Frau Jenny Treibel

Jenny Treibel or " Where find't heart to heart " is a novel Theodor Fontane. The end of 1892 delivered, the novel very quickly gained the favor of audiences and critics that he has kept to this day with no apparent restriction. With apparently only half- seriously, the reader is vorgeplaudert after the pattern of a comedy story. It's about ownership and the social prestige associated with it, to education versus possession to poetry, true and false feelings.

Content

In the center of the novel are two families in Berlin: Firstly, the upper-class Treibels - the councilor, his wife Jenny and sons Otto and Leopold, on the other Wilibald Professor Schmidt and his daughter Corinna. The connection between the families existed for decades. At that time Wilibald was not only a young student, but also the admirer of Jenny, the daughter of his rooms landlord, who ran a small basement shop. Even a poem he wrote in his zeal for love Jenny - to achieve the desired success without, however. A poem, its literary qualities are modest, but that will put even many years later because of its dripping sentimentality of his girlfriend Jenny at every opportunity to lecture.

Wilibald it looked most like his daughter would her cousin Marcell, a promising aspiring archaeologists marry. Only can not bring himself to make her a proposal of marriage. The intelligent and independent Corinna has other plans anyway. She wants to break out of the modest world of a high school teacher budget. The social interaction with others, Professor Women ' finds them boring and correcting the student notebooks her father is also no real variety. So Corinna in the head sets to marry Leopold Treibel. Social prestige and material wealth you appear as providing adequate safeguards for a happy future and it uses all means to attract the nice, but easily influenced Leopold into the trap. She throws all her charm and wit into the mix one, two dinner parties and a country outing later she did it. It comes to the secret engagement.

Corinna has done its calculation without the mother- in-law. Jenny is furious - she had a rich young woman from a good family and no professor's daughter provided for Leopold as a bride. Immediately she takes the initiative, make representations to the professor, granted her son curfew and invites Hildegard Munk - the sister of Otto's wife - to Berlin to make this match with Leopold. The connection between Corinna and Leopold, meanwhile, is maintained by correspondence. The two fathers behave in this tense situation waiting - the counselor because he is busy trying to organize his campaign, and the professor because he trusted that Corinna's will is crushed by Jenny's resistance. Finally she decided thirty years ago for the material prosperity and social advancement called Treibel and against what is ideal and thus their admirers Wilibald.

Leopold writes Corinna resistant escape marriage and, if necessary, also in Scotland, lets his words but no action. After some time, Corinna recognizes that Leopold will never make free from the influence of his mother, and decides to break the engagement. Then Marcell proposes to her, and at the end of the novel finds the wedding instead. Leopold is offended, but can not ( at least as indicated ) comfort with Hildegard.

Figure Overview

Interpretation

" Jenny Treibel " occupies a special place among the novels Fontane - yet it is one of his few novels (as well as L' Adultera and the unfinished work Mathilde Möhring ), in which the middle class takes the central role. Fontane processed here his experience with a middle class, in which ideals and action, moral principles and practical decisions are diametrically opposed. The genesis of the book was influenced by the quarrels about the preprint of Trials and Tribulations, a novel, which was perceived by many contemporaries because of the depiction of a love affair between an ironer and a nobleman as offensive. Fontane had to learn how the contemporary bourgeoisie ruled with double standards. In addition, and in addition to marital love affairs were entirely tolerated - in a novel, however, wanted to read them nothing. Art was abstract, are "higher" ideals and goals and do not represent the own world with their social inconsistencies and distortions in question.

Jenny is a perfect example of this bourgeoisie. Like no other figure in Fontane it is presented as ridiculous. Jenny speaks constantly of, Higher ' and the fact that it was better to follow his feelings and to live in humble circumstances, and yet they decide themselves for the material well-being and urges her son to marry a boring but rich woman. Their action is in constant conflict with their words, without altering its is even aware of it. The professor's daughter Corinna she denied the marriage with her son and forgets that she is only risen through such a marriage from the basement shop of her father in a classy Berlin suburban villa. And as Jenny implements its unacknowledged material embossed values ​​within the family, pursued her husband with his political activities his own social advancement dream. A seat in the Reichstag is to provide a title beyond the " Kommerzienrates " and a higher social position. But Treibels election plans bear the stamp of the ridiculous. Not only is he on the product range of its chemical plants ( Prussian blue, the traditional color of Prussian uniforms ), directing its political position, even in the choice of his election campaign helper - a reserve lieutenant with abstruse views and an inexhaustible potential for unintentional humor - he turns out to be extremely clumsy. And so ends his political career before it has even begun.

Fontane shows in Roman social life of the bourgeoisie - a social layer that strives in Berlin in the 1880s, to imitate the nobility, and by the way invite a few representatives of art and science as a decoration for their social events. Especially Jenny repeatedly emphasized their strong interest for " the artistic ". But, apart from an uncritical Wagner cult and the regular chanting of Wilibalds " unseligem " poem in piano accompaniment of rich married former opera singer Adolar Krola this enthusiasm for art hardly bears fruit. Can speak of a real internalization of the values ​​propagated in the art of course be no question, and as the subtitle of the novel and at the same time the final line of Wilibalds poem ( " Where find't Heart to Heart" ) to be in flagrant contradiction to the plot of the novel. Even with Corinna and Marcell, there are probably more the intellect, with Leopold and Hildegard probably best if the company's shares. But that is exactly what Fontane - the contradiction between aspiration and reality in the set of values ​​of the upper-class society to show the better in its search for the feudal nobility than to develop their own political and social concepts. Fontane himself wrote to his son Theodor ( letter of 9 May 1888) that it proposed to him "... the Hollow, phrases gorgeous, lying, haughty, hard -hearted of Bourgeoisstandpunktes to show that speaks of Schiller and Gerson [ owner of a Berlin fashion salons, author's note ] says. "

Complement the above interpretation

" Jenny Treibel " you can probably call the " Song of the educated middle class ." Fontane is resistant propertied middle ( " bourgeoisie " - embodied by the Treibels and Munks ) and educated middle class ( embodied by the Schmidts, Marcell and the other a high school teacher ) with respect to each other.

Of course, the propertied middle ultimately comes off not very good; yet in Fontane 's description - to feel usually much benevolence and loving forbearance of the relevant characters - and condemnation. This applies primarily to Treibel himself, who is good-natured, generous and quite self-critical ("who are at the end of the Treibels "). His " election campaign " is indeed mocked, as a human being but not Fontane gives him cheap. Treibel analyzed quite lucid his own motives, as well as that of others. Fontane also suggests that Treibel - would have a marriage with Corinna Leopold accepted with cheerful resignation - even if at the end under the influence of his wife Jenny of Bourgeois wins in him. Even Otto and Leopold Treibel are good-natured and very friendly people, what they ultimately predestined to come " under the slipper " strong women: Otto among its extremely arrogant Hamburger wife Helen and Leopold especially among his mother Jenny, then Corinna and finally the of Helene's sister Hildegard. The bourgeois women, however, do not come with so much benevolence of how the masters. The most unpleasant character of the book - even more than Jenny herself - is likely Helene Treibel born Munk, the cold commercial, " dynastic " ("The Thompsons are a syndicate family !") And - pursuing educational goals - to her daughter Lissy. She considers it - unlike Jenny - not necessary to gloss over their interests with artistic and sentimental pretexts. For them, rather the smooth and proper facade is the most important thing.

Fontane's consent shall be deemed the educated middle class, whose ideals he represents as an outstanding and desirable. Of course, the vanities and " quirks " especially the high school professors do not come away with it. The undisputed protagonist is of course Wilibald Schmidt, not only the spiritual, but also the Humane is above all. He is liberal ( "If I were not a professor, I would end Social Democrat !"), Seen through the people and has, despite a slope, the weaknesses of his acquaintances expose with wit and acuity, a deep and sympathetic understanding for his fellow man. That's what he has in common with Marcell and Distelkamp, and these three are because even for the ideal of citizen education, the Fontane high only pays when he embodies not only knowledge and culture, but also the Humane. The contrast is provided by the professors cow, beef and Immanuel Schulze, although they are also in the camp of the mind and knowledge, but it humanly vulnerable, vain and colder than their colleagues of the "seven orphans of Greece".

Corinna is " interloper " between the two spheres. Actually, it belongs to the educated middle class, has the gifts her father inherited ("and almost smarter than the old man "), is intelligent, educated, interested in many things. But she has the " propensity to externals ". She feels attracted to the bourgeoisie and toying with it. But that's just youthful self-deception. Would you look very clear at the end that they " certainly also probably not very happy " has become, she would have married Leopold. It is not a man of great passions, she is talented, cheerful and enterprising and would never bored, not even with Leopold, to which they as the stronger would anyway have had a not inconsiderable influence. But it does not belong in this life. It embodies, even if she has forgotten for a while, also the ideals of the educated middle class. It shall respect these ideals and lives at her youth. Therefore, it is not only the intellect, which connects it with Marcell; rather, it is an existing small due sympathy between the two, a harmony, a real matchability, respect for the same ideals. For, in Corinna, the " propensity to externals " notwithstanding, a great honesty and integrity, a respect for the Human that she has from her father and with Marcell shares - and they name separated by Jenny Treibel.

In addition to these representatives of the main groups of the novel, the bourgeoisie and the educated middle class, there is a number of secondary characters that give the whole the right color.

In first place is because woman Schmolke, Professor Schmidt's housekeeper and surrogate mother Corinna, real Berlin petit bourgeois and policeman 's widow ( " Schmolke gently och always ..."). It underlines the Schmidt's ideals, unless they are related to knowledge and culture: It embodies the purely human, kindness, warmth, mothering. Of course Fontane caricatured their popularity. But basically it is Schmidt's alter ego and stresses by their presence and importance in the Schmidt household the Humane.

Fontane's socially critical realism is especially evident in the picture that he draws of the two governesses, Miss Honey and Miss beads. It is a comforting and joyless showing us that Corinna's fear of the " humble " is not at all unfounded. The governesses are educated women of the lower middle class who have not managed to "save" in the economic port of marriage, and are forced to earn their living as teachers or society ladies in the world of the bourgeoisie. They have to make their own lives completely and accept complete subordination and not infrequently humiliation. They are even bitter and envious.

Quotes

• "Title: Woman Counselor 'or' Where find't heart to heart ' ( borrowed from Schiller's poem. " Song of the Bell ": original:" Drüm test what ever binds, whether the heart is to the heart " ) This is the final line of a sentimental favorite song that sings the 50-year Counselor in the narrow circle resistant ( Schmidt wrote this song at a younger age for Jenny, as he still courted ) and by which they claim to, Higher ' purchases, while her in truth only that, Kommerzienrätliche ', wants to say a lot of money, Higher ' means. Show the Cave, phrases gorgeous, lying, haughty, hard -hearted of the bourgeois standpoint, which speaks of Schiller and Gerson says " the purpose of history.

Theodor Fontane: Complete Works, ed. by Walter Keitel. Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 1963, vol 4, p 717 cutout.

• "What is a novel? He should tell us to avoid all Overdone and ugly, a story in which we believe. He should speak to our imagination and our hearts, give suggestion, without upset; it should appear to us a world of fiction for a few moments as a world of reality, to us weep and laugh, hope and fear, in the end can but feel love partly under and pleasant to have lived partly under characterful and interesting people whose handling we prepared good times, promoted us, explained and taught. This is about a novel. [ ... ] What should the modern novel? [ ... ] The novel is supposed to be a picture of the time to which we belong themselves, at least the reflection of a life at the border, we were still standing or even of the our parents still told. "

Theodor Fontane: Gustav Freytag: The ancestors. Vol I-III. Book Review of " Vossische Zeitung" of 14 and February 21, 1875 Quoted from: . Theodor Fontane: Mathilde Möhring. Essays on literature. Causerien about the theater. Nymphenburg Verlagshandlung, Munich, 1969 ( Vol. 14 of the Nymphenburg paperback edition in 15 vol ), pp. 177 cutout.

Expenditure

• Fontane, Theodor: Mrs Jenny Treibel or " Where find't Heart to Heart". First edition. F. Fontane & Co., Berlin 1893
• Fontane, Theodor: Mrs Jenny Treibel or " Where find't Heart to Heart". Novel. Edited by Tobias Witt. Berlin 2005 ( Great Brandenburg edition, the narrative work, vol 14). ISBN 3-351-03126-2

Secondary literature

• Lowsky, Martin: Theodor Fontane: Ms. Jenny Treibel or Where find't heart to the heart. King's Notes: Text analysis and interpretation (Vol. 360). C. Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2011, ISBN 978-3-8044-1906-3
• Müller- Seidel, Walter: Theodor Fontane. Social fiction art in Germany. J. B. Metz Kindler Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1975
• Judge Simone: Fontane's concept of education in "Mrs. Jenny Treibel " and " Mathilde Möhring ". Lack of education of the heart as the reason for the failure of the bourgeoisie, Saarbrücken 2007