Martin Salander

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Martin Salander is the last novel by Gottfried Keller . The work remained unfinished and had the working title "Excelsior". With the provisional title, Keller means “upward striving in the» bad sense «”. The fragment was preprinted from January to September 1886 - with the exception of March and August - in the " Deutsche Rundschau ". It was published as a book in the same year at Christmas with a revised ending by Wilhelm Hertz in Berlin.

Keller presents a "political or social moral development out of the acute misery". Although the unreasonable father Martin Salander fails in this paradoxical educational novel as the guarantor of his old school friend Wohlwend, as a liberal public educator and as head of a five-person household, he is ultimately brought to his senses by the clever son Arnold. As a contemporary novel , the text stands on the borderline between obsolete poetic realism and more modern naturalistic social criticism. For the Weidelich brothers - two young notaries - political sentiment becomes a fine commodity. In addition, Keller mocks the own liberal hopes of his earlier years as a poet.

action

For seven years, Martin Salander left the woman with three children in Münsterburg. The former secondary school teacher made a fortune as a trader in Brazil and is now returning home to German-speaking Switzerland around 1866. The wife has leased a small summer tavern with a guesthouse on the Kreuzhalde just outside the city. Marie hasn't had any cash for weeks. Marie entertains cocky, non-paying summer visitors by getting into debt and bravely starving with the children. Martin Salander closes the inn and thus relieves his wife from the heavy burden. But Marie comes from bad to worse. The husband had entrusted his fortune, which he had honestly and laboriously earned in Brazil, to his old friend Louis Wohlwend from Münsterburg. He embezzled it and went bankrupt. Marie can hardly believe Martin's stupidity. Her husband had been cheated out of a large amount of money years ago by the false friend he knows from the teachers' college.

Martin Salander found his four loved ones a small apartment in the city, Marie set up a modest merchandise store and went back to Brazil for another three years. There he again works as a dealer, also supplies the small company Maries with Brazilian products and wants to take action against the South American bank, with which Freund Wohlwend is in league. Although the Salander family is slowly recovering economically, Martin is no match for the bankruptcy in Brazil or at home in Switzerland. When he returned home, Wohlwend escaped to distant Hungary and made his fortune there.

Marie has now gained a foothold in the goods trade. Back home in Switzerland, Martin Salander feels called upon to have political impact alongside his work as a merchant. The years go by. Salander's daughters Netti and Setti - now 18 and 19 years old - spin on the dance floor. Her admirers are Messrs Isidor and Julian Weidelich, schoolmates of Salander's son Arnold. The willowichs had been neighbors on the Kreuzhalde Salander. The father Jakob Weidelich is a "simple farmer" and the mother Amalie Weidelich is a busy laundress.

At the age of 25 and 26, Netti and Setti secretly become engaged to twins, Isidor and Julian, who are only 20 years old. Marie Salander is against the connection because she suspects that the young men are dowry hunters. In Münsterburg there is a rumor that each of the two daughters of the respected merchant Martin Salander, who is a beneficiary of “good fortune”, is worth half a million francs .

At an electoral meeting at home, Isidor and Julian propose the future father-in-law as the Grand Councilor of the Münsterburg constituency. Martin Salander is elected as a candidate, but refuses the honor. He does not want to owe the office to his future sons-in-law. Isidor and Julian, now notaries, are nevertheless surprised by the initial success in their political work. That's why they roll the dice in the inn over a beer to determine their future party. Julian wins and is allowed to become a democrat. The loser Isidore has to go to the liberal camp. The two young politicians were quickly elected to councilors in Münsterburg and asked for Netti and Setti. Marie Salander is still against it. Her husband, the respected merchant Martin Salander, asserts himself and arranges a sensational double wedding, at which even “political plays” are performed. Compared to the “brides who have blossomed in full maturity”, the pretty young twins still look a little immature.

Some time later, Martin Salander no longer defends himself against the election to the Grand Council. As a former secondary school teacher, the Volksfreund wants to make a name for himself as an educator for Helvetian youth.

Both parents - both the Salanders and the Weidelichs - are disappointed at how the two young married couples have withdrawn. The Salanders make a quick decision to visit their Setti and are brought into the picture about their unhappy, childless marriage to Isidore. When asked by the parents about the cause, Setti finally confesses: “It's nothing with them! They have no souls! ”With that she includes her sister's misfortune in hers. The willowichs - simpler people than the Salanders - hold back. Finally, Amalie Weidelich can't take it any longer and goes to see Marie Salander. Amalie cannot believe the devastating judgment of the alleged soullessness of her beloved sons. This debate marks the beginning of Mrs Weidelich's end. After Isidor was imprisoned for 150,000 francs in debt and Julian fled to Portugal, Amalie Weidelich suffered a stroke from which she only slowly recovered. When Julian is also arrested and the twins are sentenced to several years in prison at home, the mother does not get over it and dies. Jakob Weidelich stands alone and is supposed to pay the sons' debts financially. His modest financial strength does not allow that. Martin Salander unselfishly helps out with a large amount of money.

Netti and Setti divorce their imprisoned husbands and henceforth live with their parents again. Arnold had received his doctorate from a law school in England, joined his father's company on his return to Switzerland, was sent to Brazil, where he proved himself in his father's possessions and achieved what Martin Salander was denied. He returns to Europe with documents incriminating the fraudulent Wohlwend.

Louis Wohlwend is already waiting for him. The fraudster came from Hungary with his family. Wohlwend does not face Marie Salander, but he lures his friend Martin with 5000 francs. Martin Salander, now 55, falls in love with Miss Myrrha Glavicz. This is the very young sister of Wohlwend's wife Alexandra Volvend-Glavicz. Wohlwend wants to pair his sister-in-law of "Hellenic descent" with Arnold. He's at the wrong address with Arnold. The sober young man - an ideal image of the aspiring citizen of the early years - recognizes Myrrha's idiocy . Yet Myrrha has "all the attributes of the classical ideal". Wohlwend sees his plans thwarted and leaves. The Salanders hadn't used the incriminating material against him.

Martin Salander observes his son's way of life and realizes that the future belongs to such young men as Arnold. At the end of the novel fragment, Martin Salander almost sees himself as a relic from a bygone era.

Testimonials

  • On a map of the canton of Zurich, Gottfried Keller found the town of Saland while looking for a sounding title .
  • On August 9, 1887, Keller wrote to Ida Freiligrath: “Of course, it is more of a dry sermon book than a novel, and unfortunately it is not finished. In my country it has been well understood and read with great grumbling. Outside, however, only a few noticed what it was supposed to be and that it was their business. This is how it goes when you want to be tendentious and doctrinal. I'm happy to be able to stick to 'pointless art' again if there is one. "
  • "It's not nice! There is not enough poetry in it! "

shape

Gottfried Keller accumulated explosive potential for conflict between Martin Salander and Louis Wohlwend. The reader asks himself: Will Wohlwend fool his capitalist friend for a third time? At the end of the fragment, Gottfried Keller smoothed out the waves in this regard with one sentence: "Even Louis Wohlwend's dark pirate ship, which had crossed Martin's path for almost a generation, came up repeatedly, but could no longer board." He had a few pages earlier Readers learn how Wohlwend wanted to plunder his friend again: by pairing Fraulein Myrrha with Arnold. That failed because of the smartness of the young man (see above).

A separate little story is inserted into the text, which Schilling calls “a bulky set piece”. Martin Salander was still a Grand Councilor because former Grand Councilor Kleinpeter had to resign for family reasons. Now Kleinpeter seeks out the Salanders and tells the story of his private misfortune.

interpretation

After entering the novel, the reader suspects a farce. What is meant is the story that tells how Martin Salander let Louis Wohlwend cheat him twice for his fortune. Salander stands there as a fool. His unmistakably doctrinal endeavors towards the young compatriots also make him a downright ridiculous figure. Nevertheless, Salander is a capable Swiss who always gets up. His trials and tribulations - let's just take his late love for Miss Myrrha - are deeply human. But there is the rejection of some literary critics of the “poorly designed novel of old age”. Neumann doesn't want to hear about it. This is to be agreed, for example, when one thinks of the expressive passages in which the deep woes of mother Amalie Weidelich and her husband, the farmer Jakob, are touchingly presented. This is stuff that two lovable people are made of.

reception

  • On January 9th and 12th, 1887, Theodor Storm wrote to Keller that he was “a bit cold”, “couldn't really do anything” with the “Salanderie” and that he favored the earlier Keller, which was “less cruelly realistic”.
  • Paul Heyse is "seriously disappointed" with the reading.
  • Hesse settles accounts with “dispensable philologists” who have reviled this “modern model novel” because of its supposed timeliness. Hesse celebrates the "long series of unforgettable, pure pictures" and explains why this work is "pure art".
  • In 1990, Hans Wysling felt the novel was "somewhat sclerotic in its teaching ."
  • Breitenbruch quotes from Keller's letters to Heyse and Rodenberg . After that, the author always put the "Romanian" aside "because it was too topical", which is detrimental to poetry, and also found it difficult to write the end of the novel. The intended continuation of Arnold Salander did not come about, among other things, because Keller was ailing from the end of 1888. Adolf Frey remembers how Gottfried Keller had planned his third novel: Arnold became head of the Salander family and his sisters got married again; this time the right ones.
  • According to Neumann, Keller's great romantic theme is connected with the probing question “about the continuation of the beautiful in the new age”. In addition, the text is a discussion of Pestalozzi's legacy. The schoolmaster Salander had to fail in the strenuous public education in the early days . In this old work, Keller takes back his liberal-tinged hopes from the 1850s in this regard, as well as the previously vaunted bourgeois willingness to rise. The general schooling that was implemented in Zurich in 1869 could not prevent Isidor and Julian's criminal offenses. Both the wife Marie Salander and finally the “omniscient narrator” contradict Salander's “popular education idealism”. With Louis Wohlwend and the fraudulent twins, Keller represented patriotic journeymen from the early days. The two notaries - though not twins - really existed. The liberal notary Koller cheated the Swiss out of around 350,000 francs in Thalwil in 1881 and the democrat Rudolf von Dielsdorf embezzled around 300,000 francs in the same year. Neumann mentions an ending to a novel that Keller had considered but did not take: The aging folk friend Martin Salander - good-natured, gullible, weak and sensual - stumbles over his affair with Myrrha.
  • Schilling sums up the well-intentioned, idealistic concern of Martin Salander, which failed in a Switzerland ruled by capital in the second half of the 19th century, with the appropriate formula: “All people become citizens”. While the farmer's son Salander gets rich and settled again "in the emphatically realistic novel", Wohlwend has to flee from his creditors to Hungary. Keller simply leaves out the labor that is immanent in capitalism. Schilling searches for the causes and illuminates the differences in Germany and Switzerland. While there was - in today's jargon - worker-friendly legislation in Switzerland , Bismarck , as is well known, prevented this in the German Reich until 1890. The dominance of capital at that time also makes it understandable why Martin Salander is giving up the teaching profession and the twin brothers throw out their party affiliation (see above). In the novel everything follows from the single sentence: Capital has sole rule. As a capitalist, Martin Salander is an enemy of the democrats and consequently a liberal. Although Martin Salander made his wife Marie a clerk, he delegated her back to the stove after she had achieved prosperity. Marie, actually Martin's first critic, does not protest against it. There is order in Switzerland. In his last novel, Keller takes the phrase “knowledge is power” ad absurdum: only those who have money have power. Schilling recognizes the bearers of hope, that is, the figure of young Arnold and his “disciples”, as an “ideological construction” with no perspective and asks about the “content of hope”.
  • Breitenbruch, Neumann, Schilling and Selbmann refer to further passages:

literature

First edition

  • Martin Salander. Novel. Verlag von Wilhelm Hertz , Berlin 1886. 351 pages, red canvas embossed with gold

Other issues

  • Martin Salander. Novel. Cotta'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung , Stuttgart 1914, 368 pages
  • Martin Salander. Novel. Rascher & Co, Zurich 1920, 404 pages, linen
  • Martin Salander. Novel. Voigtländers Verlag, Leipzig around 1920, 357 pages
  • Martin Salander. Novel. Schreitersche Verlagshandlung, Berlin 1926, 304 pages
  • Seven legends. The epiphany. Martin Salander . Edited by Dominik Müller. Volume 6 from: Gottfried Keller: Complete works in seven volumes. Edited by Thomas Böning, Gerhard Kaiser , Kai Kauffmann, Dominik Müller and Bettina Schulte-Böning. Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-618-61740-2
  • Martin Salander. Novel. With an afterword by Peter Bichsel . Collection. Nagel & Kimche, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-312-00326-1

Used edition

  • Martin Salander. Novel. P. 5–328 in: Gottfried Keller: Complete works in eight volumes. Volume V. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1961

Secondary literature

  • Bernd Breitenbruch: Gottfried Keller. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968 (1998 edition), ISBN 3-499-50136-8
  • Beyond poetry - "Martin Salander" . P. 266–302 in: Bernd Neumann: Gottfried Keller. An introduction to his work. Athenäum Verlag, Königstein / Ts. 1982 (AT 2170), ISBN 3-7610-2170-4
  • Volker Michels (Ed.): Hermann Hesse. The world in book I. Reviews and essays from the years 1900–1910. In: Hermann Hesse. All works in 20 volumes, vol. 16. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988 (2002 edition), 646 pages, without ISBN
  • Eva Graef: Martin Salander. Politics and poetry in Gottfried Keller's early days novel . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1992, ISBN 3-88479-698-4
  • Pathology of the citizen: "Martin Salander". S. 216–243 in: Diana Schilling: Keller's Prosa. Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-631-34190-3 . At the same time dissertation from the University of Münster (Westphalia) in 1996
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century . Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1
  • Failed old age novel or anticipation of modernity? Martin Salander (1886). Pp. 172–183 in: Rolf Selbmann: Gottfried Keller. Novels and short stories. Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 2001 (Klassiker-Lektüren Vol. 6), ISBN 3-503-06109-6
  • Thomas Binder: Martin Salander. Between the joy of experimentation and a sense of duty. P. 154–171 in: Walter Morgenthaler (Ed.): Interpretations. Gottfried Keller. Novels and short stories. Reclam RUB 17533, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-15-017533-0

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ " Excelsior " ("higher up!") - chosen from a poem from 1841 by Longfellow (edition used, p. 450, 14th Zvo)
  2. ↑ With Münsterburg Zurich is meant (see for example Sprengel, p. 252, 1. Zvo)
  3. ↑ Setti is the pet form of Elisabeth (see edition used, p. 108, 9. Zvo)
  4. ↑ Myrrha : Arabic "the bitter" (Neumann, p. 293, 17. Zvo)
  5. ↑ Keller interpreters also want other interpretations to apply. After Ermatinger, Salander is the name of the Witzemann in Züritüütsch and alludes to the character of the title hero. Kaiser, on the other hand, think of the salamander, that mythical creature that passes tests in fire (Ermatinger and Kaiser, quoted in Neumann, p. 268 middle). When Neumann reads Salander's first name, a more ironic semantic comes to mind. It is reminiscent of St. Martin , the saint, who shared his cloak (here with Wohlwend) (Neumann, p. 268 middle).
  6. ↑ According to Graef, both the individual and society are disintegrated by the power of money and the liberal “world plan for the fiction of a foolish dreamer” (Graef, quoted in Schilling, p. 232, 10th Zvu). Martin Salander calls Sprengel “a kind of Don Quixote from the early years” (Sprengel, p. 252, 21. Zvo). Selbmann hits the strange phenomenon more precisely with his hypothesis of oscillating writing: Keller alternates "between identifying closeness ... and ironic distance" to his hero. In the first case one could sometimes assume Martin Salander as “the mouthpiece of Keller” and in the second case one had a “joke figure” (Selbmann, p. 174, 11. Zvo) under the magnifying glass.
  7. ↑ " All people become brothers "

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Keller, quoted in Binder, p. 158, 13. Zvo
  2. ↑ [1]
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 450, 3rd Zvu and Breitenbruch, p. 158, 17th Zvo
  4. ^ Letter from Keller, addressed to Paul Heyse at the beginning of 1882, quoted in Binder, p. 155, 10. Zvo
  5. ↑ Schilling, p. 216, 9th Zvu
  6. ^ Neumann, p. 292, 3. Zvo
  7. ↑ Sprengel, p. 251, 3rd Zvu
  8. ^ Neumann, p. 298 middle
  9. ↑ Ermatinger, quoted in Neumann, p. 298, 7. Zvo
  10. ^ Neumann, p. 300, 6. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 17, 1. Zvu
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 202, 15. Zvu
  13. ↑ Selbmann, p. 179, 1. Zvu
  14. ^ Neumann, p. 295 above
  15. ↑ Schilling, p. 240, 9th Zvu
  16. ↑ see also Neumann, p. 276, 14th Zvu
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 450, 14th Zvu
  18. ↑ quoted in the edition used, p. 452, 8th Zvu (see also Keller's letter in Lexikus.de )
  19. ↑ quoted from Adolf Vögtlin , in Neumann, p. 299, 19. Zvu
  20. ↑ Edition used, p. 239, 16. Zvo
  21. ↑ Edition used, p. 327, 14th Zvu
  22. ↑ Schilling, p. 221 above
  23. ↑ see also Neumann, p. 276, 6. Zvo
  24. ↑ see for example the note in Selbmann, p. 175, 19. Zvu
  25. ^ Neumann, p. 287 middle
  26. ^ Storm, quoted in Selbmann, p. 173, 1. Zvo
  27. ↑ Heyse on July 19, 1890 to Baechtold , quoted in Selbmann, p. 173, 8. Zvo
  28. ↑ Hesse in the Munich March of July 15, 1910, quoted in Michels, p. 476 to p. 479 above
  29. ^ Wysling, quoted in Selbmann, p. 173, 1st Zvu
  30. ↑ Breitenbruch, pp. 157–158
  31. ↑ Breitenbruch, p. 160 below
  32. ↑ Frey's memories, quoted in Schilling, p. 231 above
  33. ^ Neumann, p. 269 below
  34. ^ Neumann, p. 273 middle
  35. ↑ Neumann, p. 270 below and p. 297, 5. Zvo
  36. ↑ Neumann, p. 272 ​​below
  37. ^ Neumann, p. 274, 13th Zvu
  38. ^ Neumann, p. 282 Mitte and p. 292
  39. ^ Neumann, p. 291 middle
  40. ↑ Schilling, p. 216, 3rd Zvu
  41. ↑ Schilling, p. 221, 3. Zvo
  42. ↑ Schilling, p. 218
  43. ↑ Schilling, p. 222 above
  44. ↑ Schilling, p. 224 below
  45. ↑ Schilling, p. 225 above and p. 226 below
  46. ↑ Schilling, p. 229 above
  47. ↑ Schilling, p. 235 above
  48. ↑ Schilling, p. 238 below
  49. ↑ Schilling, pp. 242-243
  50. ↑ Breitenbruch, p. 186 below
  51. ^ Neumann, p. 352
  52. ↑ Schilling, p. 269
  53. ↑ Selbmann, pp. 188-189