Juerg Reinhart

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Juerg Reinhart. A journey of fate in summer is the first novel by the Swiss writer Max Frisch . It was written between winter 1933 and spring 1934 and was published by the Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt in the same year . Frisch later distanced himself from his autobiographical youth work, which was not reprinted as a separate edition, but included it in the collected works . His second novel J'adore ce qui me brûle or The Difficulties followed in 1942 from the plot of the first novel.

Jürg Reinhart, the protagonist of the novel, is a young man in the process of self-discovery . For this purpose he travels to Greece after dropping out of his studies. In a Croatian pension he meets three women, but can only love one of them: the terminally ill landlady. As she lies dying, he makes her suicide , an act that matures at the end of it.

content

Jürg Reinhart gave up his studies at the age of 21 because he had got it into his head to live with his lover in Vienna . As soon as he arrives there, his motivation changes: He travels on, somewhere, in order to find his way through on his own and get on in his life. Now he is already the third week in a guesthouse in Ragusa , an old mansion called Solitudo , run by Baroness von Woerlach, an impoverished noblewoman from northern Germany. Jürg enjoys the summer on the Adriatic with swimming and sailing tours, while he earns his living with small reports for a local newspaper. He confronts the world as well as people with the self-confidence that at some point they will all be used in literature.

Three women enter Jurg's life in the pension. There is a 39-year-old Dutch baroness who is married to a man 21 years her senior, who has long been used to cheating on him with someone else in every place. Although Jürg feels obliged to joint activities with the baroness for the sake of propriety, he evades her stalking because she only desires his young body and does not love him.

Jürg shows more interest in Hilde, the pension's new housemaid who, at 18 years of age, still approaches life with great naivety. But on a joint sailing trip, Jürg cannot bring himself to make any advances. In general, it seems to him to be a major flaw that he does not succeed in what all boys of his age find so easy: getting close to a woman. He has high expectations of the first intimate encounter with a woman who should finally reveal the meaning of his life.

Only with the third wife, Inge, the landlady's 30-year-old daughter, does Jürg develop mutual affection. Inge lost her groom and her beloved younger brother Hennings during the war. Over the pain of their losses lies a mask of youthful happiness. Jürg exchanges his first kiss with Inge. But it does not keep him in the pension and he sets off to continue his journey to Greece.

In Jurg's absence, Inge's health deteriorates dramatically. In her financial distress, her mother cannot afford a doctor's visit, and only the secret generosity of a new guest, Ms. von Reisner, enables Inges to have an operation. But after a blood poisoning , the doctors give Inge, who suffers from severe pain, only a few weeks to live. Debates unfold between the mother, her friend and the hospital staff about the possibility and justification of prohibited euthanasia , but ultimately nobody takes responsibility. Meanwhile, Hilde, who remained in the pension, is deflowered by the wife of Reisner's son Robert, a light-hearted dandy, and left with her dreams of a life together. Juerg, on the other hand, whose thoughts still hang on Inge, got to Athens via Turkey . A night alone in the temples of Delphi is the epitome of happiness for him.

When Jürg returns to Ragusa, he still meets Inge, who is suffering. The next day she is dead. The rumor of possible euthanasia spreads, the local authorities are hoping for a solution against the unloved Austrian doctor Heller. In the end, Juerg, who is still spending weeks in the pension and keeps Inge's bookkeeping, confesses to Frau von Woerlach that it was he who gave Inge the fatal injection. The mother sees it as proof of his great love and hides his deed, with which he will have to live alone from now on. When Jürg leaves for his home country, he feels mature. In a few weeks, things have happened that seem like years to him.

Background and history

Max Frisch himself referred several times to the autobiographical background of Jürg Reinhart : "The result was a first, a very youthful novel, which, like many first works, got stuck in the autobiography." In an interview with Heinz Ludwig Arnold , he also emphasized Jürg Reinhart is "a weakly disguised autobiography, and as an autobiography just not honest enough".

The novel was based on actual events that began when Frisch drove to the ice hockey world championship in Prague in the spring of 1933 as a sports correspondent for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung . The planned fourteen days turned into a journey of eight months, which led Frisch via Budapest , Belgrade , Sarajevo , Dubrovnik , Zagreb , Istanbul to Athens , where Frisch hiked on foot to Corinth and Delphi , before going via Dubrovnik, Bari and Rome returned to his hometown of Zurich at the end of October 1933 . On the Adriatic Sea near Dubrovnik there was actually a guesthouse called Solitudo , where Frisch stayed for a few weeks. It was run by an impoverished nobleman named von Woedtke and her daughter Ehrengard. A baron and a baroness von Ittersum also stay in the pension. Frisch wrote enthusiastic letters about his hosts at home, as well as a report to the NZZ , which began with the words: “These days in Dalmatia were actually desperate: that you can't paint and have to leave such colors here. Because letters remain at most the interpretation of a beauty. Never this beauty itself. Never such a glow from a southern sky when it is cloudless. To cheer up. "

The following three weeks in Greece were a formative experience for Frisch, about which he also wrote a report, which he put under the title Happiness in Greece . The idyll of his trip ended on August 16, 1933 with a letter from his mother, who reported the death of Ehrengard von Woedtkes. Frisch immediately traveled back to Dubrovnik and helped Ehrengard's mother for a few more weeks to organize the legacy, for which he wrote: “We go through the house, where old and new guests are and everything goes on, and wait for our honor guard. it's so cruel ”. In a later interview with Volker Hage , Frisch summed up his journey in more clarity: “Although it was darkened by the sudden death of a young woman, it was a full and happy time”, whereby he and the woman had “a pure admiration story”: “She was thirty-three Years old, a fat blonde, East German. When I was gone, on my trip to Istanbul, she died. "

Shortly after his return, between winter 1933 and spring 1934, Frisch translated his experiences into the novel Jürg Reinhart . He had initially planned the material as a play . Julian Schütt also attributed the polished dialogues at the beginning to this origin, which came from a drama version in which Jürg had to fight off the advances of a mature Dutch woman. Numerous journalistic works that Frisch had previously written about the trip flowed into the novel, mainly for the NZZ . In retrospect, Frisch himself described: “There were so many texts there, and then I stopped; so feuilletons that I simply cemented together. "

In the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt , Frisch published by his own admission because he had not found a Swiss publisher. Although this also earned him critical voices for being a “non-Swiss defector”, the young and then largely apolitical Frisch published in National Socialist Germany until 1937. For the Deva , the young, unknown Swiss corresponded to her ideal of an adventure and travel poet, which was also reflected in the subtitles of the two early works. In 1944, however, your general manager Gustav Kilpper confessed to Frisch, "that the events and the people you talk about, along with all the great and terrible things that bring us close every day, basically seemed unimportant and private."

interpretation

genre

Most reviewers assign the novel to the genre of the educational novel , educational novel or development novel . The central theme is the development of Jürg Reinhart, although the novel often leaves his perspective, especially the middle of the three parts mainly focuses on Inge's death instead of Reinhard's development, and the plot, atypical for this genre, only spans a period of a few months. Volker Weidermann , on the other hand, spoke of both an artist novel and a colportage novel . Urs Bircher also referred to the “sentimental journey” of a travel novel , but he too spoke of examples of trivial literature .

Main character

Bircher described the protagonist as a “Swiss Parzival ” dressed in his national colors, white and red. His name "Reinhart" stands for his purity, which has not yet been "polluted" by any sexual experience, and the tenacity with which he defends his purity in spite of the ever-ready female world. For Weidermann, too, the novel focuses on "a pure hero who tries to maintain his purity in a dark world". Frisch makes use of numerous clichés, from female seductions to the dark and dodgy locals that Frisch meets. For Walter Schmitz , the “pure gate ” Reinhart bears traits of a “ neo-romantic vagabond” and embodies “the healthy youth par excellence”. The novel Robert von Reisner builds up as Jürgs counter-figure, whose careless handling of sexuality is paired with irresponsibility and lack of love. His contrast in dealing with Hilde should positively emphasize Jürgen's active love in its humanity and actual masculinity.

Walburg Schwenke interpreted the novel - like all of Max Frisch's early work - before its existential basic conflict between a bourgeois and an artist's existence. In the process, Frisch's alter ego Jürg Reinhart is shown in a social outsider role. He remains incapable of acting towards the baroness and Hilde. His relationship to nature, in which he is able to overcome obstacles, is different. The sea, for example, has a special function for Jürg, and the relationship with the baroness and Hilde both culminate at the sea. The alternative to the outsider Jürg is Robert von Reisner, who is integrated into society. But as this is only drawn like a template, it only serves to confirm that there is no alternative to Jürg Reinhart's path, and thus for Frisch's own decision to self-actualize in literature.

Influences of the zeitgeist

Walter Schmitz explained Reinhart's search for a fulfilled life against the background of the philosophy of life , life reform and youth movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Criticism of civilization and turning to the simple life, for example on Reinhart's trip to Greece, point to these influences. On the other hand, there is Reinhart's outsiderness, the loneliness that is reflected in the “guest house” and its name “Solitudo”. Schmitz sees echoes here of Frisch's beloved "loneliness poem" by Hermann Hesse's Im Nebel . In the novel there is often a lack of communication, for example through unread letters, also a skepticism of language that stems from aestheticism . The sacred exaggeration of women leads back to the world of ideas of the cult of life. In the end, she becomes the midwife of the male self.

Julian Schütt pointed out that the end of the novel fell into the waters of the popular eugenics at the time of its writing . For example, it is stated about Inge “that her blood was used up and should no longer be passed on.” Furthermore: “Because there are generations that are younger, healthier and more capable of life.” And: “But then one had to be noble again by doing the last and most difficult service to the fatherland by extinguishing it. ”This fatally reminds of the idea of ​​the“ annihilation of unworthy life ”which was just spreading in Nazi Germany, but which was also discussed in Switzerland.

Urs Bircher also referred to the racism in which the “ Aryan heroic personnel”, whether from Switzerland, Germany or Austria, stand out in a kind of chiaroscuro technique against the Slavic-Turkish background, which is called “dark”, “devious” and “ lazy ”up to the“ little Jew ”with“ dirty neck ”in a bazaar. In contrast, he does not see Reinhart's euthanasia in the context of euthanasia under National Socialism . Rather, it should prove the greatness of "masculinity" in Reinhart's "masculine deed". The hero himself postulates: “You don't become a man through a woman.” You prove yourself to be a man “through a male act”. Only through this one attains the highest level of human development. Jürgen H. Petersen said: "That sounds even more pathetic and absurd than it is presented in this novel". In the conception of “active life” as actually human, he identified an influence of Goethe . Alexander Stephan , on the other hand, traced the emphasis on “male strength and maturity” and the “great deed” back to the 1930s.

Relation to the complete works

In Jürg Reinhart , Frisch first formulated the problem of portraits that would determine his later work. In the second part of the letter, Jürg writes in a letter: “You see: when I am pushed all around by finished people, when I am passed from hand to hand, so to speak, and everyone can shape myself in their own image, then one finally crumbles.” The idea of Strangely formed image is illustrated in a following episode in which Jürg is pushed into the role of a famous pianist by fellow travelers on a boat trip.

Alexander Stephan drew attention to other complexes of motifs that were already laid out in the first work and determined Frisch's later work: the autobiographical elements, the artist as an outsider, the unfulfilled longing for happiness and love, especially the sea as a symbol of freedom and fulfillment, and finally the Communication of the living and the dead. Volker Hage pointed to the indefinite guilt that the hero has in the end, and about which no court can pronounce a judgment, a motif that repeats itself in Bluebeard . Urs Bircher saw the novel at the beginning of a long series of “more or less fictional first-person stories” that Frisch would subsequently write.

reception

The reception of Frisch's first work in contemporary critics was very positive, and Frisch almost exclusively noticed "laudatory advertisements". The debutante was raised above the other young Swiss authors. In Germany, too, Frisch received mostly positive reviews; criticism here came more from the Swiss reviewers who write for German newspapers. Leonhard Beriger, for example, missed the "lively intellectual exchange" with Germany that Jakob Schaffner offered. According to Alexander Stephan, Jürg Reinhart was particularly praised by German critics "for his advocacy of the 'great deed' that clarifies and purifies everything."

Hellmut Schlien rated the novel as a “promise […] very positive” and gave the young author “an honest word of encouragement”. For him, Frisch's novel was an example of how literature "after the exaggeration of the psychologizing art of dissection in the novel, is returning to a kind of archaic epic lecture". He praised: “The way it is presented is extraordinarily fresh. A somewhat boisterous, sometimes unbridled prose claws into people, relationships and events and, so to speak, catches them fresh as blood. Here, from a purely stylistic point of view, there are pleasant qualities of carefree expression and a certain rousing nervousness in the storytelling. "

In Switzerland too, Frisch received mostly positive reviews. In the Bundestag Hugo Marti found that the “young Parzival from Zurich” chatted a little too much, but his discussion was generally characterized by sympathy and empathy. Robert Faesi , a Professor of Frisch's at the University of Zurich , also published a benevolent review in the Basler Nachrichten , and the newspaper introduced the young authors as "traveling chatters". Eduard Korrodi , the head of the features section of Frisch's house newspaper, the NZZ, refused the preprint that Frisch had hoped for because Jürg Reinhart “is not the novel of the younger generation” and “personally, the topic does not seem up to date”. Instead, the NZZ published a bogus interview, and Korrodi later added a freshly minted gloss about a young author who searches the shop windows of all bookstores for his first work.

Frisch's novel soon had a print run of over 2,000 copies. In December 1934, the Zurich Literature Commission awarded him 500 francs and ruled that it was “moving how the hero becomes a man by taking on a great deal of responsibility”, a “turn of the book from the erotic into the ethical”. Only Emil Ermatinger restricted in a note that there was “a lot of exhibition by a mentally not entirely natural person” at work. Frisch received the most critical feedback privately from his friend Werner Coninx at the time : "He tore up my debut with love, but so accurately that I sometimes had the impression that I didn't understand anything about poetry."

Jürg Reinhart was not reprinted until the publication of Frisch's Collected Works . When Frisch's second novel J'adore ce qui me brûle or Die Schwierigen 1942 followed the first novel in its plot, Frisch added a plot by Jürg Reinhart that was shortened to a third , because it would be “immodest” to assume that the first would be that Readers still known that the plot should not be suppressed "only for literary concerns". In the new edition in 1957, he deleted this plot again. In 1975, Frisch commented on his first novel: "It no longer exists and doesn't need to exist".

The later Frisch research assessed Jürg Reinhart largely with a distance and took up Frisch's own criticism. Volker Weidermann called it “pretty dreadful” as a novel. Volker Hage emphasized that the work “cannot deny its character as a beginner's work, but as a literary document of a twenty-three year old it doesn’t have to hide.” The novel is of particular interest as an early document of the “images and thought patterns” that will be used by Frisch's work in the future certain. In addition, the transformation of autobiography into fiction, which is also characteristic of Frisch's work, can be studied in the novel.

literature

Text output

  • Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. A summery journey of fate. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1934. (first edition)
  • Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. In: Collected works in chronological order. First volume . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-06533-5 , pp. 225-385.

Secondary literature

  • Urs Bircher: On the slow growth of anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 . Limmat. Zurich 1997, ISBN 3-85791-286-3 , pp. 46–51.
  • Walter Schmitz : Max Frisch: The Work (1931–1961) . Studies on tradition and processing traditions. Peter Lang, Bern 1985, ISBN 3-261-05049-7 , pp. 24-37.
  • Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an ascent. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-518-42172-7 , pp. 141-144.
  • Walburg Schwenke: What am I? - Thoughts on Max Frisch's early work . In: Walter Schmitz (Ed.): Max Frisch . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-518-38559-3 , pp. 63-91, on Jürg Reinhart pp. 70-78.
  • Volker Weidermann : Max Frisch. His life, his books . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-462-04227-6 , pp. 45–51.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Max Frisch: voluntary disclosure . In: demands of the day. Portraits, sketches, speeches 1943–1982 . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-518-37457-5 , p. 37.
  2. ^ A b Heinz Ludwig Arnold : Conversations with writers . Beck, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-406-04934-6 , p. 14.
  3. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 44.
  4. ↑ a b Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , pp. 127–130.
  5. ↑ Volker Weidermann: Max Frisch. His life, his books , p. 39–42, quote from the report Days by the Sea p. 41.
  6. ↑ Max Frisch: Happiness in Greece . In: Collected works in chronological order. First volume , pp. 57-65.
  7. ↑ Volker Hage : Max Frisch . Rowohlt, Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-499-50616-5 , p. 22.
  8. ↑ Max Frisch: Collected works in chronological order. First volume , p. 666.
  9. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , p. 142.
  10. ↑ For a list, see note 11 in: Walburg Schwenke: What am I? - Thoughts on Max Frisch's early work , p. 89.
  11. ↑ Volker Hage: Max Frisch , pp. 22-23.
  12. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , pp. 145-147.
  13. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch . Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-13173-4 , p. 23.
  14. ↑ Volker Weidermann: Max Frisch. His life, his books , pp. 45, 47.
  15. ↑ a b Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 46.
  16. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 47.
  17. ↑ Volker Weidermann: Max Frisch. His life, his books , pp. 45–46.
  18. ^ Walter Schmitz: Max Frisch: Das Werk (1931–1961) , p. 28.
  19. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch . Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-13173-4 , p. 25.
  20. ↑ Walburg Schwenke: What am I? - Thoughts on Max Frisch's early work , pp. 70–78.
  21. ^ Walter Schmitz: Max Frisch: Das Werk (1931–1961) , pp. 24–37.
  22. ↑ a b c Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. In: Collected works in chronological order. First volume , p. 294.
  23. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , pp. 143-144.
  24. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , pp. 47, 244.
  25. ↑ Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. In: Collected works in chronological order. First volume , p. 305.
  26. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch . Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-13173-4 , pp. 24-25, quotation p. 24.
  27. ↑ a b Alexander Stephan : Max Frisch . Beck, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-09587-9 , p. 25.
  28. ↑ Max Frisch: Jürg Reinhart. In: Collected works in chronological order. First volume , p. 303.
  29. ↑ Jürgen H. Petersen: Max Frisch . Metzler, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-476-13173-4 , p. 24.
  30. ↑ Alexander Stephan: Max Frisch , p. 24
  31. ↑ Volker Hage: Max Frisch , p. 24.
  32. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , pp. 173-175.
  33. ↑ Hellmut Schlien: Jürg Reinhart. Novel. From Max Frisch . In: Die Literatur 1934 Issue 1, p. 44.
  34. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , p. 174.
  35. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , pp. 147-148.
  36. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , p. 150.
  37. ↑ Julian Schütt: Max Frisch. Biography of an Ascent , p. 175.
  38. ^ Letter from Max Frisch to Käthe Rubensohn. Quoted from: Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 49.
  39. ↑ Max Frisch: Collected works in chronological order. First volume , p. 667.
  40. ↑ a b Volker Weidermann: Max Frisch. His life, his books , p. 45.
  41. ↑ Volker Hage: Max Frisch , p. 23.
  42. ↑ Urs Bircher: From the slow growth of an anger: Max Frisch 1911–1955 , p. 49.