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<p>At the latest with <i>Carsten Curator</i>, Theodor Storm’s novellistic works can be said to have dealt with questions of heredity and familial degeneration, culminating in <i>Der Schimmelreiter</i>. The figures of thought that structure these novellas are fed, as was common at the time, by Darwinism, but above all by the psychiatric doctrine of degeneracy. The latter, as it readily admits itself, owes its central basic figure, the death of a&#xa0;family over the course of three or more generations, to the threat of God’s wrath if the Ten Commandments are not fulfilled (Exodus 20:3ff). While <i>Carsten Curator</i> and <i>Der Schimmelreiter</i> juxtapose psychiatric-biological and (para-)theological figures of thought (around the wrath of God) in the form of two analogous readings that are by no means completely mappable to one another, <i>Hans und Heinz Kirch</i> attempt to work through the hereditary relationship of the sexes and their (possible) decay in a&#xa0;purely theological way. However, the novella is not only an attempt to exemplify the Old Testament model of God’s wrath. Rather, further biblical parables and thought figures from the New Testament are connected to this model. Taken together, this results in a&#xa0;literary theology of familial extinction, but also –&#xa0;and this is the special feature of the purely theological model and the associated use of the New Testament&#xa0;– the possibility of stopping it. All in all, it is a&#xa0;structural model which underlies all of Storm’s later novellistic works, although never again as explicitly narrated as here.</p>

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Vererbung und Verfall theologisch: Theodor Storms Hans und Heinz Kirch

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年2月13日

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  • Maximilian Bergengruen

摘要

At the latest with Carsten Curator, Theodor Storm’s novellistic works can be said to have dealt with questions of heredity and familial degeneration, culminating in Der Schimmelreiter. The figures of thought that structure these novellas are fed, as was common at the time, by Darwinism, but above all by the psychiatric doctrine of degeneracy. The latter, as it readily admits itself, owes its central basic figure, the death of a family over the course of three or more generations, to the threat of God’s wrath if the Ten Commandments are not fulfilled (Exodus 20:3ff). While Carsten Curator and Der Schimmelreiter juxtapose psychiatric-biological and (para-)theological figures of thought (around the wrath of God) in the form of two analogous readings that are by no means completely mappable to one another, Hans und Heinz Kirch attempt to work through the hereditary relationship of the sexes and their (possible) decay in a purely theological way. However, the novella is not only an attempt to exemplify the Old Testament model of God’s wrath. Rather, further biblical parables and thought figures from the New Testament are connected to this model. Taken together, this results in a literary theology of familial extinction, but also – and this is the special feature of the purely theological model and the associated use of the New Testament – the possibility of stopping it. All in all, it is a structural model which underlies all of Storm’s later novellistic works, although never again as explicitly narrated as here.