Short stories
The Jew's Beech
Die Judenbuche
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff · 1842
Opening lines
Friedrich Mergel, geboren 1738, war der einzige Sohn eines sogenannten Halbmeiers oder Grundeigentümers geringerer Klasse im Dorfe B., das, so schlecht gebaut und rauchig es sein mag, doch das Auge jedes Reisenden fesselt durch die überaus malerische Schönheit seiner Lage in der grünen Waldschlucht eines bedeutenden und geschichtlich merkwürdigen Gebirges.
Friedrich Mergel, born in 1738, was the only son of a so-called half-farmer, a landowner of the lesser class, in the village of B., which, however poorly built and smoky it may be, nevertheless captivates the eye of every traveller by the exceedingly picturesque beauty of its situation in the green wooded gorge of a considerable and historically remarkable range of hills.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
In the Westphalian village of B., in the eighteenth century, Friedrich Mergel grows up with a drunken, violent father and a mother who hides her poverty from the neighbours. After the father's death, found near an old beech, his uncle Simon takes him in and draws him into dubious dealings, at a time when gangs plunder the wood of the forests. A forester is killed with an axe, then the Jew Aaron, who had publicly demanded a debt from Friedrich, is found dead under a beech; suspected, Friedrich flees with Johannes Niemand, who resembles him.
Context
The story appeared as a serial in 1842 in the Cotta firm's Morgenblatt, under a title proposed by the editor Hermann Hauff; one passage was shortened, which the author later accepted. It starts from a real case of 1783, which August von Haxthausen, the author's uncle, had drawn from the court records and published in 1818: a farmhand from Bellersen, the murderer of a Jew, had fled and been enslaved in Algiers. Critics reproached the story for its ambiguities, which the drafts have since shown to be deliberate; Theodor Storm was one of the few to praise it without reservation, and its inclusion in 1876 in Paul Heyse's anthology launched its fortunes.
Who it is for
A short narrative, which proceeds by detached scenes and deliberately leaves questions unanswered; the bilingual edition makes it possible to follow the German.
Prizes and reception
Its author's best-known work; the twenty-mark banknote bearing her likeness, issued in 1989, carried a beech tree in reference to this tale.