Stormy mornings

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The volume Stormy Mornings brings together four novellas by Heinrich Mann and was published by Albert Langen in Munich in 1906 .

Heinrich Mann calls his spring awakening stormy mornings , that is, the thematization of the “crises of sexual identity”.

Heinrich Mann in 1906

content

heroine

The novella was written in late summer 1905 and was preprinted on April 15, 1906 in a supplement of the time . Transfers into Czech by Fr. Holeček and into French by Alzir Hella followed in 1916 and 1926.

action

At a lake near the Italian border at the turn of the 20th century: two young Italian women - the sensitive 15-year-old half-orphan Lina Clemens and the 16-year-old firm Grete Pinatti - love the same young man. This is Mr. Roland. This German with lung disease confesses to Grete that he could not desire Lina because she was scary to him. Lina is really out of luck in love. Because her father, a winemaker, doesn't want to know anything about the potential German son-in-law either. He calls his daughter an angel. Lina goes through all of her father's vices in her mind. The winemaker is a womanizer who was unfaithful to his sick wife during her lifetime. And Lina grudges her boyfriend like that. There are quite a few things that the sensitive Lina bothers about her father. So he poisoned the poor rats, who only steal a few chicken eggs, with arsenic in the polenta and recently - even more effectively - with strychnine .

One sleepless night, Lina goes to the lake and witnesses a tender tête-à-tête between Grete and Mr. Roland. The realization “he doesn't love me” is followed by action. Lina bites into the strychnine polenta that has been laid out.

reception

Mr. Roland could be an image of the author. Lina did not bring love for Germans and charity to any common denominator. On the one hand, this young girl would die according to her title as a martyr and, on the other hand, her terrible end could be interpreted as a senseless death. Lina's story is reminiscent of that of the little mermaid .

The unknown

The novella was probably written in the spring of 1905 and preprinted in time in late summer of the same year .

action

The father of the 15-year-old student Raffael is a shipowner in a town near Travemünde . Since Schlutup can be reached on foot, Raphael's unnamed hometown can actually only be called Lübeck . Raffael loves Estela, the wife of Consul Vermühlen. Love is more than platonic. Raffael makes one advances after the other, but he flees headlong as soon as an encounter threatens. Of course, he didn't even speak to his beauty, let alone touch it in any way. Even an exchange of words would be difficult, because Estela articulates herself in a foreign language. Besides, she doesn't know him, but Raphael's parents are friends with the Vermühlens. Raffael picks up comments from his parents regarding the married life of the Vermühlen couple and concludes from them that the consul, this recently “gray widower”, is maltreating and poisoning his newest young wife bit by bit. That could - no, it has to - be true, because Estela is apparently getting worse and worse every month. Raphael's father and his friend, Consul Vermühlen, manage the seemingly impossible: in a seaside resort, both gentlemen Raphael compel a dance with Estela. Nothing will come of it. With great concern, Raffael looks at "the line of this swelling body" of his secret love and faints. The reader suspects the solution to the riddle. Consul Estela Vermühlen is very pregnant. Raffael is sent to the midwife by his father and thus initiated a little into practical sexuality .

reception

From the well-known family history of the brothers Heinrich and Thomas Mann it follows that the author has incorporated a piece of autobiography here - only poorly encrypted. In addition, the relationship between the author and Inés Schmied must be added. The same applies analogously to what was said in the article Between the Races in the section Autobiographical Traits about the two women from South America . The novel and novella were also written almost simultaneously.

Virgins

The text, written in the summer of 1905, was preprinted in the autumn of the same year in Maximilian Harden's Berlin weekly newspaper Die Zukunft .

action

Together with their mother, the privy councilor's wife, Claire and Ada - a 15 and a 16 year old girl - left their home country estate for the first time in their lives and headed for Italy. Ada is the more blooming and pale Claire is the smaller of the two sisters. During their stay on Lake Garda , both girls fall in love with Mr. Schumann. This loyal German singer turns to Ada, who promptly praises his silly German singing. The previously inseparable siblings become rivals. Heinrich Mann writes: “She [Claire] felt all laws overturned, the world lifted up dizzying, something great blooming wildly in the dark. She thought to call out: “My life, Herr Schumann! How gladly I would give it to you! «“ After the parting with Ada and Mr. Schumann, the sisters are - as before - one heart and one soul. So both can finally watch together with no envy how the privy councilor writhes behind the currant bushes in Mr. Schumann's arms.

reception

With Claire and Ada Heinrich Mann's sisters Carla and Julia could be meant. The young author, presumably influenced by psychoanalysis , works out Claire's libido . The young girl wants to "kill her rival!" But Ada and Claire remain - the title does not lie - lively virgins .

abdication

Written in Florence in autumn 1905 , the novella was preprinted in Simplicissimus in early 1906 .

action

The pupil Felix, a half-orphan, lives in modest circumstances with his mother in Lübeck. The father died while traveling. The circumstances of death are unknown. Felix not only dominates the lazy, fat classmate Hans Butt - who is the son of a gardener owner - but also other schoolboys; sometimes much stronger than himself. Felix is ​​sometimes amazed at how they all obey him. Even the mayor's son sprints.

When Felix is ​​suddenly tired of orders and from then on only reacts to Butt's orders, things go downhill. Butt is by no means a ruler like Felix. The fat boy has to be constantly encouraged or urged by Felix to issue a new order. This game ends with Felix going into the water and finally finding peace in death.

reception

Ariane Martin writes that power makes you lonely, that it cannot be increased at will and that it is ultimately directed against the power people concerned. The comparison with the Törless works only up to the point in time when Felix turns the tables on the torture of Hans Butt. Paradoxically, the tormentor Felix designed the subsequent domination by his previous victim Butt again as a compulsion, which, however, sent him "to the fish", that is, to death by drowning. This turning the tables has its philosophical equivalent in the transition from tyrannical will to power to pessimistic redemption through death. Sprengel describes the character of the novelistic text end as “suicide on command”. Thomas Mann, to whom his brother dedicated the novella, praised: "The work is so close to me that I almost feel it is mine."

Self-testimony

Heinrich Mann in his mid-thirties calls himself an eternally twenty year old. As a result, he particularly values ​​these four narrated “experiences of very young people”.

Résumé

The four texts are difficult to digest because behind the compact lecture there is a complex, artistic structure. So it is not surprising that the German literary criticism - represented in this case by Carl Busse , Richard Dohse , Carl Schultze and Fritz Böckel - unanimously rejected the volume after its publication and admired only René Schickele Heinrich Mann's “stylistic power”.

literature

First edition
  • Heinrich Mann: Stormy mornings. Novellas . Albert Langen, Munich 1906. 150 pages
Used edition
  • Stormy mornings. Novellas. With an afterword by Ariane Martin and a material appendix, compiled by Peter-Paul Schneider. (Peter-Paul Schneider (Ed.): Heinrich Mann. Study edition in individual volumes. Licensor: Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1978 (Sigrid Anger)) 158 pages. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-596-25936-3
Secondary literature

Web links

annotation

  1. ↑ Sprengel (p. 8, 18. Zvo and p. 335, 15. Zvu) speaks of the "turning from sadism to masochism ".

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 110, 10. Zvo and p. 126, 4. Zvu
  2. ↑ Edition used, pp. 130–131.
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 29, 10. Zvo
  4. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 120, 12. Zvo - p. 124, 9. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 131
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 72, 8. Zvo
  7. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 111, 13. Zvu - p. 114, 14. Zvo
  8. ↑ The future ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.haraldfischerverlag.de archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in haraldfischerverlag.de.
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 132.
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 88, 10. Zvo
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 89, 11. Zvu
  12. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 124, 10. Zvo - p. 126, 7. Zvu
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 132 and p. 133.
  14. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 114, 15. Zvo - p. 120, 11. Zvo
  15. ^ Sprengel, p. 8, 21. Zvo
  16. ↑ Thomas Mann, quoted in Sprengel, p. 335, 5th Zvu
  17. ↑ Heinrich Mann, quoted by Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 128 below.
  18. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 127, 11. Zvo
  19. ↑ Schultze, Karl in the German biography
  20. ↑ Edition used, p. 147
  21. ↑ Ariane Martin in the afterword of the edition used, p. 127 middle - p. 128 and first entry in Contemporary Reviews in the edition used, p. 147.