How five girls perish miserably in brandy

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Jeremias Gotthelf (around 1844)

How five girls perish miserably in brandy is a story by Jeremias Gotthelf , which was published in November 1838 in Wagner's bookstore in Bern.

content

The first-person narrator, a “rubber” - that's a clerk , a traveling salesman - stops by a farming village in the canton of Bern . In the dining room of the inn he observes five girls addicted to brandy. The next day he meets a local farmer. During several conversations, the communicative old man tells the city traveler about the woeful fate of the five alcoholics.

Stüdeli

The father, a dissolute wagoner, died early. In the second marriage, the mother had several children - ugly bad things that tormented the stepsister very much. Stüdeli stayed with a seamstress. This “unclean bitch” attracted men. Each of the visitors spent the night with the seamstress in a bed in which Stüdeli also had to sleep. After the seamstress' sudden death, Stüdeli followed the example of the deceased. The "Meitschi" slept with a funny farmer's son. The Brönz, that is the brandy, made Stüdeli “the blood so heavy and black” that she finally “cannot sweat out the poison”. She doesn't get up one morning. " Stomach break " is suspected. Stüdeli ends in terrible madness . She rips the clothes. As was not unusual in the canton of Bern at that time, the patient was locked in a chamber, stark naked. When Stüdeli is racing, she is beaten "out of sheer mercy" by the people who push her food and drink. Once, when the patient has become quiet again, these people let her out into the cold winter. Stüdeli goes off badly dressed. On the way she finds shelter and gets brandy. Stüdeli dances out into the night. She freezes to death in it.

Babi

The parents were good people with principles. One of them: Bäbi was allowed to become pregnant before marriage, but the parents did not want an illegitimate grandchild.

The parents had apprenticed Bäbi zu Stüdeli because they had heard that Stüdeli was a good seamstress. During her apprenticeship, Bäbi had to drink brandy and sleep in Stüdeli's only bed. Bäbi had to do what Stüdelis or their own co-sleepers wanted in the bed. Towards the end of his apprenticeship, Bäbi became “pregnant by some rascal”. The mother-to-be had absolutely no idea what was happening to her body. When the impending birth could no longer be concealed, the angry father knocked the name of the father-to-be out of the unfortunate woman with his fist. But it wasn't the specified neighbor's son at all. With the best will in the world, Bäbi did not know who had fathered the child.

The fathers of the young people, two neighbors, argue and litigate at great cost. The child is born. After all, Bäbi has to swear on the matter in court. The young mother does not get over the perjury. Babi dies. People talk of a sudden and cruel fever and also of a hemorrhage .

Marei

As a “poor, bad people's child”, Marei was “made to beg” at an early age. Begging children, including Marei, drink brandy. The child was taken from its parents. Then later, Marei approached old men. The first, a miser, was informed about the thefts of Mareis by his relatives who want to inherit him. The old man tolerated Marei's drunkenness, but did not allow himself to be stolen from. So the convicted thief came to the penitentiary. After her release, Marei took on a widower again. He was a hardened villain who had nothing against a convict.

Drunk, Marei finally falls into a steaming kettle in the old man's house and is boiled.

Lisabeth

As the daughter of a shoemaker and a laundress, Lisabeth grew up in the poor settlement of the farming village. She is the only one of the five drinkers who survived. But her drunkenness brought her to the hospital. The alcohol withdrawal there didn't get her at all. Then back in freedom, she lives with a belt man and over time has six children. The couple neglect their offspring so much that the narrator complains: "Pray for the poor little worms that God may soon redeem them and take them up to his beautiful heaven!"

Liseli

When the pretty farmer's daughter was fourteen years old, her mother died. The girl, "tall and strong like an eighteen-year-old", was seduced by a boarder in her father's house. The forbidden pleasures became Liseli's need. The relationship becomes known. Liseli's reputation has been destroyed. Then later a businessman, a “failed subject” from “some city”, advertises her. Liseli wants to be married, especially since the groom is drinking. The father does not say no to the daughter husband. Liseli becomes a mother. The businessman neglects his wife. Liseli is harmless on the Brönz. You can't tell the drunkenness of the quite stately-looking woman.

Once in midsummer, when the first-person narrator approached the village during a heavy thunderstorm, lightning strikes one of the houses. Liseli's dwelling was hit and is on fire. The dutiful husband is sitting in the tavern playing cards. Liseli wakes up. The still drunk woman rescues herself from the fire. Outside, Liseli thinks about it and looks for her children. When the little ones cannot be found, Liseli falls into the flames and burns with her children. The moralist Gotthelf comments on the misery about the "burned children that a sober mother would have saved."

Bern German

  • Sometimes the meaning of the Bern German words cannot be guessed.
Bärndütsch Standard German
places mend
puff nibble, browse
allbets already
flea procrastinate
Kilter also: window-country boy
God godmother
sturgeon Wage labor
Ghüder Rubbish
Längizyti Homesickness
Müntschi kiss
Kuderbützi Doll
Gaden Attic
Storm dizzy
  • Whole sentences also need a translation. Gotthelf, for example, has business travelers say: "Nobody would have done anything bad, and nobody before a judge gsi vo ne as one is drGroßätti, because he wants to help the priest pour his plum heyg, dr Landvogt heyg but nume glachet u asked, whether she de ryf gsi syge. ”- Nobody would have done anything bad, and none of them was before the judge except once the grandfather, because he had his plums for the priest [= the priest's plums] helped to shake, but the governor only laughed and asked if they were ripe.

reception

  • An anonymous writes on May 2, 1839 in the “ Christian Volksbote from Basel ”: The text makes “too close to the dirt of vice acquainted”.
  • The story is Gotthelf's answer to Zschokke's “The Brandy Plague” from 1837. In it, the alcohol addiction that arose at the time is played down.
  • An anonymous reviewer in the liberal weekly “ Berner Volksfreund ” on January 24, 1839 gave Gotthelf's text preference over Zschokke's “Lustspiel”. Because Zschokke's text cannot be localized regionally and is rather improbable.
  • According to Fehr, the narrative has not received sufficient attention from recent literary historiography. That is why he dedicates an entire sub-chapter to the “Structure of the“ Five Girls ”” in his Gotthelf book. Gotthelf put the life and death of the five drinkers together from fifteen individual images - in three sections of five images each. Based on the present, the first-person narrator experiences the “Schnapselend” in the tavern. Second, thanks to the communicability of the local farmer mentioned above, Gotthelf draws on events from the past of the five alcoholics. And thirdly, the future is illuminated: the first-person narrator is on site during Liseli's terrible death by fire.
  • The pastor Gotthelf geißele drunkenness as godlessness , behind which the devil stick.
  • v. Zimmermann calls the story a “breach of the norm” and a “brutal picture of alcoholism”.

literature

First edition

  • Jeremias Gotthelf: How five girls perish miserably in brandy. A strange story. Wagner'sche Buchhandlung, Bern 1838.

Used edition

  • How five girls perish miserably in brandy. A strange story . In: Henri Poschmann: Gotthelf's works in two volumes (=  library of German classics ). Vol. 1, pp. 1-87. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1982 (3rd edition), text basis: Gotthelf complete edition by Rudolf Hunziker and Hans Bloesch (Munich 1911) and the 20-volume edition by Walter Muschg (Basel 1948).

expenditure

  • Jeremias Gotthelf: How five girls perish miserably in brandy. How Joggeli is looking for a woman . The valid day. Reissued from the original text by Otto Sutermeister . Zahn, La Chaux-de-Fonds 1894. Magnificent edition with full-page illustrations by Albert Anker and K. Gehri, linen with gilding on the spine and cover.

Secondary literature

  • Karl Fehr : Jeremias Gotthelf. Poet and prophet - narrator and educator. On language, poetic art and the content of his writings . Francke Verlag, Bern 1986, ISBN 3-317-01611-6 .
  • Pierre Cimaz: Jeremias Gotthelf (1797-1854). The novelist and his time. From the French by Hanns Peter Holl. A. Francke, Tübingen / Basel 1998, ISBN 3-7720-2185-9 .
  • Christian von Zimmermann: "How to (not) write a people's book". In Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): "Jeremias Gotthelf". text + criticism. Issue 178/179, pp. 43-55. Richard Boorberg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-88377-913-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Used edition, p. 357, first entry
  2. ↑ Schnapps , increasingly made from potato and fruit leftovers since 1830 (Cimaz, p. 66, 5th Zvu)
  3. ↑ Used edition, p. 47, 12. Zvu and 5. Zvu
  4. ↑ Son -in-law
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 86, 6th Zvu
  6. ↑ Homesickness at berndeutsch.ch
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 51, 1. Zvo
  8. ↑ quoted in v. Zimmermann, p. 54, note 14
  9. ^ "The brandy plague" in Gutenberg-DE
  10. ↑ Fehr, p. 145, 12. Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 1, 6. Zvo
  12. ↑ v. Zimmermann, p. 46, 16. Zvo and p. 54, note 15
  13. ↑ Fehr, pp. 146-147
  14. ↑ Cimaz, p. 64, middle
  15. ↑ Cimaz, p. 68, 12. Zvu
  16. ↑ v. Zimmermann, p. 54, note 14 and p. 46, 5. Zvo

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