Leporella (Stefan Zweig)
Leporella is a novella by Stefan Zweig from 1929. It is about the maid Crescentia who turns her back on her Tyrolean village. Employment in a better Viennese house does not bring her luck.
action
The 39-year-old maid Crescentia Anna Aloisia Finkenhuber lets herself be lured away from her Zillertal mountain village. Because of the higher wages, the illegitimate, ossified maiden took service in the Viennese house of the young bon vivant Freiherr von F. The bigoted, strict old girl has forgotten how to laugh for years, but after a pat on the backside given by the landlord, the skinny Tyrolean is downright devoted to the baron. This passionate hunter even knows his way around her closer home. After the unloved housewife left for a sanatorium for two months, Crescentia literally came to life. The baron brings one girl after the other into the house for the adulterous overnight stay. Couples lust awakens in Crescentia. One of those easy-going young women, a budding opera diva, turns Freiherr von F. into a Don Juan . Logically, his servant Crescentia does not call her Leporello, but Leporella. The previously dull workhorse - still cunning, restless and intrigued - is learning to sing again. After the lady of the house has returned from the cure, the baron escapes the marriage hell and has fun as a hunter in the Alps . Leporella takes his uncontrolled farewell word, “There must be an end”, all too literally. While the landlord is away, Crescentia kills the landlady. The police doctor recognizes suicide.
The baron's sympathy for Leporella is over. When he returned home, he was disgusted with her and fled to friends in Carinthia for long weeks . Horror seized the baron after his return home when, for better or worse, he had to live under one roof again with Leporella. The maid does not understand the persistent dislike of the master. When the baron hires a servant and he dismisses Leporella at the instigation of his new master, she puts an end to her life by jumping off the bridge of the Danube Canal .
filming
Dagmar Damek filmed the novella in 1991 with Jessica Kosmalla , Max Tidof and Gila von Weitershausen for television.
literature
Used edition
- Stefan Zweig: Leporella. In: Novellas . Vol. 1, pp. 255-286. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1986 (3rd edition), without ISBN, licensor: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, (Copyright 1936, Herbert Reichner Verlag Vienna ), 288 pages
Other issues
- Stefan Zweig: Four stories. ( The invisible collection . The episode from Lake Geneva . Leporella. Buchmendel ) Insel, Leipzig 1929 (Insel Bücherei Bd. 408), 96 pages
Secondary literature
- Gabriella Rovagnati: “Detours on the way to myself”. On the life and work of Stefan Zweig. Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 1998 (Vol. 400 of the series "Treatises on Art, Music and Literature"), ISBN 3-416-02780-9