Clothes make the man
Clothes make the man is a novella by the Swiss poet Gottfried Keller . First published in 1874 in the second volume of the shortstory collection Die Menschen von Seldwyla , it is one of the best-known stories in German-language literature , served as a template for films and operas and is a prime example of the style of poetic realism .
The story is about the tailor Wenzel Strapinski, who dresses well despite being poor. He got to a strange town called Goldach and was mistaken for a Polish count because of his appearance. After failing to clear up the mix-up out of shyness, he tries to flee. But then a young lady, daughter of the councilor, enters the scene. The two fall in love, whereupon the tailor continues to play the count role that was forced upon him. A scorned rival ensures that the supposed impostor is exposed. Scandal breaks out at the engagement party. Strapinski flees, but his bride finds him, saves him from freezing to death and confronts him. When she has convinced herself that his love is real, she confesses to him and enforces the marriage. The tailor founds a studio with her fortune and brings it to prosperity and reputation, with which the saying “clothes make the man” proves its worth.
Structure and content
From tailor to count
A Seldwyler master tailor owed his journeyman his wages because of imminent bankruptcy. This, a Silesian , wanders in the unfriendly November weather without a penny in his pocket on the road to the neighboring town of Goldach. Since he looks noble and romantic with his cycling coat , fur hat, long curly hair and a well-groomed mustache and is also shy, he cannot beg himself breakfast in the manner of a craftsman, so "he was the martyr of his coat and suffered hunger, as black as the latter's collective feed" . When it starts to rain halfway through, the driver of an empty touring car lets the visibly exhausted pedestrian get in.
The stately vehicle causes a stir on arrival in Goldach. As soon as it has stopped in front of the “zur Waage” inn, the best in town, it is already surrounded by astonished people and ready-to-serve staff, and the disembarking Strapinski, “pale and beautiful and sadly looking at the earth” , appears to the people like one mysterious prince or son of a count. The guard of honor to break and his ways of doing things, it lacks the courage. A little later he finds himself in the dining room, where they ask about his orders. In order to honor his inn, the landlord has the best that the kitchen and cellar offer. Wenzel, in the greatest embarrassment, eats and drinks only squeamishly, which is immediately interpreted as special refinement. At last he was overwhelmed by the smell of a delicious pie: “Now I would be a fool,” he says to himself, “if I wanted to endure the coming shame and persecution without having been fed up” , and he reached out hard. But the landlord also recognizes a sign of a higher way of life in this and says to the cook: "It doesn't look very elegant, but when I went to my training I only saw generals and chapters [high-ranking clergy] eat!"
In the meantime, before setting off on the journey, the coachman has allowed himself the bad joke of passing his passenger off as the Polish Count Strapinski - he was able to take his name from Wenceslas' identity papers that were forgotten in the car. From then on, the tailor, who does not dare to contradict, is addressed as "Herr Graf". Some respected Goldacher citizens appear for coffee, honor themselves to entertain the distinguished visitor and invite him to a country party to the winery of the district council. In the hope of a chance to escape, Strapinski agrees and even gives a test of his driving skills on the way; because he has served with the hussars and understands horses, so that people whisper: “It is correct. In any case, it is a gentleman, [...] a perfect Junker! " .
Then he sits in the group of gentlemen playing cards "like an ailing prince before whom the courtiers put on a pleasant spectacle" . Only one person, the accountant Melchior Böhni, looks closely at his fingers that have been strangely stung. But the latter keeps his doubts to himself for the time being, yes he helps the penniless out of his embarrassment by staking a piece of money for him in the following gamble . Strapinski wins and soon has enough in his pocket to pay his bill at the inn. He already believes he has been freed and is about to run away unnoticed when the councilor approaches him with his daughter Nettchen on the arm. Strapinski bows, blushing deeply, and the young beauty, also blushing, begins to chat confidently with him. At dinner he sits next to her in the place of honor and enchants the company with a performance of a Polish little song that he picked up without understanding it - it's not quite house-trained, but luckily nobody asks for the translation - “in short, the tailor's flower began near the woman's room to make his jumps and carry his rider away ” .
A white lie with consequences
Meanwhile, there is consternation in the "Libra": they forgot to unload the count's luggage! The landlord offers the returning guest to send a courier to the carriage. Strapinski refuses, startled, and resorts to a lie: “Don't let it be! You have to lose my track for a while ” . Then it becomes clear to the landlord and his late guests that “the count must undoubtedly be a victim of political or family persecution” . The word spreads, and in the morning Strapinski wakes up amid gifts from his new friends: a dressing gown, toiletries, fine linen - up to spurs and riding crop - everything a nobleman needs is taken care of.
As in a beautiful dream, the tailor's apprentice strolls through the streets of Goldach, marveling at the rich houses decorated with symbols . The fact that he lives in the house “zur Libra” seems to him to be a favorable omen, as there “the unequal fate would be weighed and balanced and sometimes a traveling tailor would be made count” . In view of the road, however, his conscience comes forward. He is already resolutely turning his back on the city when he meets a car, driven by the daughter of the councilor who greets him in a friendly manner. Then he turns back and fate takes its course.
By nature noble and good, Strapinski quickly learns what else it takes to present a count based on the ideal of Goldachers. But the constant fear of shame costs him sleep. He tries to save himself, goes into a lottery, is lucky again and wins a considerable sum. Now he can disappear in a good way, pay his debts remotely and only needs to "pretend a short business trip, but then report from some big city that his inexorable fate forbids him ever to return . "
He appears solemnly in black at a ball and announces that he has to travel. But Nettchen changes color with his words. Offended, she refuses him the dance and leaves the hall. He tried to appease her, and when he stretched out his hands pleadingly, “she fell on his neck without further ado and began to cry miserably. He covered her glowing cheeks with his finely fragrant curls and his cloak enveloped the slim, proud, snow-white figure of the girl as if with black eagle's wings; […] But Strapinski lost his mind in this adventure and won the luck that is often held by the incomprehensible ” .
The next day, Wenzel asked the councilor for Nettchen's hand. The father grants it to him with the words:
- So the fate and the will of this foolish girl was fulfilled! Even as a school child she kept claiming that she only wanted to marry an Italian or a Pole, a great pianist or a robber captain with beautiful curls, and now we have the presents! She refused all domestic well-meaning applications, just recently I had to send the clever and capable Melchior Böhni home, who will still do big business, and she mocked him terribly because he only wears a red whiskers and sniffs from a silver jar! Well, thank God, a Polish count is there from the wildest distance! Take the goose, Herr Graf, and send it back to me if it freezes in your Polackei and gets unhappy and howls! Well, what a delight the blessed mother would be if she had seen the spoiled child become a countess!
The exposure
The engagement will be celebrated as soon as possible. As the winter weather is nice, Strapinski invites the Goldacher Haute-Volée to a sled game followed by a ball. The preparation costs him half of his lottery winnings, the other half he spends on bridal gifts. On the day of the festival, a fleet of splendid sleighs leaves the town, with the betrothed in the "Fortuna" at the head - named after the goddess of luck, whose symbol also adorns the town hall of the council. In the end, Melchior Böhni rides in a simple one-horse carriage. He's just back from Seldwyla, where he was busy, and looks quietly happy. The train reaches its destination, a restaurant halfway between Goldach and Seldwyla. Since it is Mardi Gras, nobody suspects evil when a masked train arrives from Seldwyla at the same time, carrying colossal figures on load sledges: a Fortuna pursued by a billy goat, a gigantic iron, a pair of scissors, in front a plaque with the inscription " People make clothes ”and on the last sledge, under the motto“ Clothes make people ”, all kinds of rich people in costumes as emperors, kings and other dignitaries. Obviously it is a carnival parade of the Seldwyler tailors' guild, and when the mask wearers apparently good-naturedly ask for permission to perform a show dance for the Goldach gentlemen, it is granted. Only Strapinski creeps in with dark suspicions, but Melchior Böhni steps up next to him and loudly names another city instead of Seldwyla as the place of origin of the train.
The ball guests followed the Seldwylers' pantomime with amusement . It begins quite harmlessly with praise for tailoring, which turns unsightly figures into handsome ones. But then a dancer appears in a strapinski costume, first in a cycling coat with a fur hat, then eagerly sewing a count's skirt, which he finally puts on himself to strut around as a cosmopolitan man. Here the accompanying music suddenly breaks off, the lewd likeness steps up close to the original Wenceslas and calls out into the dead silence that has entered:
- "Egg egg egg egg! […] Look at Brother Schlesier, the Water Polack! Who ran out of work because of a small fluctuation in business that he believed was the end of me. Well, I am glad that you are having such fun and that you are celebrating Carnival here so happily! Are you working on Goldach? "
To make matters worse , the master shakes hands with his former journeyman, all Seldwylers do the same one after the other, the music starts again and the procession marches out of the hall "with a well-studied diabolical chorus of laughter" . In the erupting turmoil, the interpretation of the game spreads in no time at all, spread by Melchior Böhni.
The bride and groom “sat motionless on their chairs like a stone Egyptian royal couple, very quiet and lonely; one believed to feel the incalculable glowing desert sand ” . First Wenzel gets up and walks pale as a corpse, without gloves or hat, through the departing guests into the winter night. On the country road, he takes the direction that leads away from Goldach to Seldwyla. When his thoughts are in order, the feeling of immense shame gives way to that of an undeserved injustice: the folly of the world has forced the role of count on him. First made defenseless by hunger, then by love, he allowed himself to be pushed and now stands there as a deceiver. He realizes all this soberly, but at the thought of the abandoned Nettchen he begins to cry. When the procession of Seldwyler, heading home, approaches under torchlight, the sound of bells and laughter, he jumps to the side, lies in the deep snow and falls asleep "while an ice-cold breeze began to blow from the east" .
Confronted
Nettchen remains in her seat until almost all of the guests have left. Then she gets up and cries. Girlfriends bring their coat and hat. She dries the tears and looks around angrily. Böhni approaches her with a humble smile and offers to drive her home. Without answering, she gets into her own sleigh and drives the horses at a fiery gallop on the country road towards Seldwyla, next to her Wenceslas gloves and hat, which she grabbed as if in a dream when she got up. After a while she lets the horses walk and fixes her eyes on the roadsides glistening in the moonlight. She finds Wenzel, who is still weakly breathing, and brings him to her again. He begs her forgiveness, she tells him to get in: “Come on, stranger! [...] I will speak to you and take you away ” . Then she steers the sledge into a lonely yard and asks the farmer's wife, a good friend, to make them strong coffee.
She is now interrogating Wenzel in private. She has to suppress a laugh at the report of how he came to play the Count. His answer to the question of what he had in mind with her, however, causes her heart palpitations: he would have given himself to death after the wedding in order to let her return to her accustomed life without shame: “Instead of longing for a worthy one Existence, after a kind heart, after love, to be sick for life [...] I would have been great and happy for a moment and high above all who are neither happy nor unhappy and yet never want to die! Oh, if you had left me lying in the cold snow, I would have slept so peacefully! ” Had he played similar pranks and lied to strangers in the past? Wenzel describes his career: After the early death of the father, the mother entered the service of a landlord's widow, brought him up carefully and, with sacrifices, always dressed a little better. When the landlady moved to town, she offered to take the 16-year-old with her to give him a good education. But the mother didn't have the heart to let him go. He was reluctant to stay and after his apprenticeship with the village tailor he was drafted into the military: “After a year I was finally able to get a few weeks vacation and hurried home to see my good mother; but she had just died ” . - Nettchen comes to the trickiest point:
- “Since you,” she suddenly asked, but with a hesitant, pointed demeanor, “were always so valued and amiable, you have no doubt always had your love affairs or the like and probably more than a poor woman on your conscience - from not to talk to me? "
- "Oh God," replied Wenzel, blushing, "before I came to you, I never even touched the fingertips of a girl, except -" "Well?" Said Nettchen .
Wenzel tells how the landlady's daughter, a girl of seven or eight years of age, whom he made his protector, clung to and did not want to leave him behind in the country. When he breaks free, she becomes angry and cries ... At this point he pauses in horror and points with his finger at the person opposite: "When that child was angry, the beautiful hair around your forehead and temples rose just like you do now a little up to see them move ” . This freak of nature, a coincidental resemblance, helps the two over the last cliff. Nettchen hugs Wenzel: “I don't want to leave you! You are mine and I want to go with you in spite of all the world! "
From Count to "Marchand Tailleur"
Wenzel initially imagines the future together romantically as a quiet happiness in unknown space. But Nettchen suddenly thinks realistically: “No more novels! As you are, a poor wanderer, I will confess to you and be your wife in my home in defiance of all these proud and mockers. We want to go to Seldwyla and there, through activity and intelligence, make the people who mocked us dependent on us! ” . That same night they moved into two Seldwyler inns - each for themselves - to the astonishment of the fools who were still partying there, while in Goldach there was already a rumor of a kidnapping. The next morning the councilor arrives in Seldwyla, accompanied by Mr. Böhni. Nettchen is supposed to marry the accountant on the spot, who is ready to "protect and uphold your honor from the world with his inviolable name" . Nettchen, who has just come of age, steadfastly refuses, Wenzel, no longer shy at all, rushes to her aid and there is an appearance. A lawyer is brought in. He urges prudence and sends the rivals home. It is known among the Seldwylers that a large fortune - Nettchen's maternal inheritance - might come to the city, whereupon the mood immediately turned in favor of the fiancé. Guards are posted in front of Nettchen's and Wenzel's separate hostels, and when Böhni returns hours later with Goldacher policemen, it looks for a short time that “Seldwyla is about to become a new Troy ” . But it does not come to that, higher officials intervene mediating. The legal situation is clear, no one can prevent Wenzel and Nettchen their squad to order.
Further investigations show that Strapinski has never committed a crime and has always signed his simple real name. The Seldwylers shoot salutes in honor of the wedding couple , Strapinski becomes their preferred “Marchand Tailleur” or “Tuchherr”, as they call it. But they soon complain, "he presses the blood out from under their nails" because he insists on payment for the things delivered. Years later, however, the couple moved back to Goldach with their group of children and considerable wealth. Wenzel leaves nothing behind in Seldwyla, “be it out of ingratitude or out of revenge” .
About the work
Origin and background
The 17-year-old Keller already liked the character of the “impostor against his will”, as he encountered in a nautical novel by Captain Marryat . The tailor's journeyman, who was invited by a stately coachman, appears in a cellar, an anonymous calendar story from 1847. Grimm's fairy tales , Clemens Brentano's art fairy tale Schneider Siebentod in one fell swoop , Ludwig Tieck's life of the famous Abraham Tonelli (a stacked tailor) and Wilhelm Hauff's The Fairy Tale of the False Prince and the literary satire The Man are also considered “literary godparents” of dresses make people in the moon .
Furthermore, Keller's biographers point to actual cases of imposture that caused a sensation in his homeland during the long “ incubation period ” of the novella. In one case a Polish count and exile played a role, albeit as a victim, in the other - with no reference to Polish - a tailor who appeared as a count and thus fooled an entire town, for which the neighboring town mocked it in a carnival game . There is agreement that Keller greatly modified both the real and the literary motifs and placed them in the context of a completely newly invented plot : Unlike Romeo and Juliet in the village, clothes make people are not based on a real incident.
When exactly the novella was finished is unknown. From 1863 to 1865, Keller was secretary of the Swiss Central Committee for Poland , a political and humanitarian aid organization that he helped to establish when the January uprising in Poland broke out . It was to this office that he probably owes the final impetus for writing. It confronted him with the fate of Polish emigrants, both younger and older; for as early as 1831, after the defeat of the November uprising , a wave of Polish refugees had reached Switzerland.
The story of the fake Polish count takes place in this earlier period. The guests at the table of the district council are singing songs “that were fashionable in the thirties” and an interim remark by the narrator reads: “At this time many Poles and other refugees were expelled from the country because of violent activities; others were watched and ensnared by strange agents ” . Such referrals took place after 1831. In contrast, the Liberals ruled the country in 1863/64 and tolerated the recruitment of fighters and even direct arms deliveries to the rebels. In fact, with the help of Keller, two foreign agents were exposed, fraudsters who had sneaked into the Swiss Committee on Poland. However, these experiences hardly left any traces in the narrative. The historical background is less the tragic fate of the Polish liberation struggle itself than the enthusiasm for the Polish cause among the European bourgeoisie with its admixture of romanticism and nostalgic admiration for the aristocratic nature.
About the structure: appearance and being
- Nettchen: "Who are you?" Wenzel: "I'm not quite what I seem!"
The plot of the novella is structured in the manner of a comedy of mistake . The Goldachers do not expect a specific person on the day of Strapinski's arrival (as in Helmut Käutner 's film comedy of the same name ), but they live in the constant expectation of romantic and exciting events, which their sedate, Biedermeier existence links to what is happening in the big world her gives shine. The elegant vehicle, the well-dressed traveler - everything corresponds to this expectation so precisely that only a born doubter (and disdained lover) like Böhni will notice things that do not fit into the picture. On the other hand, the reader knows right from the start who is sitting in the carriage, is amused by the chain reaction of the deceptions and thinks to see everything coming as it has to come. But after the wrong dream has burst and the spoiled daughter Nettchen has turned out to be a resolute lifesaver and steadfast defender of her choice of love, he has to ask himself whether he really knew who was in the carriage. Did he foresee that the dandy Wenzel would be a capable person, the dream dancer a prudent businessman?
The author-narrator deliberately plays with the double meaning of the saying “clothes make the man”, the critical one, which says that the world is only too happy to be deceived (“mundus vult decipi”), and the appreciative one, which says that one can owes himself and others to value his appearance. Wenzel, the honest skin, wraps itself out of "longing for a worthy existence" in a cycling coat; John Kabys, a vain speculator and eponymous hero of The Blacksmith of His Fortune , drapes himself with fashionable frills . The latter novella follows in the Seldwyler stories immediately after dresses make people , together they could both stand under another saying: “If two do the same thing, it is far from the same”.
Wenzel is not such a blacksmith who tries to force happiness through skillful manipulations. His actions are not calculating like that of his opponent Melchior Böhni. He has something of a Hans in luck , of the stupid in the fairy tale The Golden Goose, or of the simple-minded craftsperson in Leebel's calendar story , Kannitverstan , who, out of lack of understanding, makes an experience in Amsterdam that makes him happy and content. Like him, Wenzel in Goldach takes the house names and façade sayings literally and believes that "behind every front door it really looks like the heading" . He interprets the sign of the inn "Zur Waage" as a sign of a favorable balance of fate, while the narrator puts a completely different meaning into the same sign: Wenzel is in danger, his fate is on the brink, a wrong impetus and his scales sink lower than never before. But Wenzel recognizes this even with an alert mind on sleepless nights. The narrator is constantly occupied with the shimmering, ambiguous nature of the symbols and figures. He also puts an inkling of this into the mouth of his main female character: “Who sends us” , Nettchen asks herself on her nightly search, “such simple-minded deceptions that intervene in our destiny while they then dissolve like weak soap bubbles?” . Seemingly auspicious, the name of Mr. Böhni's vehicle is “Der Teich Bethesda ”. But unlike the lame man in the New Testament ( Jn 5,2 LUT ), the patient intriguer in his sleigh expects his salvation in vain. The name Goldach also fits into this pattern: "As if from 'gold' and 'oh' combined, from an apparent gilding, under which the wail 'oh' denotes the misery".
The spelling of Keller has been called " heraldic ". His texts are multicolored and composed of allusions to other texts, similar to heraldic shields made of symbols. Nothing in it is accidental or mere ornament. Every detail is coherent and requires knowledge and the ability to combine. Nevertheless, the fable of clothes make people is so simple and so fundamentally human that children can understand it too, provided that there is good language instruction.
To topicality
The literary scholar Klaus Jeziorkowski has undertaken to "blow the school reading dust off this story". He opposes the widespread view that it is precisely her harmlessness that qualifies the novella for the school: “Within the apparently good-natured and sedate style of the story, which itself appears to be worked according to the Goldacher principle of gilding [...], is the The terrible iciness of the catastrophe when Wenceslas was unmasked was never fully taken into account. I myself am afraid of this passage every time I read it, because a bottomless hole opens up under the gilded world, an abyss of hell and ice that cannot be closed by anything. [...] The Seldwyler's mask dance is the death and ghost dance of a society which, due to its trivial and tabloid clichés, initially forces a tailor into the role of a count and then tortures and drops him through punitive exposure - not unlike our 'good' society at first 'highly acclaimed' and courted dizziness still does today without seeing how she portrays and judges herself in such death dances. "
Jeziorkowski calls such passages “ archetypal ” and characterizes Keller's narrative art as a “combination of the current and the archetypal.” It is in the essence of “such archetypal and archaic patterns not to be out of date, to remain valid and also to be present in a futuristic way” to think of stone images of Egyptian kings, with which the narrator compares the terrifying couple Wenzel and Nettchen. With this comparison, which is anachronistic in the exact sense of the word , the narrator jumps from the Biedermeier period to his present, the year 1874, the early days with their expansive phenomena, colonial conquest, Suez Canal , world premiere of Aida in Cairo, the heyday of Egyptology . Jeziorkowski draws attention to another such jump point, which is also often overlooked: In the name of Wenceslaus, who is lost through the icy night, the narrator steps in front of the barriers of a court, as it were in a lawyer’s salar, and gives him the following timeless defense speech:
- “When a prince takes land and people; when a priest defends the teaching of his church without conviction but consumes the goods of his benefices with dignity; when a noble teacher holds and enjoys the honors and advantages of a high teaching post without having the least idea of the height of his science and without giving it even the slightest advancement; when an artist without virtue, with frivolous action and empty juggling, brings himself into fashion and steals the bread and fame of true work beforehand; Or if a swindler, who has inherited a great business name or has sneaked it by fraud, deprives thousands of their savings and emergency pennies through his follies and unscrupulousness, all of them do not weep over themselves, but enjoy their well-being and do not stay an evening without cheerful company and good ones Friends. "
- "But our tailor wept bitterly over himself ..."
Combination of the archaic and the current - combination of the poetic and the realistic! Without using the term “poetic realism”, Keller expressed the conviction in a brief preliminary remark on Romeo and Juliet in the village that the fables of the great old works are deeply rooted in human life and repeat themselves in ever new variations. The poet's task is to recognize such variations and to record them. This applies to the tragic story of lovers who are driven to their death by the enmity of their fathers; But it also applies to the comic story of Wenzel and Nettchen, who narrowly escape a tragic turn due to the folly of their fellow citizens. According to Jeziorkowski, the “standard validity and popularity of the two stories” can be partly explained by these circumstances, but not sufficient: “I believe that they are - and here perhaps especially by young readers - appreciated so consistently because they offer identification. [...] This Wenzel, who wanders through history carefree of belongings, possessions and riches as a ' tramp ' and romantically non-bourgeois appearance, has nothing in common with the established society into which he ends up. He can be put up with by it, and after a temporary defeat he outsmarts society with its own means so that the triumphant citizens lose hearing and seeing. "
Special issues / editions of the work
The novella was published in several shorthand editions in addition to the normal long-written print runs. Including in the unified shorthand from 1924 (Heckners Verlag, Wolfenbüttel) and in the unified shorthand from 1936 (Kesselringsche Verlagbuchhandlung, Wiesbaden and Winkler's Verlag Gebrüder Grimm, Darmstadt).
Stenographic edition in standard shorthand from 1936, Kesselringsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Wiesbaden, 1948.
First page of the stenographic edition in standard shorthand from 1936, Winklers Verlag, Darmstadt, 1953. "On an unfriendly November day, wandered ...".
Adaptations
Movies
- 1921 by Hans Steinhoff , see Clothes make the man (1921)
- 1940 by Helmut Käutner with Heinz Rühmann as Wenzel, see Clothes make the man (1940)
- 1962 by Paul Verhoeven (direction) and Leopold Ahlsen (adaptation), with Hanns Lothar (TV film)
Graphic novel
- Martin Krusche: Clothes make the man , Edition Büchergilde, 2016
Operas
- Alexander von Zemlinsky : Clothes make the man , three versions, composed between 1907 and 1922, premiered in Vienna in 1910 and in Prague in 1922.
- Joseph Suder : Clothes make the man , composed between 1926 and 1934, premiered in Coburg in 1964.
- Marcel Rubin : Clothes make the man , composed 1966–69, premiered as an orchestral suite in 1973 in Vienna.
mime
- Georges Schehadé : L'habit fait le prince , written in 1957 for Jean-Louis Barrault , who then did not implement this project. The text - loosely based on Gottfried Keller - was first published by Gallimard in 1973 .
Play
- Gertraude Röhricht : Clothes make the man. A happy game based on the novel of the same name by Gottfried Keller. Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale), undated [1950].
literature
text
- Gottfried Keller's complete works . Text-critical edition ed. by Jonas Fränkel , Vol. 8 ( The people of Seldwyla II). Eugen Rentsch Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich and Munich 1927.
- Clothes make the man . Text with a comment on the position on the Gottfried Keller website of the University of Zurich
Representations
- Heinrich Richartz: literary criticism as social criticism. Representation and political-didactic intention in Gottfried Keller's storytelling . Bouvier-Verlag, Bonn 1975 ISBN 3-416-01035-3 . The second main part (pp. 123–180) deals with clothes make the man .
- Klaus Jeziorkowski: Gottfried Keller. Clothes make the man. Text, materials, comment . (= Literature Comments Vol. 22). Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich Vienna 1984 ISBN 3-446-14146-4 .
- Reiner Poppe: Explanations on Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man , text analysis and interpretation (Vol. 184), C. Bange Verlag , Hollfeld 2012, ISBN 978-3-8044-1965-0 .
- Heinrich Walter: Gottfried Keller, the secretary of the Swiss Central Committee for Poland, and the novella “Clothes make people” reflected in this activity (seminar paper). History seminar at the University of Zurich SS 2001.
- Walburga Freund-Spork: Key to reading. Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. Reclam, Stuttgart 2002. ISBN 978-3-15-015313-0 .
Web links
- People make clothes in the Gutenberg-DE project
- Audiobook on librivox (MP3 format), read by Stefan Schmelz
Individual evidence
- ^ All verbatim quotations based on the text of the Frankel edition of Keller's works, Vol. 8, pp. 7–69.
- ↑ Peter Simple , German: Peter on the seven seas . See Emil Ermatinger: Gottfried Kellers Leben , Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1950, p. 439.
- ↑ "The tailor who plays the gentleman", in: Gottfried Keller: Complete works . Vol. 20 (Post-retired stories, edited by Carl Helbling). Bern 1949, pp. 1–5 and 187–90. On the other hand, Ermatinger, Gottfried Kellers Leben , p. 438.
- ↑ KHM 20, 35, 61, 114, 183.
- ↑ On Hauff and Keller cf. Heinrich Richartz: literary criticism as social criticism , Bonn 1975, p. 148 ff., As well as Klaus Jeziorkowski: Gottfried Keller “Clothes make people” , Munich 1984, p. 61 ff.
- ↑ The owner of Kyburg Castle , a Count Sobanski, temporarily granted hospitality to a stable boy who pretended to be the son of a befriended noble family.
- ↑ See Ermatinger, Gottfried Kellers Leben , p. 436.
- ↑ Details on this from Heinrich Walter: Gottfried Keller, the secretary of the Swiss Central Committee for Poland, and the novella “Clothes make people” reflected in this activity (seminar paper). See also the articles Władysław Plater and the Polish Museum in Rapperswil .
- ^ Heinrich Walter: Gottfried Keller, the secretary of the Swiss Central Committee for Poland, and the novella "Clothes make people" reflected in this activity (seminar paper).
- ↑ Klaus Jeziorkowski: Gottfried Keller “Clothes make the man”. Text, materials, comment . Munich 1984, p. 94. Cf. Gretchen's words in Gothes Faust : “Golde urges, / On gold depends / But everything. Oh we poor! "(Verse 2802 ff.)
- ↑ Walter Benjamin : “Gottfried Keller. In honor of a critical complete edition of his works ”. In: Angelus Novus. Selected Writings II , ed. by Rolf Tiedermann. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1966, p. 395.
- ↑ Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. P. 106.
- ↑ Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. Pp. 95 and 96 f.
- ↑ Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. P. 119. Jeziorkiwski uses the term archetype freely, not in the sense of CG Jung .
- ↑ Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. P. 132.
- ↑ Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. P. 119.
- ↑ Complete Works , Vol. 8, p. 48.
- ↑ Gottfried Keller: Clothes make the man. P. 133.