Life of the cheerful schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal

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Jean Paul around 1797
* 1763 † 1825

The life of the cheerful schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal is a story by Jean Paul , which, written in 1790, appeared in January 1793, inserted into the novel The invisible lodge .

content

The narrator witnessed the end of the little schoolmaster Wutz. He tells of Wutzen's “life and death”, which was “so gentle and calm”. Wutz was very poor all his life, so poor that he couldn't buy a book.

But he gets the Leipzig "Mass Catalog" and writes his books by hand. Among other things, Lavater'sPhysiognomic Fragments ”, “ Schiller's Robbers , Kant's Critique of Pure Reason ” and the “ Cookische Reisefind their way onto his bookshelf . As a born bon vivant, Wutz constructs a bright future every morning. But only for the next day. So he always has something to look forward to. And if things get bad and he has nothing to laugh about, then he just looks forward to the evening. When he is happy in his feathers, he says to himself: “You see, pig, it's over.” As I said, he never desires more than the present, is satisfied with what little he has, remains His Justina (called Justel by the Auenthalers), whom he is allowed to marry, loves life in the house he is allowed to live in as a schoolmaster. Justina is his second self, with whom he goes for a walk on Sunday. One joy follows the next in this simple life. Wutzens “life writer” - the narrator - has no trouble whatsoever with his short biography. He can copy most of these "focal points of human delight" - from Wutzen's manuscript " Werther's Freuden ". Sometimes Wutz hears "nothing but music of the spheres in his dancing, tumbling imagination". In short, Wutz has mastered a great art - happily ships over his "evaporating drop of time".

Suddenly the person describing his life makes a tremendous leap in time: Wutz is lying on the holy land in his "razed grave". The biographer had rushed to the bed after the blow paralyzed the patient's left side. Wutz is no longer able to “look forward to”. So he looks forward to being back. It works. Play "The Rays of Rising Childhood". The biographer wakes up at the bedside and fears that the blow will repeat itself during the night. That doesn't happen. The blow does pig a favor and does not let him die in the dark. The biographer knows the relevant passage from Wutzen's papers: On a clear day, the soul should see the sun through the closed eyes when it rises from the dried up body into the wide blue sea of ​​light outside. Wutzen's very last dream in life is: "As a child he swayed on a bed of lilies that billowed up under him" and lifted him up "through golden dawns over fields of smoking flowers".

The descriptor of the little schoolmaster Wutz can say: "When he still had life, he enjoyed life happier than we all do."

Self-testimony

When the Auenthal schoolmaster Sebastian Wutz is mentioned in the Invisible Box, Jean Paul confesses in a footnote: “I have included the entire résumé of his father, Maria Wutz, at the end of the second volume. But even if it is an episode that has nothing to do with the whole work but the bookbinder's stitching needle and paste: the world should do me a favor and read it immediately after this note. "

reception

  • According to Friedrich Hebbel, "Schulmeisterlein Wutz" encompasses the "whole succus of the real Jean Paul".
  • Ueding points to the loss of quality in a life that, as in the case of Wutz, would like to remain in the “childhood paradise”.
  • According to Walter Höllerer, pig is “the opposite” of a “philistine ideal”.
  • Wutz overcome the adverse external circumstances with his "inner strength".
  • De Bruyn calls "this wonderful piece of prose a guide to survival" and admires the "sadness soaked with sadness, the loving irony".
  • According to Ortheil, Jean Paul wants to lead the reader away from “fashion follies”, from “great tragic subjects”. The story is medicine against "feverish unrest". At the same time, however, it must be remembered that not everyone is a pig.
  • “Defiantly”, Wutz held on to his dignity, despite all the misery.
  • Zeller goes into a relation of the text to the French Revolution .

literature

source
  • Norbert Miller (Hrsg.): Jean Paul: Life of the cheerful schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal. A kind of idyll. In: Jean Paul: Complete Works. Section I. First volume. Pp. 422-462. Scientific Book Society Darmstadt. License edition 2000 (© Carl Hanser Munich Vienna 1960 (5th corr. Edition 1989), ISBN 978-3-446-10745-8 ). 1359 pages. With an afterword by Walter Höllerer (pp. 1313–1338), order number 14965-3
expenditure
  • Jean Paul: Life of the cheerful schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal. A kind of idyll. Insel pocket books 1685. 102 pages (4th edition November 8, 2007), ISBN 978-3-458-33385-2 . With the afterword It will do us all gently (pp. 65–103) by Peter Bichsel .
  • Jean Paul: Life of the hilarious schoolmaster Wutz. Afterword and comments by Jürgen Drews. Reclams Universal Library 18522. 64 pages. November 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-018522-3
Audio CD
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Secondary literature
  • Günter de Bruyn : The life of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. A biography . Halle (Saale) 1975, ISBN 3-596-10973-6
  • Gerhard Schulz : The German literature between the French Revolution and the restoration. Part 1. The Age of the French Revolution: 1789–1806. 763 pages. Munich 1983, ISBN 3-406-00727-9
  • Hanns-Josef Ortheil : Jean Paul . Reinbek near Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-499-50329-8
  • Werner Wilhelm Schnabel: Narrative arbitrariness or secularized structural model? Jean Paul's “Life of the hilarious little schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal” and the biographical form . In: Athenaeum. Yearbook for Romanticism 11 (2001), pp. 139–158.
  • Gert Ueding : Jean Paul . Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-35055-0
  • Christoph Zeller: Allegories of storytelling. Wilhelm Raabe's Jean-Paul reading. Metzler, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-476-45218-2 .
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German Authors A-Z . S. 306. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8

Web links

Individual evidence

References to a citation are sometimes noted as (page, line from above).

  1. Wilpert, p. 306
  2. Ortheil (49,16)
  3. from "lawn" (grass)
  4. Source (181, 33)
  5. succus (Latin): juice
  6. quoted by Walter Höllerer in the afterword of the source (1332, 25)
  7. Ueding, pp. 57/58
  8. Source (1332, 22)
  9. Schulz (337, 29)
  10. De Bruyn, p 121/122
  11. Ortheil, p. 41 below
  12. Ortheil (42.15)
  13. Zeller (98.2)