Goodbye Mister Chips!

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Farewell, Mister Chips (Original title: Goodbye, Mr. Chips ) is a novel by the British author James Hilton from 1934 about the life story of the teacher Mr. Chipping. The story developed into an international sales success and was adapted several times for film, theater and radio.

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England in the 1930s: Former teacher Mr. Chipping - known as "Chips" - retires near his old place of work, the Brookfield School, in Mrs. Wickett's house. The sprightly man in his mid-eighties is overcome by many bittersweet memories of his almost completed life, which may appear monotonous and uneventful on the outside, but was full of vivid experiences.

Born in 1848, Chips became a teacher of Latin and Greek in 1870 at Brookfield boarding school in a small village of the same name in the Fens . Brookfield has a reputation for being a good secondary school with a few respected families who send their children there from generation to generation, so Chips would meet the children and grandchildren of his former students throughout his life. Since Chips had previously failed at another school due to a lack of discipline in his lessons, he surrounded himself with rigor and discipline in his first years at Brookfield, but was noticed early on with his humor. During a vacation in the Lake District , he met and fell in love with the much younger, cheerful Katherine. They wed soon after, and Katherine not only became popular with Brookfield students and teachers, but also made chips a more approachable and relaxed person. This eventually makes Chips a really popular teacher and an institution due to his long time in Brookfield. However, Katherine dies in 1898, after only a few years of marriage, giving birth to her child.

Although Chips spends most of his life in tranquil Brookfield, events between the Franco-Prussian War and the stock market crash have touched his life . Surviving many of his former students killed in various wars, he takes on a young, overly ambitious school principal. After he had actually already retired in 1913, Chips was reactivated again at the beginning of the First World War and the resulting lack of teachers. When the director of Brookfield dies in 1917, Chips becomes the unofficial school director for the duration of the war, but he does not officially accept the title out of modesty. Some people are astonished when he also announced the war death of Mr. Stäfel, who had worked as a German teacher in Brookfield before the war, even though he had fought on the enemy, German side. One evening, during a bombing raid, Chips remained calm and, to the amazement of his students, unwaveringly continued his Latin class on the grounds that the things that were important for 2,000 years could not simply be suppressed by loud noises.

After the end of the World War, Chips finally retired and receives occasional visits from past and present students who stop by for tea time. One November evening in 1933, Chips was suddenly dying. Friends and colleagues rush over and someone standing by regrets Chips that he had never had children - whereupon the old teacher replies with a final joke that he had thousands of children, and all of them boys. Once again, Chips sees all of his students in front of him.

background

Shortly after the publication of The Lost Horizon , James Hilton wrote the story within two weeks in November 1933 for the Christmas edition of the British Weekly . Hilton was inspired by his own father, who was a British teacher, and a number of teachers who had taught him at Leys School in Cambridge as inspiration for the title character . In later years, Hilton named William Henry Balgarnie (1869–1951), who taught in Leys between 1900 and 1930, as the main role model for chips.

Although the story was not initially very successful in England , it was published as Goodbye, Mr. Chips by The Atlantic Monthly newspaper in April 1934 in the United States , where it was enthusiastically received by American readers. After Goodbye, Mr. Chips was also published as a short novel by Little, Brown and Company two months later , English critics re-examined Hilton's work and declared it a masterpiece. The novella thus became a breakthrough for author Hilton, who was particularly known for his celebration of the English way of life and his honest portrayal of society in the early 20th century. His recently published novel The Lost Horizon , which until then had only mediocre sales, was also washed into the bestseller lists in the wake of the excitement about Goodbye, Mr. Chips and developed into a second world success for Hilton.

The novel was first published in German in 1936 under the title Farewell, old chips! by Herbert Reichner Verlag . Another translation was published in 1955 by Herberth E. Herlitschka in S. Fischer Verlag . Die Zeit wrote about Hiltons novel in January 1952:

“It's a long way from the monastery“ Somewhere in Tibet ”with its recipes for eternal youth to the average English boarding school Brookfield, where James Hilton lets the average humanist Chipping, called chips by the students, spend decades of his monotonous teaching life. There a fantastic world in sublime nature and beyond time, here the exact picture of English school life in the decades from 1870 to 1930. But the basic motif is common to both novels: the permanence of the humanistic spirit in the alternation of generations. Chips is neither an important educator nor a great Latin, but he is the incarnated tradition, and the students, who for their part are no special lights, thank him by including him in their jokes and by supporting him against the attempts at reform by a young director. A very English book in its sober wit and quiet goodness, and yet a small piece of world literature . "

Adaptations

Various radio and theater adaptations of the play appeared as early as the 1930s. In Cecil B. DeMille's radio production Lux Radio Theater in 1939, Laurence Olivier spoke as Chips and Edna Best as Katherine.

Also in 1939, the film Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Robert Donat and Greer Garson in the lead roles , directed by Sam Wood . The film adaptation, which was largely true to the original, was an international success and Donat won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of the chip . In 1969, thirty years later, the musical film Goodbye, Mr. Chips with Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark in the leading roles , was directed by Herbert Ross . Ross Version made some changes to the fabric and expanded the role of Katherine significantly. O'Toole won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical .

In 1984 the BBC produced a six-part miniseries with Roy Marsden and Jill Meager in the lead roles. In 2002 another television film was made with Martin Clunes and Victoria Hamilton in the leading roles.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Timothy Carroll: Who was the real Mr Chips? December 9, 2002, ISSN  0307-1235 ( telegraph.co.uk [accessed November 21, 2017]).
  2. ↑ Michael Troyan: A Rose for Mrs. Miniver. The Life of Greer Garson . The University Press of Kentucky, 1999, pp. 88-90.
  3. ^ Good-bye, Mr. Chips at Faded Pages. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .
  4. ↑ The blessings and burdens of habit . In: The time . November 21, 2012, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed November 21, 2017]).
  5. ↑ Sam Wood, Sidney Franklin: Goodbye, Mr. Chips. July 28, 1939. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Herbert Ross: Goodbye, Mr. Chips. November 24, 1969. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Stuart Orme: Goodbye, Mr. Chips. October 19, 2003. Retrieved November 21, 2017 .