Princess fish

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Princess Fisch is a development novel by Wilhelm Raabe , which was written from February 1881 to March 1882 and was published in book form by Westermann in Braunschweig in March 1883. While working on the novel, Raabe reads “ Poetry and Truth ”. The title comes from Goethe's early work .

The orphan Theodor builds a fairy tale world with a princess fish in it. Finally this new Amadis escapes his dreams and stands at the end of the novel “On the threshold” to everyday reality. Raabe rejected the threshold title as well as “Too late in the year” - both quotations from the novel.

content

In Ilmenthal an der Ilme, the 55-year-old woman Eugenie Rodburg wants to see her 5-year-old son Theodor again on her deathbed. "My child - my poor dear -" are her last words. After the woman's death, Theodor's father, the lawyer Dr. juris F. Rodburg, no more. Theodor's adult siblings Alexander, Agnes, Martha and Charlotte leave Ilmenthal to flee from the “old annoyance”. After the father died too, the siblings who remained in Germany took care of the little orphan Theodor in the immediate vicinity of the parents' house on Kuhstiege. Theodor is very lucky. He is lifted over the fence into the garden of the widow Schubach by the old bookbinder journeyman Heinrich August Baumann from Bruseberg, known as the Bruseberger. The two old eccentrics are won over by head teacher Professor Dr. Drüding as head guardian. The professor leads Theodor up to the high school graduation exam. Every early summer they go out into the forest with Drüding's daughter Florine, a child, and hunt butterflies and beetles. In the house of his mother, Schubach - the able-bodied woman has never been a mother in her life - Theodor receives a “nice school room” with a view of the blessed father's overgrown garden. The siblings sell the house and garden. The property changes hands. When Don José Tieffenbacher, retired war paymaster D. of the Emperor Max of Mexico , actually Joseph Tieffenbacher from Bödelfingen, who buys the father's house and moves in with his beautiful wife, Dame Romana, theodor's quiet study is over. The boy falls madly in love with Romana, his princess Fisch, and doesn't want anything more to do with Florine. Theodor has never liked Latin and Greek, this “leathery, learned curd and nonsense”. Dr. Drüding should finally teach him something correct, that is, Spanish. The boy wants to talk to his handsome, stately neighbor - this woman with the dark, deep-set, foreign eyes. Mother Schubach estimates the curious, yellow, paper cigarette-smoking "boring witch" to be a good twenty years older than her foster child.

Captain Redburgh from Mobile US stays at the Hotel Bellavista in the new international seaside resort of Ilmenthal. The captain, a lively forties, turns out to be Theodor's brother Alexander. Bruseberger and Mother Schubach still know that Mr. Alexander is a thief. The foster child ignores the warnings about this "rascal from a person". Theodor adores his brother, who is twenty years his senior. Alexander brought the Tieffenbacher couple to Ilmenthal and speculated with the money from the former war paymaster. D .; pushes the construction of a new hotel. Señor Tieffenbacher shares with Dr. Drüding's passion for collecting beetles in early summer. Especially when the two older gentlemen are on related excursions, Mr. A. Redburgh has fun with Ms. Romana, the "damp, cold fish princess". For Theodor the brother is still a “great guy”. The Bruseberger bumps into him with his nose on the goings-on of his brother with the "old strange doll". Alexander, "the bad Rodburg", calls the little brother a "childish drip".

Theodor passed the Abitur. Florine apparently knew this before the professor. The boy is sent to Leipzig by his three tutors to study law. Because the university is "still one of the better educational institutions among the peoples of the earth." The fairy tale figure Romana now becomes a "very elderly earth madam" from a distance.

Florine, now fifteen years old, is writing a letter to Leipzig. In it, “the faithful friend” tells Theodor that Romana ran off with Alexander.

Theodor wants to visit Ilmenthal - from Leipzig. Shortly before his destination, he meets his "most loyal, best teacher, master and playmate", the old Bruseberger. The two set off on foot. On the way there is also talk of Princess Fish, the “yellow witch with the false hair structure, the black cave eyes and the lazy limbs”. Theodor, in view of his hometown, feels that “there is a corpse in it”: his uninhibited childhood, his blissful, innocent, trusting, fairy-tale, wonderful youth. ”So close to his destination, Theodor returns to Leipzig - in agreement with the Bruseberger around.

Quotes

  • "How tight this damn world is and how full of pesky good friends."
  • "Some coffee says that they have to be content with chicory."

shape

The narrator calls the "story of the princess fish" the "story of human education through the imagination". It tells of Theodor's first steps on his life path. In the lecture of this story, the deliberations of two educators - the Bruseberger and the mother Schubach - get out of hand. In the sixteenth of the twenty chapters of the novel, Raabe suddenly changes his perspective. Suddenly the story is told from the "previous life" of the three "Mexican" intruders (the Tieffenbacher couple and Captain Alexander Rodburg) in the small town of Ilmenthal. The two gentlemen met in Mexico.

Testimonials

  • On July 18, 1883 to Marie Jensen (the wife of Wilhelm Jensen ): " Princess Fisch was a bigger daring in our days of literature."
  • On November 18, 1891 to E. Felber: "I am very pleased that Bruseberger first greeted you on the threshold of my dear picture gallery."

reception

Reviews in the year of publication

  • An anonymous praises in the “ Grenzbote ” the “healthy and humane philistine ” of the “humorous, atmospheric” novel.
  • Paul Schlenther complains in the “ Deutsche Literaturzeitung ” that in this “bitterly disappointed boy’s fantasy” “the external context of things in the presentation of what happened” is always torn off. The secondary character Princess Fisch, who gave the title, remains "more a means than an end". The reviewer emphasizes the letter from Florine Drüding to Theodor as an exemplary contemporary drawing of a fried fish .
  • Hellmuth Mielke calls Raabe a great humorist and bad epic in the “Magazin für die Literatur des Domes and Abroad” . "The blurred, unclear nature of the narrative" tire the reader. The Bruseberger and the mother Schubach lingered long-winded about things that “are mostly too high or too deep”. In every book - with the exception of the “ Hunger Pastor ” - Raabe only tells about himself again and again.
  • An anonymous in the “ present ” feels that the title of the novel is in demand. The main plot, the argument between a primate and the “adulterous princess Fisch”, is “unpleasant”.

Recent meetings

  • Theodor's love for Princess Fish turns out to be an illusion. With this picture Raabe symbolizes his failure as a writer. The text opens Raabe's series "ruthlessly subjective novels".
  • An " adolescence crisis , the expulsion from paradise" will be presented.
  • Theodors educator trio (Bruseberger, mother Schubach and Dr. Drüding) seem funny. Leitmotiv narration (Mother Schubach's favorite word “That is my idea!”, For example) allows the reader a “higher point of view” above reality, which makes it possible to laugh.

material

  • After Hoppe, Raabe wanted Bad Harzburg as the place of the action. The essence of the text - that is, in the description of a piece of the path in the life of the young Theodor - contained autobiographical elements.
  • Raabe took the history of Ms. Romana Tieffenbacher from the book "Querétaro" penned by Prince Felix von Salm-Salm .

Name further leading work

  • Hoppe:
H. Zimmer: Wilhelm Raabe's relationship to Goethe . Görlitz 1921, p. 49
Walther Scharrer: Wilhelm Raabe's literary symbolism, depicted on Princess Fish. Dissertation Munich 1927. 102 pages, p. 71
  • Oppermann:
Barker Fairley: Wilhelm Raabe. An interpretation of his novels. Translated by Hermann Boeschenstein. Munich 1961, p. 19
Karl Hoppe: Raabe's design: Too late in the year. in Hoppe: Wilhelm Raabe. Contributions to understanding. Göttingen 1967, p. 155
Fritz Martini: Wilhelm Raabe's 'Princess Fish'. Reality and Poetry in Narrative Realism of the 19th Century . In Hermann Helmers (Ed.): Raabe in a new perspective . Stuttgart 1968, p. 145
Friedrich Neumann: Philology and psychology of Raabe research . Communicated by the Raabe Society 1953, p. 4
Ernst-August Roloff: "'Princess Fish' as ​​a developmental psychological problem". Raabe-Jahrbuch 1950, p. 87
  • Meyen names eleven works from the years 1923 to 1969.

literature

Used edition

  • Princess fish. A story. Pp. 191–386 with an appendix, written by Karl Hoppe † , pp. 595–656 in: Rosemarie Schillemeit (ed.): Wilhelm Raabe: Fabian and Sebastian . Princess fish. Villa Schönow . (2nd ed.) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1979. Vol. 15 in Karl Hoppe (Ed.), Jost Schillemeit (Ed.), Hans Oppermann † (Ed.), Kurt Schreinert (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols., ISBN 3-525-20130-3

expenditure

  • Wilhelm Raabe: Princess Fish. 214 pages. Klemm, Berlin-Grunewald 1916. Fraktur
  • Wilhelm Raabe: Princess Fish. Afterword by Heide Eilert. 245 pages. Reclam, Stuttgart 1980 ( RUB 9994), ISBN 3-15-009994-3
  • Meyen names five issues.

Web links

In English:

  • The Oxford Companion to German Literature. Copyright © 1976, 1986, 1997, 2005 by Oxford University Press: Princess Fish Brief description of contents

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dissertation Ernst-August Roloff , p. 21, Göttingen 1951, cited in the edition used, p. 626, 22. Zvo
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 595, 5th Zvu, p. 625, 23rd Zvo and p. 626, 2nd Zvu
  3. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 314, entry 55
  4. ↑ see there verse 17
  5. ↑ Goethe's relationship to Wieland's cheerful sensuality in “ The New Amadis ” is mentioned in Wilpert (p. 23, 9th Zvo).
  6. ↑ “On the threshold” would only have indicated the end of “this truly true story” (edition used, p. 386, 3rd Zvu).
  7. ↑ Little Theodor is the straggler in the Rodburg family, which has many children.
  8. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, pp. 625–626
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 349, 20. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 340, 1. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 346, 14. Zvu
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 348, 16. Zvu
  13. ↑ quoted in Hoppe in the edition used, p. 627, 24. Zvo
  14. ↑ quoted in Hoppe in the edition used, pp. 631, 25. Zvo
  15. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, p. 626 below - 630 below
  16. ↑ quoted in Hoppe in the edition used, p. 627, 13. Zvu
  17. ↑ see beginning of the 19th chapter
  18. ↑ quoted in Hoppe in the edition used, p. 628, 17. Zvo
  19. ↑ quoted in Hoppe in the edition used, p. 629, 12. Zvo
  20. ↑ quoted in Hoppe in the edition used, p. 630, 17. Zvo
  21. ↑ Fuld, pp. 281, 16. Zvo and p. 282, 3. Zvo
  22. ↑ Sprengel, p. 333 middle. See also: Schillemeit, p. 72, 2. Zvo
  23. ↑ Schillemeit, p. 68 below to p. 69 below
  24. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, p. 625 below - p. 626
  25. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, p. 626 middle, under point 3.
  26. ↑ Hoppe in the edition used, p. 626 middle
  27. ^ Oppermann, p. 152, 2nd Zvu - p. 153, 9th Zvo
  28. ↑ Meyen, pp. 368-369
  29. ↑ Meyen, p. 114