Hermann Lauscher

Hermann Hesse (1925)

Writings and poems left behind by Hermann Lauscher is a book by Hermann Hesse with nine poems and three - five from the second edition - prose pieces. Written from 1896 to 1899, it was published in November 1900 in the Basel bookstore Reich, where Hesse had been employed since autumn 1899.

Hesse initially presented himself as the editor , only after his "exposure" in 1902 by Richard von Schaukal as the author of the writings and poems left behind . Some of it is autobiographical, as Hesse admitted to his pen friend Helene Voigt-Diederichs . The text “Meine Kindheit” reveals something from Hesse's childhood in Basel between 1881 and 1886. “The November Night” gives impressions from Hesse's apprenticeship from 1895 to 1899 in Tübingen . “Das Tagebuch 1900” can be assigned to Hesse's years from 1899 in Basel. Julie Hellmann (1878–1972) from Kirchheim is immortalized in the story “Lulu” .

In his foreword to the 1933 edition, Hesse wrote: “Every time I looked through the eavesdropper over the years, I noticed passages that I would have liked to have deleted or changed, e. B. those foolish, youthful words about Tolstoy in the beginning of the diary. However, it did not seem to me permissible to subsequently forge my own youthful portrait. "

content

My childhood

Listener can remember a shocking event from when he was not yet three years old. He slips into his child's soul and explores their incomprehensible "longing for harmony". Memories of the father take up a lot of space.

The November night

In Tübingen, the poet eavesdropper has to witness how the expelled student Elenderle shoots himself .

A wreath for the beautiful Lulu

The description of this youth experience is dedicated to ETA Hoffmann . Thus, the focus is immediately on the "magic of the spring Lask", the tone of the harp Silberlied, the king Ohneleid, the witch Zischelgift and two lovable characters: "the old eccentric and philosopher Drehdichum" and the beautiful Lulu with the "dark pure eyes ”and the“ dark hair ”. Each of the friends of the Schöngeist Lauscher and especially eavesdroppers themselves adore the poor orphan Lulu, who has to serve the young men in Kirchheim in the “Zur Krone” inn. When the gentlemen “aesthetes” don't wander over the beautiful mountains of the Alb , then they philosophize in the “Krone” over wine about those “eternal powers and beauties” that slumber “in the lap of life” and those of the poet “from the Unconscious ”are to be raised. Hoffmannesk, as the story began with the gushing of the Lask spring, it ends too. The philosopher and smoker Drehdichum dissolves in his own tobacco smoke and the beautiful Lulu disappears without a trace.

Sleepless nights

There is talk of the dead poet Hermann Lauscher as he strolled through the old town of Bern during his lifetime . His last days of life must have been unhappy and he had surrendered to the drink. The narrator had seen the “flickering, sad glow of madness ” flicker in Lauscher's eyes. “Dreams are not foams”, Lauscher had claimed on sleepless nights. And he had become a poet because he heard this nightingale . Lauscher wrote his first song in the “golden red shadow” of a “spring-like copper beech”. The subject of his poetry was the "beautiful features of a" woman. Throughout his life, Lauscher had sought “the image of the eternal reflected in us” as poetry. At the end the editor brings a new definition for eternity: "This stream of conscious life in which Dante and Donatello are only beautiful turns".

Diary 1900

The end of the poet Lauscher becomes conceivable when he is “overcome by heavy, physical grief” and he plows through his soul, this “dangerous sea”, measuring and rubbing himself against the great in his “heavy-blooded way”: Tolstoy's “raw art “Still has to“ mature a hundred years ”. Tieck is unmatched. Half a page later, however, Lauscher calls Tieck a failure. Godwi gets off well. Listeners scold one of Plato's works as “miserable Scharteke ” [Schmöker]. Full of envy, exaltation and pain, Lauscher registers the works of the great and can only “stammer” himself and at best produce prose . But, so the esthete calms down, maybe his concern cannot be articulated linguistically.

Quote

"Life without a purpose is dreary, and living with a purpose is a plague".

shape

Hesse appears as the editor of Lauscher's writings. Logically, he lets eavesdroppers tell (“My Childhood”, “Diary 1900”). But sometimes he also talks about eavesdroppers (“The November Night”, “Lulu”). But during “Sleepless Nights” the reader gets mad and asks: Who is telling the story, Listener, Hesse or both alternately?

In addition, a passage from the fifth night in "Sleepless Nights" is strange. Regardless of who the narrator is there, Hesse or Listener: Both are certainly young boys and complain about the terrible fear of death "when you get older".

reception

• Around 1900 the eavesdropper was compared to the Werther . Even Goethe's debut was published anonymously.
• On December 2, 1900, Hesse himself (or as the alleged publisher) wrote a review about the restless fighter Listener for the “ Allgemeine Schweizer Zeitung ”.
• Hesse's distance to modernity becomes clear as early as 1900.
• Heinrich Wiegand wrote in the Neue Rundschau in 1934 : "If you didn't know: this piece was published more than thirty years ago, you would think of it as a mystification of the mature Hessian [...]"

Book editions

The first edition appeared in November 1900, but - as was customary at the time - was dated the following year. Hesse, who now appeared as the author, added the two pieces "A wreath for beautiful Lulu" and "Sleepless Nights" to the second edition. In 1933 the unchanged edition appeared as part of the collected works by S. Fischer Verlag .

• Left behind writings and poems by Hermann Lauscher . Reich, Basel 1901.
• Hermann Lauscher . Rhineland, Düsseldorf 1907.
• Hermann Lauscher . Langen, Munich no year (= 1911).
• Hermann Lauscher . With 25 drawings by Gunter Böhmer . Fischer, Berlin 1933.
• Hermann Lauscher . With an afterword by Hans Bender . Reclam, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-15-009665-0 ( Reclam's Universal Library , Volume 9665).
• Hermann Lauscher . With early, partly unpublished drawings and an afterword by Gunter Böhmer. Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3-458-31906-9 (it 206).
• Hermann Lauscher . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-39017-1 (st 2517).

literature

• Volker Michels (Ed.): Hermann Hesse. The world in book I. Reviews and essays from the years 1900–1910. In: Hermann Hesse. All works in 20 volumes, vol. 16. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988 (2002 edition), 646 pages, without ISBN
• Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 .
• Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A-Z . Kröner, Stuttgart 4. A. 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 271.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Michels (Ed.): Hermann Hesse: Complete Works in 20 Volumes, Volume 1. Jugendschriften. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-41101-2 , p. 671.
2. ↑ Michels, p. 670.
3. ↑ Michels, p. 671.
4. ↑ Michels, p. 672.
5. ↑ Quoted from: Siegfried Unseld , Hermann Hesse - work and history of effects , Insel, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-458-32812-2 , p. 29.
6. ↑ Michels, p. 247.
7. ↑ Michels, p. 298, 9th point
8. ↑ Michels, p. 671.
9. ↑ Complete text of this self-review in: Michels, p. 38
10. ^ Sprengel, p. 388.
11. ↑ Quoted from: Unseld, Hermann Hesse , p. 29.