Heidepeters Gabriel

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Heidepeters Gabriel is a novel by the Austrian writer Peter Rosegger , which was published by A. Hartleben in Vienna in 1882 .

overview

Summer 1857 in Styria : The young Fraulein Anna Mildau travels by train from the big city to Karnstein with the elderly Ferdinand Küßdenker, an old friend of her father's, the wealthy businessman Josef Mildau. From the village of Karnstein, Küßdenker and Anna go on a hike across the Rattensteinertal to the Heidehaus, built in 1744 in the barren, mountainous wasteland. Waldsing - a young poet whom Anna adores - was born in the Heidehaus on the Moorheide, on the highest farm in Einöd. The Waldsing is actually called Gabriel Stammer. The two hikers from the city meet Heidepeter - that is Gabriel's father Peter Stammer - in the house where he was born. On the way back to Karnstein, the two townspeople meet the friendly young district forester. The latter draws the attention of Anna, who is interested in Waldsing, to a marble tombstone in a forest cemetery on the way. The farmer Klara Stammer, the poet's mother, is buried there. Born on October 30, 1802 - she died on July 16, 1856.

In short, it turns out that the forester has disguised himself and is actually the Waldsing. This wood warbler commutes back and forth between Anna's place of residence and the woods around the desert. Anyway - Anna and Gabriel are getting together. Before that happens, Gabriel has to show something like a civil profession at the behest of the future father-in-law Josef Mildau. The wood warbler sits down and writes a textbook on the flora of the Alps . Anna contributes to the book Appendix Psychology of Plants . Waldsing is now allowed to marry Anna, having become Professor Doctor Gabriel Stammer. Sepp is born in the marriage. The pale Anna asks the worried husband to take a wet nurse or at least see a doctor. No - the young mother doesn't want either. Anna dies. The doctor writes cardiac paralysis as the cause of death on the death certificate.

Peter, Klara and Regina

The second part of the novel was sketched above. The first of the two parts of the novel tells about the life of the parents and Gabriel's sister. In a black and white painting, the good Stammer family is juxtaposed with the bad family of the Zapfenwirt. Klara Stammer persuades her husband, Heidepeter, to do a good deed. Here are two examples. First, the old schoolmaster Michel Bieder rang the death knell in the Rattenstein parish on his own for a suicide and thus drew the righteous wrath of the pastor there. After Clare's persuasion, Heidepeter, once wealthy and completely impoverished by the repression of the ruling Count Frohn, takes in the ailing schoolmaster in the Heidehause. The schoolmaster gives lessons to Gabriel and his sister Klara. Second, when Gabriel is finally big and strong, i.e. fully able to work, the boy goes to the big city at the invitation of Professor Frei. Klara has a stroke . Peter goes into debt to the doctor. After Peter went bankrupt and his farm was bought by the farmer Hahnenkamp for 1050 guilders, the bankrupt reproaches his wife Klara, who got a little bit up, reproaches: she wanted the boy to move to town; he does not. Had he, Heidepeter prevailed, Gabriel would have kept the farm afloat thanks to his manpower. All lamentation doesn't help. Heidepeter even has to toil on Sundays as a servant of the Hahnenkamp and the hardworking Regina has to help pay off residual debts as a maid on the farm of the farmer ant-guardian. The cone landlady denigrates Heidepeter and Klara wherever she can. When the schoolmaster died, the landlady spread the rumor in Einöd that Heidepeter - she scolded him Dalkert - had buried the deceased teacher alive. Most of the residents of Einöd and the Rattenstein doctor are convinced of Heidepeter's moral courage . Peter had been locked in prison for weeks as a game shooter by the hunters of Count Frohn, the great devil. Peter had killed a deer after the animal had repeatedly eaten the cabbage on the Heidehaus. Before the fatal shot, Peter had confronted the Count several times in vain.

Klara goes insane, leaves the house and looks for her son. David, the son of the cone keeper, poaches. The count then has his hunters collect the farmers' rifles in the desert and denies them the right to the forest. With winter approaching, the wastelands lack firewood and litter for their cattle. Regina's bridegroom Rudolf and the ant guardian humbly beg the laughing Count for mercy. In vain. When this big devil and his hunters come to one of the Einöder farms after the next hunt and drink, the Hahnenkamp tries to split his skull with an ax, but is knocked down with a chair leg by one of the hunters. Then the attacker dies. The count, terrified to death, thinks about it and from now on carefully rows back.

reception

Lengauer examines “moments of artificiality in Rosegger's work, that is, of literature”. Rosegger denies autobiographical references, but Lengauer names a number of them. For example, Professor Frei, who brings Gabriel into the big city and paves his way up the academic ladder for him, remember Rosegger's sponsor Dr. Svoboda (free - Slavic свободно = swobodno), an editor from Graz. And the "exiled schoolmaster" Michel Bieder could be modeled after Rosegger's first teacher Michael Patterer. After 1848 the Alpl farmers had given the latter shelter. From today's perspective, Lengauer considers the poetic effort that Rosegger makes in the second part of the novel, summarized above under “Overview”, as “as considerable as it is questionable” and refers to Vilém Flusser's definition of kitsch when he describes both the lack of “breadth of the factual” as also considered the lack of “plausibility of material reality”. Lengauer also affects the treatment of the topic of sexuality at Rosegger when he pursues Gabriel's question to God: "May I have a dirndl?" And Heaven promptly affirms: "Z'weg dem Büaberl I'll do a dirndl".

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. With the anonymous "big city", the capital of Styria, in which the story takes place, we mean Graz .
  2. Dalkert - clumsy, stupid, clumsy simpleton.

Individual evidence

  1. Lengauer, pp. 27-36