Schnock (Hebbel)
Schnock. A Dutch painting is a humorous story by Friedrich Hebbel . It was written in 1836–37 and featured in the 1847 Yearbook Homage to Women. Paperback published for 1848 . The first single edition followed in 1850 by the JJ Weber publishing house in Leipzig.
content
First chapter
The unnamed first-person narrator of the story comes on a trip through the small town of Y., where an escaped thief has just been recaptured. The master carpenter Schnock, who caught him in the forest, is commended by the bailiff for this. The narrator starts a conversation with Schnock and learns that he regrets his heroic deed and is afraid of the thief's later revenge. The narrator invites Schnock to spend the evening with him and Schnock tells about his life:
second chapter
Schnock is tall and strong, but peace-loving and rather cowardly. As a teenager, he wanted to learn tailoring , but his father urged him to become a carpenter like himself. As a young man, he actually wanted to remain a bachelor, but his mother presses him to marry his neighbor Magdalene. Schnock is suspicious of Magdalene's kindness and wants to lure her out of the reserve, but does not succeed. After the marriage she turns out to be quarrelsome and stingy, and Schnock tries in vain to rebel against her. In order to publicly prove his manliness, he once started an argument with his cousin, the wheelwright Vinckel, in a pub .
third chapter
The narrator wants to leave the next morning and meets Schnock in the inn's taproom. He has made a bet with the landlord: as long as he neither laughs nor speaks a word, the landlord has to serve him food and drinks free of charge. But if he laughs or speaks, he has to pay twice for everything. So he says goodbye to the narrator in silence, while the landlord tells him the tricks he uses to get Schnock to talk.