"Raabe's 'Else von der Tanne'." German Quarterly 40, #4 (November, 1967): 653-663

Raabe's Else von der TanneAuthor(s): Janet K. KingSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Nov., 1967), pp. 653-663Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/402460 .

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RAABE'S ELSE VON DER TANNE

Janet K. King

Despite a considerable scholarly interest in Wilhelm Raabe's work, the author has not enjoyed a wide reading public.1 One

explanation for this phenomenon is suggested by Herman Meyer, who observes that the narrational complexities of Raabe's style have been a formidable barrier between this author and a wider reading public.2 Another cause may be attributed in part to scholars and critics themselves. Barker Fairley points out that Raabe's literary reputation has rested largely on three works, Der Hungerpastor, Abu Telfan, and Der Schiidderump, and that these novels are not neces-

sarily either his best or most representative writing.3 Fairley states: "It is a sobering thought for those who accept the conventional estimate that, whatever the virtues of the 'trilogy,' it has effectively stood between the reading public and the rest of Raabe both during his lifetime and after."4 Fairley remarks further that emerging interest in Stopfkuchen may be indicative of a change in popular and critical

attitudes, but that any real change has yet to come.5

Raabe's Novelle Else von der Tanne belongs to the same period as Abu Telfan and Schiidderump. Written during the summer of

1863, Else von der Tanne in its extreme pessimism is characteristic of kaabe's middle or Stuttgart period. At the same time, structurally the Novelle foreshadows later works such as Stopfkuchen. Whereas both Abu Telfan and Schiidderump adhere to a linear development of plot, Else von der Tanne, like Stopfkuchen, is a mixture of present happenings and remembered events.6 In Else von der Tanne the reader's attention is concentrated upon the various episodes as

chronologically unordered yet closely integrated parts of a whole, whereas in Raabe's novels and other shorter works written during this same decade, the author presents his plot in traditional fashion

by narrating a sequence of chronological events.

It is clear, then, that Else von der Tanne is both innovating and

representative in comparison with other of Raabe's works written

during the Stuttgart period. This study will concern itself with an

investigation of Raabe's narrative technique in Else von der Tanne and its implications for the author's Weltanschauung as revealed in other works written during the same period.

At the outset of the Novelle the reader is presented with a mass

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of information on subjects whose possible relevance to the theme of the narrative can only be viewed in retrospect. Raabe commences his story with a weather report, describing a raging storm. Then attention shifts to Pastor Leutenbacher, who has been laboring over his Christmas sermon. Not relinquishing the point of view of the omniscient storyteller, Raabe delves into the conscious memory of the pastor and, at the same time, sets the tone for the entire narrative:

Dominus Magister Friedemann Leutenbacher, der Pfarrherr zu Wallrode im Elend, hatte den ganzen Tag iiber an seiner Weihnachtspredigt gearbeitet und Speise und Trank, ja schier jegliches Aufblicken darob versiiumt; das irdische Leben war so bitter, daB man es nur ertragen konnte, indem man es vergal; aber der Prediger im Elend konnte es nicht vergessen: eine solche Weihnachtsrede hatte er noch nicht schreiben miissen.7

The tone and emphasis of the final statement simulate the first

person singular. However, the author has built up to this statement which verges on being an exclamation-"eine solche Weihnachtsrede" -with a series of apparently detached observations. The pastor has worked on his Christmas sermon throughout the day, an impartial assertion. Next the reader learns that this work has been of singular intensity since the pastor has not eaten or drunk; he has not even

paused from his labor. Up to this point there may have been any number of reasons, both good and bad, for such energetic activity. The allegation which follows, however, leaves no room for doubt as to the motivation. The pastor behaves in the manner described because temporal life is only rendered bearable by being forgotten, a powerful statement of negation in the factual context established

by the preceding observations. The technique is striking. However, Raabe is not only bent on startling the reader. More important, he is presenting in this matter-of-fact fashion the underlying concept or Idee of the Novelle. For Friedemann Leutenbacher life is un-

bearable, and the subsequent narrative will illustrate why this is so.

Initially life is unbearable because, for reasons as yet unclear, the pastor cannot forget the reality of earthly existence. That a resume of this existence should follow is only logical. The presenta- tion of general historical events-the Thirty Year's War, its political and social implications for Germany-is punctuated liberally by reflections about personal experiences of the pastor, his cognizance of

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weather conditions, and finally a quotation from Lamentations 3:4-7 which occurs to the pastor as a kind of culmination to his thinking.

Consistently throughout the entire story, yet without ever yield- ing the apparent objectivity of the outsider, Raabe conveys the events of the Novelle through the medium of Friedemann Leuten- bacher's conscious thought process from the hours of twilight to midnight on Christmas eve of the year 1648. This thought process provides the framework for the complex unfolding of events which follows.

What the pastor reviews in his mind is essentially a series of scenes dominated by considerations of Else. Each of these scenes is related to the present as a kind of increasing measure of Leuten- bacher's despair. Thus, the arrival of six-year-old Else and her father in September of 1636 presages in the pastor's memory "eine so seltsame, so wunderliche Geschichte" (164); and before he commences to review the events of this portion of the story, thoughts of Else oppress his soul and cause him to groan aloud and wring his hands (164).

The basis for this despair becomes clearer during Leutenbacher's more general reminiscences of the ensuing twelve years. The small family's move into the woods, the superstition and resentment which result from their living apart in the safety of the forest while the village is pillaged and burned on three separate occasions, a short explication of Magister Konradus' personal history prior to his arrival in Wallrode-this process of recollection is inseparably bound in Raabe's narration to the depiction of Leutenbacher's personality.

Thus, Raabe pauses midway through this review of events to explain that, prior to the arrival of Else and her father, Leuten- bacher had lived in spiritual isolation. His refuge had been the woods, and one third of his sermons had been written in the forest (174). But, since the woods had no "soul," nothing to give back, the pastor had a spiritual need for his pastorate: "Das erbarmungs- wiirdige, halb tierische Leben um seine leere, halbzertriimmerte Behausung her hatte doch wieder mehr dafiir zu geben als die Natur" (174). This situation is drastically altered by Leutenbacher's increasing attachment to Else: "Als nun von dem Friihling des Jahres sechzehnhundertsiebenunddreilig an dem Walde eine Seele wuchs, da huben fur den Pfarrer im Elend das Wunder und der Zauber an" (174). For Leutenbacher, Else is explicitly "the soul of the great

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forest" (174, 176, 178), and his existence assumes a whole new meaning in relationship to her. With the advent of Else's influence in his life, the natural barrier between a sensitive, educated man and the ignorant, "half animal" villagers becomes insurmountable. Leutenbacher no longer has his original spiritual affinity for his pastorate.

From the standpoint of the villagers, they have been spiritually estranged from their minister by Else. His existence now centers around her rather than his congregation, and this is the basis for a genuine grievance against the girl. They have lost their pastor for reasons beyond their comprehension, and what is beyond their comprehension is equated with the supernatural. The villagers' interpreta- tion is that Else is a witch; and, in point of fact, Raabe attests to the logic of this assumption by acknowledging freely that Else has cast the pastor under a spell (172).

The tensions implicit in such a situation must naturally reach a climax. This climax, the stoning of Else by the villagers, is also the high point of dramatic action in the Novelle. A parallel to the stoning of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, this scene is Leuten- bacher's culminating memory and gives rise to the emotionally most charged and longest expressions of despair yet to occur in the narrative. Yet the narration in the third person is scrupulously preserved and even brought forcibly to the reader's attention through such devices as this terse, almost harsh summary statement at the conclusion of a series of highly personal and bitterly remorseful reflections:

Gestern, gestern! Wer kann den Gram ermessen, welcher sich in dem kleinen Worte bergen kann? Es ist der gierige Schlund, der das gespenstische Morgen gebiert, welches uns mit tausend- fachen Schrecken ingstet, his die finstere Hohle, die alles verschlingt, wodurch wir leben, uns selber in ihre Tiefen herab- zieht... Dies aber ist die Geschichte des Todes der Jungfrau. (180) Even the statement that this is the story of Else's death is not as

simple and straightforward as one might initially suppose. Else is mor- tally injured by the villagers on the midsummer morning of 1648, but she does not die until the close of the Novelle and after the past events of Leutenbacher's relationship to her have been fully explored in his mind. Hence, the statement "this is the story of Else's death" serves to cover both the stoning, the turning point of the Novelle, and the actual death of Else, the Begebenheit, the focal point of the entire Novelle.

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It is an indication of Raabe's considerable artistry that he man-

ages to maintain the pace of his story after the vividly documented

stoning scene and succeeds in building rising action which does not reach its peak until Leutenbacher stands at the dead girl's bedside. What could so easily have been the aftermath of a martyrdom is, in Raabe's hands, the emotional climax of the Novelle. How does Raabe

accomplish this feat? What are the major threads, and how has Raabe

manipulated them?

The initial consideration is a structural one. As stated at the be-

ginning of this study, Raabe presents events in Else von der Tanne in two ways: as past happenings and current happenings. The past happenings are recalled, reviewed as if in the mind of Leutenbacher, but this is done without sacrificing the peculiar distance conveyed by the third person narrator not personally involved in events. There is no break in the style or tense of the narrative between that which has taken place and that which occurs as a present happening in the context of the story. The Biblical quotations, the now finished sermon, the

raging storm, the white cat-all appear once more at the close of the reminiscences as they had at the beginning of the Novelle and inter-

mittently as transitions between the various scenes from the past. How-

ever, the reader is aware that the action from this point on is not a

foregone conclusion. What follows will be lived events, not remembered events. In part it is this distinction in kind which enables the author to generate increasing interest.

Of course, it might be argued that Else's death is, after all, a fore-

gone conclusion, and hence the reader can anticipate the course of events which are about to take place. To deal effectively with this ob-

jection is to illuminate nicely both the dramatic implications of Else's death and the Idee of the Novelle. The subtitle of Else von der Tanne is Das Gliick Domini Friedemann Leutenbachers, armen Dieners am Wort Gottes zu Wallrode im Elend. With these words the author informs the reader that his story will concern Else insofar as she repre- sents the happiness of Friedemann Leutenbacher. Throughout the Novelle Raabe's characterizations carefully preserve this intent. Else never confronts the reader in the course of lived events. She is re-

membered, and Raabe presents this in such a way that more is revealed about Leutenbacher, who undergoes the process of recollec-

tion, than about Else herself.

The use of Biblical quotations to reflect Leutenbacher's deep

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despondency has already been alluded to. However, these quotations not

only lend an Old Testament breadth to Leutenbacher's character, their frequent occurrence throughout the Novelle sets the tone for the

story as a whole. Thus, on the single occasion when the pastor actually expresses aloud the meaning of Else's death, he speaks in the archaic, totally encompassing style of an Old Testament prophet:

Jawohl, wehe uns! Es ist geschehen-Gottes Wille ist voll- bracht. Er hat seine Hand abgezogen von der Erde, er hat die Volker verstol3en und uns vernichtet; es ist keine Hoffnung und kein Licht mehr in der Welt und wird auch nimmer wieder- kommen. (195)

By merging the speaking style of the Old Testament with his major characterization at the focal point of the Novelle, Raabe, has, on a

purely linguistic level, elevated Leutenbacher to the stature of a Biblical figure and Else's death to the proportions of a Biblical catas-

trophe. On the level of the theme or the idea, yet another climax is

reached with Else's death. The pessimism of the Novelle is cumula- tive up to the instant that Else ceases to exist, and in this respect Raabe has intensified a motif which Else von der Tanne shares with other works of this period-namely, the death of virginal goodness in a profane world.8 Although this theme is present in many forms in Raabe's writing, two works in particular, Holunderbliite (1863) and

Schiidderump (1869), present women in situations which closely re- semble that in Else von der Tanne. Tonie HiauBler of Schiidderump and Jemima Low of Holunderbliite have specific qualities in common with Else. Each of the three girls shares a certain vulnerability. All three die in early maidenhood, but not before they have affected the lives of other characters in the respective narratives. They are all figures who represent a high degree of goodness and innocence. Yet, despite these parallels, Raabe is not repetitive. His motif may be similar in all three works, but the author tells different stories each time by varying the components of his narrative structure.

Holunderbliite consists of a series of reminiscences related within a frame. While comforting a bereaved mother, an aging doctor recalls an experience of his youth. These memories are faithfully retold in order of their occurrence. As a young medical student in Prague, the doctor meets a Jewish girl who fascinates him. The girl has grown up in the Prague ghetto amid depravation and filth, but she has a magical quality; indeed, her effect upon young Hermann is described as

658




"magical" (98, 99, 103). The two young people spend their time to- gether in the Jewish graveyard Beth-Chaim, the "House of Life," and one day Jemima reveals that she suffers from an incurable heart condition. Confused by his attraction to the girl and the utter hopeless- ness of their relationship, Hermann seeks the advice of the older care- taker of Beth-Chaim, who tells the young man to leave at once. He returns a year later only to learn that the girl is already dead. At this juncture the reader is returned to the frame situation. The mother thanks the doctor for sharing her grief, and he leaves, "ein trauriger, aber nicht schlechterer Mann" (119).

As in Holunderbliite, the events in Schiidderump are related in chronological order. Instead of a frame the author has a pervasive leitmotif, the death cart. Tonie and her mother Marie are brought back to Krodebeck in the death cart. After her mother's death Tonie, like her mother before her, is taken in by the von Lauen family, the local Junkers, and treated almost as their own child. She enjoys a sheltered, unblemished existence until her grandfather, Dietrich HiuB- ler, returns and takes Tonie away with him just as he had done before with Marie. Unable to adjust to the new life her grandfather has im- posed upon her, Tonie ultimately dies.

The fact that Else von der Tanne does not develop in chronological order allows Raabe to emphasize his pessimistic views more by implication rather than by explicit statement and obvious symbols. In- stead of graveyards or death carts, the reader is confronted by a pastor who is writing his most difficult sermon not during a devastating war but rather after peace has been declared. This paradox is heightened by the fact that the reader discovers the enormousness of this difficulty only by degrees; and the major event of the Novelle, the attack upon Else and her father, takes place at the very time when they attempt to return to the Christian community to participate in holy com- munion after having been safe (though mistrusted) during twelve

years of hermit life in the forest. Raabe depicts an existence in which

goodness and worldliness are irreconcilable, a point of view accentu- ated by the fact that the pastor learns of Else's death at the precise moment when he has somehow managed to complete his sermon, the sermon of reconciliation for which Else has pleaded.

Another similarity in the three narratives may be explored here: the relationship each of the three women has to the male hero in the

respective stories. It has already been observed that Leutenbacher's

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attachment to Else is of profound spiritual significance to him. Neither Jemima nor Tonie share in this kind of affinity. In Holunderbliite the young medical student impulsively expresses his love for Jemima when she tells him of her heart condition. However, both he and the girl recognize that he is not serious, only "fieberkrank" (107), and after this occasion he never sees Jemima again. Similarly, young Hennig of Schiidderump experiences what he regards as deep feelings of attachment for Tonie just at the point in the story when Dietrich HaiuBler comes to take her away. With this impassioned plea Hen- nig unwittingly antagonizes his mother, who is Tonie's best hope for

protection against her grandfather, for to Hennig's mother the com-

ing of the grandfather offers an admirable way out of what she considers a potential misalliance. Thus, the issue is left open as to whether both Tonie and Jemima are more victims of social inequities than examples of the defenselessness of innocence and purity, a question which assuredly cannot raised in regard to Else.9

Neither Hermann nor Hennig is deeply attached to the young heroines of Holunderbliite and Schiidderump. In the last analysis life goes on for both men, despite whatever sorrow is occasioned by each girl's death. For Hermann the memory of Jemima summons up feelings of guilt combined with general reflections on the transitoriness of the truly beautiful. The experience takes on positive expression in Her- mann's professional life as a doctor: he becomes an authority on heart conditions and writes a significant book on the subject. The effect of Tonie's death on Hennig's subsequent life is not touched on in Schiidderump since the story ends after his return from Vienna and Tonie's funeral. However, there are sufficient indications that Hennig will be absorbed in his role as landed aristocrat to the exclusion of other considerations.

The implications of Else's death are different for Pastor Leuten- bacher. Else is neither a temporary diversion (Jemima-Hermann) nor a single, ultimately expendable facet of a comfortable orderly existence (Tonie-Hennig). On the contrary, Else has been the de- cisive influence in the pastor's life. Raabe observes that Leutenbacher would have been no better off than the lost German people if it had not been for Else von der Tanne (163), and he indicates repeatedly throughout the Novelle that Else's significance for Leutenbacher is qualitatively different from anything the man had ever known. The most frequent allusion, one which has already been discussed in another context, is that Else is a "soul." The only instance in which

660




Raabe gives some indication of what he wishes to imply by this term is when he alludes to other phenomena which possess a soul:

Aber wenn der Mensch seine Seele gibt, so muB3 er auch eine Seele wieder empfangen, wenn sich nicht der hohe Segen zum bittersten Unheil verkehren soll, und es ist einerlei, ob die Seele einem Weibe, einer Dichtung oder einem groflen Werk und Plan zum Besten der Briider des Erdentages gegeben werde. (173)

It makes no difference, Raabe says, whether the soul is contained in a

woman, poetic creativity, or a great project for the betterment of mankind. The important thing is that when a man relinquishes his own soul, he receives a soul in return.

Clearly, Else's powerful effect on Leutenbacher has to do with her

meaning as a kind of ideal existence rather than in any capacity as a flesh and blood human being. Hence, Raabe presents her to the reader as Leutenbacher's memory rather than as an actuality. This characterization of the pure, totally innocent, and childlike Else would not be plausible as the depiction of a living person. Such an assertion can hardly be made of Jemima Low and Tonie HauBler since they are represented as individuals who live and speak in the narrative. There is no attempt by the narrator or by the characters in either

story to impose a more than human measure of existence on either

girl. Both Tonie and Jemima have their admitted frailties; in con-

trast, Else is nothing less than an ideal representation in a man's mind. Unlike Hermann and Hennig, life does not just "go on" for Pastor Leutenbacher when Else dies. She has been identified in his con- sciousness with everything that makes life bearable, and with her death

the intensity of the pastor's suffering short-circuits his will to live.

Such an analysis draws attention to the fact that Else von der Tanne is a more completely pessimistic work than either Holunder- bliite or Schiidderump. Even if one went so far as to consider the

figures Tonie and Jemima solely as victims of fate, they are hardly martyrs. The parallels to martyrdom in Else are too obvious to be

ignored. Furthermore, it is possible to submit a case for two martyrs in this Novelle. Else experiences martyrdom in the early Christian

sense-martyrdom of the physical self but not of the spirit. She goes from a state of earthly purity to eternal grace. Leutenbacher's

martyrdom is of the soul. Raabe leaves no doubt that the only respite from the pain and anguish of the world he has depicted is

death. He concludes his story of Else's and Leutenbacher's death by saying: "Ihnen beiden war das Beste gegeben, was Gott zu geben

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hatte in dieser Christnacht des Jahres eintausendsechshundertvier- zigundacht" (197).

Else von der Tanne is a richly complex, powerful, and tightly woven Novelle. At the outset of the narrative Raabe informs the reader that life is made bearable by forgetting, and that the central figure, Leutenbacher, cannot forget. The impact of the Novelle rests upon the fact that this condition of non-forgetfulness is communi- cated to the reader. The vivid depiction of tragic events is one aspect of this communication. The placing of these events in the language frame of Biblical catastrophe is a second aspect. But perhaps most important is that, throughout the Novelle, Raabe has interwoven past and present until these distinctions are virtually obliterated for both Leutenbacher and the reader. By the close of the Novelle there is a forceful awareness that the pastor has no escape, that there is no possibility of forgetting. What has emerged by virtue of Raabe's narrational technique is that Else has been the focal point, the center of Leutenbacher's conscious being. There is simply no memory which does not culminate in her existence. The past and the present, so

delicately separated and yet so dangerously entwined in the pastor's thinking throughout the Novelle, merge at dead Else's bedside. The man who leaves to go out and die in the snow no longer distinguishes between either the real or the unreal, yesterday or today, the remembered or the forgotten. A man bereft of all things encompassed in the will to live, the pastor dies insensible even to the distinction of living and dying. He has, as Raabe states succinctly. lost himself in the wilderness.

University of Texas

1 Cf. Georg Lukics, Deutsche Realisten des 19. Jahrhunderts (Bern, 1951), p. 231 et passim. Lukacs goes so far as to assert: "Nach 1870 wurde er [Raabe] fast vollkommen vergessen" (p. 231).

2 Das Zitat in der Erzahlkunst (Stuttgart, 1962), p. 187. s Wilhelm Raabe (Oxford, 1961), p. 161. 4 Ibid., p. 162. 5 Ibid. 6 Cf. Herman Meyer, "Raum und Zeit in Wilhelm Raabes Erzahl-

kunst," DVLG, xxvii (1953), 236-267. 7 Wilhelm Raabe, Sdmtliche Werke, ed. Karl Hoppe, Hans Opper-

mann and Hans Plischke (Gottingen, 1962), Ix, part I, 161. Future references are taken from this source and are cited in the text by page number.

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s Cf. N. C. A. Perquin, Wilhelm Raabes Motive (Amsterdam, 1927), p. 148, where this motif is expressed as "Das Gute, das zugrunde geht."

9 Because of Hennig's vacillation and Lady Adelheid's failure to intercede in Tonie's behalf, Barker Fairley suggests that Schudde- rump "is not a death novel, nor a fate novel, but a social one, closer, much closer, to Irrungen Wirrungen.... It is not a story of doom, if a noblewoman guides her son's life away from what she considers a misalliance. Nor is it a story of doom if the young man is insufficiently in love with the heroine" (Fairley, p. 179).



Documents

"Raabe's 'Else von der Tanne'." German Quarterly 40, #4 (November, 1967): 653-663