An unexpected reunion
Unexpected reunion is one of the best-known stories of the calendar story type bythe poet and narrator Johann Peter Hebel . It first appeared in 1811 in the calendar Der Rheinländische Hausfreund published by Hebel.
content
A young miner in the Swedish Falun and his bride want "on St. luciae" - this is the 13th of December and a Festival of Lights in Sweden (Memorial of Saint Lucia of Syracuse ) - married, but a few days before the wedding he does not return more out back to the mine; nor is his body recovered. Pass fifty years - the narrator illustrates the lapse of 50 years through a crowded list of the occurred historical events - there is "something before or after Johannis " - this is the day of the summer solstice and an even more significant festival in Sweden - in a collapsed coal face of Mine found the corpse of a young man, completely preserved by water containing vitriol . Nobody knows him, because his relatives have been dead for a long time. But then, "gray and shriveled" , the old woman who got engaged to him 50 years ago joins a crutch. She sinks "more with joyful delight than with pain on the beloved corpse" and thanks God that she is allowed to see her bridegroom again. She attends the funeral in her Sunday garb, "as if it were her wedding day ..." . When the corpse is being laid in the grave in the churchyard, she says: “Now sleep well, for another day or ten in the cool wedding bed, and don't let the time get long. I only have a little more to do and I'll be back soon, and soon it will be day again. "
template
Hebel was inspired by a true story that took place a hundred years earlier and about which Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert reported in 1808 in his views from the night side of natural science . For details on this and other literary processing of the substance in Literary Falun Mine # reception .
For interpretation
The story is told as recently happened. The narrator sharply contrasts the absolute calm in the mountain with which the vitriol permeates the corpse, as well as the quiet aging of the bride - there is no mention of either - with the noisy world events, by explaining the great events and upheavals that the reader can remember enumerates the past decades in time-lapse style , from the Lisbon earthquake to the present of the Napoleonic Wars .
What love can be, the actual subject of the story, is shaped in this miraculous course of fate. The paradox that unfulfilled love outlives a person's life moves the reader strangely deep. The story, praised as a masterpiece - Ernst Bloch called it “the most beautiful story in the world” - is also political: It was published in 1811 under the eyes of the Napoleonic censors . Every word in the historical account has therefore been chosen with care. The contemporary reader could see the skeptical attitude of the author towards the most recent events from the fact that the list ends not with the defeat of Prussia but with the bombing of Copenhagen in 1807 , which meant a setback for Napoleon.
Opera
The composer Alois Bröder created his second opera Unverhofftes Wiedersehen , which was premiered on June 24, 2017 at the Mainfranken Theater in Würzburg, largely taking over the Hebel's text .
literature
- Giuseppe Bevilacqua: In che consiste il fascino di Unexpected reunion. In: Paragone 254 (1971), pp. 45-76.
- Helmuth Mojem: Hopeful resistance. Johann Peter Hebels “Unexpected Reunion” between idyll and utopia. In: Journal for German Philology 111 (1992), Issue 2, pp. 181-200.
- Carl Pietzcker: Johann Peter Hebels "Unexpected Reunion". An attempt at psychoanalysis. In: Carl Pietzcker (ed.): Johann Peter Hebel. Immortal from the Wiesental. Freiburg im Breisgau 1996, pp. 263-299.
- Horst-Jürgen Gerigk : Literary transience. Notes on Oscar Wilde's “Portrait of Dorian Gray” and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's “Rosenkavalier” with regard to Johann Peter Hebel's “Unexpected Reunion”. In: Imagery as visualization and enigma of the world. Literature and art around the turn of the century. Edited by Volker Kapp. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-09182-5 , pp. 139-144.
- Johann Anselm Steiger : Unexpected reunion with Johann Peter Hebel. Studies on the poetic and narrative theology of Hebels. Heidelberg 1998.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert: Views from the night side of natural science. 4th edition, Dresden and Leipzig 1840, chapter eighth lecture. The organic pre-world , p. 113–127, p. 121 f .
- ↑ Ernst Bloch: Afterword. In: Johann Peter Hebel: Calendar Stories. Selection and afterword by Ernst Bloch. Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 139.
- ^ Website of the composer