Heinrich Stilling's youth
Heinrich Stillings Jugend (originally Henrich Stillings Jugend ) is the first part of Johann Heinrich Jung's autobiography , then called Jung-Stilling . It ranges from the marriage of his parents to the death of his grandfather when he was eleven years old, and was published in 1777. This was followed by Heinrich Stilling's youthful years (1778), Heinrich Stilling's wandering (1778), Heinrich Stilling's domestic life (1789), and Heinrich Stillings Apprenticeship years (1804).
Structure and overview
The narrative is divided into four roughly equal sections, each of which leads to a crucial event. First it is about the marriage of tailor Wilhelm Stilling and Dortchen , the daughter of the preacher and alchemist Moritz . After Dortchen lost her father and had a son Henrich on September 12th, 1740 , she became melancholy and died. In the third section, Henrich's strict upbringing is described. Henrich's grandfather Eberhard Stilling finally dies .
Content by sections
The book begins with a description of the home village of Tiefenbach . Eberhard Stilling is just going home from his coal-burning hut and watching the sunset. Neighbor Stähler thinks he is scared by the news that his son Wilhelm, schoolmaster in Lichthausen and Schneider, wants to marry poor Dortchen, the daughter of the expelled preacher Moritz. But Stilling is not worried about that. He has planted his six children, two sons and four daughters, to abhor evil and to pay attention only to diligence and piety. At home, Wilhelm asks for his consent and the next day in Lichthausen that of the bride's father. He agrees and shoots a snipe to celebrate. This leads to a dispute with the hunters, which Wilhelm and his older married brother Johann have to settle. On the well-prepared wedding evening, while the bride and groom are walking in the forest, Eberhard talks to Moritz about the alchemy with which he brought his family into financial difficulties and about the miracles of God. He suggests that he work as a watchmaker again and move into his house with Dortchen. But the alchemist wants to make one last attempt to find the philosopher's stone first .
The changed family relationships are reflected in the new seating arrangement at the table. Dortchen is given the free seat of his son Johann, who knows science and whose visits are all looking forward to. Dortchen has a hard time doing the hard work in the fields and it is agreed that she will help her husband in the tailoring. Her father Moritz, who, contrary to Eberhard's offer, remained alone to continue experimenting, dies resigned to the futility of his life's work. Henrich is born. The pastor comes to dinner, but leaves soon because Grandfather Stilling is putting limits on his lust for power. After giving birth, Dortchen becomes melancholy and listless. On a walk with Wilhelm at Geisenberg Castle a year and a half after the birth, she compares her melancholy with withered flowers at the ruins. She develops a fever and dies two weeks later.
Wilhelm does not recover from the death of his wife for a long time, he gives up his job as a schoolmaster and withdraws from the people. Attempts by his sisters to cheer him up fail, which Eberhard does not even try in his knowledge of human nature. Wilhelm allowed himself to be influenced by the theology of the Pietist Niclas, raised Henrich, isolated from society, strictly religious and taught him to read legends, fairy tales and sagas. He only opens up the living space of his now nine-year-old son, who resembles his mother, when they walk together to Geisenberg Castle, where Henrich finds the knife with Dortchen's name that was lost during his parents' last hike. Now Wilhelm assures his son of his love (cover picture) and frees him from his isolation. For the first time he visits the church and his mother's grave with him. Henrich now also accompanies his grandfather to the Köhlerhütte, where he tells him about her family history.
There are now some changes in the Stilling family. Three daughters get married and leave the house. Wilhelm takes on a teaching position again, this time in his home village of Tiefenbach. Pastor Stollbein noticed Henrich's talent and persuaded Wilhelm to let him attend the Latin school in Florenburg. He learns well, but not according to the given rules, but in his own way, for which Stollbein reprimands him. Eberhard Stilling gives up the charcoal trade because of his age. While walking through the forest, Mariechen once told her nephew Henrich the fairy tale of Joringel and Jorinde, while her grandfather had a vision of Dortchen in the kingdom of heaven. His wife Margaretha sees it as a sign of his death and warns him to re-cover part of the roof with thatch every year, but he believes in the divine predestination of life and carries out the repairs on his own. He falls in the process, is unconscious for two days and dies.
Romantic symbolism and internal stories
Heinrich Stilling's youth consists of conversations and descriptions that exemplify the domestic conditions of his childhood. The calm authority of the grandfather is decisive. She is z. B. shown on the basis of the seating arrangement at his table, which he has made and apparently also exists in the village, as his appearance towards the dreaded pastor and the comparison with the lonely alchemist Moritz shows.
The central part of the book is the walk to the ruins, where Stilling's dying mother says "this is quite my place" . Moritz and grandfather Eberhard also visit the place before they die. For Wilhelm and Henrich it is a place of pilgrimage to Dortmund's ghost. In addition, the cold and the shade under the trees serve as signs of the near end, with grandfather also the course of the sun, which he likes to look at.
Wilhelm answers his father, on what he should live on with his sick feet and the girl who is “not led to the hard work” : “I want to get by with my handling and, for the rest, give myself over completely to divine provision; it will feed me and my Dorthe as well as all the birds in the sky. ” Then through the window he hears two nightingales singing alternately. This had often been a sign to Wilhelmen. During their meaningful walk on the Geisenberg they wrapped themselves in their arms and walked step by step under the shade of the trees and the various chirping of birds. Pigeons and nightingales appear again in the fairy tale of Jorinde and Joringel and, in the last sentence of the book, on grandfather's grave.
The decisive events are each accompanied by a story or a song: On the wedding evening, the groom's sisters sing the beautiful secular song about the knight with the black horse . While walking before Dortchen's death, her husband tells the story of robber captain Johann Hübner , she sings about the white horse . At the Koehlerhütte, the grandfather tells his grandson an anecdote about his own grandfather, who was also called Henrich and who fought bravely as a carter against a band of robbers. The "History of Joringel and Jorinda " gets Henrich of my Aunt Marie told, while the grandfather has his vision of impending death.
In the background there is always Stilling's education in piety and abhorrence of evil. A similar contrast emerges after the wedding dinner between the Pietist Eberhard Stilling, who marvel at the stars as God's miracle, and the alchemist Moritz, who wants to penetrate nature. At the same time, there is a difference between Eberhard and his wife, who prefers to look at flowers, similar to that between the researcher Johann and his pragmatic wife. The family contradiction continues in Dortchen, who is not happy with Stillings, especially after the death of her father. Another such contrast is that between Henrichs and his father's ambition for education and pious mistrust of the worldly. These black and white dualisms are often expressed linguistically as an oxymoron , e.g. B. Dortchen with her Wilhelm felt the delight of melancholy , according to Dieter Cunz, typical Pietistic vocabulary.
Factory history
Johann Heinrich Jung wrote this first part of his autobiography in 1772 immediately after leaving Strasbourg, where he had studied, for his college friends, whom he wanted to consolidate in their faith. He later gave a copy to his closest friend from university, Goethe , who, without his knowledge, had it printed in Berlin in 1777 in the abbreviated form known today. It became the literary event of the year and a kind of anticipation of romance . The author did not go unrecognized for long despite the alien place and personal names and has been called Jung-Stilling ever since . His father was actually called Johann Helmann Jung , his mother Johanna Dorothea (née Fischer ). His uncle Johann was called Johann Heinrich Jung like himself .
Influences
The village of Tiefenbach near Florenburg is the land that is now incorporated near Hilchenbach . The Geisenberg Castle is the Ginsburg . Stilling was influenced by Johann Gottfried Herder . For Heinrich Stilling's youth to Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield have been modeled (although Stilling did not mention him).
Stilling names a few examples , partly spiritual, partly secular , which he was allowed to read as a child, along with the Bible and the catechism , and whose idealized characters he never forgot: The Emperor Octavianus with his wife and sons (1535), The History of the Four Haimons Children (1535), The beautiful Melusine (1456), Gottfried Arnold's Life of the Old Fathers (1700) and Johann Heinrich Reitz ' The History of the Reborn . He played alone the Melusine , the Turkish sultan's daughter Marcebilla and Reinold (from Renaus de Montauban ). In the schoolmaster's library he found Reineke Fuchs (1498), Hans Clawerts Werckliche Historien von Bartholomäus Krüger (1587), and again Emperor Octavianus with his wife and sons , the story of the four Haimons children , Peter and Magelone , The beautiful Melusine . As an alchemist, his uncle was influenced by Johann Friedrich Helvetius ' Das güldne Kalb , his father by religious writings by François Fénelon and Thomas von Kempens Imitation of Christ .
Receptions
The Brothers Grimm adopted the legend of the robber Johann Huebner in their German legends (no. 129) and the fairy tale Jorinde and Joringel in their children's and household tales (no. 69).
Novalis , who knew Jung-Stilling's work, uses a similar symbolic language in his novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen .
literature
- Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Stuttgart 1997. pp. 3-84. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Cunz, Dieter. In: Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. Pp. 413-414. Stuttgart 1997. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )
- ↑ Cunz, Dieter. In: Jung-Stilling, Johann Heinrich. Henrich Stilling's youth, adolescence, wandering and domestic life. Bibliographically amended edition. S. 390. Stuttgart 1997. (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. 51-52. (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. 53. (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. 70. (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. 20-21. (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. 50. (Reclam-Verlag; ISBN 3-15-000662-7 )