Imperial Countess Gisela

In chapter 25 Gisela is compared with Elisabeth of Thuringia , who was a symbol of active charity .

Reichsgräfin Gisela is a novel ( development , family, love story ) that E. Marlitt published in 1869 in the family weekly Die Gartenlaube (Issues 1–32). The book edition followed in the same year in the publishing house of the publisher of the garden arbor, Ernst Keil . Julius Kleinmichel provided the illustrations for the book edition .

The novel tells the story of the young Gisela Countess Sturm, who as a child inherits a fortune dishonestly acquired by her grandmother and who later finds herself in the firing line of two fatally conflicting parties: on one side is her stepfather, who is after the fortune himself has, and on the other, the mysterious Portuguese Oliveira, who is fighting to restore justice.

action

The relationships between characters in the novel, along with those in Das Haideprinzesschen, are the most complex that Marlitt has ever thought of.

The location of the action is initially the fictional location Neuenfeld in the Thuringian Forest , the time the 1850s.

Chapters 1-9. Prehistory: Heinrich, Prince von A. had a mistress, the beautiful Countess Völdern, whom he had made his sole heir even though she was married. He had therefore come into enmity with the royal house from which he came. Remorse only came to him shortly before his death: his mistress was cast out, the will revised, and a confidante of the prince, Baron Fleury, was sent to the royal court as a messenger of peace. Under mysterious circumstances, however, the latter did not achieve its goal, and under equally mysterious circumstances the revised testament also disappeared. Countess Völdern became a rich woman and Baron Fleury became minister to the Prince.

At the beginning of the actual novel, there are events in three families: the Ehrhardts, the von Zweiflingen and the Fleury.

Theobald Ehrhardt is a smelter in a major foundry. His younger brother, the student Berthold, lives with him. The brothers receive a letter from Mr. von Eschebach in Brazil. He was with Prince Heinrich personal physician, but after his death emigrated under mysterious circumstances and became rich. Since Eschebach has no children and was friends with the parents of the Ehrhardt brothers, he asks that one of them come to Brazil to continue his business as an inheritance. Berthold is just sick with typhus and Theobald has to take care of him; so nothing will come of the trip.

The “Waldhaus”, built as a hunting lodge, belongs to the lords of Zweiflingen, whose last male representative, Major Baron Hans von Zweiflingen, was a confidante of Prince Heinrich and after his death the lover of Countess Völdern. Now the blind, sick widow Adelgunde the major and their daughter Jutta live in the forest house. Jutta is engaged to the (already mentioned) smelter Theobald Ehrhardt. During a snow storm, strangers get stranded in their coaches at the Waldhaus and ask to be admitted. It is the (also already mentioned) Minister Fleury, who is on the road with his 6-year-old stepdaughter Gisela and her governess wife von Herbeck. Gisela is an orphan. Through her biological father she is a Countess von Sturm, and through her mother - the only daughter of Countess Völdern - the heiress of Völdern's fortune.

Adelgunde von Zweiflingen blames Fleury for the infidelity of her deceased husband and gets so excited about the personal encounter with the arch enemy that she dies. Her daughter Jutta, however, becomes friends with Frau von Herbeck and maintains this friendship when Fleury settles with her and Gisela in Arnsberg Castle . The situation with the characters of the new friends becomes clear when the motherless Jutta moves into the modest household of the local pastor. For him and for his wife, Christianity is not a question of lip service, but of love that is actually lived, which is especially evident in their very warm family life. While Gisela, who was brought up to be cold-hearted and conceited by her governess, begins to awaken emotionally in the rectory, on the contrary, Jutta and Frau von Herbeck are repelled. Jutta feels called to higher things and Frau von Herbeck recommends her to the Princess von A. as lady-in-waiting. As a result, there is a break between Jutta and her fiancé Theobald.

Because a bridge breaks, Theobald's brother Berthold falls into a river. Theobald jumps after him and is able to save Berthold, but drowns himself in the process. Jutta and Fleury get married a year later.

Chapters 10-24. Eleven years after her stepfather remarried, Gisela has grown into a young woman. She now lives on her inherited Greinsfeld estate. Since she is considered to be severely nervous, Ms. von Herbeck is still around her all the time. Strangely, when she went off her medication on her own, she felt better, but suddenly better. She also begins to rebel against her upbringing and stands up to her stepfather by giving the pastor in Greinsfeld, who was prematurely retired by Fleury, a new pastor's position.

The foundry has a new owner, under whose management it has become remarkably successful: the mysterious Brazilian Oliveira, who after a long period of invisibility finally arrives in person and moves into the "Waldhaus". Oliveira keeps her distance from the locals, which is why Gisela initially considers him callous and cruel. When she discovered that, on the contrary, he was devoting himself to various charitable endeavors, she began to do the same. In doing so, they fall in love, but due to misunderstandings they do not find each other yet. The situation is particularly difficult for Oliveira, because he only came to Germany for one purpose: to give the world a certain message that, as he now fears, will cause Gisela great disadvantages.

Chapter 25. Fleury shocked Gisela with the information that her grandmother, Countess Völdern, was not - as Gisela had always been led to believe - a wonderful woman, but a deceiver who completely and unlawfully appropriated Prince Heinrich's inheritance Has. Then he claims that Gisela's mother, who suffered greatly from this family guilt, decided that Gisela should go to the monastery for atonement. The mother also wished that Fleury should be made the sole heir to keep up appearances. Gisela begins to suspect that Fleury was only interested in wealth from the start.

Chapters 26-30. When the prince invited everyone involved to a big forest festival, Oliveira finally had the opportunity to give the world the message for which he had been preparing for so long: he is by no means the "Portuguese" everyone thinks he is, but none other than Berthold Ehrhardt. After his brother's death, he had accepted Mr. von Eschebach's invitation and went to Brazil, where shortly before his death Eschebach had made him a comprehensive confession: Countess Völdern had fraudulently obtained Prince Heinrich's inheritance. In order to get the revised will out of the way, Countess Völdern had seduced the Major von Zweiflingen. Baron Fleury, the mastermind behind all evil, had deliberately prevented the prince's reconciliation with the royal house. Eschebach himself had fled to Brazil with his share of the looted money, although his unrequited love for Countess Völdern's daughter also played a role in the decision to turn his back on Germany.

Oliveira-Berthold can present the prince with the duplicate of the revised will as irrefutable proof of the correctness of his presentation. Gisela has long known that she cannot make any moral claims to her inheritance and declares that she will forego her property in favor of the Princely House.

Chapters 31-32. Gisela and Berthold become a couple. In order for Gisela not to go completely empty-handed, the prince offers to ennoble Berthold for his services to the economy, but Berthold refuses. Fleury is cast out by his wife and shoots himself.

reception

In 1918, director Georg Victor Mendel produced a silent film adaptation of the novel for the Berliner National Filmgesellschaft AG, based on a script by Josef Richards . The leading roles were Grete Reithofer (Gisela), Paul Rainer (Berthold), Theodor Burghardt (Fleury) and Else Roscher (Jutta).

Expenses (selection)

• Imperial Countess Gisela . Atlas-Verlag, Cologne 1958.
• Imperial Countess Gisela . Eduard Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1975.
• Imperial Countess Gisela . Xenos, Hamburg 1976, ISBN 978-3-596-21555-3 .
• Imperial Countess Gisela . Melchert, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 978-3-87152-124-9 .
• Imperial Countess Gisela . Neuer Kaiser Verlag, Klagenfurt 1992.
• Imperial Countess Gisela . Kelter, 1993.
• Imperial Countess Gisela . Create Space, 2015, ISBN 978-1-5084-0513-9 .

• Imperial Countess Gisela . Audible, 2016 (audio book, read by Gabriele Blum ).

In other languages

• Countess Gisela . JB Lippincott, Philadelphia 1869.

literature

• Michael Kienzle: The successful novel. On the criticism of his poetic economy in Gustav Freytag and Eugenie Marlitt . Metzler, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 978-3-476-00311-9 .
• Elke Liebs: Dictated dreams. Mothers and Daughters in Popular Reading . In: Helga Kraft, Elke Liebs (eds.): Mothers - daughters - women. Images of femininity in literature . JB Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 1993, ISBN 978-3-476-00887-9 , pp. 149–172 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Commons : Countess Gisela  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Countess Gisela  - Sources and full texts

• Imperial Countess Gisela. Accessed August 2, 2020 (PDF version with illustrations). 
• Imperial Countess Gisela. Retrieved on August 1, 2020 (Gutenberg project). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Countess Gisela. Retrieved August 1, 2020 .