Ut de Franzosentid

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Ut de Franzosentid is a novel by the Low German writer Fritz Reuter (1810–1874), which was first published in 1859 . The high German translation is from the French times .

content

The novel Ut de Franzosentid describes similar events that could have happened during the French occupation by Napoleon in 1813 in Reuter's hometown of Stavenhagen in Mecklenburg , when the writer was still a child. Reuter's father was the city's mayor, and the governor (Johann Joachim) Heinrich Weber (1757–1826) was his godfather.

After the Napoleonic troops had to withdraw from Russia , they were on their way back to the west towards home. Billing and requisitions made problems for the population. When one day marauding soldiers show up in Stavenhagen, the governor Weber, who doesn't understand French, tries to appease a wildly gesticulating chasseur by offering him wine. The present Müller Voss proves to be a solid drinking companion, so that in the end the Frenchman is lying unconscious under the table. The miller, who is also seriously drunk, does not want to leave the Frenchman, with whom he drank brotherhood, and orders his servant Friedrich to load him into the back of the wagon and bring him home to the mill. Since Friedrich doesn't think this is a good idea, he gets rid of the Frenchman on the way by leaving him somewhere sleeping under a tree. In the process, he discovers a large amount of valuables stolen by the French, which he takes from the soldier, the “chasseur”.

The next day he hands the treasure to the miller, who can no longer remember anything. Since he is in great financial trouble, the money would come in handy. But his daughter Fieken ("Friederike") makes it very clear to him that he must not keep the valuables under any circumstances. If the French caught him, he would fare badly. So he goes back to the governor to hand over the things to him. But on the way it turns out that the Frenchman has meanwhile disappeared.

While the miller had rendered one French man harmless, the watchmaker Droz, who was the only one in Stavenhagen to speak French and who also had a French uniform, drove away the remaining soldiers by posing as a regular French officer, before whom the marauders flew took. But when a regular French regiment under Colonel von Toll actually arrives in Stavenhagen, the situation becomes difficult. To the colonel, it must appear as if a French soldier had been murdered by the population. In order to preserve the dwindling authority of the French, he wants to make an example and arrests a number of honorable Stavenhageners, including the miller and the mayor. Since he also finds the stolen valuables, he senses unheard of events and takes the arrested people with him when his troops withdraw.

But Friedrich, the miller's servant, is now looking for the missing Frenchman in order to prove in this way that the accused were telling the truth. After a long search, he actually succeeds not only in finding the French, but also in catching him. The governor, on the other hand, brought witnesses to the fact that the valuables were property of Germans that had been illegally confiscated from them. So everyone is released while the Frenchman is being executed. The freedmen return to Stavenhagen to great cheers from the population.

The self-important uncle Herse, who is also a notary, discovers a passage in the contract of the miller, who is still in great financial distress, according to which the miller is entitled to a whole bushel as wages for every bushel given to him for grinding. Obviously, this is only a spelling mistake made when logging (“whole bushel” instead of “whole measure”). With a bad conscience, but pressed by hardship and strengthened by Herses encouragement, Müller Voss set about withholding the questionable meal wages, with which he can settle all his debts to the Jew after a while. But of course people cannot put up with the fact that they cannot get flour for their grain and sue the miller. Governor Weber must condemn the miller, while he sharply rebukes Herse for giving people such stupid advice and advising him (successfully) to forego his notary license in the future. At the same time, the governor instead awards a large part of the ownerless stolen property to Friedrich, the miller's servant, because he had caught the thief. This is just inconvenient for him, as he wants to pull the land storm against the French. At a sign from the governor, Friedrich now lends the troubled miller the money as long as he is with the soldiers, and Müller's Fieken succeeds in getting the mill back on its feet economically. At the end there is a happy ending and a double wedding, in which besides Müller's Fieken also the Fieken from the castle household are married, Müller's Fieken from the son of one of the miller's main believers, the other Fieken from his servant Friedrich.

meaning

Ut de Franzosentid is the first of Reuter's autobiographical novels, all of which he wrote in Low German. The focus is still entirely on the local events and the characters that Reuter narrates in a humorous way, while the course of the plot takes a back seat to the anecdotal episodes. Reuter is free and creative with the truth, but basically it is about events that actually happened and were told in family circles. The people involved are also real.

expenditure

  • Olle camels. Two funny stories . Hinstorff, Wismar 1859
  • Olle Kamellen, first part . Hinstorff, Wismar 1862
  • Works 12 volumes , vol. 3. Leipzig 1936
  • Collected Works and Letters Vol. 4 . Rostock 1967
  • Works in three volumes Vol. 1 . Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin and Weimar 1972
  • Ut de Franzosentid . Rostock 1979
  • Ut de Franzosentid . Heath 1981
  • Ut de Franzosentid . BookSurge Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0-543-89389-8
  • Ut de Franzosentid (audio book), read by Gerd Lüpke . Tennemann Verlag , Schwerin 2013, ISBN 978-3-941452-28-2 (double CD)

Translations

Standard German

  • From the French period. A funny story for youth and people . Tr .: Friedrich Kleemeier. Dietrich, Munich 1909
  • From the French period . Acc .: Gerhard Henner. Bachem, Cologne 1912
  • From the French period . Tr .: A. von Schweigert. Upper Austrian People's Education Association, Linz 1915
  • From the French period . Acc .: Anna Schotten. Heling, Leipzig 1933
  • From the French period . Acc .: Heinrich Conrad. Janke, Leipzig 1939
  • The French story . Acc .: Fritz Meyer-Scharffenberg. Hinstorff, Rostock 1962
  • Tides of life. The novels of memory . Acc .: Friedrich and Barbara Minssen. Langen-Müller, Munich and Vienna 1976
  • Autobiographical novels . Acc .: Friedrich and Barbara Minssen. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1978

English

  • In the Year '13: A Tale of Mecklenburg Life . Tr .: Charles Lee Lewes. 1867
  • When the French Were Here . Acc .: Carl F. Bayerschmidt

Finnish

  • Ranskalais-vuodelta 1813 . Ex .: Martti Raitio. Söderström, Parvoossa 1915

Swedish

  • Fransman i stan . Acc .: Edwin Kallstenius. Nature and culture, Stockholm 1960

Dramatization

  • Karl Nahmmacher . Hinstorff, Wismar 1926

Film adaptations

  • Uncle Bräsig tells , BRD 1979 (TV series; director: S. Barabas)
  • From the French period , FRG 1981 (TV; Director: D. Damek)

radio play

literature

  • Maria Haehmer: The political and cultural-historical background in Fritz Reuter's "Ut de Franzosentid". A contribution to Reuter research . Wulle, Münster i. W. 1916.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Reuter knew the locations and the characters of the plot very well, although he does allow himself minor anachronisms and especially redesigns Councilor Herse in a humorous way. Wilhelm Seelmann notes, of course, “that the lovers, Heinrich or Fiken Voss, owe their existence to poetic invention. The same applies to all French. ”(Wilhelm Seelmann (Ed.): Reuters Werke . Bibliographisches Institut, Vienna / Leipzig 1905/1906, Volume 3, p. 268) Furthermore, he points out that of the events Reuters biographer Glagau 1874 only Mayor Reuter's escape was confirmed by contemporaries, while the letters that the governor Weber wrote to his son about the time of the French occupation do not mention any of the events that Reuter lets happen in the castle. (see pp. 268/269)
  2. ↑ Grete Grewolls: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons . Hinstorff Verlag, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01301-6 , p. 10583 .