Schoolmaster Marie

Schoolmaster Marie is a novella ( peasant , horror and love story ) that E. Marlitt submitted in 1865 together with her story The Twelve Apostles for publication in the family weekly Die Gartenlaube . However, the work was only published posthumously as part of the ten-volume complete edition of Marlitt's prose work (Volume 10: "Thuringian Stories", 1890).

The novella tells the story of the young Marie Lindner, who is wrongly suspected of illegitimate motherhood and whose mother is wrongly suspected of theft. Marie manages to rehabilitate both herself and her mother, and in the end she can also marry the man she loves.

action

A Thuringian woman's costume. Marie makes her living sewing traditional hoods.

The location of the action is the fictional Thuringian mountain village Ringelshausen, the time is the author's present, i.e. the 1860s. The "schoolmaster" Mrs. Lindner, widow of the village teacher, has been destitute since the death of her husband. She has two daughters to support: the almost grown-up Marie and little Christel. She earns extra income by looking after a child on board; she had to promise not to tell anyone who the parents of this child were. Because the cultivated Lindners always kept a certain distance from the farmers, they accuse them of arrogance and treat them with suspicion.

The situation escalated when 700 thalers disappeared from the rectory and Ms Lindner was seen by Mamsell Dore, the rectory keeper, in the corridor of the rectory on the evening in question. On Dore's indictment, the matter comes to court, where Mrs Lindner is acquitted thanks to her very capable lawyer; however, the villagers still consider her a thief.

The storyline of the novella begins with a celebration of the villagers in the tavern "To the green fir". The reason for socializing is the marriage of the rich Scholz daughter Katharine with the farmer's owner Anton. The groom traveled with his very wealthy stepmother - Mrs. Sanner - and their only biological son, Joseph. During the celebration, little Christel accidentally tears the hood of the parsonage housekeeper Mamsell Dore off, which the "skinny handicraft", the untrained son of the Tannenwirt, takes as an opportunity to accuse the child of theft and in the same breath her mother, Mrs. Lindner, again as Branding thief. When Marie comes to her mother's help, Bastel attacks her too and accuses her of no longer being a virgin, but of being the mother of the foster child that Mrs. Lindner has taken in. Marie surprisingly finds a defense attorney in Joseph, the groom's stepbrother. Marie's defensiveness, her determination and her seriousness made a great impression on Joseph; instantly he loses his heart.

Marie falls in love with Joseph when she hears him singing in the moonlight. Conversely, Joseph falls even deeper into Marie's spell when he hears her singing a chorale in church on Sunday. Marie's heart breaks, however, when a neighbor tells her that the second school daughter, the beautiful but not very clever Margarete, whom Joseph also loves, and that the engagement is almost perfect. Joseph manages to convince Marie that this is not true and that he only loves her - Marie.

The lovers' tête-à-tête is overheard by children, who pass on what they observe to the adults. Marie soon hears that Mrs. Sanner, Joseph's mother, would not accept Marie because of her bad reputation as a daughter-in-law. Joseph is ready to marry Marie without his mother's blessing, which Marie does not want to expect from him under any circumstances. She now rejects him. Joseph and his mother leave.

Eight days later. In order to avoid the viciousness with which the villagers showered her since handicrafts accusations, Marie escapes for a day on foot in the city of A., where she has to do shopping. First she visits her friend Anna, the Tannenwirt's daughter, who lives in the household of her rich auntie. Anna knows about Marie's plight and has made a confession to Joseph's mother, who was just staying with her: she herself, Anna, is the mother of the child. The child comes from Anna's young marriage with the lawyer Börner - especially the lawyer who had defended Ms. Lindner so successfully - but this may only be disclosed when the husband's Erboheim is no longer alive. Marie sees herself half rehabilitated, half but still not, and therefore still does not want to see Joseph.

Marie starts her way home from the city in the dark. When Bastel and his cronies approach shortly before their home village, Marie takes a detour that leads them via the abandoned “Pfaffenmühle”, a lonely haunted place that the superstitious villagers avoid. It just so happens that Mamsell Dore and her useless son Fritz are meeting there for a secret meeting. Marie overhears their conversation unnoticed and learns that it was Fritz who stole the 700 thalers from the pastor. Fritz wants to go to America with his bride Rike and until then keeps the money hidden in the tiled stove of the Pfaffenmühle. Marie manages to secure the money.

On the road to the village she runs into Joseph by chance, who tells her that his mother has already given him her blessing for the connection with Marie. Now he accompanies Marie to the village mayor, before whom she exposes the whole matter. It also turns out that the Tannenwirt witnessed how Fritz snuck out of the rectory after the theft. The Tannenwirt had once free for Marie's mother, but received a basket. Ms. Lindner's accusation in the theft matter had thus been a belated revenge for him. He has to go to prison for perjury. Fritz is handed over to justice, Dore has to go to the workhouse for a few years because of her complicity and another theft from the pastor. Mrs. Lindner is rehabilitated. Marie and Joseph can get married.

Expenses (selection)

• Collected novels and short stories. Volume 10: Thuringian Stories . Keil's descendants, Leipzig 1890.
• Schoolmaster Marie . In: Thuringian stories: schoolmaster Marie, the twelve apostles, bluebeard, bailiff's maid . Hofenberg, 2018, ISBN 978-3-7437-2576-8 .

Web links

• Schoolmaster Marie with Zeno