At night under the stone bridge

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Night under the stone bridge is a novel by Leo Perutz (1882–1957). Perutz began it in Vienna in 1924 and completed it in Tel Aviv in 1951 . It appeared in 1953.

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Along the lines of an impossible love between the Habsburg Rudolf II and the beautiful Jewess Esther and their relationship with the wealthy Mordechai Meisl and Rabbi Löw , the 14 stories that make up the novel are linked to form a multifaceted mythical legend between Prague's Jewish town and the Hradschin , the Prague Castle. Only gradually do the reader discover the connections between individual, also independently functioning stories from Prague around 1600, which are not strung together in chronological order. The main story is the family history of the tutor cand. Med. Meisl and the destruction of Prague's old Jewish town at the turn of the century, which Perutz experienced as a high school student.

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During a visit to the Jewish city of Prague, the Roman Emperor Rudolf II saw a beautiful young woman and fell in love. Rudolf demands from Rabbi Loew that the beautiful woman should be sent to him at the castle. The rabbi refuses, because Esther is married to the merchant Mordechai Meisl. The young emperor then threatens to expel the Jews. Out of concern for his community, Rabbi Löw plants a rose bush and a rosemary bush next to each other under the stone bridge on the Vltava , in which the souls of Rudolf and Esther unite in a dream night after night. However, this sin brings great child deaths to the Jewish city. When Rabbi Löw investigates the cause of the curse, he pulls out the rosemary stick. The beautiful Esther dies, leaving Mordechai Meisl and Rudolf inconsolable. Years later, Rudolf II and Meisl are connected to one another in other ways, without ever having seen one another. The deeply indebted emperor does business with the rich merchant - money for privileges. In addition, the emperor is said to inherit his estate after Meisl's death. But when Mordechai Meisl found out in the last weeks of his life that his Esther was the emperor's mistress, he gave away all of his money in order to get revenge. In doing so he is dragging the whole of Bohemia into misery. Rabbi Löw is always involved in all of these processes, but with his magic words intended to do good, he disturbs the balance of the world.

Content of the individual stories

The plague in the Jewish city

(1589) Koppel-Bär and Jäckele-Narr, two poor musicians and jokers, want to play for Blümchen, the little tailor's daughter. But the little flower is also dead, the plague is wiping out the children of the Jewish community. You go to the cemetery and see the ghosts of the dead children there. Rabbi Löw knows how to interpret this as a sign that a sinner is wicked in the community, day after day. The rabbi has the two of them catch one of the children's spirits and ask for the name of the sinner. But the two only find out that it is a question of adultery. The rabbi then gathers the congregation and demands that the sinner who brought infant death to the congregation should come forward. When no one steps forward, even after being asked three times, he curses the sinner. But the curse is not visible to anyone.

So Rabbi Loew sent the two musicians back to the cemetery to catch another ghost and lure them into the rabbi's room. That's how it happens. Hardly in the room, the rabbi transforms the spirit back into a living child and questions it himself. The child says to the rabbi: Only God and you know it. Rabbi Löw understands. He sets out for the banks of the Vltava himself. There, under the stone bridge, a rose bush and a rosemary are intertwined. He separates the plants, digs up the rosemary and throws it into the dark water. That night the child's death ends, the beautiful Jewess Esther Meisl dies, the Emperor Rudolf gets out of bed with a scream.

The emperor's table

(1598) The relatives Zaruba and Kaplirsch walk through the Jewish town. Kaplirsch, the rich landlord, gets excited about the Jews and their trade and asks poor Zaruba if he would like to accompany him to the castle, where he has business to discuss with the emperor's chamberlain. Because then he too would be invited to the emperor's table. Peter Zaruba explains that an old prophecy reports that one of the family will re-establish the sacred Bohemian freedom, except that he is not allowed to eat from the emperor's table. So Zaruba lets Kaplirsch go to the castle alone. On the way home, Zaruba passes an inn and stops because the landlord promises four courses for only three Bohemian groschen , and the food is excellent. When Kaplirsch walks past the guest garden, he is in a bad mood. The court has payment problems and that is why he, the enemy of Jews, should get a money order from the Jew Meisl. That even drove his appetite that he hardly ate from the emperor's table. It turns out that the two relatives were served the same thing. The landlord says that he served the remains of the imperial table. Zaruba is desperate to have gambled away Bohemian freedom in this way.

The conversation of the dogs

(1609) The unfortunate but pious Jew Berl Landfahrer is said to be hanged for accidental stolen goods, as a special punishment between two dogs. Landfahrer spends the night before the execution in the cell with the two dogs, a skinny street dog and the poodle of the late Mordechai Meisl. The dogs are yapping while he tries to pray. This annoys him and he wants to impose a ban on the two dogs. To do this, he writes the magic spell in the dust and calls the ban. But he is wrong in one letter and instead of the desired calm he can now understand the dog's language. So he hears the poodle talking about where Meisl buried money for the unfortunate Berl country driver that he should have shown him, but he doesn't know him. Berl Landfahrer then introduces himself to the poodle. The poodle is happy and promises to show the hiding place tomorrow. Landfahrer informed the poodle that the three should be hanged in the morning. The poodle announces that he will flee quickly if someone comes. The next morning, however, instead of the executioner, the Judenrat came in and told Berl Landfahrer that he had been pardoned. But instead of being happy about it, he despairs because the poodle slipped through the open door before he could show him the hiding place. He spends the rest of his life looking for the poodle. It is said of him that the night before the execution he lost his human soul.

The sarabande

The elegant Count Collalto tripped the awkward Baron Juranic out of jealousy while dancing with the youngest daughter of Berka , in order to make him look ridiculous in front of the girl. The baron then challenges the count to fencing that evening and is vastly superior to him in the fight. He gives life to the Collalto on the condition that he dance all night. Three Croatian musicians play a sarabande . The count becomes more and more exhausted. Only when they pass a statue of the Virgin does the dancing count come to rest briefly, because then the musicians paused to pray. Juranic, who wants to prevent this, leads them to the Jewish city, where there are no Christian signs. Count Collalto is finally exhausted, he desperately cries out for help. Rabbi Löw hears this scream and looks out the window. Collato begs him for a picture of Christ. When the rabbi understands the situation, he conjures up a picture on the opposite wall, an ecce homo . Before that, Baron Juranic kneels with his stony heart, accuses himself and takes pity on the count. The Ecce homo, however, was not an image of Christ, but an image of persecuted Judaism .

Heinrich from Hell

Rudolf II awakes from a nightmare. He had the courtiers Hanniwald, Sternberg and Bubna summoned, but confused the young cupbearer Bubna with someone else. Only after Bubna prays the paternoster on the orders of the emperor does he calm down. The emperor tells his dream, in which he is tempted by the devil, who prophesies that the secret treasure will escape him and that terrible punishments will come over the country. The emperor's confidants discuss how to respond to the devil's envoys. The Kaiser likes Hanniwald's formulation and calms down, recognizes Bubna too and finally goes to bed.

The Moroccan ambassador, with a large, well-equipped retinue, arrives in Prague and is received at court. But the emperor reacts strangely again. He takes the Moroccan ambassador to be Heinrich Twaroch, a former fodder in the imperial stables who stole a coin from him and then disappeared. Rudolf II accuses the ambassador of disbelieving and that he came from hell. The courtiers are embarrassed. The emperor, however, is not deterred, he sees in the envoy the devil's envoy, who is now awaiting his answer. So he repeats the words of Hanniwald: I won't leave the Lord Jesus a finger. The audience is over.

In the evening, the ambassador goes to a gardener on the outskirts, disguised as a craftsman. He tells him that the emperor has received him. And recognized him as the only one at court - him, the former stable boy Heinrich Twaroch, the son of the Prague gardener who converted to Islam.

The stolen thaler

The young Rudolf II, son of Emperor Maximilian , gets lost on his ride without a retinue and has a strange appearance: in the middle of the forest he meets two giants with three flashing heaps of gold, silver and copper. He asks the ghosts who the treasure belongs to and learns that all of this is destined for the Jew Mordechai Meisl, the future chamberlain of the emperor. This angered the young prince and he took a silver thaler from the pile. Before the whole ghost disappears, he is told: Just keep the taler, but he will not find peace until he is with whoever it belongs. In the following days he was followed by misfortune until he decided to get rid of the illegally appropriated thaler. But he cannot track down the Jew Mordechai Meisl in order to give him back the taler, nobody knows him. So he throws the thaler from the Stone Bridge into the Vltava. He falls into a boat that is just passing through below. The fisherman puts the taler in his coat pocket. Rudolf decides to pursue the thaler. A stranger buys the fisherman's coat to visit his lover disguised as a fishmonger. The morning after the night of love, the coat gets stuck in the pear tree over which the lover climbs out of the garden. A carter takes the coat and thaler and sells it at the used clothes dealer. Young Rudolf takes a seat at the used clothes dealer and waits a long time. Finally a little boy arrives who, for a penny, searches the coat pockets of the clothes and is allowed to keep everything in them. He finds the thaler. When Rudolf asked what he would buy with it, the boy replied that he would not spend the thaler on himself, because one thaler can easily become two. And he runs away happily. Rudolf learns that the boy's name is Mordechai Meisl.

At night under the stone bridge

A rose bush and a rosemary stick wind around each other under the stone bridge . Rudolf II and Esther meet night after night in a dream as lovers and do not know what happens to them. Esther is distressed because she feels God's wrath. In the morning they wake up alone in their beds. Rudolf longingly and desperately, Esther relieved that it is only a dream, even if a beautiful one.

The star of Wallenstein

(1606) At the court of Rudolf II, savings were made and many servants were not paid their salaries, including the astronomer Johannes Kepler . In an interview with the secret secretary Hanniwald, Kepler complains that, as a serious astronomer, he does not want to make the astrological predictions that the emperor wanted. At the end of the conversation, Kepler asks about the young nobleman Waldstein , because he also wants him to do an astrological calculation. He is curious because Kepler reads a difficult but great character from the handwriting of Waldstein.

Now the impoverished young Waldstein comes to Kepler. The croaking of the frogs in the pond behind Kepler's house bothers him excessively, he says that all animal noises made him mad, as did all the animals that he heard screaming, barking and complaining around his apartment. Waldstein wants to have the planetary constellation calculated for the coming night. Because he intends to join a gang of thieves to get money for his political ventures. In return he hopes for the good influence of Mars. But Kepler calculates Venus for him. Waldstein promises Kepler the wages for the calculation after the night in question.

Waldstein has made an arrangement that a carriage will pick him up in the evening, which is supposed to take him to Barvitius, the head of the gang of thieves, under strict security precautions. The attack is said to have been carried out on the wealthy Jew Mordechai Meisl, the secret treasurer of the emperor, who lately has been giving away his money like a madman and selling it to the people. Waldstein gets into the carriage that is pulling up. His eyes are blindfolded. After a long journey, he is taken to a castle, where it is not Barvitius but a beautiful masked woman who is waiting for him. After misunderstandings on both sides, Waldstein is told that the lady loves freedom and therefore wants to be his mistress incognito and masked for one night. So Waldstein spends a night of love with the stranger. But in the morning he recognizes from the hated crowing of his hostess's rooster that he is not far from home and that the stranger is his neighbor, the beautiful, very rich widow Lucretia. After he exposes her, she agrees to marry him.

When he comes back to his little room, the thief gang's liaison is waiting excitedly for him. Barvitius and his journeymen were arrested that night. As a thank you for the good horoscope, which has now made him richer than the planned foray, Waldstein sends a bag of gold ducats to poor Kepler, who now credits astrology with the fact that it nourishes better than astronomy .

The painter Brabanzio

Emperor Rudolf II, an obsessed art collector, comes across a small picture by the Prague painter Brabanzio, which he recognizes as a masterpiece. Incognito , he visits the painter who is portraying a raft in his studio. There is a small picture on the wall that fascinates him. He advises the painter to try his luck at the castle, but Brabanzio doesn't want to know anything about it, because word has got around that the emperor owes everyone their wages. Mordechai Meisl enters the studio. He wants the painter to paint him a portrait of his wife Esther, who died a long time ago, and which he cannot forget. He tries to describe Esther. But Brabanzio cannot paint a portrait with the eyes of love based on these descriptions. But Meisl's words penetrate the heart of Emperor Rudolf and, lost in thought, he draws the face of his beloved from the dreams he could never forget. He is not satisfied with the small drawing himself; it seems too superficial to him. He leaves it and leaves the studio with the intention of sending a chamberlain to the small painting by Brabanzio the next day . A gust of wind blows the emperor's drawing in front of the painter and Meisl. Meisl recognizes his deceased wife in this picture and generously pays the astonished painter. The next day, the emperor's valet found the Brabanzio's studio empty. With the eight guilders from Meisl, the unsteady painter set off on a journey.

The forgotten alchemist

The emperor has financial problems. He has been insolvent for a long time, but is getting into debt more and more to buy works of art. He is desperate when the councils refuse to grant him any more money for some paintings. His personal valet Philipp Lang reassures him and advises him to do business with the wealthy Jew Mordechai Meisl instead of relying on alchemists like the court alchemist Jakobus van Delle.

The court alchemist Jakobus van Delle bet his head on the emperor that he would have produced a bar of gold by St. Wenceslas Day . But the conversion of lead into gold failed and van Delle was scared to death. His friend, the stove master and former court jester Brouza, decides to help him escape the castle and get money for the onward journey. To do this, he goes to the emperor and provokes him until the emperor attacks him. Brouza allows himself to be beaten up, but then complains about what the late father of the emperor, whose dearest jester he was, would say about it. To appease him and his conscience, the emperor gives him three guilders. Brouza brings the three guilders to van Delle and helps him escape from the castle with a rope ladder. Van Delle injures himself and hides fearfully in Brouza's little house. The alchemist's escape is only noticed a long time after Wenceslas Day, but the emperor has long since forgotten the bet. And Philipp Lang explains to Brouza that the emperor has won a new, more successful gold maker for himself. When van Delle found out, he was so offended that he cut his wrists open and died. His friend Brouza is as heartbroken as it was when Emperor Maximilian died.

The jug of brandy

The two old musicians Jäckele-Narr and Koppel-Bär walk past the old school late at night, arguing over a jug of brandy . In it they hear singing and shouting - in the week after the New Year celebrations, the spirits of the deceased call out the names of those who will die in the coming year at night. Jäckele-Narr and Koppel-Bär listen intently, whoever is called will finally hear the name of the Jäckele-Narr. Koppel-Bär is desperate that his friend should die; that too is quietly affected. But when Mordechai Meisl is also called, as “the man who does not belong”, the two doubt that it is the spirits of the deceased who are calling. They think it is a bad joke of the gold ticker who is probably repairing the brocade flag there, because there is no question that Meisl is extremely rich for them. They are comforted and even find the brandy jug that was believed to have been smashed intact.

The emperor's faithful

(1621) Three years after the uprising in 1618 , Bohemian society is in upheaval, the Reformation has been repulsed, the king has been driven out, there is war , times are bad. After the great execution, in which 27 people were hanged as traitors, the former court jester and court oven master Brouza, the former court barber Svatek, the aged, former second valet Cervenka and Kasparek, the emperor's lute player, meet in an inn. It turns out that the landlord Wondra once worked as a pepper pounder in the imperial kitchen. They exchange anecdotes from the old days. Old Cervenka now tells the story of Rudolf's serious illness: Doctor Jessenius put Rudolf on a strict diet, prescribed fresh air and told him to get up. Since Rudolf was already too weak, he forcibly pulled him up. Rudolf then prophesied to the doctor that because he had laid hands on him he would one day end up on the gallows. Today he, Cervenka, saw this prophecy come true. And he speaks of the curse that Rudolf II cast over all of Prague. The reasons why the old Bohemian empire perished. In response to the remark that Rudolf shouldn't have been so stingy, Cervenka says that in the end the emperor had no money because his gold maker would have let him down. Brouza has something to say about this: he knows who this mysterious gold maker is, but is not allowed to reveal it because he has promised not to disclose it. Not even when he is offered a roast does he break his promise. But in heaven he will one day reveal the secret - then at the price of a heavenly roast.

The consumed light

In the evenings, Mordechai Meisl struggles with life alone at home. He has no son to leave his estate to. He thinks with grief of his wife, who died early, and the puzzling words she uttered in the hour of her death: “Rudolf help!” Then he ponders his business connection with the emperor, who in return for a multitude of privileges, not only give him a quarterly share in the profit, but should inherit half of it after his death. And death seems near, Meisl is in very poor health.

Mordechai Meisl feels that he is a light that has actually already been extinguished and has only been forcibly kept alive - like that which Rabbi Löw once prevented with a magic word from being extinguished for a long night - because God still needs him for some purpose in this world. But which one? Now the valet Philipp Lang comes to visit and observes Meisl's state of health with cold greed. He is waiting for the secret treasure, half of which is to be inherited by the emperors and the other half of which he wants to snatch for himself. They talk about business and gossip from the court. Meisl asks Lang why the emperor, like himself, has neither a wife nor a child. Lang tells him that Rudolf II remained loyal to a mysterious lover who was probably someone else's wife and who was suddenly snatched from the emperor. The story inexplicably depresses Meisl, and he expresses the desire to see the Kaiser in person. Lang puts him off until later, because he hopes that Meisl will die before that. The old Mordechai Meisl disguises himself as a butcher and drives the meat delivery for the predators to the castle to see the emperor.

Rudolf II is depressed, he had bad dreams again. (The emperor tries to borrow 100 guilders from Brouza stove, but he fools him with cheeky negative answers). Rudolf didn't miss feeding the lions for lunch. But on his way to the cages, a girl disguised as a gardener throws herself in front of him to beg for mercy for her father and calls out: Rudolf help! The emperor thinks the girl is a lazy kitchen boy, rebukes her and goes on. But these two words fall deep into Mordechai Meisl's soul and he understands that Emperor Rudolf was his wife's lover. He seeks revenge. The emperor should not inherit anything, he decides to get rid of his great wealth - and he wants to live just that long.

The angel Asael

Rabbi Löw is visited by an angel who speaks to him about the power of words that leave traces in the world. The rabbi remembers his magic words. He had saved the life of young Rudolf II when he had turned a stone that was supposed to kill the emperor into a pair of swallows while the emperor was visiting the Jewish city. The angel warns the rabbi that this spell would have disturbed the divine plan at the time. Because that day Rudolf had seen a girl in the Jewish city and fell madly in love with her. After a long and unsuccessful search for the girl, Rudolf visited Rabbi Löw and ordered him to look for the girl and bring her to the castle. Rabbi Löw refused, because the beautiful woman is Esther, the wife of Mordechai Meisl. Then Rudolf, maddened with love, threatened to drive the Jews out of Prague and its lands. For fear of this, Rabbi Löw planted a rose bush and a rosemary cane under the stone bridge, in which the souls of Esther and Rudolf were to unite night after night, and thus brought sin to the Jewish city.

When the angel asked why people complained with love that would only bring unhappiness into the world, Rabbi Löw reminded the angel of the beginning of the time when angels and daughters of men loved one another. The angel is crying.

reception

The novel was published in 1953 as Perutz's last novel during his lifetime. The success was restrained, as the German-speaking readership - as Perutz had already suspected before the publication - had little interest in literature about Jews after the time of the persecution of the Jews under National Socialism . The skill with which the novel was written was praised by critics long after it was published.

In the magazine of the Theodor Kramer Society , Martin Krist is surprised that this most famous of all “Rabbi Löw” and Golem novels was not mentioned in a three-month exhibition in Prague in 2009 on the 400th anniversary of Judah Löw's death and its aftermath in art. In the exhibition catalog of 500 pages, the book is noted twice, but only with the title. Krist sees a deliberate tendency in this: Perutz will probably remain forgotten in the Czech Republic, a fate that he shares with many German authors in Prague.

expenditure

Edits

literature

  • Karin Becker: Building modern houses with antique materials. On the narrative conception of Leo Perutz's historical novel "Night under the stone bridge" . Bielefeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89528-623-0 .
  • Monica Strauss: Leo Perutz: novelist of old Prague. In: Structure No. 3/2007, p. 14f. ISSN  0004-7813 mainly about this novel

notes

  1. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: http://archiv.sueddeutsche.de/V5t38H/401734/Der-Mensch-denkt-Gott-lacht.html )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / archiv.sueddeutsche.de
  2. ↑ Zs. Zwischenwelt, J. 26, Issue 3/4, Dec. 2009, p. 40 ISSN  1606-4321 p. 40: "The 'forgotten' Leo Perutz."