Lugau monastery

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Lugau Monastery is a short story by Wilhelm Raabe that, completed in June 1893, was published by Otto Janke in Berlin towards the end of the same year .

content

Countess Laura Warberg, also called Ophelia, has withdrawn behind the walls of the Lugau nunnery - a foundation from the year 870 - to be safe from the stalking of intrusive princes. But she still has contact with worldliness. The countess corresponded lively with Horatio. This is Hofrat Dr. phil. Franz Herberger, prince educator a. D. and captain of the Landwehr from Wittenberg . The 35-year-old Councilor applies in the Lutheran town as the patron of aspiring young Dr. phil. Eckbert Scriewer. Thanks to such a reference, Scriewer was able to get engaged to Miss Eva Kleynkauer in Wittenberg in September 1869. Eva is the daughter of the Ober-Konsistorialrat Prof. Dr. th. Martin Kleynkauer and his wife Blandine, née Husäus. One of Eva's aunt, old Euphrosyne Kleynkauer, doesn't like the connection at all. Euphrosyne sees through them all in Wittenberg. So Euphrosyne is also able to give the councilor, who often seeks advice from the old lady, to list the bridegroom's bad character traits offhand. Herberger realizes that he was wrong. But it just happened.

Aunt Euphrosyne is the richest woman in Wittenberg. The family has, among other things, southern German roots. A Mamsell Kleynkauer married a Tübingen man in the 18th century who had been appointed professor in Wittenberg.

Aunt Euphrosyne is, to her regret, right. Scriewer, this adder, in his noble urge to improve Eva morally and morally, puts the girl so much under emotional pressure that she falls ill. The councilor and aunt must intervene. At Whitsun 1870, Aunt Euphrosyne brought the young girl to visit the Lutheran monastery in Lugau. Aunt Euphrosyne is not the only one to look after the sick child in the convent. Countess Warberg and the monastery aunt, that is the sister Fraulein Augustine Kleynkauer, also take part in the care of the sick.

Another relative of the Kleynkauers arrives, as luck would have it, at the Lugau monastery. The young Dr. Eberhard Meyer from Tübingen wants to compare the Swabian mirror with the Wittenberg code of the Saxon mirror. The latter is said to have been gathering dust in the Lugau monastery library for centuries. There is no librarian among the nuns. The prioress also uses the library as a personal closet. Despite the energetic support of some women - especially Countess Warberg - the Swabian cannot find a mirror in Saxony. But he finds a woman: Eva.

The young couple is threatened from the outside in the monastic seclusion. Dr. Scriewer travels on behalf of the world-famous Alma Mater as auditor of the monastery library. Scriewer takes possession of his bride. Eva's health is rapidly deteriorating.

In a letter from Scriewer to his mother, the scribe shows his true colors. He despises Eva's impoverished parents and does not want to marry the “sickly, childish” bride other than with Aunt Euphrosyne's money.

The aunt and Countess Warberg step in. With combined forces, Scriewer, this "Moloch of nerdism", is scared away from the Lugau monastery. Eva's parents - two other Kleynkauer - arrive. The child, this “poor, small, hunted bird”, had previously written to plead for the assistance of father and mother in his need. The Sachsenspiegel can still be found. Eva's father had borrowed it. Countess Warberg throws the copy to the Swabian. Dr. Meyer catches the code with his presence of mind.

To his infinite delight, Dr. Herberger heard from Countess Warberg. The councilor walks into the Lugau monastery on a standing foot. The happy couple embraces each other under the indiscreet glances of the nuns. In mid-July 1870, Dr. Herberger and Dr. Meyer in the Franco-German War . One wins.

shape

Raabe considered “Lugau Abbey” to be one of his “finest books”. The work is a "novel narrative experiment" Raabe breaks down the genre of the conventional love novel and plays a game of cat and mouse with the expectations of the bourgeois reading public. He takes on the semi-education of the “educated public”, giving people literary nicknames that are not factually correct (“Horatio” and “Ophelia” for Franz Herberger and Laura Countess Warberg from “Hamlet”; “ Der blonde Eckbert ” [novella by Tieck] for Eckbert Scriewer). By referring to the Hamlet material, the narrator calls his fictional university town “Wittenberg” - that of course not the real Wittenberg, whose university was founded in 1817 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. Raabe could assume that the reader was relocated to Halle adSaale. In fact, he then links the fictitious “Wittenberg” in the text with a number of very well-established north German university towns. The model for the fictional “Lugau Abbey” was Drübeck Abbey on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains. Raabe's satirical foundation of his portrayal of the university world is striking in several ways. With meaningful names - for example Prof. Dr. Nachkauer - the author makes fun of the "Wittenberg" academics. The narrator also slips three words that one would otherwise search in vain in Raabe's very extensive prose: Some readers “are just stupid”.

But Lugau is more than a joke. Evidence of this is for example the figure of Eve. The girl is afraid of the Wittenberg world, which appears distorted to her like Mercator's projection .

Testimonials

  • On December 29, 1893 to Karl Schönhardt: "For twenty-three years now I have carried around with the feeling that I still owe you Swabians thanks for the hospitality you showed from 1862 to 1870: now I have shaken it off with - Lugau monastery ."
  • Shortly after the publication of the story to Sigmund Schott : “... that there is real content in it [in the text] and a third of this the reader has to think, feel and feel for himself; - I never considered myself a good writer for entertainment. "

reception

  • Finck goes into the benevolent reception of the text shortly after it was published.
  • Ferdinand Avenarius points in the " Kunstwart " to "the hedge bush-like nature of the composition". Not every reader gets through.
  • The author designed the story as a text in a cheerful tone.
  • The desire for recognition of his work was Raabe's mainspring when writing the story.
  • According to Goldammer, the allusions to Shakespeare's "Hamlet" are secondary.
  • Meyen names six reviews from the years 1894 to 1937.

expenditure

First edition

  • Wilhelm Raabe: Lugau monastery . 309 pages. Otto Janke, Berlin 1894

Used edition

  • Peter Goldammer (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe: Kloster Lugau . 365 pages. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Weimar 1970

Further editions

  • Wilhelm Raabe: Lugau monastery . 2nd Edition. 210 pages. Otto Janke, Berlin 1902.
  • Wilhelm Raabe: Lugau monastery . 3. Edition. 210 pages. Otto Janke, Berlin 1907.
  • Lugau monastery . Pp. 5-210. With an appendix, written by Hans Finck, pp. 411–446. In: Hans Finck (arrangement), Hans Jürgen Meinerts (arrangement): Lugau monastery. The birdsong files . 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1970, Volume 19, without ISBN. In: Karl Hoppe (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 volumes.

literature

  • Sigmund Schott : From Sperlingsgasse to Lugau Monastery . In: Generalanzeiger der Stadt Frankfurt am Main from November 15, 1894
  • Hans Oppermann : Wilhelm Raabe. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1970 (1988 edition), ISBN 3-499-50165-1 (rowohlt's monographs)
  • Fritz Meyen : Wilhelm Raabe. Bibliography. 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, supplementary volume 1, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 . In: Karl Hoppe (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 volumes.
  • Cecilia von Studnitz: Wilhelm Raabe. Writer. A biography. 346 pages. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-0778-6 .
  • Werner Fuld : Wilhelm Raabe. A biography. Hanser, Munich 1993 (dtv edition in July 2006), ISBN 3-423-34324-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fuld, p. 326, 18. Zvo
  2. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 315, entry 65
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 305, 1. Zvo
  4. ↑ Braunschweiger Edition, Vol. 19, p. 420 below
  5. ↑ Braunschweig Edition, Supplementary Volume 4, 244.
  6. ↑ Walther Schmidt, "How would he do it?" Wilhelm Raabe's narrative experiment “Kloster Lugau”, in the yearbook of the Raabe Society 2010, 106
  7. ↑ Braunschweig edition, Vol. 19, 58
  8. ↑ "What could not be left out of sight in Wunsiedel could also be recorded in Wittenberg, Jena, Greifswald, Halle, Göttingen, Kiel and Rostock." Braunschweiger edition Vol. 19, 54.
  9. ↑ Braunschweig edition, Vol. 19, 414.
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 125, 8. Zvo
  11. ↑ quoted in Goldammer in the afterword of the edition used, p. 310, 11. Zvu
  12. ↑ quoted in Goldammer in the afterword of the edition used, p. 307, 6th Zvo
  13. ↑ Braunschweiger Edition, Vol. 19, pp. 418–419
  14. ↑ quoted in Goldammer in the afterword of the edition used, p. 305, 5. Zvo
  15. ^ Fuld, p. 324, 1. Zvo
  16. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 278, 5th Zvu
  17. ^ Goldammer in the afterword of the edition used, pp. 307–308
  18. ↑ Meyen, p. 358