Professor rubbish

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Cover of the brochure of the first print
Title page of the first edition

Professor Unrat or The End of a Tyrant is one of Heinrich Mann's most important narrative works .

Professor Unrat was written in a few months of 1904 and appeared a year later. In Mann's hometown of Lübeck , whose inhabitants served as models for the novel, the book was hushed up as much as possible and, if that didn't help, criticized negatively. The book was actually forbidden. The numerous translations and the film adaptation as The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich made the book world famous. Some saw in Professor Unrat a caricature of the German educated citizen of the Wilhelmine era . It showed how high the double standard of the bourgeoisie can reach if it can be determined by secondary virtues, and is a document for the mentality in Germany before the world wars.

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The 57-year-old high school teacher Raat lives alone and withdrawn. He is widowed and has renounced his son because he failed his exams four times and shows himself in public with various unmarried women. As a professor, however, he is a legend. One or two offspring from almost every family in the village was once a student of the strict professor. The nickname “rubbish”, with which he is called behind his back, has meanwhile become a tradition in the town. Everyone calls him like that and shows him a certain ironic appreciation that Raat does not recognize. For him, the denigration of his name is an attack on himself and a sign of disrespect. Everyday school life is a daily struggle for him, his students are his enemies, who must be fought with all means. He gives them tasks that they cannot solve in order to punish them.

In the 17-year-old son of the consul Lohmann, Unrat has a special opponent at school: he is intelligent, cannot be hit by punishment and knows exactly how to infuriate the professor. When Raat referred him to a dark cloakroom, the “Kabuff”, because of the use of the nickname “Rubbish”, he noticed a poem in the student's essay book entitled “Homage to the noble artist Fräulein Rosa Fröhlich”.

In order to finally bring Lohmann down, Raat goes in search of this "Miss Rosa Fröhlich". He finds out that she appears as a “barefoot dancer” in the entertainment venue “Der Blaue Engel”. Convincing himself that his only concern is the welfare of his students, he enters the pub. There, however, one mishap after another happens to him until his students notice him. When he escapes through a door, he suddenly stands in front of Rosa Fröhlich. Although he tells her to stop seducing his students and leave town, she protects him from her colleagues and offers him wine. The "artist" courted by his students does not fail to have an impact on the professor.

The next morning there is a tense truce in the school: Raat fears that his students have ridiculed him in class - the students fear that they will be summoned to the headmaster. After school is over, Raat absolutely wants to be with Rosa Fröhlich in front of his students. He can't stand the students sending her wine and flowers. Rosa ensnares the professor, explains that she has thrown away the flowers from the students, and lets him help her with changing clothes. Raat is more and more under her spell. He fulfills all of her wishes, expensive meals in the restaurant, new clothes, a furnished apartment, he even sorts her laundry. She "is now under his protection". So he not only ensures that his students don't get too close to her, he also keeps other admirers away from her and throws out a ship's captain who wants to visit her in the artist's dressing room.

Raat cares less and less what people think of him. Neither his housekeeper, who complains about Rosa's visits, nor a reprimand from his school principal are able to impress him. He even goes so far as to publicly defend Rosa's honor when she is accused of devastating a barn with his students . Only when Rosa has to admit that she took part in the desolate celebration of the megalithic tomb does he withdraw, devastated. He is released from school service.

When the pastor argues against Rosa, Raat defends her and resolves to marry her, which he does not cease to do when he learns that Rosa has a daughter. After the wedding, the couple spends some time in a seaside resort. There it is noticeable that other men want to attract the attention of the married Rosa.

After two years of marriage to Rosa, Raat is financially ruined. A friend of Rosa's advises him to teach Greek. Language classes soon evolve into evening drinking bouts, with large parts of the city appearing. Rubbish uses these celebrations to get revenge on his former students and on the city superiors.

In the end, Lohmann comes back into Raat's life. Rosa meets the former student in town and invites him to her apartment. There Lohmann offers to pay all of her debts and puts the opened wallet on the table. When Rosa sings his old poem from the school essay, the jealous Raat rushes out of the next room and tries to shut her throat. Then he reaches for Lohmann's wallet and rushes out. The Raat couple were arrested shortly thereafter. The respectable citizens, who until recently liked to come to his house, now only have mockery and mockery for the professor.

Film adaptations

expenditure

  • Heinrich Mann : Professor Unrat or The End of a Tyrant. Novel. Munich: Albert Langen, 1905.
  • Heinrich Mann : Professor Unrat or the end of a tyrant. Newly illustrated by Martin Stark. Edition Büchergilde, Frankfurt am Main, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86406-039-7 .

Research literature

  • Albert Klein : Heinrich Mann: Professor Unrat or the end of a tyrant . (= Model analyzes literature 19). Schöningh, Paderborn u. a. 1992, ISBN 978-3-506-75059-4 .
  • Helmut Koopmann: The tyrant on the hunt for love. To Heinrich Mann's "Professor Unrat" . In: Heinrich Mann-Jahrbuch 11 (1993), pp. 31-51.
  • York-Gothart Mix : The Nation's Schools. Criticism of Education in Early Modern Literature. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1995, ISBN 978-3-476-01327-9 , Chapter II.3, p. 81 ff.
  • Klaus Kanzog: "Abused Heinrich Mann"? Comments on Heinrich Mann's “Professor Unrat” and Josef von Sternberg's “The Blue Angel”. In: Heinrich Mann-Jahrbuch 14 (1996), pp. 113-138.
  • Georg Ruppelt : Professor Unrat and the Feuerzangenbowle / from high school teachers in literature. In the reading room / small specialties series from the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library - Lower Saxony State Library. Issue 15, Verlag Niemeyer, Hameln 2004, ISBN 3-8271-8815-6 .
  • Helmut Koopmann: Professor Unrat as "Anti-Thomas". A parody of the art and artistry of Thoma Mann. In: Heinrich Mann-Jahrbuch 23 (2005), pp. 45–63.
  • Ariane Martin: Touching girl versus "dusty pedant" or: A cyborg is being rebuilt. Schiller's “Jungfrau von Orleans” in Heinrich Mann's “Professor Unrat”. In: Heinrich Mann-Jahrbuch 23 (2005), pp. 79-103.
  • Andrea Bartl: “Everything is contaminated!” Structures of contamination in Josef von Sternberg's “The Blue Angel” and Heinrich Mann's “Professor Unrat”. In: Heinrich Mann-Jahrbuch 36/37 (2018/2019), pp. 35–61.

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