In 1811, Johann Peter Hebel wrote the most beautiful story in the world. This is the assessment of many German writers and critics. The story is called “Unexpected Reunion.” Franz Kafka extolled the story as “the most wonderful in the world.” I first encountered the story in a collection of landmarks in German prose edited by no less than Hugo von Hofmannstahl, the great Austrian writer and Richard Strauss’ librettist. Ernst Bloch, a renowned German philosopher, shared Kafka’s opinion of the tale as did Theodor Adorno and Hermann Hesse. Commenting on Hebel’s short stories, Hesse said that the writer had only one equal in German prose, the Swiss writer Gottfried Keller, and that Hebel’s touch was more sure; Hesse proclaimed Hebel’s fiction clearly superior to Goethe’s efforts in that genre. (Goethe was himself an admirer of Hebel’s lyric poems.) More recently, W. G. Sebald has written an essay proclaiming Hebel’s unique excellence as a story-teller; this text appears in Sebald’s book of essays, A Place in the Country under the title “A Comet in the Heavens, a piece for an Almanac in honor of Johann Peter Hebel.” In his 1995 essay, “Johann Peter Hebel’s Hollywood or the Freeway in the Valley of Balzac”, the German author, Patrick Roth pays homage to Hebel’s “Unexpected Reunion,” meditating on the tale as he cruises the freeways in Los Angeles. I have translated Hebel’s “Unverhofftes Wiedersehen” (“Unexpected Reunion”) and you can decide for yourself what to make of the little narrative – the story is less than three pages long. Some context may be helpful and so I have translated a number of Hebel’s other short stories with some brief commentary. If you can’t wait to make your acquaintance with “Unexpected Reunion,” it’s at the end of this essay.
Hebel was born in 1760 in Basel, Switzerland. He lived until 1826 mostly in Karlsruhe in south Germany. During his lifetime, Hebel was a schoolteacher, a minor official in the Lutheran Church, a botanist, and a bureaucrat. Although ill, he traveled some distance to supervise the administration of an official examination and died as a consequence. He wrote 32 poems in the south German alemanic dialect, the so-called Allemanische Gedichte. These were greatly admired by Goethe and remain famous in Germany. (To a person educated to read “high” German, the poems are well-nigh impenetrable.) Hebel’s most influential works were his so-called Kalendergeschichten (“Calendar-Stories). The stories are very short prose narratives written for publication in farmers’ almanacs. Hebel wrote for the Badesche Landkalender beginning in 1803 and, then, for the Rheinlandische Hausfreund (the Rhenish Home Companion) in 1807 and thereafter. Hebel’s stories are anecdotes written in idiosyncratic prose accompanying printed calendars displaying advice as to planting and harvesting, tables for multiplication and computation of interest, phases of the moon together with solar and meteorological commentary, lists of holidays including a Jewish calendar, percentage tables and other compilations of useful information. The stories from the Rheinlandische Hausfreund were compiled in a volume called the Schaetzkaestlein der Rheinlandische Hausfreund (or “Little Treasure Chest from the Rhenish Home Companion”), with editions appearing in 1811, 1814, and 1827.
W. G. Sebald’s graceful, if eccentric, essay on Sebald notes that modern Germans may find access to the profoundly conservative, but humane, writer obstructed by accretions of malign later ideology that now confound Hebel’s readers. Hebel was an example of a Heimatschriftsteller (“local or provincial writer”), rooted in the German soil and its agrarian folkways. Accordingly, he was much praised during the Nazi era and, further, had the misfortune of being the subject of a well-known speech by Martin Heidegger delivered in 1957. Heidegger lavishes praise on the writer but uses diction that would not be out of place in a Nazi harangue. With friends of this sort, Hebel didn’t need enemies and appreciation of his work was obstructed by his own supporters. This is not to say that Hebel was not widely admired – Tolstoy, Hesse, and Goethe all have praised him. Sebald remarks that his appreciation for Hebel arises from his admiration for Walter Benjamin. Benjamin’s appreciation of Hebel was published on the centenary of the writer’s death in 1926 and impressed Sebald to the extent that he sought out Hebel’s work, immersed himself in it, and was astonished by its depth and humanity.
Hebel’s stories have been decisive in the development of short prose as a genre in the German language. Most German prose writers compose what are called Novelle. These are works, typically longer than a Anglo-American short story that pivot on the occurrence of a single unerhoerte Begebenheit (literally “unheard-of happening”, that is a surprising or intriguing reversal of fortune or turn of events). Geschichte, that is, “short stories” are different – they are generally very short and simple and would be characterized as “anecdotes” in English literature. In America, short stories are written under the macabre aegis of Edgar Allan Poe as later refracted through French writing by de Maupassant and Flaubert. German Geschichte harken to Hebel. For this reason, some practitioners of the German Geschichte have been very prolific. For instance, Alexander Kluge has written hundreds of short stories that will baffle American readers without knowledge the German genre in which he works. Kluge’s stories usually occupy one or two pages at the most and, typically, are simply anecdotes – one doesn’t look to stories of this sort for character development or the poetic portrayal of a mood or Stimmung (as is the case with Poe). Rather, the stories are concise little tales of the kind of historical or popular anecdote that you might hear in a tavern. Brecht followed Hebel’s example and wrote his own Kalendergeschichte – these are more fulsomely developed and, I think, closer to the tradition of the German Novelle. However, Brecht’s appropriation of the notion the Kalender or “Almanac” story bespeaks an attempt to write in a demotic, vernacular style remote from “high literature.” The great paradox is that Germany’s greatest prose-writer didn’t consider his work literature or art – it was simply filler for the farmer’s almanacs annually published in the rural environs where he lived.
“The Three Thieves” is characteristic of Hebel’s story-telling. The anecdote involves a couple of incorrigible thieves, crooks so perversely dishonest that they devote considerable effort to defrauding one another. Hebel’s view of criminality is two-fold: first, it is a profession and craft with certain technical standards – he shows an amoral respect for crimes well-committed; nonetheless, Hebel writes from a didactically moral stance: in his view criminals should be punished severely for their misdeeds and anti-social behavior. In this latter respect, he seems to embody the ethos of the middle-class community for whom he writes. It’s the mixture of didactic morality and amoral glee in the exploits of his tricksters (who usually exploit the vices of their victims) that gives Hebel’s stories of this kind their peculiar complexity. In “The Three Thieves”, we see Hebel’s appreciation for the stealth and cunning practiced by the crooks, but, like “Red Dieter,” the surrogate for the reader in the tale, we know that these fellows will come to a bad end. (Hebel’s affinity for these petty criminals is implicit in his first sentence, in which he admits that there’s an element of fraud in his tale as well.)
The Three Thieves
The esteemed reader is cautioned not take as true everything that appears in this story. This is despite the fact that the tale is written in a nice book and set forth as chapter and verse.
Crooked Heiner and Crooked Frieder pursued the profession of their father, a fellow who copulated with the hangman’s daughter on the end of a rope on the Auerbach gallows. They had a younger comrade, Red Dieter, who kept company with them. These three didn’t murder anyone or hold people for ransom, rather it was their custom to visit henhouses at night in the neighborhood and, when opportunity existed, kitchens, cellars, and granaries as well as such troves of hidden money that they could find – stolen goods they always sold for next to nothing at market. If there was nothing else to steal, they practiced their trade with one another, improving their craft with various exercises and risky tricks. One time, Heiner was in the woods and saw a tall tree where a bird was sitting on her nest. He thought there’s an egg up there and asked the others: “Who has the skill to snatch the egg from under that bird without her noticing it?’ Frieder, quick as a cat, climbed the tree, sneaking up to the bird and boring a little hole in the bottom of the nest so that the eggs dropped out into his hands one by one. Then, he tapped the nest in its mossy roost and dropped to the ground with the eggs. “So who could put the eggs right back under the nest,” Frieder then said, “without the bird noticing?” So Heiner, then, climbed up to the nest, although with Frieder scaling the tree behind him. As Heiner slid the eggs back under the bird, without her taking notice, Frieder pulled down Heiner’s trousers, also without him taking note. There was much laughter at this prank and the two others agreed: “Frieder is the master.” Red Dieter then said: “It’s clear that I shouldn’t have anything to do with you two, otherwise I can see that we’ll end up in bad place with much injustice and neither of you will care anything about me.” And, so, he left them and lived with his wife, becoming both hardworking and domestic in his affairs.
At the end of the year, after the two rogues had paid a visit to the horse market and stolen a pony, they visited Dieter and asked him how things were going. They had heard that Dieter has recently butchered a pig and they were interested in the whereabouts of the meat. The suckling pig was hanging on the wall in the pantry. After the thieves had left, Dieter said: “Wife, I had better bring the little suckling pig into the kitchen and hide it under the trough, otherwise it won’t be ours for long...” That night, the thieves appeared, broke into the place, but the booty wasn’t there any more. Dieter noticed that something was afoot and he got up and went from the house to take a look. While he was away from his bed, Heiner slinked into the room, creeping up to where Dieter’s wife was laying; then, he assumed her husband’s voice and said: “Wife, the little pig isn’t in the pantry.” The woman said: “Don’t talk nonsense! Don’t you recall that you hid the pig under the trough?” “Oh, yes,” Heiner said, “I’m half asleep.” He, then, went and took the pig from the house without accusation. The night was dark and he didn’t know where his brother was, although he expected him at the appointed place in the woods. When Dieter came back into the house, planning to seize the pig from under the trough, he cried out: “Wife, those jailbirds have taken it!” But he wasn’t ready to give up so readily and Dieter hurried after the thieves and, when he overtook Heiner, and saw that he was alone, he swiftly spoke in Frieder’s voice: “Brother, let me carry the suckling pig – you must be getting tired.” Heiner thought that it was his brother speaking and so he gave him the swine, saying that he would hurry ahead and make a fire. Dieter, however, turned around and said to himself: “My dear little pig, I have you back.” Frieder was lost in the night, wandering around until he saw the fire burning in the woods. He approached and said: “Do you have the piglet, Heiner?” Heiner replied: “Don’t you have it?” They stared at one another with wide open eyes – they had never built such a fine, roaring fire from beech branches for their night-cooking. And even more lovely was the fire crackling in Dieter’s kitchen. Because after the pig was brought home, the meat was cut in pieces and tossed into a kettle hanging over the fire. Dieter said: “Wife, I’m hungry and we need to eat fast because whatever we leave those rogues will take.” Then, he lay down in a corner and slumbered a bit while his wife stirred the pot with an iron spoon and looked to the side where her husband was snoring. While she was watching her husband, a pointed stick slowly poked down the chimney flue, stabbed the best piece of meat in the kettle, and pulled it up the chimney. And as the man whimpered in his sleep and his wife watched him all the more closely, the sharp stick appeared a second time. Then, the woman woke Dieter and said: “Husband, now we can eat.” But, by this time, the kettle was empty and the thieves had dined without having to cook over the fire in the woods. The man and wife went to bed hungry and they thought: the Devil take that piglet since we can’t enjoy it! Then, the thieves came down from the roof, through the hole in the wall and into the pantry and, then, from the pantry into the dwelling, carrying what they had snatched. Then, it was a merry time. They ate and drank and joked and laughed as if it were the last time that they would all be together and this was a good thing because the crescent moon slipped down over the housetops and the roosters crowed for the second time in the village and, far away, the butcher’s dog bayed. The constable was on their trail and as Dieter said to his wife “Now, it’s time for bed,” the cop was there on account of the stolen pony and arrested Crooked Heiner and Crooked Frieder and dragged them away to jail and, then, the penitentiary.
Hebel is never content to merely recount these anecdotes. He always incorporates an “excess” or surplus of either rhetoric or detail in his stories even those that are very short. Here, he tells two separate stories that are only tenuously linked: there is the stunt involving the nesting bird that so impresses Dieter with the thieves' technical prowess (and their unreliability) that he reforms himself, disavowing petty crime for a placid, if impoverished domesticity. The second story involving the thieves and their machinations to steal the pig, although mostly narrated in Hebel’s breathless paratactic style (this happened and then, this and this), has a couple of rhetorical flourishes. The writer’s strategy of linking events together by the copula “and” yields an interestingly vivid and wholly unnecessary account of the crooks coming into the house, moving from room to room in the shack. Similarly, Hebel’s account of dawn in the rural village is also extravagant when viewed against the otherwise laconic narrative background. Hebel’s stories don’t have anything approaching “psychology” in them – people’s motivations are based upon their “types”. The two crooks Heiner and Frieder are genetically wicked – the death of their father on the gallows as sardonically described by the narrator hasn’t affected them in the least. By contrast, Dieter, who is just a misled farm boy, sees the error of his ways and repents before it is too late. The reader may be excused for sensing a sexual subtext in the scene in which Heiner imitates Dieter in the peasant’s bed chamber. The darkness and the mise-en-scene might allow for a sort of “bed-trick” in which Heiner could have his way with the housewife – the story seems to have been, perhaps, tamed from a more raw, even, obscene version. In our era of electric lights, the tale reminds us that once it was very dark at night and those who went abroad in the shadows were, generally, up to no good.
Hebel is clear-eyed about the poverty of his protagonists, although he seems to regard this without any particular interest or emphasis. People slaughter pigs in the Fall so the meat will not spoil so swiftly. When a pig is killed everyone has to eat to excess because soon enough there will be nothing for anyone – this idea is embodied in the feast at the end of the story. The shack is so small and with such a low roof that the crooks can use a pointed stick to steal meat from the kettle cooking over the hearth. (Hebel has some anxiety about this motif, I think, regarding it as implausible – hence, the caveat at the outset of the story.) People work very hard. Dieter is too tired to stay awake and, in some sort of elliptical parody of Christ’s passion in Gethsemene (where the disciples kept falling asleep), he retreats into a corner to slumber while the thefts are underway.
This might be adapted as follows:
Three Thieves
This is mostly true. I typed it out just for you.
Hank and Fred were brothers and crooks too. They learned thieving from their dear old dad who was a permanent resident at the iron-bar motel. They had a buddy from school, Red Dick, a younger kid who hung around with them. They didn’t kill people or commit armed robberies but were mostly content with car theft and shoplifting. They fenced their ill-gotten gains at a flea market and didn’t make much in the way of money. But the boys had a good time boasting and daring each other to do this or that.
One day, when they couldn’t find anything to boost, the lads went for a stroll in the park. Spying a bird sitting in her nest high up in a tree, Hank asked his buddies if they thought it possible that one of them could climb up and snatch the eggs out from under the fowl without her even noticing. No sooner dared than done: Fred, nimble as a cat climbed the tree, crept under the nest, and, then, bored a hole in its bottom so that one egg after another dropped down into his hand. Fred, then, said: “I bet you can’t sneak up there and slide the eggs back into the nest without the bird noticing.” So Hank climbed the tree with Fred right behind him. As Hank was slipping the eggs back under the fowl, Fred slowly pulled Hanks’ pants down to his ankles. Hank had a bare ass before he knew what was happening, reached down to cover himself, and dropped right out of the tree. They all had a good laugh and agreed that Fred ruled when it came to pranks of this sort. Red Dick said: “I can see that I’m not in your league and, if I stay with you guys, I’ll end up the hoosegow or worse.” So Red Dick went on his way, straightened himself out, and, even got married. He kept his nose clean and stayed out of trouble.
Late in the season, Dick went to the grocery and bought himself a fine, fat turkey for Thanksgiving. That same day, Fred and Hank stole a motorcycle and tooled over the Dick’s house on the purloined scooter. Pulling up to Dick’s place, the boys asked how he was doing. They saw Red Dick unloading the fat bird from his car and licked their lips. After the two thieves said goodbye, Dick put the turkey in the refrigerator to thaw. A little later, when it was time for bed, Dick began to fret about his bird. “They’re up to no good,” Dick told his wife. It was cold outside and Dick said that he was going to hide the turkey in a snowdrift next to his back door.
In the middle of the night, the crooks slipped through a hole in Dick’s fence and crept into his house. They looked in his fridge but didn’t see the turkey thawing there. Dick heard the thieves tiptoeing around the house and got out of bed to look for them. Hank went around the side of the house and found the front door open. He slipped into Dick’s bedroom and, pawing the Mrs. where she lay, whispered: “Woman, the turkey wasn’t in the fridge.” She pushed his hand off her ass and said: “Why are you talking nonsense? You know as well as I do that you hid the turkey out in the snowbank.” “You’re right,” Hank said, imitating Dick’s voice as best he could: “I guess I’m half asleep.” Then, he slipped out of the room, went outside, and dug the turkey out of the drifted snow.
Hank was supposed to meet Fred in a grove of trees a few blocks away. It was very dark. Dick patrolled the house and, then, went into the backyard where he found that his turkey was gone. “Those jail-birds have stolen our bird,” he told his wife.
Out in the woods with his prize, Hank was wading through the deep snow. Dick followed his tracks and caught up with him in the dark woods. Dick saw that Hank was all alone and, so, he murmured to him: “Bro, that bird looks heavy. Let me carry it for you awhile.” Hank thought it was his brother, Fred, and so he handed the bird to the shadowy figure and, then, hurried along ahead to light a bonfire so they could roast the fowl. Fred was lost, wandering around in the woods, but then he saw the fire roaring among the trees and stumbled toward it. With eyes as big as saucers, he saw Hank feeding twigs and branches to the fire but without anything to cook.
Back at Dick’s house, husband and wife were both wide awake, tending to an open fire on the hearth under their chimney. They had cut the turkey into quarters and were cooking it in a kettle over the flames. Dick said: “I’m pretty hungry and we had better eat this right away. Otherwise, they’ll snatch the food right out of our mouths.”
Dick told the woman to watch over their turkey. Then, he crawled into a corner to rest his eyes. Soon, he began to snore and dream. While he was twitching in his sleep, Dick’s wife looked over at him and didn’t see a long sharp fork slowly appear in the chimney flue above the kettle where the bird was cooking. The fork poked into the tender meat and a quarter of the turkey vanished up the chimney. Dick continued to grumble and growl and wince as he dreamed and his wife turned to look at him again just as the fork stabbed down into the kettle for a second and, then, a third and fourth time. After a while, Dick’s wife said: “Wake up. It’s time to eat.” But when she looked into the kettle it was empty. Dick said that his wife had been careless and let the thieves steal their turkey; his wife replied that he should never have left her side and fallen asleep. As they were quarreling and close to blows, Hank and Fred popped through the door carrying the roast turkey. “It’s too much for the two of us,” Hank said. “Let’s have a feast,” Fred added. So the table was set and Dick brought out a case of beer and they ate and drank until it was dawn. Then, the seven o’clock whistle sounded at the plant and the sickle moon slipped below the rooftops and the dogs all howled with the whistle calling honest laborers to work. Hank and Fred were drunk and passed-out on the sofa when the cops showed up at the door. The stolen motorcycle was parked outside at the curb and had led the police to the home. Fred and Hank were handcuffed and taken to the county jail and they are now living with their dad at State expense if I am not mistaken.
As the reader will note, Hebel is fond of hangings – thus, the elaborate image of the “hangman’s daughter” at the outset of “The Three Thieves”. (This unseemly interest doesn’t translate well for our modern sensibility and so I eliminated the motif from my updated version.) Several of Hebel’s stories involve hangings either successful or botched. One of these tales is translated below:
The Remarkable Adventures of a young Englishman
One day, a young Englishman arrived by mail wagon for his first time in the big city of London. He knew not one of those dwelling there except for his brother-in-law (and, of course, his sister) whom he intended to visit. On the mail wagon, there was no one else except for the Postmaster responsible for the packages and letters and, as supervisor answerable for those things. The two travel-companions didn’t give a thought for when they might ever see one another again. The mail wagon arrived at London in the middle of the night. The stranger couldn’t lodge overnight at the post office because the post-master was a dignified and fastidioius gentleman himself and didn’t rent rooms and the poor youth didn’t know how to find his brother-in-law’s house in the enormous city that was dark as could be – the boy’s destination was a needle in a haystack. The post-master said: “Young fellow, come with me. I won’t take you home with me, but I have a relative who has a small place with two beds. My Aunt will shelter us both tonight and, then, in the morning, you can inquire about your brother-in-law’s address and how to reach that place.” The lad didn’t have to think about this twice. At Mrs. Aunt’s place, they drank a mug of English beer, had some sausage, and, then, lay down to sleep. In the night, the call of nature oppressed the youth and he had to go outside. This situation was even worse than before. Because in their little shelter, he didn’t know his way – just as he had been lost in the big city two hours earlier. Fortunately, the post-master was awake and told him that he had to go first left, then, right, then, left again to reach the door. “This door,” he continued, “will be locked and we’ve lost the key. But carry in the pocket of your jacket, my big pocket-knife and slide it between the door and the door frame and, then, the door will pop right open. Follow your ears: you’ll hear the Thames flowing nearby and put on some clothes because the night is cold.” In the pitch-black and, in his haste, the young stranger picked up the jacket of the post-master instead of his own and made his way outside to a place where he took his ease. He didn’t take much note of the fact that he had blundered into a corner during his midnight perambulations and, due to the warm beer, was bleeding profusely from his nose. Due to loss of blood and the beer in his belly, the young man lost consciousness and fell asleep on the sidewalk. The drowsy Postmaster waited and waited for him to return, wondering where the lad had gone, and, then, when he heard a disturbance on the street, a thought occurred to him although he was still half-asleep: “What if the poor fellow has gone to the door of the house and, then, out on the street, and been impressed?” Because when the English need men for their ships, they dispatch strong men who go by night into common pubs or houses of ill-fame and, even, in the alleyways, and, if they encounter an able-bodied man, they inquire briskly: “Landlubber who are you?” or “Landlubber, where are you going?” and, after this short inquest, haul the wretch away so that – for better or worse – he finds himself on a ship far out at sea and the devil take the hindmost. This nocturnal human hunt, they call “impressing” seaman, and, for this reason the Postmaster said to himself: “So what do I do if he’s been impressed?” – And consumed with this fear, the Postman threw on his own jacket and hurried onto the street so that, if possible, he could rescue the poor fellow. Hearing some ruckus, he hurried down one street and, then, another and, then, fell himself into the hands of some scoundrels so that, against his will, he was dragged onto a ship and gone by morning. Vanished.
After coming to his senses, the young man found his way back to the house and hustled into bed still bloodied and fell asleep without noticing that the Postmaster was missing. The man was expected at work that morning at eight o-clock and, when hours passed, and he didn’t show up, a postal worker was sent to fetch him. The Postmaster wasn’t found but, instead, a fellow wearing the missing man’s bloody jacket resting in his bed, a big gory pocketknife lying in the corridor and the door open to the river bank where the Thames was rushing by. So an evil suspicion arose that the stranger had murdered the postal official and pitched him into the water. He was taken away for interrogation and, as they were searching him, a leather money-bag was found in his pocket and, inside, the well-known signet ring of the postmaster on its lanyard, and so the boy was pretty much done for. He asked for his brother-in-law – but no one knew him – and, also, begged that his sister be summoned, but no one knew anything about her either. He explained the whole affair exactly as it had occurred. But the Judge was just his executioner: “Lad, you’re blowing smoke in my eyes and I’ll have you hanged.” And so decreed, so done – on that same afternoon according to English law and custom. Now the usage in England is this: because there are so many rogues that have to be hanged, they make short work of this with a trifling summary trial that doesn’t much trouble anyone, an unremarkable process since it is so common. The miscreants, as many as condemned to die, are loaded onto a wide wagon and driven to the gallows. There a noose is nailed to a cross-beam and the wagon is hauled out from under them so that the merry company can kick and flop around, left to their own devices. Only in England is hanging done in such a miserable, if deadly, manner. To shorten their misery, relatives of the hanged men pull on the legs of their cousins strangling choking above them until the felons have strangled. But the poor lad from the country had no one to perform this last office of love and friendship and, so, he just dangled there. Around evening, a young married couple, arm in arm, were strolling near the execution site and glanced up at the gallows. The young woman screamed and fell into the arms of her husband: “Merciful heavens,” she cried, “my brother is hanging there.” And her horror was even greater when she saw that the hanged man, aroused by the voice of his sister, opened his eyes a little and rolled them to the side. So he was still alive and the married couple strolling by was his sister and brother-in-law. The brother-in-law was a decisive fellow, didn’t lose command of his senses, and considered to himself how to rescue the boy. The place was remote and deserted and there were no people around and, so, marshaling a little cash and persuasion, the brother-in-law hired a couple of discrete and stout lads who, willy nilly, cut down the hanged man, and brought him without mishap or alarum to the brother-in-law’s house. There, the young man regained consciousness in a few hours, suffered a slight fever, but, soon enough, under the kindly care of his sister, regained his full health.
One evening, his brother-in-law said to the youth: “Friend, you can’t remain in this country. If you’re found out, you’ll be hanged again and I won’t escape either. And, even if you’re not discovered, you have a noose around your neck and that’s a bad state of affairs for both you and your kin. You’ll have to go to America. I can arrange for that.” The young man agreed with this assessment and, at the first opportunity, hopped a ship for a confidential voyage, eighty days long, to the port of Philadelphia. Embarking from the ship in this foreign place, the boy stood on the shore with a heavy heart. And, as he thought: “If only God would grant that I meet just one person here that I know,” he saw the Postmaster approaching in miserably ragged seaman’s apparel. But the great joy of this unexpected reunion in such a strange place was, at first, mitigated by a harsh welcome. Because the Postmaster, as he recognized the boy, clenched his fists and shouted: “Why the devil are you here, you damned sleepwalker? Do you know that on your account I was kidnaped into service at sea?” The young Englishman replied: “Goddammit, you accursed good-for-nothing! Do you know that on your account, I was hanged?” And after this exchange of greetings, the two went together to a tavern. And, at the Three Crowns in Philadelphia, they told each other about their adventures. And the young Englishman, who had procured a good job in a trading firm, didn’t rest until he had purchased the freedom of his good friend and was able to send him back to London.
The first sentence in this story runs on breathlessly for 34 words, an effect that can’t be duplicated in English without risking incoherence. Hebel’s second sentence consists of two equally long half-sentences broken by a semi-colon. The effect is one of breathless urgency – the prose is propulsive and moves forward with so much information so quickly spewed onto the page that the reader is overwhelmed. (Heinrich von Kleist, famous as a purveyor of luridly Gothic tales, uses a similar style in works such as “The Earthquake in Chili” and “Michael Kolhass” – his prose is paratactic, miscellaneous fragments of information linked together by words like “and” and “but”. There’s no preliminary “throat-clearing” – the reader is assaulted with data as if the narrative exerts a pressure that is well-nigh irresistable.) Despite the story’s accelerated opening, Hebel is not exactly concise – in the gush of words with which the tale commences, he pauses to make certain that the reader knows what a “brother-in-law” is (Schwager in German) and differentiates, pointlessly, it seems, between the letters and packages on the post wagon. Hebel, in fact, is conveying a sort of highly contrived and intentional “sloppiness”, a sort of fast and furious approach to a story that seems to lunge forward recklessly. This reckless or heedless urgency is reflected in the events narrated – an urgent need to urinate propels the hero onto the dark and dangerous streets and the judge, driven by equally violent impulses orders the protagonist hanged without any second thoughts, an execution immediately (if negligently) performed. Hebel’s prose replicates a world in which events occur one after another without pause and any conscious deliberation.
The protagonist’s reunion with the unfortunate former post-master is described in German as an unverhofftes Wiedersehen (“unhoped-for reunion”), words that are the title for Hebel’s most famous story. The concept of an “unhoped-for” or improbable reuniting (“reunion”) is intrinsic to narratives of the kind in which Hebel traffics –that is, stories involving improbable coincidences and remarkable, well-nigh impossible events. These kinds of things are grist for the story-teller’s mill.
Here’s another example of Hebel’s prose:
The Cunning Quaker
The Quakers are an English religious sect, pious, peaceable, and rational folks, a bit like the Anabaptists here, and, according to their precepts there are lots of things that they can’t do: they are not allowed to swear, carry weapons, or doff their hat to anyone, but they are permitted to ride if they have a horse. One evening, as a Quaker was riding from the city to his home, mounted on a very fine, noble horse, he encountered a robber, lurking in ambush, with his face disguised with soot, and seated on a nag that was so scrawny that you could count each and every rib and number the bones in each joint but not the beast’s teeth, since these had all fallen out, not from eating oats, but raw straw. “Child of God,” the robber said, “I would like to afford my poor critter – dark as the night in which the people of Israel fled from Egypt – the sort of fine fodder that your horse, at least as it seems, must enjoy. So if it’s okay with you, we can make a trade. You don’t have a loaded pistol, but I do.” The Quaker thought to himself: “What should I do? If all else fails, I have another horse at home, but I don’t possess a second life.” So they made the trade and the robber rode off on the Quaker’s horse while the Quaker led the poor beast that he had been given by its reins. Before leaving the city, the Quaker wrapped the reins around the back of the horse and said: “Go ahead, Lazarus, you’ll be able to find your stall better than me.” So he let the horse amble ahead of him and he followed down this lane and that, until the horse stopped at the door of a stall. As the horse stood by and didn’t want to wander any farther, the Quaker went into the house and to the room where the robber was wiping the soot off his face with a woollen stocking. “So this is where you live,” the Quaker said. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll reverse our trade which was never really legally sanctioned. Return my horse; you’ll find yours waiting for you at the door.” As the rascal saw that he had been discovered, willy nilly, he returned the Quaker’s horse. “Will you be so good,” the Quaker asked, “to give me a couple of Taler for the rent of my horse; your horse and I had to stroll back here by foot and you owe me.” Whether he wanted to or not is beside the point: the thief paid the rental fee of two Taler. “Doesn’t my little foal have a fine, soft gait?” the Quaker said.
Hebel is interested in religious minorities. Many of his stories involve clever Jews. There are several curious punctum in this anecdote: why are we shown the horse-thief wiping the soot off his face with a “woolen” stocking? This is the sort of detail that seems to warrant the story’s credibility – there is no reason for the detail other than the ostensible one that the tale is a kind of reportage. The Quaker is depicted as above all “rational” – and he’s not above making some money off the transaction. The theme of horse-trading is traditionally rife with all sorts of fraud and deception. The thief’s polite but threatening assertion that his criminal enterprise is really just another form of commercial transaction is amplified by the Quaker treating the encounter in exactly that way – as a transaction involving the rent of a horse. This notion is echoed in the Quaker’s statement that the original trade was accomplished without “legal sanction.” The weird courtly remark about the “Children of Israel” seems to have migrated into the tale from one of Hebel’s stories about Jewish tricksters. There is also, perhaps, an echo of the Bible story involving Pharaoh’s “lean kine.” Equine lore plays a role in the story: horse’s are better fed on “oats” than naked straw.
Many of Hebel’s stories are very short:
Gratitude
In the sea-battle at Trafalgar, while shot and shell whistled and the ship’s masts shattered, a sailor found the time to scratch at a bite on his head. On that occasion, he carefully slid between thumb and forefinger a strand of his hair, thereby taking prisoner a tiny creature that he let fall to the deck. As he stooped to administer the coup de grace, an enemy cannon-ball whiffed over his shoulders and smashed into a neighboring ship. The sailor was seized with a feeling of gratitude and convinced that he would have been smashed to pieces by the iron ball if he had not bent over at that very moment, he tenderly lifted the little beast from the ground and set it back on his head. “Because you saved my life,” the sailor said, “but take care you don’t deceive me again – then, you’re a stranger to me.”
The story contrasts a broad perspective on the battle (described in banal terms) with a giant close-up of the sailor interacting with a louse. Hebel leaches the glory from the battle by using military terms to describe the encounter with the vermin – the creature is “taken prisoner,” for instance, and the verb for the louse’s future anticipated depredations attrappieren (translated as “deceive”) is frequently used in a soldierly context for contriving “dummy” ordinance or fortifications to trick an enemy. Lice are fungible – one is as good (or bad) as another. The sailor says that if the louse bites him again, he will not be spared, but instead accorded the common fate of such vermin. Soldiers are fungible as well – one corpse is like another.
Here is one of Hebel’s stories featuring a Jewish protagonist. Salzwedel is a town in Saxony-Anhalt (northeast Germany) where there was once a large Jewish population. The Housefriend is the Almanac for which Hebel writes.
How a fine horse was sold for five strokes of a stout stick
The following true story comes to us from Salzwedel or, maybe, somewhere else – but The Housefriend
has put it in print.
A high-ranking officer in the cavalry went into a Pub. A Hebrew who was already in the place saw the officer dismount.
“You’ve got a nice sorrel there, officer.”
“So it pleases you, son of Jacob?” the officer asked.
“I’d gladly accept a hundred strokes of your cane to make it mine,” the Hebrew replied.
The officer paddled the air with his riding quirt. “We don’t need a hundred,” the officer said. “Let’s say fifty.”
The Hebrew replied: “Really, twenty-five ought to be sufficient.”
“Twenty five, okay,” the cavalryman said, “fifteen even, or five, assuming you really want to do this.”
No one knew if they were serious or joking. But when the officer said: “I think five would be enough,” the Hebrew thought: “Well, didn’t I endure ten strokes in the front of the city offices in Guenzberg and came out of that kosher enough?” – “Sir? You’re an officer. Do you give me your word as an officer and a gentleman?” The cavalry officer replied: “You don’t trust my word? Should we write it down?”
“I’d prefer that,” the Hebrew said.
So the officer summoned a notary and set before the Hebrew the following agreement:
“If the holder of this document agrees to accept calmly and without complaint five strokes with a robust cane from the undersigned Officer, then, the undersigned will convey the sorrel presently in his possession to the bearer of this note to have and to hold free of any encumbrances and without further compensation. So agree at thus and such between so and so.”
So the Hebrew put the agreement in his pocket and bent over a stool and the officer swung his good cane from Hispaniola right into the man’s backside so that the Hebrew thought to himself: “He’s got a better swing than the judicial officer at Guenzberg” and he cried out “Owee!” despite gritting his teeth.
The officer sat down and calmly drank a mug of beer. “How’s it going, Son of Jacob?” The Hebrew replied: “It’s going. Give me the others so I’m paid in full.”
“That can be arranged,” the Officer said and he applied the second stroke so that the first seemed merely a love-tap. Then, he sat down again and drank another mug.
Thus, the third and fourth strokes were administered.,
After the fourth blow, the Hebrew said: “I don’t know whether to thank you or beg your pardon that you’ve delivered the last two in quick succession. So give me the fifth right after the fourth and the pleasure will be all mine – your sorrel will then have a new master.”
But the Officer said: “Son of Jacob, you’ll have to wait for a long time for the fifth stroke.” And he set aside the cane quite calmly, restoring it to its earlier position. All of the Hebrew’s pleas and begging for the fifth blow were in vain.
Those present all laughed so much that the pub seemed about to topple over. The Hebrew sought assistance from the Notary, waving the agreement in the air and demanding that the attorney help him to his fifth stroke. The Notary however said: “Jacob’s son, what do you want me to do? If the officer won’t do it voluntarily, there’s nothing in this document that compels him.” Long story short: the Hebrew is still waiting for the fifth can stroke and his pony.
A variant of this story can be seen on You-Tube. The clip comes from a Tonight Show episode in which Buddy Hackett tells an elaborate joke to Johnny Carson. It seems that once a man from the city encountered a farmer. The farmer had a beautiful duck. The city fellow offers to buy the duck and the farmer agrees to a certain price. Cash is exchanged. But, then, the farmer reneges on the deal. The city man is very angry. He threatens a lawsuit over the duck. The farmer says: “We don’t do things that way in the country.” “So how do you settle this sort of problem?” the city man asks. “Country-style,” the farmer says. “What’s that mean?” The farmer replies: “I kick you in the crotch, then, you kick me in the crotch, and we continue that way until one of us cries uncle.” The city dweller was puzzled by this approach to dispute resolution, but he reluctantly agreed. “Okay, I get the first kick,” the farmer says. He pulls back his leg and swings his boot as hard as he can into the city dweller’s groin.”
(By this point in the story, Hackett is on his feet acting out the tale. He delivers a mighty kick to the air and, then, mimics the city fellow’s response, contorting his face into a mask of agony, pressing his knees together and staggering around the stage. Then, Hackett howls and falls to the ground writhing. At last he gets up and continues:)
So, then, the farmer says: “I don’t care about the duck. You can just have the damn thing.”
Another story featuring a Jewish protagonist:
The Glass Jew
During the last war, a Polish Jew fled to his brother-in-law’s house, a hussar who wanted to hack him to pieces in hot pursuit. The man’s brother-in-law (who wasn’t much of a friend) hid him in a sack of flour that he set on the floor. “Nausel, don’t move – otherwise we’re both goners.” “Doved, I won’t move.” The hussar, with his wrathful saber, came through the door and, with fierce gestures, bellowed: “Where is that rascal?” The brother-in-law answered: “No, most-esteemed Sergeant, as if my house were some sort of refuge for scoundrels. Am I not an honest Jew?” The hussar replied: “I want to find that rascal who cheated me out of four taler” he said, while inspected all corners of the room. “What do you have in this sack?” he asked the brother-in-law waving the naked saber blade over his head. “Cruel sir, what would I have in the sack? Glass.” Then, the hussar struck at the sack with the flat of the saber and its back, hacking at it with all his might. Many blows, many bruises! The hidden Jew thought: I can’t leave my brother-in-law in the lurch or expose myself either – so with his voice, he began making this sound: “Klink, klink, klink!” so that the hussar would think that he was hearing glass tinkling as it broke. And, indeed, it helped a bit. Because the Jew’s mimicry seemed to the hussar so comical that half of his rage subsided. Nonetheless, with the other half of his anger, he continued to beat the sack so that the Jew concealed inside cried out “Klink! Klink! Klink!” even more insistently. After the hussar had departed, the bloody Jew crawled out of the sack and observed: “For God’s sake,” he said, “for 4 measly taler, I’ll never become glass again – not if I live a hundred years.”
This story involves a new Judge and his first case before his Bench:
Ready to Adjudicate
On the first day that a new Judge took office (back in the days of the Republic), a miller downstream from his neighbor appeared before the Court to prosecute a complaint as to his water rights against the upstream miller. When he had finished presenting his case, the Judge declared: “This matter is crystal-clear. Judgment granted in your favor.” A boozy night passed and, then, the upstream miller appeared in Court, presenting his own claim and a defense to that of his downstream neighbor. When he had finished his speech, the Judge remarked: “This matter is crystal-clear. Judgment granted in your favor.” After the miller had left, the Clerk approached the Judge. “Learned sir,” the clerk said, “in all his days, your predecessor never pronounced judgement in this way. I don’t see how this can stand. Both parties to a trial can’t win – otherwise, they both lose. And that can’t be right.” To this remark, the Judge answered: “You’ve made this perfectly clear. No doubt you’re right.”
The story below was excluded from publication in the anthology made from Rheinlandische Hausfreund almanac on the ground of objections from the Catholic Church.
Pious Advice
An 18-year old youth, still inexperienced, Roman Catholic, and pious, left his parents’ home to seek his fortune. The first of the big cities into which he ventured, he stood on the span for a time, wishing to look left and right because he feared that he would never again see such a bridge built above or below a metropolis so vast as this one. As he looked to his right, he saw a Padre carrying that which all Catholics must esteem and to which they must bend their knee most humbly. As he turned to his left, he saw another Padre approaching, also bearing that object that Catholics esteem and before which they must kneel most humbly and so, as he considered this situation with right mind, both priests, it seemed, were preparing to pass by him, one from the left and one from the right. And so the poor fellow didn’t know to which Padre he should kneel, nor to which he should greet with both love and prayer and so he found himself in a difficult quandary. As he gazed at one of the priests with fear and trembling, asking him with his eyes – indeed, imploring him – as to what he should do, the padre smiled at the boy like an angel and raised his hand and, with his pointer finger, gestured at the bright sunny heavens above. – He is there above us to whom you should kneel and pray. This advice is well-taken and the Housefriend respects and commends it to all, even though your author has neither prayed the rosary (at least not yet) nor written this Almanac strictly for Lutherans.
Hebel was a man of the Enlightenment and most of his stories are rational without supernatural overtones. But he did write some ghost stories and the anecdote below involves coincidences that seem preternatural to the point of being supernatural.
Fortunetelling times Two
The first is very remarkable – at least if its true – and people maintain that it is.
Some time ago, a number of well-to-do Polish gentlemen were amusing themselves with cards and dance when a vagrant woman, a gypsy, entered the jolly hall and offered to tell their fortunes. A fine young little prince, the erstwhile Count Poniatowsky (who perished in the battle at Leipzig on the 19th of October 1813), stretched out his delicate hand before her: “Prophecy something good for me, my little mother? Tell me what will become of me.” The witch looked at the boy in a manner that was cheerful but tempered with compassion. “Aye, my fine little lord,” she said, “you will achieve the highest and most rare honors and standing. If only your joy would be longer lasting. Beware of magpies. A magpie will be your end.” The Polish gentlemen laughed long and hard at this prophecy and the woman’s other prognostications and when a magpie flew through the hall, Poniatowsky’s friends said to him: “Take care, Prince! Do you see what has just flown by you?” But Poniatowsky replied: “No worries. I haven’t yet achieved the highest and most rare office and honors.” After the three great nobles destroyed Poland, the Poles invested their hopes and visions for the future in France and, indeed, many went into the French service, hoping that through that nation their own royal kingdom would come to life again. For that reason, Poniatowsky followed this path and, on the 16th of October 1813, fought in the great battle at Leipzig, distinguishing himself in the eyes of Napoleon as an estimable ally, demonstrating so much good fortune and initiative that the Emperor of France promoted him to a field marshal commanding the French forces. And this was a remarkable office for him to hold and a great honor. However on the 19th of October, when all was lost, the new field marshal drowned during the retreat in the Magpie (“Elster”). For, as it happened, the Magpie is the name of the river in which he drowned. Most of our readers will, in fact, recognize the name of that river. Thus, in a most unexpected way, the prophecy of the gypsy was fulfilled. A fisherman found the corpse of the drowned man in the water, richly bedecked in rings and other adornments but the peasant did not remove the ornaments from his fingers or the money from his pockets – rather, one of the Prince’s retainers took the body into his custody after rewarding the fisherman with a substantial sum of money.
The second prophecy can be explained in an entirely natural manner. But it is, nonetheless, remarkable.
Obviously, one could not accuse the Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, with being gullible with respect to supernatural things. More often than not, he made fun of these beliefs although he wasn’t always successful on this subject. One day, someone assured him that a preacher could predict the future. Everything that this man prophesied came to pass. So the King ordered that this prophet be brought before him. At the same time, the King inquired as to whether there was a soldier in his service who had forfeited his life because of some crime. Indeed, there was such a person. Therefore, the King cammnded that the delinquent be posted as a sentry outside the royal chambers at the appointed hour of his meeting with the preacher. When the supposed prophet appeared, the King asked: “Has the Holy Spirit moved you?” The preacher replied: “It would be a good thing if the Spirit moved all.” – “Do you have the gift of prophecy?” – “A little bit, at least so people say.” – “As an example,” the King continued, “what should I ask you? Bring in the fellow outside the door. How old will he live to be?” he asked the preacher, “and how will he die?” The preacher responded that this man wouldn’t die for many years and that he would live to a great old age. – “You’ve done poorly in this exam,” the King interposed. “I shouldn’t need to tell you,” he said, “that tomorrow morning I’m having this fellow hanged. He’s been condemned.” – The preacher replied: “This is the first time one of my prognostications has gone awry.” And, indeed, the next morning the condemned man was marched to where he would be executed in Potsdam.
Now, it happened that the King’s sisters, the Duchess of Braunschweig and Princess Amalia were traveling on that same morning to Potsdam, a surprise visit to greet the King and bring him pleasure in that mannter. And this very same morning was very pleasant, almost to pleasant for a hanging. As the women passed the procession to the gallows and saw the poor fellow slowly led to his death, their royal souls were troubled by a delicate pain. “What will become of this poor man?” – “Your Highness, not much more. He will be hanged.” – “What has he done?” – “Such and such.” – It was one of those offenses for which you get hanged or let go at the discretion of the Judge. The princesses commanded that the execution be delayed until new orders could be sought. The King received his sisters with brotherly delight. “We have a request for you, dear brother,” they said, “will you give us your royal word that you will grant the thing that we desire?” “If it’s within my power,” he said, “there shall be no “No” to your request.” Because he thought that they had come to ask him for something on their own behalf. To his surprise, they asked him to pardon the condemned man. – So what was he to do? He had given his word. And so, he gave an adjutant a white cloth (signifying his pardon) and had the condemned man brought back from the gallows. The King’s pardon was on August 17, 1786.
As far as I know the musketeer who was pardoned is still living today.
Count Poniatowski in the story is Jozef Poniatowski, the nephew of King Stanislaus of Poland. This King was criticized for not opposing effectively enough the Third Partition of Poland. In that partition, the nation was divided between Austria, Prussia, and Russia – the “three great nobles” that Hebel mentions (respectively Frances II, Frederick Wilhelm II, and Catherine II); characteristically, Hebel defines political events in terms of persons. Jozef Poniatowski was a general of Napoleon’s army and marched with him during the Russian invasion. At the “Battle of the Nations” in Leipzig, Poniatowski fought heroically, but lost half his force and was badly wounded. Before he could lead his troops over the Elstermuehlbruecker (the “Elster Mill bridge”), the span was destroyed. Poniatowski tried to swim across the river but drowned. The battle was fought on the outskirts of the city, places that are now well within the town itself. There’s a small plaque where Poniatowski drowned. I’ve seen it myself.
An insurgent freedom-loving gene runs in the Ponioatyowski family. In the 20th century, one of Mexico’s most distinguished journalists is Elena Poniatowska. Her most famous book is an account of the massacre of students in Mexico City in 1968 – la Noche de TlatelolcoL (published in the United States as Massacre in Mexico). She traces her lineage to King Stanislaus Poniatowski. Her biographical article in Wikipedia seems translated from some unknown language and has to be seen to be believed. Here is an example: “(Her) house is filled chaotically with books. Spaces that do not have books in or on them are filled with photographs of her family and paintings by Francisco Toledo. She works at home often forgetting to do other things like going to the gym as she is involved in her writing. She does domestic chores herself such as paying bills, going to the market, and cooking.” In the “Talk” commentary on the biographical note she is bizarrely referred to as “Elenita”. The section says “Elenita has read this article and it’s (sic) upset about it. She didn’t like it all.”
Here is another story featuring der alte Fritz, as Germans call Frederick the Great and a miller:
King Frederick and his Neighbor
King Frederick of Prussia had a pleasure palace eight hours from Berlin and would have been happy with that place if it hadn’t been so near to particularly unruly mill. In the first place, a mill and a royal pleasure palace aren’t good neighbors, even though white bread, made from grain milled to fine flour, doesn’t taste bad, particularly when its been well baked. Nonetheless, when the King was in a good mood and not thinking about his neighbor, the miller sometimes opened the sluice so that water drove his water-wheel, not thinking himself about his royal neighbor, and, in fact, his thoughts on that subject didn’t perturb the turning of his wheel, although sometimes the grinding of gears and millstones intruded on the King’s reverie. Now, the esteemed reader will say: “A King has money like a tree has leaves and so why didn’t the King just buy out the miller and have the mill torn down?” The King could answer this question. Because one day, he had the miller summoned to him. “You know, of course,” the King said, “that the two of us can’t co-exist close to one another. One of us will have to yield. What will you give to purchase my little palace?” The miller said: “How much do you want for it, my royal neighbor?” The King responded: “You are odd fellow. You don’t have enough money to buy my castle. What value do you place on your mill?” The miller replied: “Gracious lord, you don’t have enough money to purchase my mill. It’s not for sale.” The King made an offer, then, a second and a third. But the miller held his ground: “It’s not for sale. I was born here,” he added, “and I intend to die here as well, and since I inherited the mill from my own father, I intend to pass it down to my own heirs and so will earn their blessings.” The King, then, spoke in a more earnest manner: “Don’t you know that I don’t need to bandy words with you, my good man?. I’ll levy taxes on your mill and ruin you. As to my offer, take it or leave it!” The miller simply smiled at the King and replied to him: “Very well put, my gracious Lord, but for the royal court and judge in Berlin.” Thus – the miller would seek a decree from the court on this subject. The King was a just man and could be very merciful and, indeed, the high-spirited and freedom-loving aspects of this conversation were not displeasing to him – in fact, he was rather pleased. So he left the miller undisturbed and, in fact, lived in friendly harmony with his neighbor from that day forth.
Many anecdotes are told about the flamboyant, much beloved despot, Frederick the Great of Prussia. Here’s an unseemly one recounted by Egon Friedell, the great popular historian. Friedell says that a cavalryman was dragged before Frederick accused, on good authority, of having committed an unnatural act with his mare. Frederick glared at the poor wretch and, then, said: “This swine was belongs in the infantry.” And, so, the cavalryman was demoted to a foot soldier.
The next story, about a grifter who claims to be able to produce weather on demand, has many variants. In fact, I first heard this story as a child. My father told the story about a man who promised to resurrect the dead in the small mountain town of Alma, Utah. I don’t know why the story was set in that place, although it may have something to do with the Book of Mormon – there is discussion of “the first resurrection” in the gospel of Alma. (And the Utah town seems to have been named for that part of Mormon scripture.) My father’s tale seems related in turn to the famous ghost story “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs. Hebel’s story is less macabre and more satirical.
The Weather-maker
Just as a sieve-maker or a broom-binder can’t earn his keep the whole year in the small area where he dwells since his fellow villagers can’t offer enough work to nourish him all year long and, so, must travel to practice his art throughout the whole territory following the trade where it takes him, so a flim-flam man must frequently change his venue, trafficking in flim and flam – that is, to say deceit and roguery by which he bewitches others and keeps himself in free drinks at the local pub. So, our hero appeared, once upon a time, in Oberehningen and went straight to the mayor. “Mr. Mayor,” the flim-flam man said, “could you use some different weather around here? I’ve inspected this neck of the woods and noticed that the low fields have suffered under too much rain and, at higher elevations, the crops seem delayed.” The Mayor said that these things were easily reported but difficult to remedy. “Uh-huh,” the flim-flam man replied, “I’ve been on the road for a long time. Am I not the weather-maker of Bologna? In Italy,” he continued, “where both citron trees and juicy oranges grow, all weather is made to order. You Germans are backward about this.” Now, the Mayor was a good and true-hearted fellow who would rather be rich sooner than later. Therefore, the proposal of the flim-flam man intrigued him. But he thought it prudent to be cautious. “For tomorrow,” he said, “please prove your point by making me a day with clear skies, maybe a couple of little white clouds floating overhead, sunshine the entire day, and some sparkly sunbeams in the air. At midday make it warm enough to call out the first yellow birds of summer and, around evening, please allow it to become cool and refreshing.” The flim-flam man replied: “I don’t trouble myself with a single day. It’s not worth the cost. I won’t work on anything less than a year. But I can make it so that you won’t have barns large enough for all the fruit and grape pulp that will abound. To the mayor’s question as to what he would charge to produce an entire year of fine weather, the fellow said that he would require an advance of free booze and a gulder per day, observing that it would take him, at least, three days to accomplish this task. “And from the surplus of wine,” he said, “I will take a quarter of the amount exceeding what you typically produce in a year – as well as a sixth of every bushel of fruit as well.” “That’s not ‘march’,” the Mayor replied – since in that part of the country, they don’t say “much” but “march” if I’m to explain this to you in ordinary English. And the flim-flam man understood what the Mayor was proposing and made sure to answer him in ordinary English as well. As the official took pencil and paper from his desk with the idea of describing from month to month precisely the nature of the weather that was on order, the flim-flam man had a new idea: “This won’t work, Mr. Mayor. We’ll have to hear from the citizens of this village. Weather, after all, is held in common. You can’t guarantee that all of your inhabitants necessarily want the weather that you desire.” The Mayor replied: “You’re right. You are a very reasonable man.”
At the first community meeting nothing was agreed-upon, nor could the people reach an understanding at the seventh. At the eighth public meeting, people almost came to blows and, then, a rational local lawyer suggested that, in the interests of peace and harmony in the community, it would be best to simply pay-off the weather-maker and send him away. Therefore, the Mayor called the weather-maker and said to him: “Here’s your nine gulden, trouble-maker – now make yourself scarce before murder and violence break-out in our community.” The flim-flam man didn’t hesitate. He took the money and left without paying the innkeeper accrued charges for 22 bottles of wine and the weather stayed just the way it had always been.
Along the same lines, here is a story in which a crooked official is scammed by an even more crooked glove merchant. The motif in play here is: “the con-man conned.”
Merchant in Gloves
A glove-merchant, who wished to bring a case of fine gloves from France into Germany, devised the following scheme. His plan relied upon this law: when a merchant encounters the toll-official at the German border, he must place a value on his goods (“how much do you think it’s worth?”) for assessment of the toll. If he values the goods fairly, the toll is assessed and he may go on his merry way. But if the toll-official perceives that the trader or shopkeeper has assessed his merchandise for too little so as to avoid the tax, the official may then say: “Good, I’ll purchase these items from you and, in fact, add a profit for you of 10%. You should be pleased with this result.” The merchant gets paid and the goods get sent to Colmar or Strassbourg to be auctioned-off to the highest bidder. This is a cunning scheme and the merchant thereby trapped has no recourse. But even the most cunning may encounter someone who is his master when it comes to trickery.
An importer, desiring to transport two cases of gloves across the Rhine, conferred with a friend. In the first case, he packed nothing but right-hand gloves two by two; in the second case, he put nothing by left-handed gloves. Under the cover of night and fog, he smuggled the case containing the left-handed gloves over the border. With the other case, he reported to the toll-station.
“What do you have their in your case?” – “Parisian gloves.” – “How valuable are they?” – “200 francs.” The toll official handled the gloves: the leather was delicate but durable, the seams finely sewn – in short the case of gloves was worth 400 francs even between brothers. “I’ll give you 220 francs for them.” The merchant replied: “They’ll be yours as much as they were mine. Ten percent is a fair profit.” So he took the 220 francs and left the case with the toll inspector. And so, on Friday, the market day in Speier (this was in the olden days), the gloves were put up for auction.
“Who will pay more than 220?”
A glove connoisseur inspected the wares. “It seems to me,” the importer’s confederate said, “that the left-hand gloves are a bit scarce.” “Parbleu,” the other replied, “you’re right!” -- meaning the gloves were all left.” No one made an offer. “Who’ll pay 200? – 150? - a hundred – who will offer 80?” No offer. “Well you know,” the confederate said, “there are plenty of folks returning from the wars missing arms.” The year was 1813 Anno Domine. “I can pay 60 francs for the lot,” he said. And so proposed, so the deal was done. The toll official assigned the upper Rhine territory was enraged, fit to be tied. The aforementioned merchant had, as we have said, smuggled the right-handed gloves over the Rhine – see no evil and hear no evil: and he met his partner in a private part of the woods where they reunited lefts with the rights and, then, brought the merchandise to Frankfurt where it was sold a market for a pretty penny. And, in addition to those profits, the merchant earned an additional 140 marks and beat the system out of its toll to boot. What does it say in scripture: “I would not have known to covet, if the law hadn’t said: Do not covet!”
The final quote is from St. Paul at Romans 7:7. The idea is that we know what is morally wrong through the old law.
Finally here is the crowning jewel of Hebel’s work, the “most beautiful story in the world”.
Unexpected Reunion
A good fifty years ago, a young miner in the Swedish town of Falun kissed his young, sweet betrothed and said to her: “On the feast of Saint Lucia our love will be blessed by the priest’s hand. Then, we will be man and wife and will build together our little nest.” – “And love and contentment will dwell with us there,” the lovely bride said with a smile, “because you are my one and only and everything to me. Without you, I’d rather be in the grave than anywhere else.” But on Saint Lucia’s day, when the pastor for the second time called out these words: “If there is anyone present who knows any reason that these persons should not be joined in holy matrimony,” it was Death who rose to object. Because the very next morning, as the youth in his black miner’s uniform (for a miner always wears the dark garb in which he will be buried) passed by her house, he knocked on her window and said “good morning”, but there was to be no good evening thereafter. He never came back from the mine and so she had embroidered in vain his cravat with a red thread for his wedding day, and when he didn’t return, she set it aside and wept and never forgot him. And so it happened that the city of Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake and the Seven Year War began and ended and Emperor Franz the First died and the order of the Jesuits was dissolved and Poland was partitioned and, then, the Empress Maria Theresa died and Streuensee was executed, America freed, and the allied French and Spanish powers were unable to conquer Gibralter. The Turks sealed General Stein in the Veteran cave in Hungary and Emperor Joseph died as well. King Gustav of Sweden conquered Russia’s Finland and the French Revolution and its wars began and another Emperor, Leopold the Second went to his grave. Napoleon attacked Prussia and the English bombarded Copenhagen and the farmers sowed and cut. The millers milled and the blacksmiths hammered and the mining folk dug into veins of metal in their underground workplaces. In the year 1809 (a little before or, maybe, after the Feast of St. John), the miners in Falun dug open a passageway between two shafts about 900 feet below the surface, excavating from the rubble and vitriol-water the corpse of a young man entirely suffused with copper-vitriol and so unchanged and undecayed; and, so it was, that the boy’s face and his age could be easily recognized as if he had died only an hour earlier or had fallen asleep at his work. When the miner brought him into the light of day, father and mother, friends and acquaintances, all were long dead and there was no one who could identify the sleeping boy nor tell anything about the misfortune that he had suffered until the erstwhile fiancee of the miner came who recalled how he had gone into the shaft one day and never returned. Grey and crippled, she came forward leaning on her crutch in the town square and recognized her bridegroom; and more with joyful rapture than with sorrow, she sank down on the beloved corpse and, only after she had composed herself after a violent, protracted spasm, she said finally: “This is my betrothed whom I have mourned for fifty years and whom God has now permitted me to see once more before my death. Eight days before our wedding, he went underground and never came back up.” Then, the spirits of the bystanders were all gripped with sadness and tears as they saw the former bride, now in the form of a withered, feeble old woman and the bridegroom, still youthful and beautiful, and saw also how, after fifty years, the flames of youthful love once again were aroused; but the boy didn’t open his mouth or his eyes upon this reunion. Then they carried him to her little room since she was the only one to whom he belonged and who had a claim to his body and there he stayed until his grave could be made in the church cemetery to which the miners then carried him and the old woman brought with her a little box in which she had kept his cravat embroidered with the red stripe, accompanying him in her Sunday-best clothes as if it were their wedding and not the day of his burial. Then, as they laid him in his grave, she said: “Sleep well for another day or week in your cool wedding bed and don’t let the time weigh heavily on you. I don’t have much more to do and I’ll come soon and, then, it will be day again. – What the earth has once restored this second time will not be confined much longer.” So she said as she went forth, pausing once to look back.
Santa Lucia is a Swedish festival famous for candlelight processions. It occurs on December 13. Johannes is the feast for St. John celebrated on December 27.
Some of the historical references may be obscure to modern readers. Streuensee was a German scientist who served as royal physician to Denmark’s King Christian VII. Streuensee, a man of the Enlightenment, assumed practical control over Denmark (which then included Norway and Iceland), when the King lapsed into melancholic madness. His intervention was deemed a coups d’etat by the nobility and Streuensee was arrested and executed for lese majeste on April 28, 1772. The reference to “General Stein” and the “Veteraner Cave” is garbled – Hebel wrote quickly and, often, inexactly. Veterani cave (Pestere Vetererani) is a cavern on the Rumanian side of the Danube in the Danube gorge – the river is the border between Rumania and Serbia. The name derives from an Italian general who fought the Turks in the area at the end of the 17th century, obviously long before the events in the story. Veterani apparently made the cave his headquarters during the Turkish war. The identity of “Stein” is unknown. However, it is clear that there was also fighting in the area in 1788 (obviously the event to which Hebel adverts) and, once again, the spacious cave with an oculus in the rock overhead was used as a fortified military site and headquarters. The siege of Gibralter lasted from 1779 to 1783 – it is really part of the American Revolutionary War. The Spanish and French besieged Gibralter in the context of France’s alliance with the American revolutionaries. As Hebel notes, the long siege was unavailing.
The protagonist of Hebel’s “Unexpected Reunion” is time. In many ways, our existence is based upon resistance to time. We are constituted to oppose time’s ravages. But time is also growth and rebirth. And the forever-young miner who has defeated time is also dead.
Hebel’s story is a strange mixture of the specific and abstract. The passage of time is measured in specific historic events, some of them highly particular; but time also passes, as it were, “timelessly” – the miners mine, the blacksmiths forge, and the farmers farm. Landmarks in time are specified, feast days in the church. And, yet, the characters in the tale aren’t given names and remain mere types. This is consistent with my assertion that the hero (and villain) of the story is time and not faithful bride nor the lost miner.
In real life, the lost miner had a name: he was Fet-Mat Israelsson (“Fet-Mat” is a Swedish nickname that means Fat Matt.) The story is based upon an actual occurrence. Hebel moves the story close to his present – in truth, Fat Matt disappeared in 1677 in the mines of Falun and his corpse was not discovered until 1719. As one might expect, the facts of the matter are a bit more complex.
Fat Matt seems not to have been a miner. It’s unclear how he wandered into the Falun copper mine where he was found 42 years after his disappearance. When he vanished, it was thought that he had jilted his fiancee and, probably, absconded to avoid marriage. (Needless to say, Hebel, if he knew these facts, suppressed them in favor of his depiction of undying love and loyalty.) Fat Matt was found in an abandoned shaft. Curiously, some accounts say that his legs were amputated. This suggests that he may have been wandering along a gallery on which there were rails installed for moving cart-loads of ore and been runover. Some depictions of his discovery show him astraddle tracks on the mine floor. His corpse was steeped in copper sulfite or vitriol – a substance that is now used in pesticide. Vitriol is a by-product of mining processes and Fat Matt was either lying in a pool of the stuff or under a perpetually dripping shower of copper sulfite dissolved in ground-water. His body was supple when it was pulled out of the mine but hardened to a consistency “like wood” by the time it reached the surface. As is common in cases like this, Fat Matt was first thought to be victim of a recent accident, but no one knew who he was or how he had come to be lost in the mine. However, his elderly fiancee identified him. Another woman asserted that she had actually been married to Fat Matt – most writers dismiss this claim as being a fraudulent attempt to secure miner’s pension benefits. (And this latter detail conflicts with the idea that Fat Matt was not a miner, but a townsman who had wandered into the pit. Notice how stories about Fat Matt seem all wildly inconsistent. The reason that it is denied that Fat Matt was a miner himself seems to be that it would be otherwise inexplicable for a shift worker to be lost in the mine and his absence somehow missed.)
Fat Matt’s afterlife was far longer than his brief sojourn in the sunlit meadows and forests of Falun. Recognizing that the corpse had celebrity status, the town-fathers had a glass case built and displayed the mummy in the Falun’s Lutheran church. Fat Matt persisted as an object of curiosity in his glass coffin for 30 years. The great Swedish taxonomist, Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) examined the cadaver and declared that Fat Matt’s decay had been arrested because he was coated with vitriol. The scientist predicted that once the vitriol evaporated, Fat Matt would begin to decompose. Linne was right – after a few years, Fat Matt developed a distressing aroma and began to turn black. My guess is that remedies were probably applied – presumably, efforts were made to arrest the decay although this is unclear. Ultimately, the body was buried. However, a few decades later, renovations at the church resulted in Fat Matt’s resurrection – he was unearthed, put in box, and hauled to the church attic. This was apparently in 1862. Fat Matt was forgotten and left to molder in peace. Around 1900, he was rediscovered and once more put on display. The story is intricate because at some point the city boosters commissioned a wax replica of the actual corpse. Exactly what was displayed between 1900 and 1930 is unclear. Perhaps, the actual body was exhibited or, maybe, the artifact on show was the wax replica. In any event, in 1930, Fat Matt’s mortal remains were once more committed to the earth and, as far as I know, remain there to this day. The copper mines in Falun were finally abandoned in 1992.
Falun’s old townhall has been made into a museum. The wax replica of Fat Matt remains as an exhibit, although who knows? – perhaps, if the wax cadaver were autopsied it would prove to contain the real corpse. Stranger things have been known to happen. Photographs of the object show a pale, red-haired man with open eyes and a baffled expression on his face. His arms are thrown up over his head in a gesture of bemusement and surprise. The corpse is dressed in antique clothing and his missing legs have been restored under his trousers, albeit with a suspicious crease at about knee-level.
The story was a touchstone for German romantics. Achim von Arnim, a fast friend of the Grimm brothers, wrote a ballad about Fat Matt and most famously E.T.A. Hoffmann composed a novella on the subject, published in 1819 in his book of short stories, Die Serapionsbrueder. Wagner wrote a libretto based on the story in 1842, but his music publisher rejected the concept of a full-blown opera on the macabre tale. (Wagner is said to have written Tannhauser instead.) In the early 20th century, Hugo von Hofmannstahl wrote a play on the theme called Die Bergwerke zu Falun (“The Mines at Falun”) – the script is based primarily on Hofmann’s tale. Much later, Fred Zinneman, an Austrian emigre movie director, adverted to the story in his 1982 film Five Days One Summer. In that picture, a corpse extrudes from a glacier and identified as the former betrothed of a woman who is now very old. Zinneman won four Academy Awards in his long career in Hollywood and he was a “prestige director” – he made movies such as The Nun’s Story, Oklahoma, and From Here to Eternity. Five Days One Summer, which starred Sean Connery, was a critical and commercial failure. Here is a story told about Zinneman:
Seniority
In Hollywood, it is called “taking a meeting.” A young executive fresh out of the Harvard Business School “took a meeting” with an old man. The old man’s first movies were made without sound in the silent era, and, later, he had directed many other famous films and, indeed, been awarded four Academy Awards for his work. The young executive sat down with the old film maker in a conference room in Century City. He was brusque and, frequently, looked at his Rolex. In Hollywood, time is money. The graduate of Harvard Business School didn’t like movies that much and he didn’t know their history – he was concerned with the business of movie-making.
The old man explained the plot for a movie that he hoped to direct. The summary was too long for the callow young executive and he told the director to be more brief. When the old director had finished his presentation, the executive asked him: “That’s very interesting. But why should I invest money in this project? Tell me what you’ve accomplished.” The old man replied: “Sure, you first.”
Zinneman denied that the story was authentic. He said that it was an invention of Billy Wilder.
Sequels
There are two sequels to my work with Hebel’s Kalendergeschichten.
1.
Many of Hebel’s stories involve things that are lost and, then, found. “Unexpected Reunion” is a tale of this sort.
I don’t recall what interested me most recently in Hebel’s prose. I know that I encountered “Unexpected Reunion” years ago and have often thought about that story. If memory serves, I was reading some works by Kafka, probably in March 2020, when Covid first began to stalk my part of the world. Kafka, of course, had high praise for Hebel as did Patrick Roth, another German writer with whom I had engaged later in 2020. At that time, I didn’t own a copy of Hebel’s stories from Rheinische Hausfreund and, so, I accessed a copy on the Internet.
The book that I received is called Die Schoensten Geschichten vom Johann Peter Hebel. The book is hard-bound but feels flimsy. It has curiously brittle paper and was published in 1960 by the Nymphenburger Verlag in Munich. On its first fly-leaf, a bookmark has been pasted onto the page. The bookmark is rather crudely printed and reads: June 2nd, 1967 – below the date there is a scroll bearing the name BRECK. Beneath the scroll, a coat of arms has been drawn in schematic outline: the coat of arms is apparently that of the Breck School: it shows a cross and an oil lamp with a tear-shaped flame, signifying, I think, scholarship. Another scroll extends beneath Breck School coat-of-arms. That scroll is emblazoned with the words “Honor, God, Country.” Then, this legend appears: THE GERMAN CONSULATE BOOK AWARD to HUGH H. ROBERTS for EXCELLENCE IN GERMAN. (The Breck School is an expensive preparatory academy located in Golden Valley, a suburb of Minneapolis. It’s tucked into a corner of the city too wealthy for me to ever enter. I know the place by reputation only.)
A few minutes on the Internet shows me that Mr. Roberts graduated from Breck School in 1969 and, then, went on to Harvard where he completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics followed by an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Mr. Roberts later had a distinguished career at Kraft Foods where he achieved high executive status – I think he may have been a President of a division of the Company. Mr. Roberts seems to have retired in 2008. He is engaged currently in philanthropy, lives on the Gold Coast in Chicago, and serves on a Board with Michelle Obama. Obviously, Mr. Roberts rose to great prominence in the world of business and continues to be an important figure both with respect to industry and public affairs.
It is remarkable to think of these achievements in light of the honor awarded to Mr. Roberts by the German Consulate at the end of the academic year, early June 1967. Apparently, Roberts is originally from St. Paul. I know that there is an institution associated with Germany on Summit Avenue – but, I think this is the Goethe Haus, located in an old mansion about four blocks from the Cathedral that is an ornate and towering building modeled on the Frauenkirche in Dresden.
I have written Mr. Roberts a letter remarking on the curious fact that the book bearing his name has come into my possession. It’s clear that he is a busy man and I don’t expect a response.
(In fact, Mr. Roberts did reply very graciously to my letter. He confirmed that the book had been his, but didn’t provide any details as to when or how he got rid of the volume. Mr. Roberts advised me that when he attended Breck School, the grounds overlooked the Mississippi – the enterprise moved to St. Louis Park sometime later. Mr. Roberts was, in fact, a senior official at Kraft Foods. He noted that he was aware from interactions with Hormel executives that the name is pronounced correctly with the accent on the first syllable. I was very pleased to receive this gentleman’s response to my correspondence.)
2.
About a month ago, when I was writing this essay in early 2021, my ex-wife contacted me and asked that I supply here with a copy of the divorce decree that ended our marriage in the mid-1980's. (She told me that she had misplaced her copy.) She was, then, involved in preparing papers to facilitate her adoption of two grandchildren in North Dakota, Hannah and Lucas Beckmann – these are the children of my daughter, Melissa, who has been unwell and troubled.
In searching for the divorce decree, I found a yellow manila file labeled “Income Verification”. I have seen this file a hundred times, but never extracted it from my filing cabinet, assuming that it contained tax returns or some other materials produced in the context of the divorce. On this occasion, however, I removed the file and examined its contents. To my amazement, the file held a translation of Hebel’s story Unverhofftes Wiedersehen that I made in 1995, that is 26 years ago. The translation, emerging like a cadaver from a pool of vitriol, was disconcerting, even, eerie and a bit frightening. I had no memory that I had translated the story.
The translation was embedded in a very short essay. In that essay, I speculate that the translation will one day be all that remains of me. In other words, my attempt to translate the story will remain as an artifact into my old age and, even, I suppose when I am old. Although, I remarked, I will age and grow infirm, Hebel’s story will always remain fresh and young, evergreen and preserved as it were in the amber of his perfect prose.
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