Master Author or The Tales of the Sunken Garden

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Master Author or The Stories of the Sunken Garden is a story by Wilhelm Raabe that was written in the first half of 1873 and published by Günther in Leipzig at the end of the same year. Raabe saw reprints in 1900 and 1903. With the title Raabe alluded to St. Author , the patron saint of the city of Braunschweig .

Bergassessor Baron Emil von Schmidt, a graduate of the Bergakademie Freiberg , talks about the life and death of others. He almost neglects to forge his own happiness.

content

The 35-year-old von Schmidt leads the reader through Schöppenstedt and Kneitlingen deep into the Elm forest. The master author Kunemund rented a room from the forester Arend Tofote. The narrator, damaged in practice by bad weather during long mining studies , is lucky. His wealthy father died early. Von Schmidt, the only heir, lives as a "jobless lover of cheap aesthetic pleasures".

From the forest back to the unnamed city, when the forester's daughter Gertrud, an 18-year-old blonde, inherits a house with a garden there. Mynheer van Kunemund, the little brother of the master writer Kunemund, who got rich in Surinam , had died. When the property in the "overgrown Rococo " is visited, an admirer of Gertrude appears - the young ordinary seaman Karl Schaake. The seaman is on home leave. He had dispatched Muslim pilgrims from Malacca to Dscheddah on “the Hamburg barque 'Kehrwieder' . Karl Schaake and the master author come from the same village. Karl's ancestors were all linen weavers .

When rummaging through the “enchanted garden palace”, the “salt water man” finds a fist-sized, oval blackish-greenish stone. The ordinary seaman and pilgrim guide Schaake knows such unlucky stones from the islands of the Harafura Sea . He throws away the “stone of acceptance”. Gertrud takes no pleasure in her inherited land. The “city expansion plan” is being implemented. The house will be torn down, the garden will be leveled and a "priority road" will be built directly over the property.

Years later, von Schmidt got stuck on a train journey. The express train stops in the open. A railway accident with dead and seriously injured is the cause. The traveler marches to the next village, the birthplace of the master author Kunemund. One meets. The master author has long since returned to his parents' house - a poor hut with a low room. A new forester sits in the restored forester's house. The forester Arend Tofote died in the master's hut. Von Schmidt asks about Gertrud, who is now the master's foster daughter. The author Kunemund replies: “We broke up without our noticing it.” Back in town, von Schmidt reads through the list of those who had been killed in the derailment and finds helmsman Karl Schaake - both feet broken twice. The mutilated man lies with his aunt. The aunt Schaake lives in the city in Cyriacushofe. Von Schmidt visits the sick. The doctors give up the helmsman.

Gertrud Tofote is welcomed by a stately lady, Mrs. Christine von Wittum, the young widow of a senior civil servant who passed away at a very ripe age. Von Schmidt calls the beautiful widow a witch. He already knew Christine as a virgin. Mrs. von Wittum quotes her cousin Vollrad von Wittum from Berlin. According to the will of the witch, Vollrad is to marry Gertrud and the inheritance of Mynheer van Kunemund. Karl Schaake wants to see his lover again. Gertrud fulfills the last wish. “Farewell, dear Trudchen”, are Karl Schaake's last words. The helmsman landed with his harbor master, the aunt, after a long journey in the harbor. Von Schmidt is too late.

It turns out that the master author Kunemund was on the run from his elders - as this man calls the woman at his side. Von Schmidt advises the master author to try it with the aunt. The master doesn't want that.

Von Schmidt marries the witch. Christine is the daughter of the miner Erdmann zu Clausthal . Vollrad actually married Gertrud. The couple moves to Freiburg im Breisgau . The firedamp damaged von Schmidt fulfills his wife's greatest wish and moves with her to Berlin.

Quotes

  • "Not everyone dies in their father's house."
  • "Anything that causes harm and mischief is usually always in good health."
  • God's power: "... the Lord passes by without our being aware of it; ..."
  • "There is nothing tempting you on and on in the same way as such a dirt road through the ripe grain and the sheaves, towards the sunrise."
  • "You think you're standing in front of a wall every moment, only to find that there is a way around it every time."

shape

On page 2 the reader is puzzled. A layman is telling the story! Von Schmidt writes: “I will start again to tell.” After reading it, it must be admitted that this work is surprisingly cleverly built. First, the master writer Kunemund is admired. The world still seems fine. There are three incisions. The next is always deeper than the previous one. The first turning point becomes apparent in the tenth of the 26 chapters - a leap in time of no more than five years. The second incision follows immediately in Chapter 11 and is a tough one. In the railway accident, helmsman Karl Schaake is seriously injured. The reader already gets to feel that the narrator has survived a firedom when, for example, von Schmidt writes: “If I had made this book, as it is called, I would really be careful not to write down what happened next to everything else . But it was like that back then! ”Von Schmidt - in the confused sense just quoted - takes back everything that was said towards the end of the story in the third section and claims the opposite. All of a sudden, Gertrud Tofote is a "silly little girl". And this narrative scientist sums up: “What was the master author and his clan to concern me? Since I met him, he had never said anything extraordinary - and done even less. "Von Schmidt finally allows only Wolfgang von Goethe to be considered a" real master author " .

interpretation

Objects loaded with symbols, such as the acceptance stone, promise and bring bad luck. Karl Schaake's love for Gertrud is unhappy. The stone reappears in an evening party. The miracle does not bring luck to its new owner either. That owner is a husband who appears without a wife Charlotte. According to Sprengel, symbols of time, meaning yesterday-today contrasts, function as narrative structures.

If the subtitle initially refers to Gertrud's sunken garden, the picture is used several times later. When von Schmidt sits in the theater and “ Hamlet ” is declaimed with false pathos, the narrator complains: “Who will lift the gardens that sink us from the depths?” And also the master author Kunemund, lamenting the death of forester Arend Tofote , exclaims: “How many gardens sink into the world for poor people!” Fuld interprets the image of the sunken garden as an admission by Raabe of the dying of his poetic “flower dreams”. The readership cannot or does not want to follow him.

The text, which has not been understood for a long time, is subtle. Eulenspiegel is said to have been born in Kneitlingen .

Raabe's aversion to the blessings of the Wilhelminian era is evident. When the narrator and the master author leave the cemetery after the helmsman's funeral, they both go home on foot: “We passed hot tar-whitewashed planks, wooden yards, garden walls and a few unsightly houses through the hot, vom Waste from the factory and coal works blackened foot-high dust back to the city. "

Self-testimony

In a letter dated March 19, 1901, Raabe looks back: “Neither the public nor the public wanted to know anything about my 'master author'."

reception

In 1874 the magazine “Über Land und Meer” praised poetry, but the “strangely conceived fable” was noted with a shake of the head. In the same year, Edmund Hoefer called the text “a story with obstacles” in “Literaturfreund”.

More recent statements address this very early attempt to narrate the side effects of industrialization in the Wilhelminian era - such as the ruthless demolition of old buildings in the course of road construction or the devastating railway accident. In this context, however, Oppermann articulates his dissatisfaction with the secretive Raabe. Fuld does not want to equate Schmidt's narrator with Raabe, but he notices approaches in that direction.

References to further work can be found in Meyen : Franz Hahne (Berlin 1912), Josef Bass (Berlin 1913), Fritz Jensch, Gustav Plehn and Wilhelm Herse (Wolfenbüttel 1922, 1930 and 1933). Helmut Freytag did his doctorate on the "master author" in Jena in 1931 (Verlag Klinz, Halle 1931).

expenditure

First edition

  • Wilhelm Raabe: "Master Author or The Stories of the Sunken Garden." 256 pages. Half linen. Ernst Julius Günther, Leipzig 1874

Used edition

  • Master Author or The Tales of the Sunken Garden. (Pp. 5–157) with an appendix by Gerhart Mayer (pp. 451–472) in: Gerhart Mayer (arrangement), Hans Butzmann ( arrangement ): Wilhelm Raabe: Meister Autor. To the wild man . Höxter and Corvey . Owl Pentecost . (2nd edition, obtained from Karl Hoppe and Rosemarie Schillemeit) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973. Vol. 11, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 in Karl Hoppe (ed.), Jost Schillemeit (ed.), Hans Oppermann (Ed.), Kurt Schreinert (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.

Further editions

  • The story appeared in collections, for example, in 1900 and 1903 by Otto Janke in Berlin and in 1934 by Hermann Klemm in Berlin-Grunewald.
  • Wilhelm Raabe: Master Author or The Stories of the Sunken Garden. 157 pages. Cardboard tape. Hermann Klemm and Erich Seemann, Freiburg im Breisgau 1955
  • Wilhelm Raabe: Master Author or The Stories of the Sunken Garden. 252 pages. Linen. Gustav Kiepenheuer, Weimar 1968
  • Peter Goldammer (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe: Master Author or The Stories of the Sunken Garden. 172 pages. Cardboard tape. Insel, Leipzig 1985 (1st edition). Island Library 688

literature

  • Hans Oppermann : Wilhelm Raabe. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1970 (1988 edition), ISBN 3-499-50165-1 (rowohlt's monographs).
  • Fritz Meyen : Wilhelm Raabe. Bibliography. 438 pages. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973 (2nd edition). Supplementary volume 1, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 in Karl Hoppe (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.
  • Antje Alber: Between idyll and Wilhelminian civilization. Wilhelm Raabe's Braunschweig novel "Master Author The Stories of the Sunken Garden". In: Braunschweigische Heimat. Edited by the Braunschweigisches Landesverein für Heimatschutz eV (Editor: Wolf Dieter Steinmetz), Wolfenbüttel 79th year 1993, pp. 3–27.
  • Gabriele Henkel: Braunschweig in Raabes "Master Author or The Stories of the Sunken Garden". City paradigm and narrative structure. In: Herbert Blume and Eberhard Rohse (eds.): Literature and Braunschweig between Vormärz and the early days. Contributions to the colloquium of the Braunschweig Literary Association from May 22 to 24, 1992 (= Braunschweiger Werkstücke , Vol. 84). City archive and city library Braunschweig, Braunschweig 1993, pp. 277-295 ISBN 3-87884-037-3
  • Cecilia von Studnitz: Wilhelm Raabe. Writer. A biography. 346 pages. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-0778-6
  • Werner Fuld : Wilhelm Raabe. A biography. 383 pages. Hanser, Munich 1993 (dtv edition in July 2006), ISBN 3-423-34324-9 .
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century . CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mayer in the edition used, p. 451 below, 454 below-455 above, 457 middle
  2. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 312, entry 40
  3. ^ Fuld, p. 258, 21. Zvo
  4. ↑ For example, the Cyriacushof, where the helmsman dies (see below), points to Braunschweig . Raabe lived temporarily with the family in the Renaissance building in 1870 (edition used, p. 75, 17. Zvo) (Fuld, p. 249, 19. Zvo)
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 39, 12. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 65, 2. Zvo
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 87, 15. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 91, 15. Zvo (Job 9:11: "If it passes me by, I don't see it." ( Hi 9:11  EU ))
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 135, 15. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 154, 16. Zvo
  11. ↑ Sprengel, p. 338, 2nd Zvu
  12. ↑ Fuld, p. 258, 7th Zvu
  13. ^ Fuld, p. 258, 17. Zvo
  14. ↑ quoted by Mayer in the edition used, p. 455, 7th Zvu
  15. ↑ After the book was published at the beginning of 1874, Raabe again had to take on bread work at newspapers (Fuld, p. 265, 14. Zvu).
  16. ↑ References to both reviews by Mayer in the edition used, p. 455, 17. Zvo
  17. ^ Fuld, p. 259, 14. Zvo
  18. ↑ Sprengel, p. 332, 4. Zvo
  19. ↑ Sprengel, p. 27, 14th Zvu
  20. ↑ Oppermann, p. 96, 21. Zvo
  21. ↑ Fuld, p. 30, 3. Zvo
  22. ↑ Meyen, pp. 363-364
  23. ↑ Mayer in the edition used, p. 457 middle