Peter Schlemihl's wondrous story

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Engraved frontispiece and title page of the first print from 1814

Peter Schlemihl's wondrous story is an art fairy tale by the poet and naturalist Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838), written in the summer of 1813. It is the story of a man who sells his shadow.

Emergence

Memorial stone at the point in Kunersdorf Castle Park where the story was written.

Chamisso himself reports on the genesis of the story:

“The world events in 1813, in which I was not allowed to actively participate - I no longer had a fatherland, or still no fatherland - repeatedly tore me apart in many ways without distracting myself from my path. This summer I wrote the fairy tale Peter Schlemihl, in order to disperse myself and amuse the children of a friend, which has been well received in Germany and has become popular in England. "

The “world events” to which Chamisso alluded were the wars of liberation against Napoleon , in which he, as a native Frenchman living in Prussia , could not participate.

content

After a strenuous sea voyage, Peter Schlemihl meets the rich merchant Thomas John in Flensburg , and in whose garden he meets a strange gray man. In exchange for his shadow , the latter offers him a sack full of gold that never runs dry. Schlemihl agrees to trade.

He soon has to recognize that this means exclusion from human society. As soon as people realize that he has no shadow, they get scared and stay away from him or mock him. He therefore travels over the mountains to a seaside resort and, with the help of his loyal servant Bendel, settles there in such a way that his shadowlessness is initially not noticed.

In the end, however, he falls in love with the beautiful Mina, and his secret is revealed by his second servant, Rascal. Mina's father explains to him that he can only marry Mina if he gets his shadow back. Then the gray man appears again. Peter Schlemihl demands his shadow back when the true nature of the gray man is revealed to him: He is the devil , admittedly a very polite one, who demands a balance of interests: The devil is only willing to give Schlemihl the shadow back if he gives him his soul in return leaves.

Schlemihl tries to flee from him, but is caught up again and again. Once again the devil tries to persuade him by giving him back his shadow on loan and thus showing him how much respect and prestige Peter Schlemihl could gain. This refuses and finally throws the little bag, which he had paid for with his shadow, into an abyss. With that he cuts the last gang to the devil. With the last of his money, he buys a pair of old boots that turn out to be seven-league boots . Until the end of the story he lives lonely as a naturalist.

Illustrations

The first edition already contained an illustration, an engraving by Franz Josef Leopold. The work inspired the creation of ever new cycles of illustration. Among the artists are well-known and lesser-known names such as George Cruikshank , Bernd Grothe, Adolf Hagel, Christa Jahr , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Peter Kleinschmidt, Anton Kling , Hans Mau, Adolph von Menzel , Emil Preetorius , Imre Reiner , Werner Ruhner , Adolph Schroedter , Max Schwarzer , Alfred Thon , Hans Thuma, Franziska Walther , Ullrich Wannhoff , Hans Looschen and Hanefi Yeter .

reception

Peter Schlemihl's wondrous story; Etching by George Cruikshank, 1827

Probably based on this story, a folk song was subsequently created that reproduces the story (abbreviated):

Once upon a time there was a person by the name of Schlemihl
whom someone once
asked whether he would sell him his shadow?
He would soon be a rich man!

After a brief hesitation, he agreed and received a bag as a reward.
“This little sack will never be empty” said the gloomy shadow buyer with scorn
“Yes, I think I did a good deal,” our Schlemihl says to himself,
“I'll buy a castle and property and yard, what can I do with a shadow? "

Mr. Schlemihl, who moved to another country, buys a castle and estate and farm
and then he wants to marry soon, there was already a chosen one.
He went to his beloved house, asks "Do you want to take me as a husband?"
"I ask for three days to think about it before I can say yes."

But the sun seemed on his form, and without shadows he stood
"Never take for a husband I love you, without a shadow you're also the soul bar"
In fact, his shadow Schlemihl has sold, while his soul verlor'n
After that has you never hear from him again, and nobody knows anymore that he was once born.

Replicas, sequels, artistic implementation

Title page by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

See main article: Schlemihl .

In ETA Hoffmann's The Adventures of New Year's Eve , Schlemihl appears as a minor character and thus illustrates the fate of the protagonist in The Story of the Lost Mirror Image . The latter served as a template for Jacques Offenbach's opera Hoffmanns Erzählungen , in which the motif of Schlemihl's lost shadow is taken up again and reinterpreted. Schlemihl appears there as a rival to the main hero.

Two 19th-century writers continue Chamisso's story by Peter Schlemihl: Friedrich Christoph Förster in 1843 with Peter Schlemihl's Heimkehr and Ludwig Bechstein with Peter Schlemihl's Manuscripts (2 parts) 1851.

In 1847 Hans Christian Andersen processed the motif of the lost shadow in his fairy tale The Shadow .

David Kalisch used the material for a play: Peter Schlemihl. Posse with singing in 1 act , which was premiered in May 1850 in the Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtische Theater .

August Brunetti-Pisano composed an opera by Peter Schlemihl , which z. B. 1908 in the State Theater Stuttgart was performed.

In 1915, the artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner created a seven-part cycle on this work with a title page in order to express his own conflict, in which he saw parallels to Peter Schlemihl. In Kirchner's eyes, Schlemihl's story is that of a persecution maniac who suddenly becomes aware of his infinite smallness .

Kurt Blumenfeld writes in his memoirs Erlebte Judenfrage about the role of this figure in the theory of Zionism , using the example of the Russian propagandist Schmarja Levin :

“When he (sc. Levin) talked about Peter Schlemihl and his shadow, he did not doubt that the famous Chamisso story has the Jew as a hero, to whom his shadow and thus the essence of his being had been lost. For him (sc. Schlemihl) it is about finding the shadow again; add the past to the present. "

- Blumenfeld 1962, emphasis added. not in the orig.

Blumenfeld shares the motif of Schlemihl as a Jew with his spiritual interlocutor Hannah Arendt .

The folk rock band Ougenweide set the folk song to music with the text given above on their 1976 album Ohrenschmaus .

James Krüss adapted the story with express reference to the original: with him, however, laughter is sold .

The writer Thomas Hettche has the character of Peter Schlemihl appear in his 2014 novel "Pfaueninsel". The dwarf Marie met Schlemihl there in 1819, also in a garden, and Schlemihl created a silhouette of her.

In the German version of the children's program Sesame Street , a mysterious salesman is called Schlemihl .

expenditure

  • Friedrich Baron de la Motte Fouqué (ed.): Peter Schlemihl's miraculous story. Communicated by Adelbert von Chamisso. With a copper as a frontispiece. Johann Leonhard Schrag, Nuremberg 1814. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemihl's miraculous journey. With illustrations by Emil Preetorius . Kurt Wolff Verlag , Leipzig 1908
  • Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemihl's wondrous story . In: German Novellenschatz . Edited by Paul Heyse and Hermann Kurz. Vol. 17. 2nd ed. Berlin, [1910], pp. 1-98. In: Weitin, Thomas (Ed.): Fully digitized corpus. The German Novellenschatz . Darmstadt / Konstanz, 2016. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
  • Adalbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemilhl's wondrous story. With reproductions of the engravings by George Cruikshank; Verlag der Nation Berlin, 1981
  • Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemihl's wondrous story. With 25 two-tone illustrations by Franziska Walther. Kunstanstifter Verlag, Mannheim 2011 ISBN 978-3-942795-00-5
  • Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemihl's wondrous story. Reclam, Stuttgart 2003
  • Radio play versions on CD from various audio publishers

literature

  • Thomas Mann : Chamisso, in Selected Essays in 3 Volumes , Vol. 1: Literature. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 1977 and other, pp. 124 - 142 (Schlemihl: pp. 134 - 142)

filming

Web links

Commons : Peter Schlemihl's miraculous story  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Although the city is not mentioned, it can be recognized by the mention of Nordertor , Norderstraße and Breiter Straße.
  2. ↑ Performance files , at that time the Royal Court Theater, in the Ludwigsburg State Archives of the State of BW  in the German Digital Library
  3. ↑ Quoted from MM Moeller (Ed.), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Masterpieces of printmaking , Stuttgart 1990.
  4. ↑ Ed. Hans Tramer, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt , Stuttgart 1962, p. 74
  5. ^ Franziska Walther