Trenck (Bruno Frank)

Baron von der Trenck in the citadel of Magdeburg , title copper in his memoir from 1787.

Trenck is a novel by Bruno Frank , which was preprinted in the “ Illustrirten Zeitung ” in early 1926 and was published in book form by Rowohlt in the same year . Knaur brought - also in 1926 - a "people's edition".

Prussia in the middle of the 18th century: whoever violates a command of the king is punished relentlessly; so also Baron von der Trenck and his lover Princess Amalie .

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The king himself calls 17-year-old Trenck, a cadet in the Gardes du Corps regiment , to his Potsdam city palace at night . Frederick II heard only good things about the cadet and subjects his knowledge to a strict oral examination. Trenck exists; At the age of 13, the candidate had already studied law, mathematics, philosophy and natural sciences in Königsberg . Trenck tells the king that he has no financial worries. His inherited ancestral property near Labiau yields around 1000 thalers a month. The father, East Prussian governor and veteran with 18 scars, died in 1740. The mother married a count with whom she lived in Breslau .

Trenck becomes an officer and adjutant to the king. He has to continue the demanding service in the Regiment Gardes du Corps on the side. His cousin, the wealthy Austrian Pandur colonel Franz von der Trenck , Trenck sets the young one as his sole heir.

The king complains to his sister, Princess Amalie. The monarch sees himself surrounded by enemies. He took away from Theresia Silesia. The Austrian can not come to terms with the loss. The German Kaiser is pretty powerless. The kings of Poland , Denmark and England all own lands in the middle of Germany. He only has the King of France as an ally. He does not want to become its vassal. So Frederick II made a pact with Russia and Sweden . In connection with this, he persuades the sister to get married in Stockholm .

Trenck's fateful hour strikes on the afternoon of March 12, 1744. The 20-year-old Princess Amalie of Prussia falls in love with the young adjutant Trenck and no longer wants to become a Swedish Crown Princess. The strong affection is returned.

The king then determined the sister's career as the new abbess of the Quedlinburg monastery . Trenck fought a few more battles at the side of his king during the Second Silesian War , but after the battle of Thrush he became a state prisoner in the fortress of Glatz . He is neither given a reason for detention nor is he convicted. The princess helps with 1000 Louisdors through the forester Hornig from Habelschwerdt .

Trenck manages to escape together with his friend Lieutenant Alexander von Schell in the middle of winter. Frederick II had released the prisoner a few days before the escape at the request of his sister. Trenck and Schell flee through the deep snow. At the castle gate in Hammer - not far from Bentschen - Trenck knocks at his sister's. She gives a few gold pieces but doesn’t show up. Trenck sends Schell to Warsaw and makes his way to Vienna . He looks for and finds the cousin in prison there. As a petitioner for the imprisoned Austrian relative, the Prussian obtained an audience with the Kaiser there in Vienna . The emperor presents the case to his wife. Maria Theresa lets it be known that she wants to pardon the Pandur colonel if he so requests. The Colonel wants his rights and turns out to be ungrateful to the active young German cousin. The Prussian goes to Russia.

Immediately after the Peace of Dresden , enthusiastic Berliners proclaimed the returning king as Frederick the Great at the Köpenicker Bridge . The king believes that Trenck is plotting against Prussia together with the Russians.

In 1749, the Pandur colonel killed himself on the Spielberg with a mug of Aqua Toffana . Trenck inherits under two conditions: He has to convert to the Catholic faith and is only allowed to serve Austria. When he arrived in Vienna, Maria Theresa appointed him Rittmeister. But Trenck does not convert, but wants to establish himself on the Danube with his grandfather's legacy as a landlord. It turns out differently: in 1754 his mother dies. He therefore travels to Gdansk and is kidnapped by the Prussians in the Free City in a night and fog action in the Magdeburg fortress . On the way, Trenck receives the opportunity to escape from the young Friedrich Eugen von Württemberg in Treptow an der Rega in Pomerania . The gullible baron trusts his benevolent king and has to pay for this delusion with nine years imprisonment in chains and irons. While in captivity, Trenck becomes excessively thin. The prisoner learns of the latest war from an aside from the mouth of an officer on duty . Immediately his thought structures overturn. Will Amelie, who works on his liberation from Quedlinburg, be able to help more effectively in times of war? In truth, the Berlin court fled to Magdeburg; Amelie lives on Domplatz - right next door. Trenck's attempt to escape after five years in prison is thwarted. The prisoner gets new shackles and a "wide neck iron" (see copper engraving above). Over the years, the news of the baron's imprisonment spread to North America. His drawings - scratched into the tin of the prison drinking cup with a sharpened board nail - go from hand to hand. After all, Trenck is allowed to burn the light in his dungeon hole. In the winter of 1761/62 - Trenck was in prison for seven years - after five months of preparation, Amalie was able to bribe a soldier and for a few minutes she advanced within calling distance of the outer fortress wall. Trenck can hope for rescue, because Amalie uses her income as abbess to prepare for the liberation of her beloved. The miracle is to be achieved with substantial payments to Austria. The lovers had been separated for sixteen years.

The end of the Seven Years' War brings freedom to Trenck.

For a long time afterwards, Trenck is married to Hendrikje de Broe - daughter of the ruling mayor of the imperial city of Aachen . His old friend Schell from Glatz visits him on his Lower Austrian estate in Zwerbach an der Donau. Schell meets a family of six. The couple has four children; including two sons, "nine and eleven years old". Trenck writes on his memoirs and has become a wine merchant. He has offices in Amsterdam and London. He only got married after Amalie had made known to him that she was determined to do so. After that, the abbess had refused to meet again.

After the king died of chest dropsy in the summer of 1786 , Trenck received permission to enter Berlin the following January. The baron goes to Amalie. The beloved is old and sick. He sinks down in front of her and weeps at the hem of her skirt. Finally he presented Amalie with a copy of his memoir, which he dedicated to the “spirit of Frederick the One”. Why did the King destroy their lives? Amelie does not answer the lover's question.

When he was almost seventy, Trenck left his family and went to Paris in 1793. The former prisoner of a monarch could be welcome with the revolutionaries there. However, the aristocratic Prussian was guillotined by the Parisian rulers as a secret agent of the Prussians and as a potential instigator of the fellow prisoners for the outbreak in July 1794 .

Quote

During the brief encounter between the lovers in the Magdeburg Citadel, the prisoner shouts out his sixteen-year-old memory of "the most delightful lover": "... so soft, so clinging, so heart-consuming!"

shape

The story of Friedrich von der Trenck is expected. Bruno Frank doesn't stop there. In several chapters - alternately inserted into the Trenck plot - it is not about the baron, but solely about the sensitivities of his great king. This is noticeable, for example, in the passages when Mr. Duhan - that was Friedrich II's tutor - dies in Berlin or when the king talks to Voltaire and especially during the detailed description of the defeat in the battle of Kunersdorf . The return of the king after the Seven Years' War must also be mentioned. The German territories - devastated and drained - are lying down. Frederick the Great is gray.

The narrator is smarter than Trenck in the citadel. So he sometimes talks in between (see for example the description of Princess Amalie's stay in Magdeburg, mentioned above). The narrator knows that Trenck “is not pious”. As soon as it gets exciting, the narrator changes from the simple past to the present tense.

What happened after Trenck's release from Magdeburg custody is not narrated very well. The end of Trenck is only referred to in a letter from Alvensleben to the king .

reception

Statements after publication

• In the morning edition of the “ Berliner Tageblatt ” from August 4, 1926, the article “Trenck and the Princess” can be found on p.
• Neisse (review of 8 August 1926 in the " Frankfurter Zeitung ") verreißt the novel furious: "One of the most outrageous cases autocratic arbitrariness is not apparent here as an internally trembling, charged with outrage book, but a soigniertes artwork of good attitude, the one a large part of the guilt is also placed on the poor victim. "

Recent comments

• Helga Karrer and Ulrich Müller name the cardinal error of the novel: The reader always loses sight of the title character Trenck.
• Kirchner continues in chapter “II.2. Enlightenment or despot? ”Of his dissertation with the novella. From the chosen chapter heading it follows that it is more about the king and less about Trenck. Bruno Frank invented the king's dispute with Voltaire in Potsdam over abuse of power and justice. Kirchner praises the author not only for the successful reflection of this controversy, but also for the portrayal of Friedrich II's introspection after the battle of Kunersdorf. Kirchner lists several preprints.

Film adaptations

See Bruno Frank, Film Adaptations .

literature

First edition

• Bruno Frank: Trenck. Novel of a favorite. Rowohlt, Berlin 1926. 328 pages

Used edition

• Bruno Frank: Trenck. Novel of a favorite. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1989 (1st edition, cover: Jörg Mothes, Regine Schmidt. Licensor: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, Munich), ISBN 3-351-01390-6

Secondary literature

• Erwin Ackerknecht : Afterword. In: Bruno Frank: Political Novella. Stuttgart 1956, pages 127-136, here: 132.
• # Günther 1946 , page 135.
• "A three hundred page love letter ...". Elisabeth Maria Karl "Liesl" Frank (1903–1979). In: Eva-Maria Herbertz: Life in its shadow: women of famous artists. Munich 2009, pages 136–160, here: 141, [1] .
• 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 138–150, 12, 152, 180, 186, 217, 237, 248, 360, 361, 363, 391, 399, 400, 405.
• Klaus Mann : What do you work? Conversation with Bruno Frank. In: The literary world , volume 2, number 29, July 16, 1926, page 1.
• Ulrich Müller: Writing against Hitler. From historical to political novel. Investigations into the prose work of Bruno Frank. Mainz 1994, pages 16-27.
• Konrad Paul: Afterword. In: Bruno Frank: Political Novella. Berlin 1982, pages 381-395, here: 389.
• # Umlauf 1982 , pages 108-109, 111.
• #Walter 1960 , pages 367-368.

Web links

• Bruno Frank, Digital Works, Friedrich Stories

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kirchner, p. 360, footnote 78
2. ↑ Edition used, p. 15, 17. Zvu
3. ^ Entry No. 38 in the list of Abbesses of Quedlinburg
4. ^ The tsarina is dead (edition used, p. 178, 6th Zvu).
5. ↑ Edition used, p. 179, 3rd Zvu
6. ↑ Edition used, p. 209, 4th Zvo
7. ↑ Edition used, p. 178, 1. Zvo
8. ↑ Edition used, p. 173, 14th Zvu
9. ↑ see for example the edition used, p. 113, 3rd Zvu
10. ↑ Edition used, pp. 209–212
11. ↑ Kirchner, p. 391, penultimate entry
12. ↑ Max Herrmann-Neiße, quoted in Kirchner, p. 148, 12. Zvu and p. 396, last entry
13. ↑ Karrer, in Kirchner, p. 148, 14. Zvo and p. 361, footnote 93 and p. 399, 4th reference vu
14. ↑ Ulrich Müller in Kirchner, p. 400, 2nd reference vo
15. ↑ Kirchner, pp. 138–150 and pp. 360–361
16. ↑ Kirchner, p. 145 center, p. 146 center
17. ↑ Kirchner, all p. 391: Entry “The Grand Chancellor” (“Verse and Prose. A Monthly Journal”, February 15, 1924), entry “Die Scar” (“ Das Tag-Buch ”, from May 24, 1924), entry "Der Baron Trenck" ("Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung", from January 17, 1926, see also article head)
18. ↑ Kirchner, p. 387, first entry in 1926
19. ↑ Erwin Ackerknecht was a brother of Eberhard Ackerknecht . This and Bruno Frank were schoolmates at the Karlsgymnasium in Stuttgart and long-term friends.