Trials and tribulations

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Title page of the first book edition

Irrungen, Wirrungen is a novel by Theodor Fontane that first appeared in the Vossische Zeitung in 1887 and then in book form in 1888. It deals with the inappropriate love between the baron and officer Botho von Rienäcker and the petty bourgeois tailor Magdalene (Lene). Both cannot and do not want to overcome their class boundaries and eventually marry another partner with whom they have a moderately happy life, because: "The custom applies and must apply, but that it has to be sometimes tough."

action

The story takes place in Berlin in the 1870s. The pretty and dutiful Lene lives with her old foster mother Nimptsch in a small house on the grounds of a nursery near the zoological garden . During a boat trip she gets to know the socially adept and entertaining Baron Botho von Rienäcker. As the summer progresses, the two get closer. In contrast to Botho, who dreams of a secret mésalliance with the natural and cheerful girl, Lene is realistic enough not to give her love a long-term future. One day after several joint meetings, the baron was summoned to meet his uncle Kurt Anton von Osten by letter. He reminds him that Botho is as good as promised to his rich cousin Käthe von Sellenthin.

A country trip to Hankel's filing seems to be the high point in Lene and Botho's relationship. However, when Botho's three friends Balafré, Serge and Pitt and their mistresses "Queen" Isabeau, Miss Margot and Miss Johanna join them, the couple notices that it is impossible for them to continue to deal naturally with one another due to the difference in class in public to maintain.

When Botho received a letter from his mother soon afterwards, in which she criticized the family's precarious financial situation and recommended a remedy through Botho's marriage to his wealthy cousin Käthe, Botho gave up and separated from Lene. He has to recognize “that the way we come determines what we do. Whoever obeys him can perish, but he perishes better than he who contradicts him. ”Lene, who saw this development coming from the beginning, understands Botho's decision, renounces it and surrenders to her fate. Botho marries the fun-loving, very superficial Käthe and since then has had a conventional marriage that is not very passionate but tolerable. When Lene later happened to meet her former lover and his wife on the street - he didn't see her - she decided to move to another part of the city.

In her new environment, Lene met Gideon Franke, a factory foreman, who was getting on a bit. When the latter proposes to her, Lene feels obliged to tell him about her past life. Gideon, a lay preacher who has already lived in America, is inclined to ignore this prehistory, but nevertheless visits Botho in his apartment to hear about his relationship with Lene. So the baron learns again from Lene and also that the old Nimptsch he admired has meanwhile died. Shaken by old memories, he burns Lene's letters and the flowers that Lene had tied with one of her hair. Yet this symbolic act cannot erase his longing for his former lover. On the occasion of Lene and Gideon Franke's wedding announcement in the newspaper, Botho admits at the end of the novel: "Gideon is better than Botho."

The motif of cross-class love

The motif of love overcoming class barriers was not new in literature in 1888. Already in the 18th century one saw a connection between the freedom of the individual and the free choice of partner. However, social reality remained largely unaffected by this - just as Botho and Lene, without much protest, return to their respective strata. At the end of the novel, both of them have a generally accepted partner. Käthe takes care of the financial security and otherwise doesn't give much thought. When she finds Lene's burned letters in the fireplace, she ignores them very superficially.

Gideon also secures his partner financially. In contrast to Käthe, he knows more about Lene's previous love affair, but makes a conscious decision to forgive her. However, the marriage between Lene and Gideon Franke is already being commented negatively by passers-by in front of the church - they emphasize that a husband who is twice as old as his young wife cannot make any great claims anyway - and a possible failure of the marriage is indicated: Franke could Lene when it munkele again , with his father murderers kill. Since Lene does not wear a wedding wreath at the wedding, so there is no sign of the bride's virginity, this also leads to irritated and mocking comments from the audience.

Reception of the novel

The novel first appeared in the Vossische Zeitung in 1887 and met with criticism, and even severe rejection, from the readers. Even one of the co-owners of the Vossische Zeitung told the editors: "Won't the horrible whore story end soon?"

Today it is difficult to understand that the love affair between Lene and Botho was seen as too revealing. Not only that the novel shows a relationship that does not respect class barriers met with rejection. Above all, it was perceived as problematic that Fontane portrayed women from the lower class not only as equal, but in some respects even as morally superior.

The choice of names in errors, confusions

The names of the people are dealt with twice in the novel: Frau Dörr thinks that a Christian cannot actually be called Botho, and Botho himself comments on Lene's marriage to his young wife with the ambiguous sentence: Gideon is better than Botho.

In the context of the novel, however, this relates more to the bearers of the name than to the names themselves, because while Botho means the ruler , Gideon can be translated as hacker, destroyer - both of which are not exclusively positive associations. In combination with the surnames of the characters, however, there are further connections.

Botho, whose miserable financial situation is emphasized again and again, commands almost nothing. In fact, the Rienäcker family's estates no longer consist of fields, but of swampy ranunculus meadows and a romantic but useless whitefish lake . He also has the same initials as Rexin (B. v. R.), whom he also advises against loving a commoner.

Gideon, who, like his biblical namesake, campaigns against unbelievers, bears the surname Franke - the Free . In fact, he rises above social conventions and is free to marry Lene despite her no longer flawless reputation.

Lene's first name Magdalene only becomes clear to the reader in the second half of the novel. One can think of the associations that the Catholic Church temporarily linked with Mary Magdalene , but also of the fact that this woman is one of the few female biblical figures who are not only defined by her husband or father, but also have a certain independence . In the first half of the novel, however, Lene also suggests the name Helena, which is reminiscent of Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in ancient Greece. Lene Nimptsch also got used to deciding and standing up for herself from a young age. Her surname Nimptsch, taken over from her adoptive mother, alludes to Nikolaus Franz Niembsch, Edler von Strehlenau, an Austrian poet of the Biedermeier period , who became known under the stage name Nikolaus Lenau .

Käthe, actually Katharina , is characterized by her name, in contrast to Lene, as "pure" (the name Katharina is often interpreted as "pure" according to a common but erroneous folk etymology). Although it is discussed in the club that she was courted at the Berlin guesthouse when she was fourteen, she apparently has no notable past life behind her, but her résumé complies with norms and professional conventions.

Again and again - also in other novels by Fontane - names have a signal effect: They allow the reader to associate connections without the narrator having to address them directly, thus activating the reader's imagination. The main characters in the world of the bourgeoisie are characterized by down-to-earth sounding names such as “(Suselchen) Dörr” or “Nimptsch”; With her family name, Lene Nimptsch forms a contrast to Botho's wife with the comparatively capricious sounding “Sellenthin”. The characters themselves also consciously use names for identification: Botho and his comrades give themselves foreign "nicknames", and the friends have named their "ladies" after female characters from Schiller's "Maiden of Orleans". Lene - like hardly any of the so-called "ladies" - does not know the origin of the names due to her simple level of education, so she does not notice how Botho disparages her by giving her the nickname "Mademoiselle Agnès Sorel " and thus the mistress Charles VII equates.

Relation to Zeuthen

Memorial stone to Theodor Fontane on Fontaneplatz in Zeuthen

Fontane is said to have written the last chapters of Errungen, Verrungen in the Hankels filing yard , which is also the scene of some scenes in the novel. The filing was a wood storage area in the former municipality of Miersdorf , which later became part of the municipality of Zeuthen . A memorial stone on Fontaneplatz refers to Fontane's work on site.

Film adaptations

The novel was filmed under the title Ball im Metropol by director Frank Wysbar in 1937. In 1966 Rudolf Noelte filmed the novel as a television film under its original title. In 1963, the German television radio produced a television play version with Jutta Hoffmann and Jürgen Frohriep in the leading roles, directed by Robert Trösch .

expenditure

Publisher's cover of the first book edition in 1888
  • First book edition: Theodor Fontane: Irrungen, Wirrungen. Novel. Leipzig: Verlag von FW Steffens, undated [1888], 284 pp., S. Fig. Right ( digitized version and full text in the German text archive )
  • Theodor Fontane: trials and tribulations. Novel. Modifications made by Karen Bauer. Construction, Berlin 1997 (=  Great Brandenburg Edition. The narrative work. Vol. 10), ISBN 3-351-03122-X .
  • Theodor Fontane: trials and tribulations. With a comment by Helmut Nobis. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-18881-X .
  • Theodor Fontane: trials and tribulations. Novel. Edited by Wolf Dieter Hellberg. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-019038-8 .

Secondary literature

  • Walther Killy : Farewell to the Century. Fontane: 'Errors, confusions'. In: Walther Killy: Reality and Artistic Character. Nine novels from the 19th century. Beck, Munich 1963, pp. 193-211.
  • Horst Schmidt-Brümmer: Forms of perspective narration. Fontane's “Irrungen Verrungen”. Fink, Munich 1971.
  • Konrad, Susanne: The inaccessibility of fulfillment in Theodor Fontane's "Irrungen, Wirrungen" and "L'Adultera". Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1991.
  • Gisa Frey: The Passionsweg of Botho von Rienäcker. In: Fontane leaves. No. 59 (1995), pp. 85-89.
  • Martin Lowsky: Theodor Fontane: Irrungen, Wirrungen. C. Bange Verlag , Hollfeld 2011 (=  King's Explanations. Text Analysis and Interpretation. Vol. 330), ISBN 978-3-8044-1928-5 .
  • Otto Eberhardt: Fontane's “Finesses” in his novel “Irrungen, Wirrungen”. In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society 56 (2012), ISBN 978-3-8353-1138-1 , pp. 172–202.
  • Otto Eberhardt: Fontane's “Irrungen, Wirrungen” as a work of poetic realism. In: Archive for the Study of Modern Languages ​​and Literatures , 251 (2014), ISSN  0003-8970 , pp. 283-309.

Audio books

  • Sabine Falkenberg reads Irrungen, Verrungen . Unabridged audio book with full text and explanations of words as a PDF file. Listen well! Verlag, Hamburg 2007. ISBN 978-3-938230-16-9
  • Gert Westphal reads mistakes, confusions . Complete reading of 5 CDs, approx. 345 minutes. Genre: German-language world literature. Publisher: Deutsche Grammophon. ISBN 3-8291-1354-4
  • Claus Boysen reads Irrungen, Verrungen . Full reading, 352 minutes. Published by Voltmedia, Paderborn (July 2006). ISBN 978-3938891117

Web links

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  1. ↑ The first publication in the Vossische Zeitung describes the novel in the subtitle as a Berlin everyday story .
  2. ^ So Fontane on July 16, 1887 to Friedrich Stephany, the editor-in-chief of the Vossischen
  3. ↑ Irrungen, Wirrungen at krimiserien.heimat.eu, accessed on March 25, 2017