Laudin and his people
Laudin und die Seinen is a marriage novel by Jakob Wassermann , published in 1925 by S. Fischer Verlag Berlin. The family man Dr. Laudin defends himself against his weakness for the fascinating actress Luise Dercum, known as Lu . Lu is the star on the municipal stages.
A number in round brackets indicates the page in the source.
action
Have you ever heard of the so-called Siberian marriage ? asks the Miss May Ernevoldt from Dr. Friedrich Laudin and explains this form of marriage to the successful attorney who listens in a long monologue. The reader gets enough marriage theory in the book. Only with practice is there a problem with the acting married couples and the adulterous ladies and gentlemen. Almost every married person wants to get a divorce or has already managed to escape the bedroom, where the kisses have turned into poison and the hugs into fits of anger (41). Almost every one of these gentlemen claims the professional help of the experienced divorce lawyer Dr. Laudin.
The lawyer Dr. Friedrich Laudin
Friedrich Laudin was the son of an elementary school teacher from the Silesian border. He had grown up in the most cramped conditions and his study path had been a constant battle against hardship (35). At that time Laudin became acquainted with Konrad Lanz.
Laudin's marriage to Pia is portrayed as exemplary. There are three well-off children: Relly, Marlene and Hubert. Admittedly, the teenage girl Marlene does not want to submit to the conventional bourgeois female role and is in demand. Laudin carefully puts the insubordinate daughter in her place.
The Laudin law firm is one of the top addresses in town. Laudin's reputation is based on a sensational divorce suit in 1910 . Even the opposing party had well-founded reason to praise his legal acumen, his profound specialist knowledge and, above all, his refinement and restraint (32). Laudin only takes on the important and difficult cases . He leaves the rest to his shareholders . Not a rough word from his mouth hit her. Never an irritability, an impatience that made the employee the scapegoat (33).
Jakob Wassermann narrated three cases by Laudin, a lawyer; that of the young unmarried mother Karoline Lanz, that of Miss May Ernevoldt and especially that of the young musician Nikolaus Fraundorfer.
The case of Karoline Lanz
Hartmann leaves the Hartmannshof, leaves his wife Brigitte with the two boys and goes to Steyr with his lover Karoline Lanz . Hartmann works there in a factory and lives with Karoline in modest circumstances. Karoline has a child. Hartmann comes home from the factory one evening with chills , goes to bed and dies. Caroline, who now stands alone with the child, goes to Hartmannshof and requires Brigitte Hartmann, the Testament , in which the deceased her and her child was financially secure. Brigitte admitted Karoline. When Karoline tries to unlock the ark, it is open and the will has disappeared.
Karoline's brother Konrad asks the lawyer Laudin how Brigitte Hartmann can be forced to hand over the will. Laudin sobered Konrad: The woman undoubtedly destroyed the will; so she cannot publish it either (25). Laudin takes on the hopeless case. He cleverly puts Brigitte Hartmann under pressure; boldly claims that a copy of the will most likely exists and, with the succinct assumption, triggers hectic activity in Brigitte Hartmann throughout the novel. At the end of the novel, the skillful lawyer manages to help Karoline. Laudin brings Brigitte Hartmann so far that it is making her a letter in the spring, in which they a division of the legacy assets of the husband between it and Hartmann Kebse (118) Karoline lance agrees reluctantly (349).
Before this happy ending, Konrad Lanz was arrested for counterfeiting banknotes . Laudin takes care of the imprisoned, hopeful young scientist, of course.
The May Ernevoldt case
Ms. Consul Konstanze Altacher, from high-class circles, has an almost morbid taste for lawyers, Laudin looking at the law firm, and paints a bleak picture of their family. The marriage resulted in three daughters.
The name Lu is also mentioned. Is Lu an instigator, seductress, culprit? May is slavishly devoted to Lu (206). Konstanze Altacher claims that Lu has a scandalous past, and that she completely ruined her husband's mental state. His internment in the insane asylum is Lu's work. May's brother, Bernt Ernevoldt, a broken artist existence, discovered Lu as a seventeen-year-old girl on a Bohemian provincial theater . Lu is a woman who does not need long preparations to cast her nets .
The Consul's wife was outraged when she learned that her husband had given his mistress May Ernevoldt a quarter of his fortune, sixty thousand gold crowns, during his lifetime. Konstanze Altacher demands the money back from the Ernevoldts and entrusts Laudin with the process.
Laudin then later, after he has meanwhile lapsed to Lu (see below), resigns the representation of the Consul's wife, represents the opposite side - demands half a million gold crowns from the Consul's wife for the Ernevoldts and thus makes herself socially impossible. After all, Konstanze Altacher is a highly respected lady . In court, Laudin suddenly makes inexcusable blunders. Laudin's lawsuit against Konstanze Altacher takes on the character of a legal egg dance . Laudin's opposing lawyer triumphs.
The case of Nikolaus Fraundorfer
The disaster takes its course when the young musician Nikolaus Fraundorfer, the only son of Laudin's unmarried friend Dr. Egyd Fraundorfer, who gives the ball. Laudin wants to help the pain-stricken friend and promises him to research the background of the suicide with Lu, the dead man's lover . When the lawyer, in preparation for the intended first contact, looked at a photo with Lu on it, he sums it up: This is a face of indescribable, astonishing truth and innocence (71). While those inquiries get out of hand, Laudin attends performances with Lu in the lead role and is grateful that such a lucky beacon encounters him . Lu is married to the actor Arnold Keller, who is actually stuck in a madhouse in Berlin .
Lu tells the investigating lawyer that Nikolaus played the piano, and the friendship arose through playing the piano. When Nikolaus became intrusive, she rejected the eighteen-year-old frog because of the age difference. Lu needs people, loves society. The actress sees her career like this: The soap bubble has risen from the dirty dish washing light; but the beautiful ball is waiting for the end. The caring family man Dr. Laudin hopelessly succumbs to the unscrupulous Lu. It was possibly her independence that impressed him most of all (196). He experienced emotions that he had not known before. He might perceive it as an unexpected and all the more welcome release from the pressures of the environment (201).
Surprisingly, Laudin throws his hard-earned money down the throat of Lu and Bernt Ernevoldt in admiration . Their appendages, the parasitic artist community, throws the money out the window with all available hands. But that's not the worst. The only really bad thing is Laudin's despondent submission to Lu, who is nothing more than a granddaughter imported from Berlin of a woman from Olomouc . Laudin looks anxiously up at her like an animal from the kennel . Lu, the liar, holds Laudin in her clutches. If she calls, he will come. If she commands, he obeys. If she complains, it becomes difficult for him to breathe.
Laudin now appears as curmudgeon at home, and the daughters have to ask themselves: Are we going to have our Easter party now? Laudins accuses himself in front of his friend Egyd Fraundorfer: he has humiliated himself, defiled, sunk down to an errand boy in alcove matters, to a financier in questionable projects . Laudin jumps as soon as the unpredictable air whistles, as soon as it brings out the defiant, nimble, sparkling, pagan and energetic . The lawyer is fascinated by Lu, but there is something scary about a sensual relationship , like the end of the end (302).
You are free (307), says Pia, in stark contrast to all of Laudin's greedy clients when she confronts her husband after a long, patient silence.
Arnold Keller, who once tied Lu to the marriage stake , is released from the institution. Lu goes to Laudin again for money. Laudin, who has apparently lost all of his inner freedom and powers of thought (316), this time gives her a briefcase full of banknotes that he secretly “borrows” from a client from his safe . At the height of Lu's humiliation, Laudin's massive friend Egyd Fraundorfer casually enters Lu's studio and nimbly wrestles a confession from the actress about the suicide of his son Nicholas. It turns out Lu had infected Nikolaus with syphilis .
Laudin, sobered, goes home with his friend and from the next day lives with Frau von Damrosch to sublet. Pia won't want him anymore, the contrite lawyer suspects and goes to bed feverishly . Pia finds Laudin's address, goes there, doesn't call a doctor, watches over the sick bed day and night and nurses her husband back to health.
The Laudins rent their villa for three years. Besides his wife Pia, Laudin's support is in particular his capable daughter Marlene. Laudin ponders: Am I giving up my job? Am I starting a new life again?
characters
- Dr. Friedrich Laudin, called Laudin, 47-year-old lawyer.
- Pia Laudin, née Rossi, Laudin's 36-year-old wife.
- Relly, the older daughter of the Laudins.
- Marlene, the younger daughter of the Laudins.
- Hubert, a baby, called dwarf Uistiti, the youngest son of the Laudins.
- Hartmann, Baumeister , fire inspector expert in estimates , land owner at Kottingbrunn (18).
- Brigitte Hartmann, Hartmann's widow.
- Miss Karoline Lanz, Hartmann's partner.
- stud. chem. Konrad Lanz, Karoline's brother.
- Konstanze Altacher, widow of the consul Edmund Altacher.
- Miss May Ernevoldt, mistress of the consul.
- Bernt Ernevoldt, May's brother, former war correspondent , negotiator , company representative , film director , occultist , theosophist .
- Mrs. Luise Dercum, called Lu, 24-year-old actress, friend of the Ernevoldts.
- Arnold Keller, actor, Lu's husband.
- Nikolaus Fraundorfer, 18-year-old musician.
- Dr. Egyd Fraundorfer, Nikolaus' father, friend of Laudin.
- Professor Weitbrecht, specialist in skin diseases , syphilidologist (229).
- Pauline Blum, Egyd Fraundorfer's housekeeper (80).
- Mrs. von Damrosch, Laudin's landlady.
Quotes
- Laudin zu Fraundorfer: After all, a son is the guide to the future (69).
- Lu to Laudin: There is no command to love (147).
- Lu wants to persuade Laudin: The German language was suddenly like a bouquet of wild flowers (152).
- Consul Edmund Altacher: For a moment in every life God is present and speaks to us (164).
- The pain suffered by a creature is absolute and with it it stands face to face with God (218).
- Laudin in the room: He looked around as if the walls were annoying to him (278).
- Regarding the theory of marriage: The stronger is someone who can develop a quality, good or bad, in himself in such a way that he brings the other into debt (285).
- In marriage: how strange those close to one another are! (286)
- About man and woman: The individual is no longer important for the whole. Only the couple is important (289).
- Impatience is always simple-minded (340).
Classification in the work of the author
Sprengel, Koester and Pazi classify the text in those works that reflect the author's marital conflict after his separation from Julie Speyer. The dispute culminated in March 1926 with the couple's divorce.
literature
source
- Jakob Wassermann: Laudin and his people . S. Fischer Verlag Berlin 1926. 376 pages
expenditure
- Jakob Wassermann: Laudin and his people . Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-10767-7
Secondary literature
- Margarita Pazi in: Gunter E. Grimm , Frank Rainer Max (Hrsg.): German poets. Life and work of German-speaking authors . Volume 7: From the beginning to the middle of the 20th century . Pp. 47-53. Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-008617-5
- Rudolf Koester: Jakob Wassermann . Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-371-00384-1
- Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900 - 1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A - Z . P. 651. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8
Individual evidence
- ^ Koester, p. 70, 1. Zvo
- ^ Sprengel, p. 382, 8. Zvo
- ↑ Koester, p. 68, 17. Zvo
- ^ Pazi, p. 51, &. Zvo
- ↑ Koester, p. 69, 13. Zvu
Web links
- The novel text at Gutenberg-DE