Pelle the Conqueror
Pelle the Conqueror (Danish Pelle Erobreren ) is a novel by Martin Andersen Nexø .
The autobiographical novel was published in four parts between 1906 and 1910.
- 1906: Barndom ("Childhood")
- 1907: Læreaar ("Apprenticeship Years")
- 1909: Den store Kamp ("The Great Battle")
- 1910: Gryet ("Dawn")
It was first published in German in 1912 under the title Pelle the Conqueror in a translation by Mathilde Mann in the Leipziger Insel-Verlag .
content
Andersen Nexø ties in with the "bourgeois Bildungsroman " in his work , which he extends to include the "social dimension". This is described in the first three parts in three different milieus (flat country, small town and metropolis) against the background of far-reaching social changes at the end of the 19th century.
Eight-year-old Pelle and his widowed father left their native Sweden by ship in 1877, driven by poverty. They settle on the island of Bornholm , part of Denmark , which promises bread and a livelihood. He and his father find employment in the Kongstrups' huge stone courtyard, where they are treated like henchmen. Pelle tends cows, his father increasingly suffers from the humiliation of the employer. Pelle, on the other hand, never loses faith in a better future. As an adolescent he leaves the farm and moves to the provincial town, where he learns the shoemaker's trade. Since he was not employed there as a journeyman, he moved on to the capital, Copenhagen , where he pursued various jobs, started his own family, organized himself in a union and temporarily became a leading member of the growing labor movement. After several years of politically motivated imprisonment, Pelle managed to gain a foothold again and, with the help of a wealthy librarian, found a cooperative . In spite of the adverse circumstances that he encounters again and again, he never forgets to believe in the happiness that he and all the underprivileged no longer have to suffer from want and sees himself growing increasingly into the role of the "conqueror" dreamed up since childhood.
expenditure
- Martin Andersen Nexö: Pelle the Conqueror . Arena-Verlag, Würzburg 2002.
- A New Life, ISBN 3-401-05469-4 .
- The Awakening, ISBN 3-401-05476-7 .
- Martin Andersen Nexö: Pelle the Conqueror. The radio play . Der Audio-Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89813-320-6 (2 CDs).
Movie
- Bille August (Director, Screenplay): Pelle, the Conqueror . Concorde Home Entertainment, Munich 2003 (1 DVD, leading actor Max von Sydow , Pelle Hvenegaard and others). The film was produced in 1987 and comprises the first part of the novel; in 1989 he was awarded an Oscar for best foreign language film .
Individual evidence
- ^ Frank Trommler: Socialist Literature in Germany. A historical overview (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 434). Kröner, Stuttgart 1976, ISBN 3-520-43401-6 , p. 341.
- ↑ Charlotte Svendstrup-Lund: Pelle Erobreren. In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , 3rd edition, Stuttgart / Weimar 2009, vol. 1, p. 380/381. ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8