Roßhalde

Hermann Hesse (1925)

Roßhalde is a novel by Hermann Hesse . It was published in 1914 and describes the failure of an artist marriage.

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Johann Veraguth is an internationally renowned painter, his wife Adele a pianist. They live in the remote Roßhalde manor house with their seven-year-old son Pierre. He sent his older son Albert outside to boarding school. Veraguth works and lives in the studio. He leaves the manor house to Adele. Pierre shuttles back and forth between the estranged parents. Adele is disappointed with the marriage, but hopes to the last that Veraguth will come to terms with her. Veraguth's intention to release Adele and generously accept her is met with incomprehension. As a mother, she wants the family to stay together, even though the couple have defiantly lived side by side for years. The painter only stays with his wife because he loves Pierre beyond measure. Adele might consent to the divorce, but will never give up the boy. So the father has to hold out on Roßhalde and wait to see who the boy will turn to.

Veraguth wants to travel to India for a long time and paint there. Adele fears losing him in that case. She generally advises him to reason. Veraguth rejects their reason. He feels torn. On the one hand he wants to get away from Roßhalde, on the other hand he wants to stay with Pierre, the only person he loves and by whom he is loved.

Painting demands all of Veraguth's concentration and strength. He has neglected the family over the years of constant exertion. Although he takes care of his people materially, his thoughts are constantly on the picture that he currently has on the easel. He has lost his earlier cheerfulness, the radiance that Adele had so won over him. Adele and Albert no longer go to the studio.

Veraguth realizes that he has long since given up Adele. Visiting his old schoolmate Otto Burkhardt makes him aware of the dilemma he is living in and that there is only one way out for him to start a new life elsewhere. Finally he wants to leave Roßhalde. So he has to part with Pierre too. Then the boy fell ill with meningitis . The world on Roßhalde is falling apart. The concerned parents take turns watching at the hospital bed. From a conversation with the treating doctor, Veraguth knows that Pierre is in danger of death. Adele, however, is not informed. Despite all the hardship that Veraguth has to endure, he remains firm. After the pain is over and there is no one left to love, it will walk away from Adele and Albert. He says that to Adele when she confronts him. Adele then released Pierre. The boy shouldn't die. If Pierre survived, he should stay with his father. Veraguth can hardly believe the sacrifice Adele is making for the boy. The couple met temporarily at the bedside. But Pierre dies and Veraguth leaves the family.

backgrounds

The manor house Roßhalde is described after the model of House Belair in Schaffhausen , today generally accessible as a youth hostel . Until his death in 1943, the house belonged to Hesse's friend, the painter Hans Sturzenegger , who also provided the model for the Veraguth. The novel contains further autobiographical elements. Hesse's three-year-old son fell ill with meningitis in 1914. Hesse's wife Maria suffered from schizophrenia ; Hesse left her after her healing in 1919.

Testimonies

• Hermann Hesse in a 1914 letter: “... the unhappy marriage the book is about is not based on a wrong choice at all, but rather on the problem of artist marriage in general, on the question of whether an artist at all ... Marriage is capable. "
• Hermann Hesse in a letter of January 15, 1942 to Peter Suhrkamp : "At that time, with this book, I had reached the level of craftsmanship and technology possible and I never got any further."

reception

• The creative has “erotic problems” and wants to free himself from his “bourgeois shackles”.

literature

• Günter Dedekind: "Art and Demonia in Hermann Hesse's Roßhalde". In: Acta Germanica . Vol. 7, 1972, ISBN 0-86961-063-5 , pp. 137-149.
• Osman Durrani: "Roßhalde (1914): A Portrait of the Artist as a Husband and Father". In: Ingo Cornils (Ed.): A Companion to the Works of Hermann Hesse . Rochester (NY), Camden House 2009, ISBN 978-1-57113-330-4 , pp. 57-79.
• Gustav Landgren: Hermann Hesse's Roßhalde, Klingsor's last summer and Steppenwolf in the context of art criticism, the artist crisis and intermediality . Uppsala, Uppsala Universitet 2011 (= Acta Universitatis Upsaliensi s. Studia Germanistica Upsaliensia . Vol. 56), ISBN 978-91-554-8055-4 , esp. Pp. 122-154.
• Joseph Mileck: Hermann Hesse . Poet, seeker, confessor . Biography . Translated from the American by Jutta and Theodor A. Knust. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1987 (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . Vol. 1357), ISBN 3-518-37857-0 , esp. Pp. 87-93.
• Martin Pfeifer: Hesse commentary on all works . Revised and expanded edition of the work published in 1980 by Winkler Verlag, Munich. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1990 (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch , 1740), ISBN 978-3-518-38240-0 , pp. 143-152.
• Ellen Risholm: "The Art of Man - Gender in Hermann Hesse's novels Gertrud and Roßhalde". In: Andreas Solbach (Ed.): Hermann Hesse and literary modernity . Cultural and scientific facets of a literary constant in the 20th century . Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 2004 (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch . Vol. 3609), ISBN 978-3-518-45609-5 , pp. 355-372.
• Christian Immo Schneider: Hermann Hesse . Munich, CH Beck 1991 (= Beck'sche Reihe . Vol. 620), ISBN 3-406-33167-X , pp. 60-64.
• Sikander Singh: Hermann Hesse . Stuttgart, Reclam 2006 (= Reclams Universalbibliothek . Vol. 17661), ISBN 978-3-15-017661-0 , pp. 95-107.
• Joseph P. Strelka: "Hermann Hesse's Roßhalde seen psychoanalytically". In: Acta Germanica . Vol. 9, 1976, ISBN 0-86961-087-2 , pp. 177-186.
• Lewis W. Tusken: »Hermann Hesse's Roßhalde. The Story in the Paintings ”. In: Monthly books for German teaching, German language and literature . Vol. 77, No. 1, (1985), ISSN  0026-9271 , pp. 60-66.

Book editions

Hesse wrote the novel in the winter of 1912/13 in Gaienhofen , Badenweiler and Bern . It was preprinted in 1913 in Velhagen & Klasings monthly books. The first edition was published by S. Fischer Verlag in 1914 , initially without a genre, in the editions after 1918 as a novel, in the 1931 edition as "Narration". The Suhrkamp Verlag included the book in its 1956 edition. The first paperback edition was published by Rowohlt Verlag in 1972 and the second by Suhrkamp in 1980.

• Roßhalde . Title woodcut by Emil Rudolf Weiß . Fischer, Berlin 1914.
• Roßhalde . Narrative. Fischer, Berlin 1931; Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 1956 (= collected works in individual editions).
• Roßhalde . Novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1972 (143th thousand 1979), ISBN 3-499-11557-3 (= rororo 1557).
• Roßhalde . Novel. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-518-36812-5 (= st 312).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.youthhostel.ch/de/hostels/schaffhausen
2. ↑ Both quotations from: Hesse, Gesammelte Werke, Volume 11: Schriften zur Literatur I , Frankfurt am Main 1970, p. 30.
3. ^ Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 , p. 390.