Disorder and early suffering

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Disorder and Early Suffering is a novella by Thomas Mann , which was first published in the Neue Rundschau in 1925 and published as a book in 1926. In 1976, the material was filmed largely true to the text under the direction of Franz Seitz , with motifs from Tonio Kröger being included in a kind of opening credits . Performers include Martin Held , Ruth Leuwerik , Sabine von Maydell , Hansi Kraus and Christian Kohlund .

Thomas Mann's Munich villa, which served as a model for the ambience of disorder and early suffering .

The story has strikingly strong autobiographical features: in the head of the family, Professor Cornelius, and his “elegant and comfortable Munich suburban house”, the author and his villa in Bogenhausen can be easily recognized. The festival there is reminiscent of the typical artist and studio festivals of the Weimar period . The unusual family constellation is also very reminiscent of Thomas Mann's own circumstances: his two older children Klaus and Erika were the same age as Ingrid and Bert Cornelius in the inflation year of 1923 - and behaved just as eccentrically as described in disorder and early suffering . The younger siblings to twelve years biters and Lorchen largely correspond Michael Mann and Elizabeth , and standing in the center of the story early suffering of love, little dancer has quite similar in fact happened that way.

content

The Cornelius family

The novella takes place during the inflation period after the First World War . Professor Abel Cornelius, Full Professor of Early Modern History , lives with his wife, his teenage children Bert and Ingrid, the two stragglers Beißer and Eleonore ("Lorchen") and several servants in an elegant suburban house in Munich . In his function as a historian, he only loves history “if it has happened”. He hates the “current upheavals”, however, and sees them as “lawless, incoherent and cheeky, in one word: unhistorical”.

The two older children are characterized by a certain playful eccentricity that prompts them to all sorts of pranks. They circumvent the compulsory food rationing , for example, by standing in line several times in changing disguises in the shops to get the eggs they need for the holiday cake. Bert and Ingrid also once emptied their parents ' visiting card tray and distributed the cards all over the place , but not without a sense of the confusing and half-probable, in the quarter's mailboxes, which caused a lot of unrest. In the tram they have loud, “long, fake” and really “vulgar conversations” about Ingrid's alleged “son who is sadistic and recently tortured a cow in the country so indescribably” until a conservative gentleman himself Young people strongly forbid “discussing such issues”.

The two little ones, on the other hand, grow up pampered and protected, with cheerful games with their parents, with rhymes from the nurse Anna and teasing from the house servant Xaver Kleinsgütl. Beißer in his “four-year male dignity (...) suffers severely from the disparities in life, tends to be quick angry and to trample over anger, to desperate and bitter tears over every little thing”, which the nurse Anna attributes to his “fat blood”. Lorchen, on the other hand, her father's darling, likes to teach her brother to educate him about “diseases such as breast infections, hemorrhage and air inflammation” or to show him the birds “cloud eater, hail eater and raven eater” in a picture book .

The party

One evening the grown-ups have a party in their parents' house . Cornelius, for whom such activities are rather annoying, initially stays in the background, does his correspondence and prefers to occupy himself with the debts of historical states in his study . Later he mingles with the guests and lets his children introduce the young guests to him. a. the brewery heir Zuber, the actor Herzl, the “bank clerk” and Wandervogel singer Möller, but above all the student Max Hergesell. To anchovy rolls and cigarettes you dance “ Shimmys , Foxtrotts and Onestepps ”. The little ones enjoy the unfamiliar hustle and bustle and take part in the festival in an age-appropriate manner. To Lorchen's great amusement, Hergesell bends down to her and dances with her for fun as if with an adult partner.

On a short winter evening stroll, Professor Cornelius indulges in melancholy thoughts, compares Hergesell with his own dissolute son Bert, argues about his upcoming history classes the following morning , especially about the idea of ​​justice and the topics of sympathy and melancholy .
On his return he was told of Lorchen's troubles in the soul: she had been put to bed, but did not want to break away from Max Hergesell, her “dance partner”. “Max should be my brother,” she desperately begs her father. He asks himself reproachfully what the dance company has done. Anna brusquely forbids Anna's simple-minded, but not so inaccurate reference to the fact that the child's “female instincts” appear “very unbelievably lepping” and that Lorchen “got it really hard”. At the instigation of Xaver, the young house servant, Max comes back to Lorchen's bedroom and shows himself “in the visible full feeling of his role as a lucky charm , fairytale prince and swan knight ” on the little bed of the sobbing little girl , who then falls asleep. Cornelius praises the heavens that “a children's night forms a deep and wide abyss between day and day”, so that tomorrow “the young Hergesell will be just a pale shadow”, “unable to cause any disturbance to her heart”.

interpretation

First printed in 1925 in the literary magazine "Die neue Rundschau"
Imprint and beginning

A central theme of the narrative is the conservative desire to preserve the past and the retreat into the private sphere: History professor Cornelius consistently closes himself off to the times that are perceived as "lawless, cheeky and unhistorical", precisely the disorder occurring in the title . The difficult political situation of the Weimar Republic with its inflation , its political extremism and moral instability is reflected here as well as down the looming on the horizon Nazism . "Father love and a baby on the mother's breast" are therefore "timeless and eternal and therefore very sacred and beautiful". And yet Cornelius recognizes what is impure in this love, "the hostility in it, the opposition to the past history in favor of the past one, that is, of death".

Another motive is the creeping process of detachment of the children, these "villa proletarians", from their upper class parents. The big boys , Bert and Ingrid, have long since emancipated themselves , jokingly call their parents “venerable old men”, literally dancing on their noses and want to become artists or even work “as waiters in Cairo”. But even the little ones are already showing tendencies towards alienation. Lorchen's experience with the newcomer Max Hergesell not only corresponds to the second concept of the novel's title, early suffering , but is also a first early messenger of breaking out of familiar circles. It is still being pushed aside by Cornelius, trusting the brevity of the child's memory , but ultimately he cannot stop it.

With the figure of Max Hergesell, Thomas Mann has once again lived up to his reputation as the creator of speaking names: The young man has “come here”, a “journeyman” who, without being asked, gets between his father in a well-intentioned but (disturbing) way and daughter pushes. The professor's relationship with him is correspondingly ambivalent: on the one hand, he values ​​him as a “person of distinction” and a role model for his wandering son Bert. On the other hand, “the feelings that inspire the professor towards the young Hergesell” are quite peculiarly “brought together out of gratitude, embarrassment, hatred and admiration”. Jealousy and doubts about the purity of the student's motives also resonate when he jokingly and ambiguously admonishes him: “Don't twist your spine when you stoop”.

The villa's numerous servants also deserve attention, as they allow a multi-faceted insight into the social structure of the Weimar period : the simple-minded nanny Anna, who acts with "strict limitation", who considers her new set of teeth to be the "topic of conversation" and who overcompensates for hers Professional jargons also speak soft consonants harshly. The mischievous, largely satisfied with his position, Xaver Kleinsgütl, whose name Mann borrowed from his long-time unruly maid Josepha Kleinsgütl ("Affa"). Finally, the backyard sisters, who were relegated from the bourgeoisie to the servants ' sphere, were mocked by Kleinsgütl, who was “born equally low from the start”.

literature

  • Thomas Mann: Disorder and early suffering and other narratives. Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 3-596-29441-X

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