Leather sock

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Book cover of a German edition from 1888 of the story Der Wildtöter
Book cover of a German edition from 1889 of the story The Last of the Mohicans

Leatherstocking (English original title The Leatherstocking Tales ) is a cycle of novels by the American writer James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851).

prehistory

JF Cooper's novel The Spy ( The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground , 1821), considered the first major historical novel in American literature is true, was enthusiastically received by readers. The writer had evidently met the American national feeling of his time and decided to take up topics from the history of his country for his next novels as well. As a model, JF Cooper chose the Waverley novels (1814) by the Scottish writer Walter Scott . As the central figure, he created an "American type", a hunter and trapper who lives on the border with civilization.

The novels

The Pioneers (1823) appeared as the first volume in the leather stocking series that was to become world-famous. The Last of the Mohicans (1826), The Prairie (1827), The Pathfinder (1840), The Deerslayer (1841) followed over the course of almost 20 years . In the novels, albeit not in chronological order, the life path of the ranger Natty Bumppo , known as “Leatherstocking”, is traced.

The leather stocking novels were not originally planned as a series. It was only because of the extraordinarily good reception that the novels found among readers that Cooper wrote the individual sequels. As you can see from historical references and Cooper's references, the novels play in different times. The plot spans nearly 60 years and does not correlate with the order in which the book was published.

Original title publication Action time at Title of the early German-language publications
The Deerslayer, Or The First War Path 1841 1740-1745 The deer-slayer (1841, trans. Otto von Czarnowski)
The Deerslayer (1841, trans. Gustav Pfizer )
The Last of the Mohicans. A Narrative of 1757. 1826 1757 The last of the Mohicans . A story from 1757 (1826, transl. Heinrich Döring )
The Pathfinder; Or The Inland Sea 1840 1759 The Boy Scout or the Inland Sea (1840, transl . Carl Kolb)
The Pioneers; Or The Sources of the Susquehanna. A Descriptive Tale 1823 1793 The settlers (1824, transl. L. Herrmann)
The prairie 1827 1804 The steppe (1828, transl. K. Meurer)
The prairie (1845, transl. Gottfried Friedenberg)

Main characters and their role models

From left: The Deer Killer , The Last of the Mohicans , The Boy Scout , The Settlers and The Prairie (Soviet postage stamps in honor of JF Cooper's 200th birthday, 1989)

The main character Nathaniel (Natty) Bumppo has various epithets in the novels: Leatherstocking, Hawk's Eye, Long Gun (La Longue Carabine), Boy Scout, Deer . The pioneer Daniel Boone from Kentucky is considered the model for this figure .

In an essay in 1934, Carl Suesser discussed the question Was Lederstrumpf a German? and came to the view that there were several reasons why the figure of Nathaniel Bumppo was Johann Adam Hartmann from the Palatinate from Edenkoben . Hartmann was probably born in 1748 and emigrated to America at the age of 16. He became a ranger and fought against the British in the War of Independence. He died in Herkimer County , New York, in 1836 at the age of 88 . The leather stocking fountain in Edenkoben is a reminder of him.

The famous ranger Robert Rogers may also be the model for the leather sock. Rogers not only led a ranger unit named after him in the Seven Years' War , but, unlike Daniel Boone, had very close contact with the Mahican and was even friends with two of their most famous chiefs . These were called Daniel Nimham and his son Abraham Nimham (often incorrectly spelled “Ninham”). Daniel Nimham was previously also chief of the Wappinger . After this people had been exterminated with the exception of a few remnants, many, including Daniel Nimham, joined the Mahican, who was related to them. This also explains why a Delaware mourning the meanwhile dead Uncas says: “You pride of the Wappanacki, why did you leave us?” After all, Cooper himself had contact with Oneida - Iroquois who passed through , with remnants of Mahican and Mohegan lived. He met the template for his Pawnee Chief Hartherz himself in Washington, DC It was none other than Petalesharo .

Other main characters are: Chingachgook - he represents the “noble savage” type  - whose son Uncas, who is just as noble as his father; his standing up for Cora brings him ultimately death. Elizabeth Temple represents the beautiful and intelligent type of woman who appears in every leather stocking novel. She is rescued from a hopeless situation by Bumppo and marries the youthful hero. Ishmael Bush is the tyrannical fighter who does not submit to any law.

In the novel The Settlers , the landowner and judge Marmaduke Temple clearly bears the traits of Cooper's father William. The place Templeton is modeled after Cooper's hometown Cooperstown . William Cooper, a realtor from New Jersey , had founded the place after the end of the Revolutionary War and made it a landowner, judge and congressman.

For the novel The Prairie , published in 1827 and set west of the Mississippi around 1804 , Cooper was inspired by the diaries of the Lewis and Clark Expedition , which covered the area between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains from 1804 to 1806 first explored whites. Cooper took over entire passages of her descriptions of the landscape and the animal world.

Effect and adaptations

The series of novels is remarkable in literary history for several reasons. The vast American continent is used for the first time in American literature as a plot backdrop on a larger scale. JF Cooper's endeavor to portray the Indians in a balanced and realistic way was by no means common in his time. Critics also complain that in many cases Cooper did not succeed (it is unclear whether he deliberately avoided it) to equip the dialogues of his heroes with a realistic syntax . Occasionally it is also criticized that his female characters seem far removed from real life, practically as if they were implanted in the novel.

Above all, all the leitmotifs of the western genre are already echoed in the leatherstocking novels: on the one hand, the individual striving for freedom who only builds on their own strength, seeks new paths into the undiscovered wilderness and lives in harmony with nature. On the other hand, with their advance, these loners pave the way for precisely that civilization with its rules and laws from which they want to escape. Again and again the question arises of who owns the land - the Indians who do not own land or the settlers who make it arable.

The leather stocking novels have influenced various writers such as Alexandre Dumas , Charles Sealsfield , Karl May , Arno Schmidt . The novels achieved the greatest impact in the German-speaking countries through the most varied of adaptations, some of which distorted the original, in children's literature, in radio plays such as Wildtöter (1974), and in particular through the numerous film adaptations such as Die Lederstrumpferzählungen (ZDF- Abenteuervierteiler ; 1969) .

The first volume Der Wildtöter was filmed for the cinema with Lex Barker in the US feature Leather Stocking: Der Wildtöter (1957) . The second volume, The Last of the Mohicans, served as a template for a number of film adaptations . An early film adaptation was in 1920 with the two-parter Lederstrumpf realized recently was The Last of the Mohicans 1992 by Michael Mann filmed.

Film adaptations (selection)

expenditure

  • James F. Cooper : The leather stocking in two volumes (original title: Leatherstocking Tales ). The edition is based on the contemporary translation of the Complete Works published by Christian August Fischer from 1826 to 1859 . With illustrations based on stone drawings by Max Slevogt . Ellermann, Munich 1992, two volumes (361 and 420 pages) in a cassette, ISBN 3-7707-6332-7
  • James F. Cooper: The Leather Stocking Tales . Complete edition in five volumes. Edited translation by C. Kolb u. a. by Rudolf Drescher, illustrations by Felix Octavius ​​Carr Darley , Insel, Frankfurt am Main 1977:
  • JF Cooper's American Novels . SG Liesching, Stuttgart, 1841–1848, five volumes

literature

  • Lederstockpf practiced in the Palatinate Forest . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , October 2, 1996
  • Where the friend waits and the mother never goes: James Fenimore Cooper's “Leatherstocking” novels and the birth of the western . In: FAZ , May 3, 2001
  • Anneliese Bodensohn: Under the sign of Manitu. Cooper's “Leather Stocking” as poetry and reading for young people. dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt 1963
  • Karlheinz Rossbacher: Leather stockings in Germany: to the reception of James Fenimore Cooper with the reader of the restoration period . Wilhelm Fink, 1972
  • Craig White: Student Companion to James Fenimore Cooper. Greenwood Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0-313-33413-7 , pp. 59-185
  • Geoffrey Rans: Cooper's Leather-Stocking Novels: A Secular Reading . University of Nort Carolina Press, 1991
  • Rudolf Cronau: In the footsteps of Lederstocking . In: The Gazebo . Issue 48, 49, 1897, pp. 797-799, 809-812 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).

Web links

Commons : Leatherstocking  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Carl Suesser: Was Lederstockpf a German? In: Westermannsmonthshefte. Illustrated German magazine. (Braunschweig: G. Westermann, 1934) May 1934, pp. 245–249