The Jews’ Beech Tree (1842 )(Die Judenbuche)
by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
The novella “The Jews’ Beech-Tree”, published in 1842 in 16 parts in the “Morning Gazette for the educated Reader”, is probably the most famous story by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Subtitled “A tableau of morals from mountainous Westphalia” it is based on a murder case that really happened on her grandfather’s estate 50 years before Droste-Hülshoff had started to deal with it. Besides psychological and moral aspects she was especially interested in the murderer’s fatalistic behaviour. After 25 years in slavery he returns to the site of crime – the Jew’s beech-tree – and commits suicide there. The novella The Jews’ Beech-Tree” is not only an exciting murder mystery, but also an example for its genre, combining the Romantic Style with upcoming Realism.
Die Judenbuche
The Jews’ Beech-Tree
Frederick Mergel, born in 1738, was the son of a so-called landowner of the lower class in the village of B., a village which, badly built and smoky though it might be, yet attracted the attention of all travellers by the extremely picturesque beauty of its situation in a green and wooded valley of an important and historically famous mountain range.
