's life, but on the contrary saved him to settle the old debt that Harry's father had also saved his life once. It was also the headmaster who sent Harry his father's invisibility cloak for Christmas.

Edition and issues

The first edition of June 26, 1997 comprised 500 copies. The German translation appeared on July 21, 1998 with an initial print run of 8,000 copies. In the United States, the book was published by Scholastic Publishing on September 1, 1998 with a print run of 35,000 copies. Scholastic changed the title to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because the word “sorcerer” promised greater sales opportunities from a stronger focus on magic, whereas the word “philosopher” might have awakened associations with philosophy . The decision was criticized because the changed title lost the relationship to alchemy . In addition, a number of phrases have been transferred from British to American English for the US edition to accommodate the reading habits of Americans. The film version of the work was also released in the USA under the changed title, see release of the film .

In addition to the original editions and the paperback editions, adult editions with a modified cover design were also published. In 2015 a fully illustrated edition with illustrations by Jim Kay was published .

The British original edition comprises 223, the US 309 and the German edition 335 pages.

English editions

• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury , London 1997, ISBN 0-7475-3269-9 . (Hardback edition)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Scholastic Inc., New York 1998, ISBN 0-590-35342-X . (Paperback)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury, London 2004, ISBN 0-7475-7360-3 . (Hardcover for adults)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury, London 2004, ISBN 0-7475-3274-5 . (Paperback)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-4088-4564-6 . (Hardcover with illustrations by Jim Kay)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Arthur A. Levine, New York 2015, ISBN 0-545-79035-2 . (Hardcover with illustrations by Jim Kay)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Bloomsbury, London 2015, ISBN 978-1-4088-7187-4 . (Hardcover with illustrations by Jim Kay; superb edition)

German editions

• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Carlsen , Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-551-55167-7 . (Hardback edition)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Carlsen, Hamburg 2000, ISBN 3-551-55200-2 . (Hardcover for adults)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Carlsen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-551-35401-4 . (Paperback)
• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Carlsen, Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-551-55901-2 . (Hardcover with illustrations by Jim Kay)
• JK Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Carlsen, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-551-55741-4 . (New hardback edition for the 20th anniversary of the German edition)

Audio book

• Joanne K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Der Hörverlag , Munich 1999, ISBN 3-89584-701-1 . (Read by Rufus Beck )
• The UK edition will be read by Stephen Fry . It was fully broadcast on English radio at Christmas 2000.
• The American reads Jim Dale .

Commercial win

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is one of the world's best-selling books of all time. Worldwide sales of the Harry Potter series in June 2017 exceeded 400 million copies in 68 languages. A few months later, JK Rowling's portal reported Pottermore that sales had reached 500 million in 80 languages. Carlsen-Verlag had sold 33.2 million copies in German by June 2017. In the United States, the number of copies sold was 11.7 million by the end of 2001, 29 million by July 2007, and more than 160 million copies by August 2016.

Individual copies of the first, 500-piece British edition from 1997 have already fetched prices of over 10,000 euros at auctions several times.

The German first edition was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list for 50 weeks from 2000 to 2002 .

Translations

The Harry Potter novels have been translated into 80 languages ​​(as of 2018) and are sold in over 200 countries.

Web links

Wikiquote: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone  - Quotes

• Reading sample from Carlsen-Verlag (PDF, 123 kB)
• Criticism of the German translation of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Philip W. Errington: JK Rowling - A Bliography 1997 - 2013 . Bloomsbury Academic, London a. a. 2015, ISBN 978-18496-6974-0 , p. 2
2. ↑ Harry Potter: History of World Success on carlsen.de , accessed on April 9, 2020
3. ↑ Archive Working Group Youth Literature: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.Retrieved on July 6, 2020
4. ↑ ^{a b} HowStuffWorks.com Ed Grabianowski: The 21 Best-selling Books of All Time. Article from December 19, 2011, accessed January 10, 2015
5. ↑ Why does the Harry Potter movie have a different title in England? In: Yahoo .com. January 23, 2002, archived from the original on February 10, 2013 ; accessed on June 24, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Philip Nel: You Say “Jelly”, I Say “Yell-O”? Harry Potter and the Transfiguration of Language . In: Lana A. Whited (Ed.): The ivory tower and Harry Potter: perspectives on a literary phenomenon . University of Missouri Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8262-1549-9 , pp. 261 ff .
7. ↑ Harry Potter at 20: Billions in Box Office Revenue, Millions of Books Sold. fortune.com , June 26, 2017, accessed March 11, 2018 . 
8. ↑ Harry Potter has hit a huge milestone this year, with more than 500 million books sold all over the world, in 80 languages. Pottermore , February 1, 2018, accessed March 11, 2018 . 
9. ↑ JK Rowling: Harry Potter. In: press kit. Carlsen-Verlag, accessed March 11, 2018 . 
10. ^ All-Time Bestselling Children's Books , Publishers Weekly, December 17, 2001 ( Memento of April 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ Press release from Scholastic on mugglenet.com ( Memento of 28 October 2007 at the Internet Archive ), August 2007
12. ↑ Number of the Harry Potter books sold in the United States and worldwide as of August 2016 (in millions). statista.com, accessed on March 11, 2018 . 
13. ↑ What does the Philosopher's Stone cost? , Spiegel online, June 5, 2007
14. ^ Danuta Kean: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone finally arrives in Scots translation . In: The Guardian . June 29, 2017, ISSN  0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed October 10, 2017]).