The Stuttgart Hutzelmännlein
The Stuttgart Hutzelmännlein is a fairy tale by Eduard Mörike and was first published in 1853. The Swabian word Hutzel has different meanings. In a narrower sense, it refers to dried pieces of fruit (especially from apples and pears), which is why fruit bread , which was supposedly invented by the title character, is also called Hutzel bread in Swabian .
action
construction
The structure of the fairy tale is multi-layered. There is a framework plot, the story of the lovers Seppe and Vrone, whereby the experiences of the two are largely independent of one another, only at the very end are both parts brought together. The fairy tale of the beautiful Lau and two short stories about the alchemist Weyland are inserted as a more extensive internal plot. Mörike explains his Swabian expressions in an appendix.
The fairy tale of the beautiful Lau
The beautiful Lau is a water mermaid who lives in the Blautopf near Blaubeuren . She actually comes from the mouth of the Danube , but was rejected by her husband because she is moody and cannot have children. But she was prophesied that if she laughed heartily five times, her problems would be solved. When she becomes friends with the family of the landlady of the monastery courtyard, she is overwhelmed by laughter in everyday situations, for example when she is tickled, when she notices why the toddler is sitting on a ceramic potty, which she admired as a particularly pretty work of art, according to one strange dream and when she tried to pull the tongue twister S'leit a Klötzle lead same with Blaubeura, same with Blaubeura lead a Klötzle lead. to say.
In the end, the prophecy will come true that her husband will come to fetch her and on the third day she can tell her human friend that she is expecting a child. As a thank you, she leaves the host family a box of money that is never empty, so that they can give the wandering craft boys a spare penny on their journey at all times.
The story of the journeyman cobbler Seppe
About a hundred years later the Stuttgart shoemaker Seppe decides to go hiking because he had an argument with his master. The night before, the little Hutzelmann appears and gives him a Hutzelbrot that always grows back if he only leaves a little bit, two pairs of lucky shoes and the order to bring a lead that makes invisible from Blaubeuren. Seppe leaves one couple in Stuttgart as instructed, the other he puts on. However, he mixes up the shoes, he wears one of each pair, which is why the shoes want to go back to their right partners and are constantly hindering Seppe. A dyer who meets him makes fun of him.
In Blaubeuren he visits the descendants of the host family and receives a gift of money and a silver bonnet from the legacy of the beautiful Lau, which he is to give to his bride one day. He moved on to Ulm, where he stayed with a beautiful master, to whom he soon became engaged. But soon she feeds the last remainder of the Hutzelbrot to her bird, so that this treasure is lost forever. Seppe later learns in the pub that the master has already killed two husbands. Horrified, he flees, but has to leave all his savings behind. At Blaubeuren, his shoes lead him to the lead solder, which he uses to play jokes to people who annoy him.
After further adventures, Seppe comes back to Stuttgart, where the little Hutzelmann demands the lead solder from him, but in return provides him with clothes for the mummery that is to take place the next day.
The itinerary takes Seppe through the following places: Stuttgart , Stuttgarter Weinsteige , Bempflingen , Metzingen , Bad Urach , Böhringen (Römerstein) , Zainingen , Feldstetten , Suppingen , Blaubeuren , Ulm , Gerhausen , Blaubeuren, Feldstetten, Bad Urach, Metzingen, Neckartailfingen , Nürtingen , Oberensingen , Wolfschlugen , Bernhausen (Filderstadt) , Stuttgart Degerloch , Stuttgart.
The story of Vrone
The pair of shoes that Seppe left behind in Stuttgart is found and taken possession of by a young girl, Veronika. She also shows that the shoes bring luck, because she finds a valuable pearl necklace that the count's daughter lost, but at the same time leads a life of her own, which is why she is henceforth considered to be clumsy.
On the day of the festival of fools, she too receives a costume from the Hutzelmännlein. At the festival, she and Seppe are led from their shoes onto a high rope, where they meet for the first time and immediately get engaged. The count is so touched that he equips the couple with a house on Stuttgart's market square.
The stories about Doctor Veylland
Doctor Veylland, a scholar and alchemist who lives in the distant past in the place that will later become Stuttgart, comes into possession of a octopus tooth that he melts into a lead solder, the famous "Klötzle Blei", which is used on all levels of action plays a role. In a second internal act he succeeds in chasing fruit thieves out of his garden with the help of a magical boot servant ('from neat beech wood, still new and carved as a wondrous crab') of the Hutzelmännlein.
interpretation
interpretation
Mörike's fairy tale is often referred to in literary studies as a work that owes its existence only to the author's lust for tales; one searches in vain for a deeper content. Frank Vögele resolutely contradicted this in his dissertation . He interprets the two most important acts of the Hutzelmännlein as stories of socialization . Seppe as a youth and Lau in her melancholy state still have to mature, both are supported by a parent figure of their own gender (the monastery landlady and the Hutzelmännlein) and with both the dangers of sexuality are reported in veiled form - with Seppe especially in the The episode with the master from Ulm and with the Lau most clearly in the dream of the Lau, in which the abbot of the monastery throws his little cap into the lake, which Vögele interprets as a symbolic sexual act. The warning is then given with a wink. Although God the Father appears personally in the dream to carry out the punishment, it is not directed against the tempter, the beautiful Lau, but against the abbot, because he lied about why his skull was wet.
Feminist literary studies have drawn attention to the fact that Lau is socialized into impotence . Although she learns to laugh, ends her personal development and can therefore end her exile in the Blautopf. But she is taken in again by her patriarchal husband and in future is limited to her role as wife and mother.
In addition, shows Vögele several observations that Moerike not naive Hutzelmännlein the fabled but formed with high artistic standards.
Generic issues
“Das Hutzelmännlein” is undeniably a fairy tale, as Mörike himself called it. For a long time the interpreters only asked themselves whether it should be viewed as an art fairy tale or whether Mörike had largely hit the tone of the folk tale .
At the same time, however, formal elements of the novella can also be found. These are especially the precise positioning of the Seppe-Vrone plot in time and space and the lead plumb, which can be seen as a symbol of things , as is typical for a novella. Frank Vögele therefore considers the question of genre to be ambiguous, perhaps even undecidable.
language
Even Thomas Mann expressed himself with admiration about the language that Mörike created in the Hutzelmännlein: Reading Mörike's prose accompanied the work of Doctor Faustus and I was particularly impressed and aroused my envy ... the Stuttgart Hutzelmännlein through the natural and apparently completely unstudied handling of older German
The language of the Hutzelmännlein imitates old-fashioned German from the Reformation period and uses many Swabian expressions that were no longer known to Mörike's contemporaries. This is why the extensive glossary is necessary.
The narrator
As usual in a fairy tale, the narrator of the Hutzelmännlein is an authorial narrator who sometimes interrupts the flow of the plot in order to address the reader directly, for example at the end, where he says goodbye. In this context, the extremely detailed appendix is also important. Vögele is of the opinion that when examining the narrator, one should also consult the appendix. Here at least one point suggests a closeness between the author and the narrator if the entry is made by sausage makers . The author found this custom still in the Swabian Alb .
Dealing with romance
A striking number of plot elements in the fairy tale vary from motifs that were also important in Romanticism: the story of the water woman, the search in the deep (only in a lake instead of in a mine), the miner's costume of the Hutzelmännlein at the festival of fools, and the frequent use of the Color blue, not only in the blue pot and the blue wall of the Swabian Alb, but Seppe once briefly mentions that he is looking for the blue Monday , what a bird should be, instead of the blue flower of romance. These motifs are mostly reduced in their meaning, it is only meant to be disguise or only humorous .
literature
- Eduard Mörike : The Stuttgart Hutzelmännlein. JF Steinkopf Verlag, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-7984-0501-8 .
- Frank Vögele: Life as a tightrope act. Studies on Eduard Mörike's short story 'Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein'. Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 2005, ISBN 3-86110-385-0 .
- Heinz Ludwig Arnold (Ed.): Kindlers Literature Lexicon . 3rd, completely revised edition. 18 volumes. Volume 11, Metzler, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-04000-8 , pp. 491-492. (Work article on Das Stuttgarter Hutzelmännlein . KLL)
Individual evidence
- ^ Frank Vögele: Life as a high wire act. 2005, p. 51.
- ↑ Thomas Mann: The Origin of Doctor Faustus . Novel of a novel. Frankfurt am Main 1989, p. 145.
- ^ Frank Vögele: Life as a high wire act. 2005, p. 47.
- ^ Frank Vögele: Life as a high wire act. 2005, p. 49.
