Procopus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prokopus is a short story by Adalbert Stifter . It was first printed in 1847. There are no other versions of the kind that Stifter produced for many other stories.

action

The plot in Prokopus ties in with that of the founder story Die Narrenburg , published in 1842 . The locations of Die Narrenburg and Prokopus are identical. The plot of Prokopus , however, is set in the 17th century - about 200 years earlier than that of the Narrenburg. The focus of the story is the marriage of Count Prokopus and his wife Gertraud . The story describes the alienation of the married couple from each other, which creeps in over the years, although both try to the utmost to find their common happiness . Above all, Procopus' inability to meet his wife's need for integration into human society makes this impossible. Both withdraw further and further, so that they lose first emotional contact with each other and later with their five children. The story ends tragically with the death of both protagonists .

interpretation

Prokopus is primarily interpreted as a plea for the founder, in his opinion, for the necessity that every person sees himself more as a member of a long line of ancestors and less as an individual in the here and now. In the story, the alienation of the married couple is repeatedly associated with their disregard for their own ancestors . Both Prokopus and his wife Gertrud do not care about the legacies of their ancestors, which are numerous in their place of residence - Rothenstein Castle - but, on the contrary, let them decay. This approach, which is reprehensible in Stifter's opinion, is reflected in the conditions in a nearby inn - the Green Fichtau - in which every landlord takes over the buildings and furnishings from their ancestors, carefully expands them and passes them on to their children and grandchildren in a carefully looked after condition . In this way, alienation within the family is prevented.

Web links

literature

  • Bertram, Ernst: Studies on Adalbert Stifter's novel technique . Gerstenberg Verlag, Hildesheim 1978.
  • Stifter, Adalbert: Prokopus , in Stifter, Adalbert: All the stories after the first prints . ed. by Wolfgang Matz, Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 2005, pp. 1043–1106.
  • Weigel, Sigrid: On the dialectic of gender and generation around 1800. Stifter's Narrenburg as the scene of upheavals in genealogical thinking . In: Weigel, Sigrid / Parenes, Ohad / Vedder, Ulrike / Willer, Stefan (eds.): Generation. On the Genealogy of the Concept - Concepts of the Genealogy , Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2005, pp. 109–124.
  • Onion, William L .: Time and the Temporal in Stifter's Prokopus . In: American Association of Teachers of German (Ed.): The German Quarterly , No. 53, Van Rooy Company, Appleton (Wisconsin) 1980, pp. 432-443.