Malepartus

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Malepartus ( Neo-Latin , from French times 'bad, bad' and pertuis 'passage (hole)' ) refers to the fox's apartment in the animal fable . The term appears in many fables, it has a leading role in the adaptations of the Low German fable Reineke Fuchs . The fable was translated into German by Johann Christoph Gottsched in 1752 and also edited by Goethe in 1794 . Malepartus appears there in the first song in which many animals complain about the fox's misdeeds, and only the badger speaks for him:

He has left Malepartus, his castle, and is building
a hermitage for his apartment. How he has become so thin,
pale with hunger and thirst and other more severe penances,
which he repentantly endures, you will find out for yourself.

The term is also used in other literary genres, either in the fabulous sense, for example in Friedrich Spielhagen's novel Hammer und Amboss:

"[...] and watched as Ehren-Reinecke crawled out of his Malepartus between the huge stones below me and made himself comfortable in the early morning sun, while a few steps further the half-grown boys chased and tumbled over each other in exuberant merriment [...] ] "

or at Fürst von Pückler-Muskaus from Mehemed Ali's realm, which, however, is about a hyena :

"We disturbed a hyena here, but it immediately crept back under the masonry without our seeing it flee outside it, so that it probably had a permanent Malepartus here, into which it withdrew from us."

Elsewhere, Malepartus figuratively - but also literally - refers to the refuge of an evil, bad person, for example in Gottfried Keller's Zurich novella “ The Fool on Manegg ”: “He knew how to lure others into his Malepartus and so in distress to bring that they should escape the walls and the danger. "

Compare is also Harry Kümels film Malpertuis with Orson Welles .

Web links

  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Reineke Fuchs - Second Canto. (No longer available online.) In: Wissen-im-netz.info. Jürgen Kühnle, archived from the original on March 29, 2007 ; Retrieved November 20, 2014 (private website).