Elderflower (novella)

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Elderflower is a novella by Wilhelm Raabe and is part of poetic realism . The death of a patient reminds a doctor and heart specialist of an encounter during his studies in 1819: forty years ago, the student Hermann met the Jewish girl Jemima Löw in Prague .

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The memory is awakened by an elderflower wreath from the deceased patient. Because even on the old Jewish cemetery , the Beth-Chaim (dt. House of Life), elderberry (which is meant, as it is also expressly called, the common lilac ) grew . Hermann meets Jemima, who tells him about the buried and the legends of her people. At first the cemetery is scary to the student, he seems to be haunted, but the longer he walks around with Jemima, the more familiar the place becomes. At the grave of the dancer Mahalath, Jemima says that like the dead woman, she too has a sick heart and will have to die from it. The young medical student does not want to believe that, feels his close affection for her and tries to talk her out of the premonition of death. On the advice of the old cemetery porter, he left the city shortly afterwards and began studying in Berlin . Jemima stays behind. Plagued by premonitions (during the funeral of Jemima in Prague, Hermann seems to wake up from a frozen mental state in Berlin), he returns to Prague on the feast day of St. John Nepomuk in 1820 and learns of the girl's death.

Forty years later, the doctor's narration resembles a confession against this background. For decades he believed he was to blame for the girl's death. At the time, he couldn't really help her medically - but humanly. He admits this failure. The admission is connected with the recognition of the tragic traits of Jewish life through the centuries.

History of origin

Wilhelm Raabe's novella “Elderflower”, the original title of which was “Ein Ballkranz”, was written between November 1862 and January 1863. It is an early work by Raabe and coincides with his years in Stuttgart . a. Works such as The Hunger Pastor (1864), "Abu Telfan or the Homecoming from the Moon Mountains" (1867) or Der Schüdderump (1869) were created. For the elderflower , Raabe interrupted work on the Hunger Pastor - his most successful novel. When the novella appeared in the Stuttgart magazine Über Land und Meer , however, it went almost unnoticed.

In his memory from the 'House of Life' - so the subtitle - Raabe clearly refers to his visit to Prague in May 1859. He visited Prague during an educational trip , the other stops of which were Leipzig, Dresden, Vienna, southern Germany and the Rhineland . In Prague, the then 28-year-old author a. a. the Jewish cemetery, which inspired him to “elderflower”.

References to contemporary history

In 1780, the same year as Mahalath, Empress Maria Theresa died . With the government of their son Joseph II , a reform program was tackled. a. contributed to the emancipation of the Jews. The status of the small Jewish population group is changing: a tolerated and legally restricted minority group became citizens with equal rights .

The main plot takes place in 1819. In that year the anti - Semitic agitation reached a climax in Germany (cf. Hep-Hep riots ). The lawyer Hartwig von Hundt-Radowsky , for example, called for all Jewish men to be castrated and Jewish women to be taken to brothels . Raabe rejected the anti-Semitic-racist currents. He deliberately put the plot of his novella in the year 1819 and thus condemns the contemporary hostility towards Jews by portraying the Jewish protagonist positively and denouncing the hostility of his own Christian culture .

Structure of the novella

The narration is organized into three concentric narrative circles. They are each separated by about 40 years: Mahalath dies in 1780, Jemima meets Hermann in 1819, the doctor remembers their meeting around 1860.

The framework plot describes the relationship between the heart specialist and a patient and includes the narrator's self-reflection. It is written in the reporting tone, i.e. sober and objective. As is typical for a novel, the frame takes on the role of attunement, suggests basic motifs and is full of symbolic foreshadowing. Hermann and Jemima dominate the internal plot. What is interesting about this figure constellation is the fact that they are the same, because both have similar problems: Hermann felt trapped by a hated guardian in his childhood . In Jemima, the Prague Jewish ghetto evokes very similar feelings. Both strive for light and freedom that they cannot find in their conventional environment. Therefore, Hermann breaks out into a new student life: This is an escape from compulsion, but it is not liberating.

Jemima's story about the dancer Mahalath, who is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Prague, forms the core of the story. Jemima introduces the core story with the exclamation “That's me”, pointing to the grave. The tragic story of a Jewish woman follows who fell miserably in love with a young noblewoman and died of a sick heart. Jemima herself has an equally sick heart, and she knows that, like Mahalath before, she will die from it.

This explains the basic problem of the novel: All three pairs of figures are about a sick heart and a (love) relationship that cannot be socially legitimized. The death of women leaves men feeling guilty.

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