Station chief Fallmerayer
Station chief Fallmerayer is a novella by Joseph Roth , which was published in 1933 by the Amsterdam publishing house Allert de Lange in the collection of short stories by contemporary German poets edited by Hermann Kesten .
The Austrian railway official Fallmerayer loves a Russian countess, but proves his humanity at the crucial moment: he can do without.
content
Station boss ( station master ) Adam Fallmerayer, who is barely two hours away from Vienna on the railway line to Italy, feels like a station attendant when the express trains to the south rush through his small station and never stop . He once went to Bozen on vacation with his wife and their twins , but that was neither the south nor the sea. In March 1914 one of these express trains ran into a freight train as a result of human error. Fallmerayer rushes to the scene of the accident and helps. He takes care of Countess Anja Walewska, a Russian from near Kiev . The lady wanted to Meran . Fallmerayer takes her in for a few days, makes his bed available to her and sleeps in the office. The countess finally travels on.
The war breaks out. Ensign Fallmerayer rushes to his fighter battalion. He cannot forget the beautiful countess from enemy territory. Fallmerayer becomes a lieutenant. Even after being wounded, he remains in the field. Fallmerayer learns Russian and eventually comes near Kiev . He looks for and finds the countess on her country estate. The Herr Graf is at the front. Immediately after Fallmerayer was promoted to lieutenant, he did not spend his vacation in Austria with his family, but with the lonely countess. After a few days, the couple hugs and kisses. When the war is over, the Austrian army disintegrates and the Russian Reds march forward. Fallmerayer flees with her lover via Tbilisi to Constantinople and Monte Carlo . The Walewskis own a small villa there . The lovers live happily ever after, as the countess had her jewelry dug up in the garden shortly before the flight. Anja Walewska wants her lover to get a divorce. Fallmerayer initiates this project through a cousin. The cousin and the other relatives, however, counted the missing Fallmerayer to the dead. So the person believed dead does nothing. The countess demands a child from him. That is begotten. One day, however, Count Walewski returns home from the field in a wheelchair. The pregnant woman looks after the war disabled - just as a healthy woman cares for her sick husband. Fallmerayer disappears, never to be seen again.
Audio book
- Station chief Fallmerayer , read by Dieter Mann , Eulenspiegel Verlag, Berlin 2011, 1 CD 66 min.
Oddities
Roth has a steamer sail from Baku to Constantinople, which has only been possible since the Volga-Don Canal was completed in 1952.
reception
- Hackert calls the novel a melancholy love story .
- The novella was supposed to be called Die Liebes-Ehe , but Joseph Roth liked the sound of the name Fallmerayer .
- Joseph Roth plays through the fall of man .
- The choice of name Walewska for the Countess would like to associate Sternburg with Maria Walewska - Napoleon's lover . So Roth could have thought of " The Hundred Days " while writing it.
filming
Walter Davy filmed the novella in 1976 under the original title with Wolfgang Hübsch , Odile Versois and Helma Gautier for television.
literature
source
- Fritz Hackert (Ed.): Joseph Roth. Works. Volume 5: Novels and Stories. 1930-1936. P. 456–478: Station chief Fallmerayer. Novella. 1933. With an afterword by the editor. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1994, ISBN 3-7632-2988-4 .
expenditure
Secondary literature
- Helmuth Nürnberger : Joseph Roth. In self-testimonials and picture documents. Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-499-50301-8 ( Rowohlt's Monographs 301).
- Eberhard Ostermann: Disillusioned masculinity in Joseph Roth's story "Station chief Fallmerayer". In: literature for readers. 27, 2, 2004, ISSN 0343-1657 , pp. 61-71.
- Ulrike Steierwald: Suffering from history. On the modern conception of history in the texts of Joseph Roth. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1994, ISBN 3-88479-880-4 ( Epistemata. Series: Literaturwissenschaft 121), (At the same time: Munich, Univ., Diss., 1992).
- Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A - Z. 4th, completely revised edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 519.
- Wilhelm von Sternburg : Joseph Roth. A biography. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-3-462-05555-9 .