Who can turn it around?

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Who can turn it around? is a novella by Wilhelm Raabe , which was written in 1859 and appeared in Westermann's monthly notebooks in the winter half of the year 1860 . In 1862 the text was in the “Tangled Life” collection at Carl Flemming's in Glogau . Raabe experienced reprints in 1896, 1901 and 1905.

Raabe describes the miserable life and death of poor people in “a big city”.

content

The end is anticipated. Rose cloud has died. The musician Heinrich Knispel watches over her coffin. Hugo van Hellen is up and away - out into the wide world.

Heinrich had attended the school for the poor and earned a few groschen with errands, bird dressage and as a violinist in a suburban dance hall. Shortly before Röschen's mother Hermione dies, he promises her to look after the girl. Heinrich keeps the promise. Röschen's father, the actor Emil Wolke, a drinker and crowd favorite in the “magic garden”, drowns himself in the river. His corpse is pulled ashore at the Unterbaum lock.

Röschen is terminally ill and no longer wants to live. On the sickbed she confesses to Heinrich that she had sinned badly against him. Heinrich forgives her. The girl dies.

shape

About fractions: The novella consists of five fragments. The story is also presented in fragments by the first-person narrator. The reader has to think along. Towards the end of the text the narrator doubts the truthfulness of his story, but he claims in one breath: “It happened that way.” The reader is suggested that the narrator understands his craft: “Oh, what does the black river chatter in the black night ! Of course, what he tells is only fragmentary, but he tells well. "

reception

Some passages were reminiscent of Baudelaire . The novella is Raabe's first publication under the title of which he has put his real name. Raabe had no success with the novella.

interpretation

Raabe used motifs from an unexecuted urban novel in the sketch. In Röschen, Fuld diagnosed consumption as the cause of death. The girl was seduced. Although not a word is said about the culprit in the text, only Hugo van Hellen comes into question from the personnel of the novella.

If the first-person narrator keeps repeating the title question “Who can turn it around?”, He can only mean the fate of the three-headed, dead cloud family. Finally he resigned: “Nobody could turn it around”.

expenditure

First edition

  • Tangled life. Novellas and sketches by Wilhelm Raabe. 263 pages. Carl Flemming, Glogau 1862 (The old university. The Junker von Denow. From the book of life of the schoolmaster Michel Haas. Who can turn it around? A secret )

Used edition

literature

  • Fritz Meyen : Wilhelm Raabe. Bibliography. 438 pages. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973 (2nd edition). Supplementary volume 1, ISBN 3-525-20144-3 in Karl Hoppe (Ed.): Wilhelm Raabe. Complete Works. Braunschweig edition . 24 vols.
  • Cecilia von Studnitz : Wilhelm Raabe. Writer. A biography. 346 pages. Droste Verlag, Düsseldorf 1989, ISBN 3-7700-0778-6
  • Werner Fuld : Wilhelm Raabe. A biography. 383 pages. Hanser, Munich 1993 (dtv edition in July 2006), ISBN 3-423-34324-9 .

annotation

  1. ↑ Raabe most likely means Berlin. This is indicated, for example, by the name Unterbaum and two other names from Raabe's Berlin prose. First, the Professor Homilius and, second, the editors of the " Chameleon " are named.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ von Studnitz, p. 309, entry 11
  2. ↑ Hoppe and Rohse in the edition used, p. 626 above and p. 629, 9. Zvo
  3. ↑ Hoppe and Rohse in the edition used, p. 630, entry B
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 518, 8. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 518, 12th Zvu
  6. ↑ Fuld, p. 141, 12. Zvo
  7. ↑ Fuld, p. 141 middle
  8. ↑ Fuld, p. 70, 11. Zvu and p. 137 middle
  9. ↑ Fuld, p. 70, 6th Zvu
  10. ↑ Fuld, p. 138, 7th Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 509, 17. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 477, 8. Zvu, p. 499, 12. Zvu, p. 510 below
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 503 below - 504
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 518, 9. Zvo
  15. ↑ Meyen, p. 19