The Arts

Johann Peter Hebel, author of Tales from the Calendar and Alemanic Poems, is the great unknown classic of German literature. May 10, 2010 will mark the 250th anniversary of his birth. Goethe.de talked with Hebel biographer Bernhard Viel about the modernity of the supposed moralizer – and about his relevance in times of financial crisis.

Mr. Viel, in his famous dialect poem Transience, Johann Peter Hebel describes how everything in the world must pass. His work too seems to be scarcely read today. Why?

There are several reasons. For one thing, Hebel is widely seen as a rather stuffy Christian moralizer, whose stories are encoded moral reminders and no longer up to date. And in fact he was a diffuser of Enlightenment ideas and took the view that man should be honest and good and live in accordance with the spirit of social justice and God’s law.

A poet of business ethics

If you leave out God, that doesn’t sound so unmodern in a time of financial crisis...

I think so too. Hebel’s admirer Walter Benjamin maintained that Hebel had an excellent understanding of “business ethics”. In fact, Hebel always says that in business a man should above all heed his conscience, his inner voice. It’s part of his realism that his heroes seldom heed their inner voice and constantly transgress moral boundaries.

But beyond that – why should we read Hebel today?

Well, not least because his works are very entertaining and written with an easy hand! Classics such as Kannitverstan or Unverhofftes Wiedersehen [i.e., Unexpected Reunion] make excellent reading in the suburban train on the way to or from work, and not only because of their brevity.

“Not a word too many”

Hebel’s admirers include Goethe, Tolstoy and the brothers Grimm. Elias Canetti said he “secretly” measured each of his books against Hebel’s style, and Hermann Hesse called Hebel the “greatest German story-teller” What is the secret of Hebel’s literary finesse?

Hebel has different aesthetic tricks. The key point is probably that he in succeeds in describing simple people and makes a meaningful order of the world shine through their everyday actions. In every detail, he has the whole in view. This “holistic” trait of his writings is very contemporary.

And then in addition to all his efforts at enlightenment and teaching morality, Hebel tried to be entertaining with all the esprit and subtle winking he could summon, and developed journalistic qualities that we can still enjoy today. There’s never a word too many or too few. And nevertheless, hidden in this very modern-looking economy of language there’s always something profound.

Death isn’t the worst thing

What role does black humor play in Hebel’s writings?

A major role. His stories aren’t moral sermons, but texts in which time and again human abysses open. The black humor and ambiguity illustrate without illusion that evil and death are part of human destiny.

This is manifest in the story Glück und Unglück (i.e., Happiness and Unhappiness), which takes place during a sea battle. An explosion saves two Russian sailors from their burning ship, only to land them in the hands of the enemy, from whom they are then again rescued by another explosion, which, however, robs them of their legs.

Here the black humor points mainly to the fact that man is mortal and that death walks next to him at every moment. It’s not surprising the story ends with the insight that, for both the sailors, death “was, after all that had happened, not the worst thing”.

A torn character

Is that the reason your biography has the subtitle: “The Happiness of the Transient”?

Yes. For Hebel it was clear that recognizing your own mortality is the first step towards overcoming it. That’s the central, very Christian message of his work, which is reminder of the Resurrection.

There are already several biographies of Hebel. What is new about yours?

I attempt to free Hebel from the bad odor of conventionality and present him in all his ambivalence. As a Lutheran theologian, high school principal and botanist, he led to all outward appearances a rather conformist life. But actually he was a colorful character, who all his life suffered from the early death of his mother and was constantly torn between his faith and his inclination to break out of the prescribed patterns. And finally, I attempted to classify his work, which has previously been regarded as the production of a solitary mind, in terms of the history of the humanities and literature as somewhere between the late Enlightenment, classicism and romanticism.

“I also used to think Hebel was boring“

What led you to concern yourself with Hebel?

Quite personal reasons: my wife comes from the region in southern between Freiburg and Basel where Hebel grew up and which is the scene of his alemanic poems and stories. In her family, and generally in the region, Hebel is still a much-read and revered author. I also used to think Hebel was boring. Then I got interested in him for these personal reasons and revised my prejudice.

Do you have favorites among his writings?

The poem Die Vergänglichkeit is one, and then the story Unverhofftes Wiedersehen, which is reminiscent of Heinrich von Kleist in its dark depth.

The philosopher Ernst Bloch called it the “most beautiful story in the world” ...

... there he overlooked, in my opinion, that the story opens incredible abysses, especially when you consider that the love its describes, that of a bride for a miner who died in an accident fifty years ago and is now brought to the surface again in preserved form, was so steadfast only because the marriage was never consummated.

Biographically, the story is based, on my interpretation, on the fact that Hebel never himself married and in general had a difficult relationship to women. At the same time, in an age that celebrates true love, it sets an ironic, even a modern counterpoint.