Auntie Terror reviewed Schwerpunkt Deutsch, Gerhart Hauptmann, Bahnwärter Thiel by Gerhart Hauptmann (Diesterweg -- 1085)
Review of 'Schwerpunkt Deutsch, Gerhart Hauptmann, Bahnwärter Thiel' on 'Storygraph'
5 stars
This is a very intense piece of literature, despite being less than 50 pages long (in my edition), and it is something of a wild ride, starting at rather scenic and picturesque observations of the everyday life of a lineman, ever only known as Thiel, in a more rural area in the German Empire and ending with him sent to an asylum for slaughtering his wife and second son after the tragic death of the first son.
The atmosphere is rather on the melancholy and bleak side of things from the very start. But then, the life a man like him won't have been roses and peaches, and this might as easily be attributed to realism as to foreshadowing.
I can see why this is one of the typical school reads in Germany (though I somehow got around this one at school) because it offers itself up to a lot …
This is a very intense piece of literature, despite being less than 50 pages long (in my edition), and it is something of a wild ride, starting at rather scenic and picturesque observations of the everyday life of a lineman, ever only known as Thiel, in a more rural area in the German Empire and ending with him sent to an asylum for slaughtering his wife and second son after the tragic death of the first son.
The atmosphere is rather on the melancholy and bleak side of things from the very start. But then, the life a man like him won't have been roses and peaches, and this might as easily be attributed to realism as to foreshadowing.
I can see why this is one of the typical school reads in Germany (though I somehow got around this one at school) because it offers itself up to a lot of interpretation - not only concerning naturalism and foreshadowing, the outer landscape versus the inner one, but also concerning the steam train as a symbol for industrialisation and the way this was impacting society in general as well as people's lives on a personal level: It transports travellers, but also workers, it provides Thiel with his livelihood but also takes his first son.
Also the text lends itself very well to showing how the understanding of the roles of mother and father and romance have changed in the constituation of a family. Thiel would not be seen as a good father, nor his second wife as a good mother in the way they prefer one of the children massively, each. Romantic love seems to happen more in retrospect than present tense in Thiel's marriages.
There is a lot more one could go into, and a lot more depth to be had from any of the points briefly mentioned here. But this is supposed to be a review on a book network, not an essay on industrialisation and the development of the ideal of romantic love.
