Days of the king

“The king, seen from the back, walks lonely between gravestones to the right”. Title vignette by Adolph von Menzel in the first edition from 1924.

Days of the king is a narrative cycle shall by Bruno Frank from 1924. The cycle consists of three independent stories "The Grand Chancellor", "The Scar" and "Alcmene", of which the first two have been pre-printed in magazines.

Prussia towards the end of the 18th century: the battles are over. In his swan song for the work of Frederick II , the author dares episodic insights into the inner being of the king.

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The Grand Chancellor

"The scales of justice". Vignette by Adolph von Menzel for the novella “The Grand Chancellor” in the first edition from 1924. - “A great man cannot be right against a small one”.

Anno 1779: Grand Chancellor Freiherr von Fürst , President of the Chamber Court , is firmly on the side of his subordinate judges. The latter condemned the miller Arnold and agreed with his opponent, Count von Schmettau . This rigid, self-confident attitude angered the king so much that he drove the Grand Chancellor - the “first judge of the kingdom” - out of office, had him locked up in the city prison with the subordinate judges and appointed his dear Herr von Carmer as Grand Chancellor. The new man is commissioned by the king to work out the land law. As a young ruler, Frederick II had campaigned for this fundamental code of law and commissioned Cocceji with preparatory work.

Not only the jailed judges, but the nobles as a whole are against the king. In front of the palace, the gentlemen express their sympathy for the deposed Grand Chancellor. Friedrich II watched the goings-on from his window with pity and mockery.

Scar

Vignette by Adolph von Menzel for the novella “Die Scar” in the first edition from 1924.

Beginning of April 1778, Sanssouci : Once again Frederick II reads Lucretius, which has been translated into French . The king's Latin leaves a lot to be desired. George Keith , Earl Marishal of Scotland, appears. The 90-year-old friend is allowed to come unannounced. The old lord remains even when two gentlemen are admitted. Count Ludwig Cobenzl , papal envoy, is accompanied by the very young, splendidly dressed up Nobile Calsabigi, a Viennese envoy on a “special mission”. Among other things, differences are addressed regarding the occupation of Lower Bavaria by Austria. When the parties fail to find a green light, Calsabigi makes an indecent advances. The king steps back abruptly. The audience is over. The old lord does not understand the excitement of the friend. Frederick II confesses to the Scotsman that at the age of 21 he suddenly could no longer “sleep with a woman”. The father insisted on an operation on the heir to the throne. Doctor von Malchow made him impotent through the operation. The women with whom Friedrich was involved in spite of everything had apparently gossiped in Vienna that it was nothing to do with Prussia. He could "only drink tea" - hence the attempt at Calsabigi.

Alcmene

"The flora in Sanssouci". Vignette by Adolph von Menzel for the novella “Alkmene” in the first edition from 1924. - “Image of the resting flora with the caressing Cupid” (The Scar, Chapter 4).

Anno 1784 in Neisse and Sanssouci: On a maneuver trip to Silesia , Frederick II inspects the Green Regiment in the pouring rain for six hours at a military training area near Neisse. In the presence of the young Marquis de Lafayette , the king lets one hussar practice after the other. The Marquis observed the very knowledgeable inspecting King. General Lafayette admires the incorrectly seated despot at work. The marquis is the only one wearing a raincoat. Friedrich II, on the other hand, gets by with his old uniform jacket. The suite , waiting in the background, does not dare to protect itself from the rain. A courier from Potsdam rushes up. The king does not wait for his honor to be paid and reaches for the dispatch. Sun breaks through. The inspection is over. The king reads and complains: " Alcmene ". General Lafayette near the king doesn't understand. Friedrich II has to return to Potsdam quickly. Wroclaw is canceled. The great inspector quickly gives the officers of the Green Regiment a lecture; gives an eloquent answer to the question: What should a cuirassier , a hussar, be like? Then the king hushed up a fit of weakness. The officers play along with this farce. Friedrich II passed out after the inspection. Lafayette and a lieutenant had caught the stumbling general with presence of mind.

"Friedrich walks through the picture gallery of Sanssouci with his greyhound". Pen-and-ink drawing by Adolph von Menzel , 1856. - His greyhound Alkmene “walked up and down with him in the picture gallery and looked at the new paintings like he did” (Alkmene, Chapter 9).

On the three-day trip to Potsdam, the king drives his coachman Pfundt. In Crossen - where the Bober flows into the Oder - you will stay at the pharmacist Henschke's. The weary traveler lets his host, a former company surgeon who went on two campaigns at the side of Dr. Rutze from Stettin was there to cure it. In addition to the desired cinchona bark , a powder made from senna leaves , liquorice , sugar and sulfur is administered. The sick patient calls the latter "devil's stuff", but swallows it obediently. The pharmacist diagnoses a cold on the chest that has affected the abdomen and suggests that the "Majesty be wrapped up in wet towels". That was just missing! For more than fifty years the king did not let a woman close to him, and now that. Henschke knows a lot about the mismanagement of the medical authorities in the treatment of the wounded in His Majesty's armies. Friedrich II knows all of this, but promises Henschke a letter to Rutze in Stettin. The place names Baruth , Goyatz , Cottbus , Schwiebus , Lebus , Podelzig , Polenzig, Peitz and Beeskow are included in the description of the further carriage ride. Friedrich II looks in the direction of Oderbruch and thinks about whether luck can be brought about through creative action.

When Friedrich II enters Sanssouci Palace, he finds his favorite dog, Alkmene, an Italian greyhound , laid out under glass. The king wants to caress his darling one last time and raises the glass. The smell of putrefaction hits him. When the glass coffin is hurriedly closed, one of the paws sticks out a little. It is like an invitation to enter the realm of the dead.

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  Final vignette by Adolph von Menzel, first edition from 1924.

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  Death of Frederick the Great, drawing by Johann Christoph Kimpfel , 1795.

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Nothing - or, more precisely, little - has been proven. So the narrator incites the reader's imagination with rumors from the “century of eroticism and abnormalities”. Here is the example of Alkmene: The king's wife had to reside at Schönhausen Palace far from Potsdam. Frederick II paid his wife a brief visit in Berlin every year. The ruler usually slept with his dog in Potsdam.

The text is cleverly constructed. In “Alkmene” General Lafayette has a narrative function as the maneuver observer of the old Fritz. He does not make the narrator appear omniscient.

reception

Statements after publication

• "A picture that is intended to displace many clichés ..." writes a certain EV on December 14, 1924 in the " Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung ".
• Feuchtwanger (review on January 13, 1925 in the “ Weltbühne ”) praises the text that is “down to the point”.
• Emil Ludwig (review on March 15, 1925 in the " Neue Freie Presse ") sees the old Fritz - not a hero, but a genius - in person.
• Wolfgang von Einsiedel (review in the April 1925 issue of “ The Beautiful Literature ”) cannot make friends with the “scar” at all. The part is a little unbelievable, in places too emotional and narrative failed. Frederick II was referring to his abdominal ailment, as it were.

Later statements

• Erika Mann and Klaus Mann write in their portrayal of German exile “Escape to life” from 1939: “... the three famous stories about the figure of Frederick the Great of Prussia, The Days of the King , [wrote] the mature, all technical means self-confident dominant man. "
• Kirchner continues in the chapter “II.1. The old king ”of his dissertation with the novella apart. Of course, every novella is fictional. But the events surrounding the Grand Chancellor, for example, are historically documented, but in describing their chronological sequence, Bruno Frank followed his artistic diction. Vienna sent Calsabigi to Potsdam in the race because it suspected that old Fritz had a homoerotic tendency.
• Ulrich Müller thinks that Bruno Frank, with his picture of the old Fritz, "unintentionally promoted the restorative tendencies in the mid-twenties."
• Kirchner writes that, according to Klaus Schröter , there is only " Colportage of historical gossip ".
• According to Werner Marx , the author does not idealize and heroize, but rather shows a contradicting king.

Dog lover

Bruno and Liesl Frank with their three black poodles, between 1924 and 1929.

Bruno Frank was a passionate dog lover. It is not surprising, then, that he gave “man's best friend” an important role in “Days of the King” and some of his other works. Constant contact with his own dogs made him predestined for the sensitive portraits of his literary dogs and their masters.

Like Bruno Frank, Friedrich the Great was a "dog lover". In “Days of the King” the author focuses primarily on people and the ruler Friedrich in his old age, but the king's dearest companions are also honored in the novellas “Die Scar” and “Alkmene”. Friedrich's dogs do not appear in "Der Großkanzler", although one would expect when he went to bed at the end of the novel that his favorite bitch, who was his faithful sleeping companion, would also be mentioned.

Scar

Friedrich's beloved wind chimes appear in “Die Scar”, but without determining the plot as in “Alkmene”. We learn that he often delights his favorite dog with small bars of chocolate, that his darlings report angrily when “a strange presence” announces itself, but when they recognize the king's friend Keith they immediately indicate “that there really is a good man come ”(Chapters 1-2). After all, the cute little ones are included in the plot. The King reads Keith the speech he wants to give his soldiers to prepare for the War of the Bavarian Succession . And in order to make the presentation of his planned speech as vivid as possible, his three "rascals" Phryne, Pompon and Hasenfuß are allowed to take on the role of three venerable generals. The wind chimes (aka generals), who follow their master's speech at attention, are finally fed with sweet delicacies as a reward “for their services” (Chapter 5). This seemingly anecdotal scene, which is certainly an invention of Bruno Frank, makes the reader smile at the author's subtle humor, which he ascribes to his protagonist.

Alcmene

Friedrich playing the flute with a greyhound on the sofa.

Frederick the Great at his desk with two greyhounds.

The enigmatic title of the novella " Alkmene " initially astonishes the reader. One suspects that the mother of Hercules is not meant, but who else? The participants in the Silesian troop show in Neisse are confronted with a different riddle: every day a rider comes from Potsdam and one is sent back there every day. Everyone is speculating what kind of fateful news is going back and forth. When the expected news finally arrives, Friedrich visibly struggles for composure ("And now the lid closed and a heavy tear welled out."). General Lafayette , the hero of the American War of Independence , who is close to Friedrich, can hear Friedrich utter the name of Alcmene several times "in the tone of the bitterest lament" (Chapters 1–3).

The reader soon learns that Alkmene is none other than Friedrich's favorite wind chime and that the messenger rider brought the news of the death of the seriously ill bitch. (With a friendly, mocking twinkle in his eye, Friedrich used to give his bitches seemingly strange names, and so Alkmene, an extremely delicate featherweight, was given the powerful name of the Hercules mother.) The troop revue is broken off and a three-day parforce trip back to Potsdam. The king, who caught a serious cold in the pouring rain during the troop display, spent the night on the way at the pharmacist Henschke's house. He hears how he calls for a dog during the night in a feverish dream: “Yes, he not only called him, he had a conversation with him and played both roles, he made the barking sounds with his lips that he answered in response believed he was listening to his teasing, and laughed kindly at it ”(Chapter 6).

Back in Sanssouci, he gives in to the mourning of his beloved dog. Between chapters 8 and 10, which are dedicated to this mourning, Bruno Frank inserts a chapter that illuminates Friedrich's relationship with his dogs in all its facets. “The king did not just have a dog that had to be replaced.” Alkmene and the other dogs were friends of his lonely age, because almost all of his confidants had died away. He loved the lightheartedness with which the dogs - “forever young, as it were” - greeted each new day as if it were their only day.

There were disgraceful mouths who suggested that he had a sodomite relationship with his bitches, even though the small size of his Italian greyhounds made such a vile suspicion seem ridiculous. “The older he got, the more he saw through the wickedness and meanness and swollen folly of men, the more tenderly his heart turned to the clear, simple nature of these speechless creatures. You could believe them. You could count on them. "

At the end of the novella, the king's gaze wanders to the sculpture of Flora lying in front of his window ( illustration ): “He would soon be lying there himself, under this plinth was his crypt. Next to it, very close by, his dogs were buried, Alkmene's predecessor in his love. There they lay, long ago turned into ghostly skeletons, in a row, covered by small stone slabs on which the names were written. "

literature

First edition

• Bruno Frank: Days of the King. Ernst Rowohlt, Berlin 1924. 161 pages. Linen. With illustrations after Adolph von Menzel

Other issues

• Bruno Frank: Days of the King and other stories. With an afterword by Martin Gregor-Dellin . Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich 1975

Used edition

• Bruno Frank: Days of the King. Pp. 7–145 in: Days of the King and Other Tales. (also contains: “Political Novella”, “The Magician” and Thomas Mann's consideration of the Political Novella). Buchverlag Der Morgen, Berlin 1977 (1st edition, licensor: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich and for Thomas Mann's consideration: S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main), without ISBN, 328 pages, linen

Secondary literature

• Erwin Ackerknecht : Afterword. In: Bruno Frank: Political Novella. Stuttgart 1956, pages 127-136, here: 131-132.
• #Carpenter 1952 , pp. 43-44.
• Fritz Endemann: The Prussian King and his Swabian chronicler. Bruno Frank tells of Friedrich II, whom he does not call the great. In: Literaturblatt für Baden-Württemberg November / December 2012, pp. 10–12, literaturblatt.de (PDF)
• # Günther 1946 , page 135.
• Klaus Haberkamm: Frank, Bruno - Days of the King. In: Munzinger Online / Kindlers Literatur Lexikon in 18 volumes. , 3rd, completely revised edition 2009, only online (access required).
• Ulrich Müller: Writing against Hitler. From historical to political novel. Investigations into the prose work of Bruno Frank. Mainz 1994, pages 11-15.
• Konrad Paul: Afterword. In: Bruno Frank: Political Novella. Berlin 1982, pages 381-395, here: 388-389.
• Sascha Kirchner: The citizen as an artist. Bruno Frank (1887–1945) - life and work . Grupello , Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-89978-095-6 (also Diss. Uni Düsseldorf ), pages 119-137, 12, 138, 144, 150, 159, 163, 180, 313, 359, 387, 391, 396, 397, 399.
• # Circulation 1982 , page 108.
• #Walter 1960 , pages 367-368.

Remarks

1. ↑ What is meant is an operation scar. Bernhard Meyer: "Everything is gloomy, nobody is sad" - The death of Frederick II at Sanssouci Palace . In: Berlin monthly magazine ( Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein ) . Issue 8, 1999, ISSN  0944-5560 , p. 19–25, here 24 ( luise-berlin.de - left column, center). According to Johann Georg Zimmermann , gangrene after gonorrhea made surgical intervention necessary (Kirchner on the subject of impotence , p. 128, 15. Zvo).
2. ↑ Apotheker Henschke: Bruno Frank probably had an ancestor of Klabund in mind when writing (Kirchner, p. 133, 7th Zvu).
3. ↑ The order of the villages, as they are listed in the text (edition used, p. 127, 8th Zvu), does not result in a route of the Pfundtschen carriage in a westerly direction.
4. ↑ In this novella about the longing for death , the death of the king is anticipated (Kirchner, p. 132).

Web links

• Bruno Frank, Digital Works, Friedrich Stories

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On the scales of justice, an arm clad in hermelin establishes the balance between the mighty (scales with aristocratic shield) and the powerless (empty scales).
2. ↑ Edition used, p. 56, middle
3. ↑ Edition used, p. 65, 2. Zvo
4. ↑ Edition used, p. 67, 6. Zvo
5. ↑ Bruno Frank summarizes the events of two Silesian troop revues in his presentation. See: #Frank 1926.2 , pages 108–109: Critique of the Silesian troop revue 1784, #Frank 1926.2 , page 169: Alcmenes' death during the last Silesian troop revue 1785.
6. ↑ Edition used, p. 113, 11. Zvo
7. ↑ Edition used, p. 135, 4th Zvu
8. ↑ Edition used, p. 135, 1. Zvu
9. ↑ see also Kirchner, p. 130 below
10. ↑ quoted in Kirchner, p. 359, footnote 63
11. ^ Feuchtwanger, quoted in Kirchner, p. 136, 12. Zvu
12. ↑ Ludwig, quoted in Kirchner, p. 136, 10. Zvu and p. 359, footnote 64
13. ↑ quoted in Kirchner, p. 129 below and p. 359, footnote 59
14. ^ # Mann, Erika 1991 , page 315.
15. ↑ Kirchner, pp. 122-137
16. ↑ Kirchner, p. 124 middle
17. ↑ Kirchner, p. 127, 21. Zvo
18. ↑ Ulrich Müller, quoted in Kirchner, p. 137, 2. Zvo and p. 359, footnote 66
19. ↑ Kirchner, p. 137, 2. Zvo and p. 360, footnote 67
20. ↑ Kirchner, p. 137, 8. Zvo and p. 360, footnote 68
21. ↑ In many illustrations, Friedrich's dogs are shown too large to scale. With withers the size of an A4 sheet of paper, they probably reached the king's knee.
22. ↑ Kirchner, p. 387, last entry in 1924
23. ↑ Erwin Ackerknecht was a brother of Eberhard Ackerknecht . This and Bruno Frank were schoolmates at the Karlsgymnasium in Stuttgart and long-term friends.