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Famous German Novellas of the 19th Century (Immensee. Peter Schlemihl. Brigitta)

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In the middle of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park there's a monumental bronze statue of two men in 18th C costumes, standing together with their arms over each other's shoulders. On the pedestal are carved just two names: Goethe, Schiller. The statue lies on my jogging/walking route and I pass it two or three times a week. Often I notice tourists staring at it in puzzlement, and sometimes people will stop me to ask if I know who the two imposing figures are. Depending on my mood, I may tell them the truth or I may say that they were the Minnesota delegates to the Second Continental Congress. I've actually had people thank me for the latter info.

In the 19th Century, German writers and German culture at large were widely venerated in the USA. Attendance at a German university then was the equivalent of a PhD from MIT or Harvard today. Even today, the repertoires of American symphony orchestras are dominated by German composers, but very few Americans are acquainted with Goethe or Schiller except by name, or perhaps through the cracked lens of French and Italian opera. The three novellas in this small collection are classics for German readers, as familiar to them as Rip van Winkle or Poe's Telltale Heart to Americans. All three would have been familiar to literate Americans of the 19th C also, either in translation or in the original, and I'm fairly sure that the writers of the so-called American Renaissance - Irving, Poe, Melville, and especially Hawthorne - were more influenced by these German Romantic authors than many scholars have realized. Melville, for instance, may have gotten most of his education from a boatswain's pipe, but he was extremely well-read and made frequent allusions to the German Romantics in his own writings.

In any case, these are three very fine novellas, mellow with atmosphere and fantasy. "Immensee" by Theodor Storm is my favorite, and probably the most likely to appeal to modern tastes. It's a story of a thwarted love, a heart-rending lifelong misunderstanding love, all of its passions evoked rather than explained, all of its psychology implicit, revealed by actions rather than declarations. Sorrow is not announced but observed. I read it many years ago, when I was studying German in college. The translation by CW Bell is straightforward and neutral, not very much like the rustic, tangy original, but lucid enough to be a good story anyway... something like eating white bread with mayo after a lunch of knakkebrot with goat cheese.

"Peter Schlemihl" by Adelbert von Chamisso, written in 1814, is another version of the Faust story, in which a poor young man sells his shadow to a "mysterious stranger" for a purse of gold that is always full. The stranger is of course the Devil, but Peter escapes Satan's wiles with his soul intact. The similarity of this tale to later works by Hawthorne and Mark Twain is striking, but Chamisso's version is eternally witty and fresh, really the archetype for all the others.

"Brigitta", by the Austrian Adalbert Stifter, is all about atmosphere - first the charming scenes of young men on their world tours, then the vast smokey abundance of the steppes of Hungary, then the pastoral utopia of a progressive paternalistic estate managed for the benefit of the folk. This is also a story of thwarted love, which ends with a surprising reaffirmation of the joy of real intimacy. There's a hint of "Wuthering Heights" -- that most Germanic of all English novels -- in the portrayal of the characters and in the narration by an outsider to the emotional turmoil.

Not only are these three stories essential classics of European literature but they're also fun to read, even in bland English translation. Highly enjoyable, and not nearly as overwhelming as Goethe or Schiller!

The book contains three well known German novellas:

Theodor Storm: Immensee
Adelbert von Chamisso: Peter Schlemihl
Adalbert Stifter: Brigitta

Being German, I know them since I was an adolescent, and I love them. Therefore, here is what others have to say about them:

Theodor Storm (1817 - 88), poet and short-story writer, was born in Schleswig... As early as 1843 he had made himself known as a lyrical poet of the Romantic School, ...but he wrote nothing that excels, in depth and tenderness of feeling, the charming story of Immensee; and taking his work all in all, Storm still ranks today as a master of the short story in Ger-man literature, rich though it is in this form of prose-fiction. (C. W. Bell)

Peter Schlemihl, one of the pleasantest fancies of the days when Germany delighted in romance, was first published in 1814. The story is a poet's whim. Later writings of Chamisso (1781-1838) proved him to be one of the best lyric poets of the romance school of his time, entirely German in his tone of thought. (Henry Morley)

Brigitta is usually regarded as an early example of German realism and written by probably the most accomplished Austrian prose writer of the nineteenth century, Adalbert Stifter (1805 - 68)..., an illustration of Stifter's didactic con-cern with inner beauty in contrast to outward appearances... Stifter instructs us in more than inner beauty by demonstrating for us - perhaps unwittingly - that the preferred and positive values of the civilized world are always already informed by their antinomies. (Robert C. Holub in: Brigitta, or the Lesson of Realism)

This book collects old tanslations. E.g., Chamisso's "...Schlemihl" is in a 19th-century translation by Henry Morley. A more recent trans. is Harry Steinhauer's 1977 version in German Romantic Stories (Continuum, ed. Ryder). Stifter's 'Brigitta' is in Edward Fitzgerald's 1957 trans. (cf. Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly's 1990 trans.), Storm's 'Immensee' is C. W. Bell's trans.