Heinrich Stilling's youth
Heinrich Stillings Jünglingsjahre (originally Henrich Stillings Jünglings-Jahre ) is the second part of the autobiography of Johann Heinrich Jung (called Jung-Stilling ), published in 1778. As a continuation of Heinrich Stillings Jugend (1777) it reaches from the death of his grandfather when he was eleven until he left his homeland when he was 21 years old. This was followed by Heinrich Stilling's wanderings (1778), Heinrich Stilling's domestic life (1789), and Heinrich Stilling's apprenticeship years (1804).
Overview
The first section very briefly describes the situation at home after grandfather's death and Henrich's four years in Latin school , and in more detail his first job as a schoolmaster. The rest of the book describes the similarly long period when Henrich tried again and again to work permanently as a teacher until he emigrated on April 12, 1762 after Pastor Stollbein's death.
content
Henrich suffers from the domestic changes when, after grandfather's death, his aunt Elisabeth and her husband Simon take over the management of the farm. While his father works as a teacher and tailor, Henrich goes to the Latin school in Florenburg for four years. Then Pastor Stollbein found him a job as a schoolmaster in neighboring Zellberg . There, the fourteen-year-old holds unconventional lessons and wins the children's sympathy through stories as a reward for diligently practicing reading, writing and arithmetic beforehand. Henrich feels at home in the beautiful landscape and lets farmers tell him about local legends, such as that of the knight and the maiden. He gets on well with the hunter Krüger, stays with him and is allowed to use his library. This is how he gets to know the Iliad . However, when the pastor, who was hostile to Krüger, found out about their relationship, Henrich was recalled in the fall and sent him back to his father's tailoring.
In his next job with the rich entrepreneur Steifmann in distant Dorlingen , he is exposed to the ridicule and various pranks of his boss, his journeymen and rebellious pupils because of his youth and good-naturedness, and after his home leave he terminates his employment according to his contract. The reason for the interruption is his father's announcement that he will marry again. The new wife is a wealthy widow with two children. In February travels to his hometown and wishes his father good luck. While walking in the woods he faints when he meets a strange girl named Dorthchen who resembles his mother. He attends the wedding in Leindorf , the place where his stepmother Gretchen lives , with whom he gets along well.
After finishing his job in Dorlingen, he suffers from the heavy physical work at home in the tailoring and agriculture of his parents and is happy to get a teaching position in Leindorf in 1756. But he is dissatisfied because he has too little time for his private reading, which is why he is moving them to school. His father criticizes his habit of reading books during school, but his supervisor, Pastor Dahlheim, understands him and advises him on how to improve his teaching method. In the following year he received an offer from the Preisinger pastor Goldmann, an extended relative of his mother, to teach at the beautiful school there, which meant an improvement for the sixteen-year-old. He likes it there and is warmly welcomed. In the pharmacist's library he finds many new books that expand his previous reading experience, and a. Ziegler's Asian Banise . He also feels at home with his landlady, the rich widow Kraft. Their two daughters Maria and Anna fall in love with him, while he does not want to enter into a firm bond and cannot justify a loose flirtation morally. Therefore, although he likes Maria, he holds back in a friendly manner. But he gets into an uncomfortable situation when Anna, who is jealous of his sister, becomes mentally ill for a few weeks. The cause, their love affair, remains hidden from the family. On the verge of madness, she reads Henrich two poems that reflect her unfortunate situation: A little sheep grazed on the rock and sat on the green heather A shepherd gray and old . Henrich tries hard in class, expanding his knowledge of geography and mathematics, painting a sundial on the ceiling in the classroom and letting the children learn through play. Because he is misinterpreted an educational card game with his students, he is criticized by many parents and Pastor Goldmann advises him to quit voluntarily in order to avoid an investigation and to preserve his chance of a new job. His father, who has previously criticized what he believes was his careless handling of the office, this time reacts bitterly to his return and demands careful manual work of him. Henrich fulfills these requirements, but feels a sadness in his soul that he could only entrust to his friend Kaspar.
In 1760, the appointment as schoolmaster in Kleefeld freed him from this situation . There, however, he gets into two difficult situations. His colleague Graser from Kleinhagen tries to make him an accomplice in his counterfeiting by pretending to be able to make silver alchemically. While he suspiciously does not respond to it and is therefore not involved in the uncovering of the case, he becomes innocent after nine months and despite the protests of many Kleefeld farmers, the victim of an intrigue by the corrupt spiritual inspector Weinhold. With the accusation that he made fun of a religious act, he wants to take his position away and fill it with his predecessor. Although the president in Salen sees through the machinations, prevents the planned replacement and considers the accusation to have not been proven, he cannot keep Henrich in office, since Weinhold has the authority to fill. So Stilling again applies for an honorable discharge and complains to Pastor Goldmann of his suffering. He gave him two letters of recommendation, to his son, a judge in Rothagen, and to the court preacher Schneeberg in Lahnburg.
Judge Goldmann talks to Henrich about his desire to study and pursue an academic position. But he recommends him to fight his “vain pride” and his “thirst for honor” and to go a long way to maturity and to work “in silence and secret for the good of the people”. He could employ him as a scribe, but his wife is against it for reasons of economy. The next person he spoke to, Schneeberg, offered him the managerial position of a mine with a smelter. Henrich grew up among cabbage distillers, miners and smelters and dares to do the job, but Judge Goldmann warns him not to become the plaything of courtiers as an inexperienced man, and so he refuses and returns to Leindorf in 1760. There the old problem continues: physical overstrain through hard work that is expected of the parents in order to feed the enlarged family, impatience of the father, who occasionally takes him along as an assistant to the surveying done by his uncle. But even that is not a perspective for him that could satisfy him. The work for another master tailor, with whose daughter Lieschen he sings sad songs, and the comfort of his grandmother (cover picture) bring some distance from his father, but only temporarily alleviate his condition.
Once again, an offer promises help, this time the prospect of becoming the rector of the Latin school in Florenburg , but he gets caught between the front lines of a fight between Pastor Stollbein and judge Keilhof, who only supports Henrich until he realizes that he is also the secret man Is the pastor's candidate and is upset with his strategy. Henrich sees this failure as a sign from God to make a fundamental decision. At Easter 1762 he resolved with the consent of his father: "[I] I have to go abroad and see what God has in mind for me". In his poem “Once again my dull eye looks” he looks over the landscape of his home country as a farewell.
Romantic symbolism
Heinrich Stillings Jünglingsjahre continues the style of the first part. The changes in the house are again shown using the example of the oak dining table full of blessings and hospitality , in the first book already an example of the grandfather's house rules. The uncle clears it away and brings a yellow maple: the gentle wafting of Stilling's spirit turned into a frenzy of an anxious desire for money and goods. Alchemy is also mentioned again as a rather unlucky thing.
Maibuchen in the landscape indicate the spirit of the deceased mother. In Preising, where he moves at the request of a preacher and his mother's relative, tragic love awaits him, illustrated by the song of the sheep on the rock and the story of the beggar woman . His mood in the various places is expressed in the landscapes, times of day and cardinal points described. In Dorlingen, where the blasphemous steel manufacturer lives, the sun seems to rise in the west. Like the previous one, the book is full of typical Pietistic phrases. His heart pounds . B. several times before.
Inland pieces
Continuing the topic of the old room table, the author has a child in the Latin school tell about his old neighbor, whom his grown son wanted to move away from the dining table. This story was made known by the Brothers Grimm as The Old Grandfather and the Grandson .
In Zellberg a farmer tells the legend of the godless knights on the Kindelsberg with the song of the virgin on the Kindelsberg , which is clearly reminiscent of two songs in Heinrich Stilling's youth . The Brothers Grimm took it over in Deutsche Sagen (No. 235 Der Kindelsberg ).
The daughter of Henrich's landlady in Preising expresses her misunderstood love in the song Es graste ein Schäflein am Felsenstein and a short story, which was also included in Grimm's fairy tales as Die alten Bettelfrau (No. 150).
In his difficult time at home after he was released from Kleefeld through no fault of his own and his father's scolding, Henrich wrote in autumn Yellow is the color of mourning . There are again echoes of his mother's depression on the walk before her death. Even more signal words in the poem Hear you dear birds at sunset remind of Jorinde and Joringel ( birds , trees , flowers , moonlight , heart , blood , dull sunbeams , moonbeams , morning dew ), similar to Lieschen's vision of future poverty as an illegitimate mother (cf. also the beggar in Heinrich Stilling's youth ).
The conclusion is Henrich's poem Once again my dull eye looks , which compares his farewell from home and youth with death and eternal life.
Factory history
Stilling published the second part of his autobiography Heinrich Stillings Jünglingsjahre 1778, i.e. directly on his successful first part Heinrich Stillings Jugend (1777), which his college friend Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had printed for him. The third part of Heinrich Stilling's wanderings also followed in 1778.
Mentioned places and books
Zellberg is Lützel , Dorlingen is Plettenberg , Leindorf is Kredenbach , Preising is Dreis-Tiefenbach , Kleefeld is Klafeld (today part of Geisweid , part of Siegen ), Florenburg is Hilchenbach , Schönenthal is Elberfeld .
Stilling reads with delight at Krüger Homer and mentions Virgil as an earlier reading . He reads mathematics from Tobias Beutel , Nicolas Bion , reads the Bible , Emperor Octavianus , The beautiful Magelone , Iliad to his students and talks to Krüger about Paracelsus , Jakob Böhme , Count Bernhard . The deceiver Graser has a book by the alchemist Basilius Valentinus . With the wicked stiff man he only finds a Bible and Zion's teaching and miracles from Doctor Mehl.
In Leindorf he reads geography and Christian Wolff's mathematics. He mentions that so far he has known church history, torture stories, descriptions of the lives of pious people, old war histories from the Thirty Years' War, poetically only Eulenspiegel , Emperor Octavianus , Reineke Fuchs . That is why he is now reading Die Asiatic Banise by Heinrich Anshelm von Ziegler and Kliphausen and The Christian Teutschen Grand Prince Hercules and the Bohemian Royal Fraulein Valiska miracle story by Andreas Heinrich Bucholtz .
He also mentions Gottfried Arnold's life of the grandfathers and impartial church and heretic history , the Heidelberg Catechism , Friedrich Adolf Lampe .
literature
- Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. pp. 89-194. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. pp. 101, 111. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- ^ Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. P. 96, 107. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- ^ Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. P. 151. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- ^ Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. p. 116. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- ^ Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. pp. 131-132. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- ^ Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. pp. 134, 144, 146. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )