#auerbücher

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I saw your tag

#and 19th c biographical novels that depict historical figures in hilarious and disturbing ways

and wondered if you had any recommendations?

(It's not quite a biographical novel ,but you might like *Charles Auchester* by Elizabeth Sara Sheppard, who is Felix Mendelssohn idfic with the serial numbers filed off: see my review at https://landofnowhere.dreamwidth.org/99862.html.)

Thanks for the recommendation, Farouche! Your review has me excited to read Charles Auchester over the summer, and I'll try my hand at a few recommendations of my own.

I'll admit upfront that I've mostly read novels of this kind in German, and am not aware of translations for most of them right now. The novel I have the most experience with is Berthold Auerbach's Poet and Merchant: a Portrait of Life in the Time of Moses Mendelssohn, which is available in German here and English here. It takes as its subject the obscure and unhappy life of the poet Ephraim Moses Kuh, who after a difficult childhood receives the opportunity to travel to Berlin in the mid-18th century. This framework is mostly an excuse for Auerbach to include his favorite historical figures—Moses Mendelssohn, of course, but Lessing and Gleim show up in the army, and in Mendelssohn's living-room we get to meet Salomon Maimon, Aaron Gumperz and Johann Caspar Lavater. A.L. Karsch even shows up at a wedding, I think!

While the scenes of luminary debate are delightful, the overall arc of the story deals with heavy themes: What's the use of a poetic vocation? More broadly, what is fulfillment? How do you live as a person and citizen of a country that considers you neither? Unlike in Auchester (as far as I can tell; I'm only a few pages in), antisemitism features heavily in the story, both in scenes of individual violence and as a pall hanging over the characters trying to conduct their lives within inhuman limits. Auerbach's clearly turning to the 18th century with a 19th-century lens, in the hope that Mendelssohn's project can provide an answer to contemporary problems, so while his "portrait" is clearly made with love, it's not necessarily accurate. On the other hand, the novel develops certain interpersonal dynamics excellently; the unfolding understanding between Kuh and his uncle Veitel is one, and the enthusiastic, very R/romantic admiration between Kuh's sister Violet and Lessing is another.

I'm also reading Lessing: Roman by Hermann Klencke. As far as I know, it's only ever been published in German. It appears he's written a whole series of biographical novels of 18th-century German writers. My mutual @estomia has read his Gleim novel, but I haven't (yet).

Going a little out of bounds: Goethe's 1788 play Egmont (English) (German) features Machiavelli as a character in a surprisingly-chill portrayal (he's Margaret of Parma's little guy!), Thomas Mann's short story "Schwere Stunde" is good, but 20th-century, and a must-read for Schoethe shippers, and César Aira's novella An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter develops a fascinating thesis on the interplay of colonialism, art and dehumanization.

I'm really interested in historical fiction, esp. 18th-century historical fiction, as a window into how people conceived of contemporary problems, and as a tool of metanarrative-building (e.g. as a national origin story). That's taken me to some works of art that aren't necessarily "good" or fun to read, but certainly deserve more scholarly interest.

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We have a wild Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Gleim on pg. 75

He shows up to teenage-Ephraim's house, tells his sister her betrothed had been executed by his boss & that he's quit his job & gives a forehead kiss. I'm utterly feral

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Berthold Auerbach Continues to be Wrong but Amusing

When one surveys the sublime friendships in the history of the German spirit, next to Luther and Melanchthon, Goethe and Schiller, the friendship of Lessing and Mendelssohn must also be named. It would be incorrect to portray them as congenial natures, but in active love of humanity, in love of pure truth they were of equal birth; the tempestuous man and the almost timidly considerate one cultivated true friendship through a whole generation; on the foundation of studying truth they held true to and supported on another.

Berthold Auerbach, "The Genesis of Nathan the Wise."

The more I read from Auerbach the more I conclude that his takes are not necessarily harmful but just...not accurate? He was also the one (according to Knobloch) to perpetuate the story of Mendelssohn & Fromet's engagement which is also probably not what happened.

Also absolutely wild to compare the collaborations of a) Luther & Melanchton, b) Goethe & Schiller & c) Lessing & Mendelssohn. Mister those are three v. different dynamics & exactly one of them should be called a friendship.

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fascinated by the choice to have Ephraim teach his sister German via Lessing

to read a play whose hero represents a level of societal acceptance & virtue you want to attain, to read aloud with your sister speeches both awful & idealistic, if not yet as good as Lessing's latter works, to read Lessing at all

if he shows up it's gonna be like if I ever meet Tom Stoppard

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I haven't made enough progress to know whether it will impact the story but it's been mentioned twice in Dichter und Kaufmann that their house is right next to a fencing school.

Is this book made for me? Is it meant to entice me to read more of the Moses Mendelssohn fanfic?

Because it's working

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:)

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I was very scared for exactly two pages but on pg. 172 Auerbach's narrator steps in and digresses.

In context Ephraim has decided on a whim/taken a Sign to become engaged to his tweenage cousin, and Auerbach leavs an A/N to clarify that he does not condone this

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I'm a Little Disappointed in Auerbach's Translator

So I'm reading Auerbach's Poet and Merchant in English translation because I like the formatting of that edition better, but on page 50 Ephraim's dad said something that confused me at first:

He goes on to say that the "Liberals" encourage Jews to turn away from their faith & assimilate to the customs of the majority society. That's a pretty consistent complaint across the centuries, so when I heard the word "Liberals" I worried Moses Daniel might have been referring to debates & reforms which would take place in Hamburg half a century after the setting of Dichter und Kaufmann, which would lead to the founding of Reform "liberal" Judaism.

Obviously that's anachronistic to the time of Mendelssohn and Kuh, but not to Auerbach's time, and there's some ideological similarities between the philosophers of the 18th century and the reformists of the 19th, so I went back to the German copy of Dichter und Kaufmann and found the same speech:

Auerbach's original refers to the "Aufgeklärten," that is, participants in the Enlightenment, many but not all of whom would have identified as "liberals" in the political or economic senses of the word. Maybe since the German word Liberal is associated with Reform Judaism, the translator of Dichter und Kaufmann wanted to indicate a continuity? I probably would have just said "the philosophers" or even "the philosophes," while the word "maskilim" might indicate that Ephraim's dad is raising an intracommunal concern but depending on the circumstances could be anachronistic.

In conclusion, translation is interesting and Sherb is dumb