Paracelsus (Kolbenheyer)
Paracelsus is a trilogy of novels by Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer consisting of The Childhood of Paracelsus (created 1913/14), The Star of Paracelsus (1915-21) and The Third Reich of Paracelsus (1921-23). It is considered the main work of the völkisch- nationalist writer. The first editions were published by G. Müller in Munich in 1917, 1921 and 1925 respectively.
Kolbenheyer's novel biography offers a “highly idiosyncratic and not harmless interpretation of Paracelsus and the Germans”.
overview
The first volume describes Theophrastus' origins and early years as the son of a Swabian doctor near the Einsiedeln monastery . He feels close to his father, his mother dies in a religious madness. The death of the mother evokes the desire to become a doctor and heal people.
The second volume describes the development of the young man in different places. He proves himself in different situations, studies successfully alchemy and becomes a doctor of medicine in Ferrara . He tests his knowledge as a regimental doctor and surgeon . He trusts in the forces of nature, Latin scholasticism and the science of his time, he rejects: He prefers the “light of nature” to the deceptive “appearance of the word”.
Volume 3 shows Paracelsus restless and on the move, driven from Basel by the scholars . A view of the world based on natural philosophy is expanded, which combines Joachim von Fiore 's theory of the three times with an idea of the microcosm in the macrocosm and postulates a context of meaning between man and people. The redemption through a third kingdom of the Holy Spirit is denied Paracelsus: He dies sick, lonely and hostile in Salzburg . The work ends with the Latin phrase “Ecce Ingenium Teutonicum” (German: see, the German spirit / character ).
statement
Kolbenheyer designs his Paracelsus as the epitome of the always searching, in this respect similar to the figure of Faust , and as the embodiment of the German character par excellence. This strives for a connection between the individual and the whole. For him, medicine is only the beginning of the path to self-knowledge. Only when man recognizes himself can he recognize the world and his position in it. Like Martin Luther, he wanted to “help the people” and help the German language and writing to victory. His commitment to the German character is a protest against the "cosmopolitanism of university scholars".
In contradiction to the historical Paracelsus, who understood humans as a microcosm, Kolbenheyer combines biological and ethnic concepts in his fictional character . Rationalism and humanism are rejected as inappropriate. With this, Kolbenheyer paints a picture of the Germans as a truly feeling people, striving for deeper truth, intelligent, and superior to other peoples in this regard.
- "There is no people like this who have no gods and who forever demand to see God." (Volume 1, Chapter 1)
style
In the literal speech, Kolbenheyer uses an "sometimes artificial" ancient expression; however, he carefully differentiates them according to region, status , colloquial and technical language. He already had this style in Amor Dei. A Spinoza novel (1908) and master Joachim Pausewang (1910) used to show the "political and popular roots of the Reformation struggle".
criticism
- Werner Bergengruen († 1964) rated the childhood of Paracelsus as the "strongest and most colorful part".
- The German scholar Herbert Seidler, 1958-64 Lecturer in South Africa of apartheid and how Kolbenheyer former member of the Nazi Party , praised the trilogy as a "masterpiece of biographical and historical fiction art".
- Kiesel admits that Paracelsus was "an epic work of stature" and could "not be called National Socialist". Nonetheless, “Kolbenheyer's prominence in the Nazi era” is based on this work. The book was consequently surrounded by “literary studies and literary criticism” after the war with a wall of silence.
Table of contents
The childhood of Paracelsus
Time and place . The first book is most likely from 1493 to 1500. At the beginning of the novel, Theophrastus' mother was heavily pregnant with her only child, and towards the end of the first book the boy Theophrastus was seven years old. The location of the action is mostly the area around Theophrast's birthplace. That is the "Ochsnerhüsli on the Tüfelsbruck " near Einsiedeln in the Swiss canton of Schwyz . The Teufelsbrücke leads over the Sihl .
Action. Rudi Ochsner and his wife, the woman from Weßner, are Theophrast's maternal grandparents. The federal farming couple had three children: Jungrudi, Hans and Elsula Ochsner. Jungrudi, formerly a mercenary in the service of the Petro de Medici of Florence, dies immediately after his return home in the oxen house. Theophrast is born shortly after the uncle's death. Hans, an extremely bellicose giant, moves into the Swabian War of his own accord towards the end of the first volume and does not return.
Rudi Ochsner had built the Ochsnerhaus himself before the birth of his daughter Elsula. Although Rudi has a coat of arms, he and his descendants are subservient to the Einsiedeln monastery and for this reason have to indulge for the monks . So also Els - as Elsula is called - and Theophrast are unfree under current law. Theophrast's father, the formerly "land-driving", rather poor Swabian doctor Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, cannot buy his wife and child free due to an acute lack of money despite his nobility. Wilhelm Bombast is considered “foreign to the country” in Switzerland and, as a native of Swabia, did not have it easy among the confederates during the Swabian War. In addition, for him there is the competition of the local faith healers , whom some patients would rather believe in their pain than the bombast physician. But ultimately, the doctor's skill is always in demand.
Theophrast grows up as the only child in the Ochsnerhaus. The adults good-naturedly follow the little one's progress on the way to the pupil. The father teaches Theophrastus how to use his future only weapon, the pen. Theophrast learns to write and to read. The first stroke of fate hits the boy when the beloved mother becomes insane and is completely absent as an urgently needed worker in the farm household. Theophrast's father has to woo a young, strong woman as a “maid”. He finds the very young Gritli in Altendorf . But the new housekeeper falls straight in love with the vigorous Hans and follows him into the Swabian War, as a personal sutler , as it were . Gritli becomes pregnant by Hans during the campaign and eventually returns to Altendorf, heavily pregnant. Meanwhile, Theophrast's mother's health has deteriorated further. In an unguarded moment, the sick Els leaves the house, climbs the railing of the Devil's Bridge and plunges into the wildly foaming Sihl. Els is not found despite an intensive search. After his mother's death, Theophrast's father wants to move to Carinthia with the boy . The grandparents see their loneliness coming. Rudi Ochsner goes on long walks with his grandson Theophrast and wants to strengthen the boy's sense of home. The Weßnerin lures the Gritli and her newborn son into the Ochsnerhaus, which threatens to be orphaned. The Gritli wants to remain independent, but finally gives in to the insistence of the grandmother of her "Büebli".
The star of Paracelsus
Time and place . The action begins in 1508 with the death of Bishop Erhard von Lavent. Theophrast is 15 years old at the time. The eager to learn young man studied first in Swabia and then in Northern Italy . In the end, the newly graduated Theophrast left Ferrara around 1516 . At the beginning of the second volume, Theophrast takes part in the Battle of Bogesund in 1520 and at the end of 1527 Theophrast's patient and patron Johannes Frobenius dies in Basel .
Act . Theophrast returns to his father in Villach . Mr. Wilhelm Bombast had sent his son to Bishop Erhard in Sant Andrä in the Lavent Valley in 1506 . There in the "monastery school" Theophrast was supposed to perfect his Latin in order to become ripe for the "high school". Theophrast is glad to have escaped the monks. Because in St. Andrä only Latin was spoken on principle. Moreover, he had no friend among the convent students. But thanks to the good connections that Theophrastus father had had with the bishop, the boy had risen to become the bishop's assistant in the art of spagyric and had spent many nights in the laboratory. On his deathbed, Bishop Erhard had given his confidante Theophrastus secret papers that were to be brought to Trithemius in Würzburg . On his escape from the convent school, Theophrastus had come to the rescue on the wintry roads in order to survive on the medical and practical knowledge he had previously imparted to him. Theophrast courageously adjusts the forearm of a farmer and is fed by the farmer's wife as thanks. The boy then goes a little way with the young scholar and compatriot Vadianus .
Theophrast's stay with his father in Villach is short. The aspiring youth wants to go to the "high school". So he joins a mounted “freight train” that takes him over the Canal Valley and Tamswegen to Ulm . From there, Theophrast wanders via Blaubeuren and Urach to Tübingen . Like his father once, Theophrast is accommodated in the Tübingen Pfauenburs . The Latinity has him again. Magister Johannes Brassicanus becomes aware of the greenhorn when he cheerfully "opposes and responds" [refuted] in front of the assembled faculty in the large Bursensaal of the Alma Mater Tubingensis . In his spare time Theophrast escapes "all learning". The young studios wandered to Kilchberg Castle to inspect the “chemical furnace” there. Theophrast finds a listener in his roommate Wolfgang Thalhauser from Augsburg . After "three half years" the friends leave Swabia and want to continue studying in Italy. On the way, Theophrast visits his father in Villach. The studiosus learns from this that he has not yet fully studied. Theophrast uses the favorable opportunity. He drives into the “Frisch-Glück-Zeche des Bleiberges ” and looks at the “ four elements of the elderly ” - water, earth sludge, red embers and wind as well as the “ four juices of life ” - blood, slime as well as yellow and black Bile.
Together with his friend Thalhauser, Theophrast studied medicine from 1512 at the University of Ferrara under Nicolo Leoniceno and Giovanni Manardo . Times are restless. Duke Alfonso wages war against Venice . Theophrast and his friend live with two German-speaking medical students from Switzerland and Silesia. In the three roommates Theophrast, the "little magician" or also called the "little German nobleman", finds listeners to his postulates: Human causes of death are "silting up of the body" and "self-poisoning". When the plague broke out in Ferrara, the doctors of the medical faculty all fled headlong into the country. Theophrast stays and reports to the "plague service" together with five medical students. As a reward, the six penniless gentlemen are to be promoted to “doctors” after successful service from the finances of the Duchy of Ferrara. The project succeeds - the plague finally subsides after its rage. Theophrast passed the oral exam with his patron Nicolo Leoniceno and was allowed to call himself “doctor of both medicine”. Theophrast had fearlessly fought unconventionally against the rampant epidemic - with vitriol alcohol and sublimate sulfur. The conventional methods were well known to him.
King Christians cannot sleep in his Copenhagen castle. Theophrast, traveling to Denmark from Naples via Paris and the Netherlands, has an effective sleeping aid for the king in his luggage and then moves as regimental medicus with the Danes “to the solid city of Stockholm ”. Theophrast has several military scissors and bathers under him in the field and tirelessly helps the wounded. After the Danish War Theophrast, who now calls himself Paracelsus, moves on through Europe. Coming from Vilnius , Danzig , Poland, the Carpathians and Transylvania , he reached Vienna via Pressburg and finally wanted to settle down there. Members of the medical faculty chase Theophrast out of the Danube metropolis. Paracelsus leads his wandering life via Tulln , Linz , Wilhering and Eferdingen to Salzburg. On a ride to a stately patient in Stauffeneck Castle , he is drawn into the peasant war . Farmers kidnap the fearless doctor to one of their wounded. Theophrast deals with a partisan attack , but keeps out of the ongoing armed conflicts with success. In the Salzburger Land the doctor is too restless. So he promises his landlords to come back one day and move on via Tübingen and Freiburg to the Hirsau monastery . There the Benedictines open their library to the doctor from "the Einsiedeln Hochstifte". Theophrast visits the neighboring thermal baths in Wildbad . In Strasbourg he met a "rebel" Baptist from Waldshuet . In Strasbourg, Theophrast received a call for help from Frobenius, the printer who had gangrene in Basel . Theophrast hurries quickly. One floor above the sick printer in Basel sits the "highly learned Doctor Desiderius Erasmus " himself! The doctor called soon arrives in Basel and can help the printer. In gratitude, Theophrast is appointed by the Basel City Council as a “city doctor” and appointed professor with a chair. A "college on urine and pulse diagnosis" and one on physiognomy are set up. The doctor gathers students from Tübingen, Freiburg and Strasbourg around him. Johannes Oporinus becomes his famulus . Once Theophrast takes a ride to Zurich. There he visits an old fellow student from his studies in Ferrara. The visitor is always on duty. So he researches the “infirmity of Zurich”. On the ride home he overcomes himself and does not turn off in the direction of Einsiedeln to check on his grandparents in the oxen house. Because of his way of advancing too far in medical matters, the newly qualified professor makes the “Arztenfakultät ze Basel” an enemy. When Frobenius finally dies, Theophrast can only escape from Basel with difficulty. Before that, almost all of Basel's friends had fallen away from him and he had been ridiculed: onions and garlic were the remedies of the “dirt moul”, the “Waldesels us Einsiedlen”. Only the excellent Ecolampad sticks to the vilified friend.
After Theophrast has left Basel behind, he lingers in the nocturnal winter landscape and looks up to his star, Orion . In the second and third books of the trilogy, the refugee is not so much a hunter as Orion, but rather a restless wandering, sometimes even a chased.
The third kingdom of Paracelsus
Time and place . The plot begins in Nürmberg in 1529 and ends with Theophrast's death on September 24, 1541 in Salzburg.
Action. Only once in the extensive trilogy does Theophrast find a woman. In Nuremberg, the Poor Clare Monastery was secularized during the Reformation , and the nun Lucia Tetzel was then brought home by her parents. Lucia fell ill. The Nuremberg doctors fail. The father, a Nuremberg councilor, who is lovingly concerned about Lucia's welfare, calls in Theophrast , who is arriving from Kolmar . The nun is initially better after the change of doctor. Lucia's “spirit flies again”. The highly educated "Jungfrou" can have a philosophical conversation about the three realms with her new doctor. The three kingdoms are the kingdom of God , the kingdom of the stars and the kingdom of the "elemental world". Minerals and metals are elements. Both slumber in the mountain, "the natural matrix". The alchemist snatches the elements from the mountain and hands them over to the fire.
Lucia recognizes Theophrastus' loneliness. Your health worsens again. The young lady wilts and dies. Theophrast wants to move on. It is not without reason that he first visits the council clerk Lazarus Spengler . After all, the doctor has some of his manuscripts in Nuremberg printing works and would like a confidante to supervise the printing. When Theophrast says goodbye to the councilor, the latter also realizes how strange Theophrast is among people.
Theophrast, who is “tired of the road”, is looking for “closeness to people” and in 1530 - on the way to Regensburg - retreats to the “isolated nest” Beretzhusen in Franconia , where he writes his pharmaceutical work “Paragranum” and begins the “Paramirum”, his big one Work on the new naturopathy . In the Beratzhausen church, Theophrast experienced the reformer Argula , sister of the baron Bernhardin Stauf zu Ehrenfels, “in the middle of a papist country” . Argula, the Grumbachin, who had previously been received by Luther himself at the “ Feste Coburg ” , enthusiastically proclaims the good evangelical message to the listening rural folk and the gentlemen who are also sitting in the church . But Theophrastus cannot stay in the country. The Nuremberg officers have had it certified by “the medical faculty in Leipzig”: The healing master Paracelsus may no longer be printed. Theophrast's enemies, whom he dubbed “ Rott Galeni ” and Rott “ Avicennae ”, dominate not only in the Basel and Vienna faculties, but also in the Leipzig medical faculties. So the oppressed went to the " Pfaffenstadt " Regensburg. There he is looking for other book printers. If Theophrast is in one place for a long time, he rides - also from Regensburg - to patients outside. The doctor cures - still in 1530 - the bad Herysipela on the arms and legs of the mayor Bastian Kastner in Amberg , but is - not for the first and last time - cheated out of the earned fee.
Theophrast's constant journey - “city umb city” - criss-cross Central Europe brings the re-encounter with Vadianus in Sankt Gallen . In the Appenzellerland the doctor completes his work "Paramirum". In it he writes about the "cause of invisible diseases". In the vicinity of Gais and Bühler, he retreats to the ancient, remote Roggenhalm homestead in the mountains and teaches devoutly listening seekers his worldview. Then he treats the poor people of Urnäsch and the surrounding area. Theophrastus makes ordinary people who believe in witchcraft understand what humanity is. Once Monsignor Anselm Keuschentaller from Rome, on behalf of the Pope - finally trudging through the deep snow - penetrates into Theophrastus' mountain loneliness and warns the ephemeral preacher of the temptations of the reformers from Wittenberg and Zurich .
Theophrast has to move on. He visits Sterzingen in the Eisach Valley via Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass . The next travel destination turned out to be a direct hit on Theophrast's zigzag course through the Alps: Augsburg. His childhood friend Wolfgang Thalhauser has meanwhile become a city physician there. Two of Theophrast's books on wound medicine see the light of day in Fuggerstadt within two months .
Theophrast visits his father's grave in Villach. Then the life of Paracelsus draws to a close. The rider's liver hurts on his travels on Lake Fuschl . The patient reached Salzburg with great difficulty. On the sickbed, Theophrastus's legs swell and become stiff. Duke Ernst of Bavaria , administrator of the Archbishopric of Salzburg , learned of the doctor's passing on the day of his death. The Duke's only concern is to take possession of any manuscripts of the “famous” man who “was a son of the Church”.
Quotes
after: Paracelsus. Novel trilogy. Orion Heimreiter Verlag, Heusenstamm 1979. ISBN 3-87588-112-5 .
- Man's happiness rests in man, not in the star. (P. 367)
- The call of a doctor would give the recovered sick. (P. 523)
- Endured a hundred years of human life undulating sin. (P. 571)
- We were not born to sleep, but to watch. (P. 578)
- I am used to the long way: it is the way of art. (P. 754)
- To rule a lot, only one is a king. (P. 775)
- The tuets, nit you. (P. 787)
- Nit death is agony. Agony is where death begins. (P. 852)
Total expenditure
- Paracelsus. Romantic trilogy , Langen Müller Verlag , Munich 1941.
- Paracelsus. Romantic trilogy , Neff, Vienna 1951.
- Paracelsus. Romantic trilogy , Lehmann, Munich 1964 (revised by the author)
- Paracelsus. Roman trilogy , Orion-Heimreiter, Heusenstamm 1979. ISBN 3-87588-112-5 . (Unchanged reprint of the 1964 edition)
literature
- Werner Bergengruen: The existence of a writer in the dictatorship. Records and reflections on politics, history and culture 1940 to 1963 , ed. v. Frank-Lothar Kroll u. a., Munich 2005. ISBN 3-486-20023-2 .
- Ingo Leiß, Hermann Stadler: German Literature History Vol. 9 (Weimar Republic 1918–1933) , Munich 2003, pp. 103–107. ISBN 3-423-03349-5 .
- Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon , extended new edition, Hamburg / Vienna 2002. pp. 268–272. ISBN 3-203-82030-7 .
- Frank Westenfelder: Genesis, problems and effects of National Socialist literature using the example of the historical novel between 1890 and 1945 (Europäische Hochschulschriften R. 1, Bd. 1101, zugl. Diss. 1987), Frankfurt am Main 1989. Excerpts online: The myth of the German Soul .
- Helmuth Kiesel : History of German-Language Literature 1918 to 1933 . CH Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-70799-5 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Ingo Leiß, Hermann Stadler: Deutsche Literaturgeschichte Vol. 9 (Weimar Republic 1918–1933) , Munich 2003, pp. 103–107, p. 107.
- ^ Leiß / Stadler, p. 106.
- ↑ Leiß / Stadler, p. 107.
- ↑ Leiß / Stadler, p. 107.
- ↑ Hans Sarkowicz, Alf Mentzer: Literature in Nazi Germany. A biographical lexicon , extended new edition, Hamburg / Vienna 2002. pp. 268–272, pp. 268 f.
- ↑ Werner Bergengruen: Writer Existence in the Dictatorship , Munich 2005, p. 128.
- ↑ Christoph König (Ed.), With the assistance of Birgit Wägenbaur u. a .: Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 . Volume 3: R-Z. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-015485-4 .
- ^ Herbert Seidler: Paracelsus. In: Wilpert. Lexikon der Weltliteratur , Vol. 4, 3rd edition, Munich 1997, p. 1009.
- ↑ Kiesel pp. 33-36 and pp. 1211-1213
- ↑ Paracelsus Das Buch Paragranum , accessed on October 18, 2018