Immensee

by Theodor Storm, Gerd Eversberg (Editor), Ludwig Pietsch (Illustrator)

Der greise Held Reinhard Weber lässt an einem dunklen Herbstabend seinLeben vor seinem inneren Auge vorüberziehen. Gegenstand seiner Erinnerung ist die unerfüllt gebliebene Liebe zu Elisabeth. Gemeinsam auf dem Landgut Immensee aufgewachsen, ist den beiden von Anfang an keine gemeinsame Zukunft vergönnt. Verantwortlich hierfür sind grundverschiedene Lebensentwürfe. Während Elisabeth Schutz hinter den bürgerlichen Normen sucht, meint Reinhard Glück und Schönheit nur jenseits dieser Grenzen finden zu können; er ist der Prototyp des Künstlers. Als Reinhard zum Studium in die Stadt geht, verlässt er zum ersten Mal Elisabeth und überschreitet die bürgerlichen Grenzen . Erst ein Brief von Elisabeth erinnert ihn an die Heimat und die alte Liebe. Als er Elisabeth über Ostern besucht, bemerkt er bei ihr eine Veränderung. Das materiell-bürgerliche Denken hat das poetische Element in ihrem Leben vollends verdrängt. Erich, ein Schulfreund Reinhards, wird für sie mehr und mehr zum Lebensmittelpunkt; die beiden heiraten schliesslich. Als Reinhard nach zweijähriger Abwesenheit wieder nach Immensee kommt, muss er erkennen, dass er Elisabeth endgültig verloren hat. Obwohl er weiss, dass Elisabeths Ehe mit Erich ein Fehler ist, beschliesst Reinhard seiner Liebe zu entsagen und kehrt Immensee unwiderruflich den Rücken. Ihm bleibt allein die Erinnerung.

Genres: German Literature, Classics, Fiction, Germany, Literature, Short Stories, 19th Century

143 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1848

About the author

Hans Theodor Woldsen Storm (1817 – 1888) was a German poet and author.

He was born in Husum ("the grey town by the grey sea") on the west coast of Schleswig of well-to-do parents. While still a student of law, he published a first volume of verse together with the brothers Tycho and Theodor Mommsen.

He worked as a lawyer in Schleswig-Holstein, but emigrated to Thuringia in 1851, leaving his mother's household, and did not return until 1864 to become a writer leaving his homeland in Denmark.

He wrote a number of stories, poems and novellas. His two most well-known works are the novellas Immensee ("Bees' Lake", 1849) and Der Schimmelreiter ("The Rider on the White Horse"), first published in April 1888 in the Deutsche Rundschau. Other published works include a volume of his poems (1852), the novella Pole Poppenspäler (1874) and the novella Aquis submersus (1877).

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 2nd short story written by a German author I've never heard of. I liked it but I was less impressed than the pervious one I read. As Frank Wynne states in Found in Translation anthology, "Storm was one of the most important figures in nineteenth-century German poetic realism".

In Immensee an old man reflects on a love lost. The writing is quite poetic and sentimental which was pleasant to read. You can see the author loves nature by the way he describes the surroundings.

[Jan-Maat]

Immense, or Lake of the Bees there are no bees, and if it is only the apiary that excites you, then I feel it only fair to warn you that in this story there is not so much as a smear of honey or a dusting of pollen, perhaps because Storm was thinking of the painting of Venus with Cupid who complains of the pain of the stings of love, was Theodore Storm's first published story, it was hugely successful in it's day with the appearance of a translation into English a little over ten years after it's original publication.

It shares some features with his later fiction an emotional central point, a long timescale - in this case contained within the frame of the story, but unusually the story doesn't have a North-German setting (there are mountains visible in the distance, which unless you are a visionary or have problems with your eyes is not possible north of the Elbe). Perhaps the story's geographical indistinctness was a key to its success, it is then in-regional or over-regional and physically hazy, the reader has to concentrate on the still, dark, waters of the lake which suggest the potential for a romance which never had the chance to develop beyond an intense childhood friendship.

Rather curiously the editor suggests that this is an unusually political story pointing out that it was written during the 1848-51 armed struggle in North Germany against the Danes in reaction to their nation building linguistic policies. One could read the story then as a kind of internal exile from the politics of the Danish kingdom but which is making a point about the sense of identity through the choice of High German and not topolect or Danish as the literary language and the hazy but recognisably Southern German setting.

The central figure in the story is a young man who is developing into a poet and writer of stories and this suggests it is a way for Storm to write about himself or to draw upon himself as a source of literary creativity, as he continued to do as in for example Viola Tricolor.

In the additional materials the editor discusses the illustrations giving a flavour of the nineteenth century publishing world and its changing technology, you had your basic text edition, then your superior edition with illustrations and then eventually your deluxe product with four colour lithographic pictures, and further marketing opportunities with international editions in foreign languages, it seemed you could begin to earn a living from writing with out having to kill yourself by working yourself to an early grave like Dickens.

[Tom Lichtenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gentle and bittersweet story of an old man's reminiscence about the love of his early life, its poignant scenes interspersed with passionate explorations into nature through botany and a charming love of plants and birds. It's an emotional book that is not afraid to feel. I read somewhere recently that sentiment is no longer permitted in fiction. It's a shame. I guess we're only allowed to yell and blow things up, keeping us at a safe distance from the things that really do happen and hurt.

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bittersweet tale of an old man reminiscing about his long lost childhood love. Reinhard is a collector of folktales and songs which adds to the lovely melancholic tone.

[Lukas Rupp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein alter Mann versinkt in einen Tagtraum seiner Jugend. Dabei ist Reinhard zurück versetzt, wo er und seine Geliebte Elisabeth Tage in der Natur verbringen. Die Liebe wird scheitern, durch Entfernung und das Erwachsenwerden.

Nun könnte man sagen, welch grosse Tragik dahinter steckt, dass die beiden, die doch eigentlich füreinander bestimmt waren, sich nicht wiederfinden konnten.
Doch ich möchte dabei eine andere Interpretation wagen: Was wenn nur durch die physische Trennung, diese Jugendliebe, so wie sie dem Alten im Traum erscheint, aufrecht erhalten bleiben kann und somit ewig währt?

Passend dazu sagte einst Kurt Tucholsky: „Es wird nach einem happy End im Film jewöhnlich abjeblendt.“ Das was nach dem Happy End eintritt, nachdem sich die Liebenden wieder gefunden haben, ist der Alltag. Teils kann das Begehren eben nur dadurch gerettet werden, in dem man sich nicht mehr sieht. Ansonsten droht vielen das, was man bei langjährigen verheirateten Paaren beobachten kann: Eros ist verschwunden, man begehrt sich nicht mehr und bleibt dennoch zusammen und verkommt zu lauen Menschen.

Dazu empfehle ich zwei passende Spielfilme: „The bridges of Madison County“ von Clint Eastwood sowie „Jules et Jim“ von François Truffaut.

Literaturkanon von Marcel Reich-Ranicki
65/180

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking back over one's life in old age can be a painful business - it certainly is for Reinhard in this (probably the most popular) novella by Theodor Storm. The story is fascinating but moves from light and joy to darkness and gloom. We follow Reinhard's life story, through a series of vignettes, from his 'springing hand in hand' with his young friend Elizabeth to his lonely and unfulfilled dotage. Why did things go so wrong, leaving Reinhard with nothing more than regret and yearning for a promising past that never materialised? Critics have mooted several suggestions but Storm does not solve the enigma for us - we, the readers, must decide.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can only imagine how beautiful this story would be if I could read it in its original language. I say this because the translation to English is spectacular. Since I don’t think translation is ever an improvement on the original, I can only believe this originally is nothing short of wonderful. It is smooth pleasant and lyrical, not to mention thought provoking and emotional.

Is there anything more perfect than young love or first love? Is there anything more tragic than a lost love? It happens every day and people move on with their lives, usually happy and content with what live gives them. But some, as in the case of Rienhard, are left wanting and searching.

This is a sad yet beautiful story, which is well worth the effort to read.

[Czarny Pies · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very well written story about letting the right girl get away. The turning point reminds one of Bergman's "Wild Strawberries. " The hero and his loved one as teenagers set out into the forest in search of wild strawberries at the height of the season. Inexplicably they are unable to find any. They drift apart when he departs for university. Both manage to carry on with their lives but are convinced that they missed their rendez-vous with destiny.

[Yules · Rating 5 out of 5]

How easy it is for people - even for those who know and love each other best - to slip away from one another, whether by circumstance or by deficiency of character or simply because they didn't hold on quite as tightly as they needed to. How desperately, hauntingly easy.

[Vishy · Rating 4 out of 5]

My reading this month hasn’t gone well so far. I have been able to read just one book till now. Today, I thought I will try to do something about it. I thought I will read one of my old favourites and hope that it will bring back my reading mojo. So, I read ‘Immensee’ by Theodor Storm.

‘Immensee’ is around forty pages long. So, it is closer to a long short story or a short novella. The story starts with an old man getting back from a long walk to the place that he is staying. He goes into his room, sits on a chair and rests. After a brief while he looks at an old picture of a beautiful woman and says ‘Elisabeth’. His mind goes back to his younger days. The story then takes us back to the past when the old man was a boy of ten called Reinhard and his best friend and sweetheart was a girl called Elisabeth who is five. They are always together, he tells stories to her, they play at the forest near their homes, they go on picnics together with other children and pick strawberries. Unfortunately, the time comes when the boy has to go to a bigger town to study. He promises the girl that he will write to her regularly and will come back soon. The boy writes down all the stories that he used to tell the girl – her favourite ones – and keeps sending them to her. He also keeps a notebook in which he writes poems about the girl, about all the experiences they have gone through. Both of them are very much in love, though they don’t articulate that explicitly. But as in all the best love stories, things don’t go according to plan. The physical distance creates a barrier between a boy and the girl and they try bridging it every time they meet, but it becomes harder and harder. What happens to Reinhard and Elisabeth? Does the story have a happy ending? I can go on and tell you what happens next, but I think you should read the story to find out. After all, it is only forty pages long :)

I first read ‘Immensee’ three years back and loved it at that time. So, I was a bit worried when I read it again, because I was afraid of what will happen if my re-reading experience was not as good as the original one. Well, I needn’t have worried. The book was beautiful during my re-read too. It was beautiful in a different way though. I noticed things that I didn’t notice the first time – for example a gypsy singer who comes at the beginning of the story makes an appearance in the end, singing her favourite song which intensifies the poignant mood of the story. I also loved Theodor Storm’s beautiful descriptions of nature – the trees and the forest and the bees and the larks and the linnet and the canary and the river and the early morning and the mist and the dew and the first rays of the morning sun – it was vintage Storm. The story was worth reading for this beautiful evocation of nature alone. Nature was there even in the title – a footnote said that ‘Immensee’ stood for ‘Lake of the Bees’ (though some readers have a problem with this translation). Theodor Storm’s prose also gives an atmospheric, melancholic feel to the story, which makes one’s heart ache. Not the heartbreaking kind, but the mild, melancholic ache, which refuses to go away.

I also spotted a reference to India in the story, which made me smile. It went like this :

Elisabeth : Are there no lions either?
Reinhard : Lions? Are there lions? In India, yes. The heathen priests harness them to their carriages, and drive about the desert with them. When I’m big, I mean to go out there myself. It is thousands of times more beautiful in that country than it is here at home; there’s no winter at all there.

One part of that dialogue is totally true. There is no winter in India. One of my college professors used to joke that there were only three seasons in India : hot, hotter and hottest!

There were many songs and poems scattered throughout the book like pearls. They were all beautiful. My favourites were the song which the gypsy girl sings in a tavern during Christmas Eve (it ends with ‘I must die alone’) and the poem which Reinhard and Elisabeth read towards the end of the story, ‘By my mother’s hard decree’. I think the poems and the songs must be more beautiful in the original German.

I also loved the fact that many of the important things in the story are implied but not explicitly stated. It doesn’t mean that they are ambiguous and left to the reader’s interpretation – they are clear enough but implied. Theodor Storm does that masterfully. In the last scene a new character makes an appearance in one sentence and we can’t help asking ourselves what that meant – is there a twist in the story here? Who is this Bridget? Is there something here that Storm implies? Isn’t this a straightforward story but one in which a lot of stuff happens in the gap between the last and the last-but-one chapters? I would love to hear your thoughts on it, if you have read the story.

I will leave you with one of my favourite passages from the book.

Elisabeth : And who, pray, made all these pretty songs?
Eric : Oh, you can tell that by listening to the rubbishy things – tailors’ apprentices and barbers and suchlike merry folk.
Reinhard : They are not made; they grow, they drop from the clouds, they float over the land like gossamer, hither and thither, and are sung in a thousand places at the same time. We discover in these songs our very inmost activities and sufferings : it is as if we all had helped to write them.

I am glad I re-read ‘Immensee’. I fell in love with it all over again, with the beautiful Elisabeth and the wonderful Reinhard and the kind Eric and the beautiful landscape that Theodor Storm creates. I think I will be reading it again. Maybe after a few years.

Have you read ‘Immensee’? What do you think about it?

[Jenny B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diese herzzerreißende und bittere Novelle fühlt sich an wie ein vager Traum der sich verliert, sobald man nach ihm greift. Auch ohne die eingeworfenen Gedichte und Lieder liest sie sich sehr lyrisch und ich gebe zu, sie hat mich fast zum Weinen gebracht. Ich kam mir vor, als würde ich in einer schwülen Spätsommernacht frösteln.

[Gilgamesh Nabeel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first English translation of those two lovely novellas by Theodor Storm, who is considered one of the best loved German authors.

In the first novella “the lake of the bees” storm took us to navigate with him in his memories, as this novella was inspired by his first love story. It is a pure, simple and sad-ending love story, in which he tried to show us the great grief we might achieve for ignoring our promises or letting the chance go by so simply, he tries to show us that the chance comes only once.

The novella is full of dreamy, romantic natural images with which we can travel into such a lovely imaginary world. We can notice the easy flawless language of his, his love to depict the natural environment of northern Germany as well as his wide knowledge in botany, music, poetry, folk songs and literature.

In the second novella “the quiet musician” is also inspired from his relation with his son and it discusses the father-son relationships and the importance of self-confidence to achieve someone’s success. As his main character Christian Valentin, a talented yet impaired pianist, who had failed to perform well in his first concert and thus he left his job and became a piano teacher and found his success in his talented pupils’ success. The novella gave us both happy and sad feelings at the same time. While Valentin failed to leave something in the musical world during his life, we can see how a talented pupil of his became a great opera singer who always introduces herself as that wholly unknown man pupil, and performed one of his compositions by a well known orchestra bands. The whole novella can give us the impression that the talent alone is never enough and should be accompanied by self-confidence. Again his language was fluent and simple and shows a wide knowledge in music and literature.

A quote I like
Between the shadows of the earth and the dark depths of the sky, human life lay slumbering, with all its unsolved puzzles.

Gilgamesh Nabeel

[Kathrin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Kürze der Erzählung hält mich bisher davon ab dem Buch 5 Sterne zu geben. Es hat mich fasziniert, wie viel Handlung und Charakteristik der Figuren Storm auf diesen wenigen Seiten untergebracht hat. Für mich bleibt am Ende nur die Frage, wie toll die Geschichte hätte sein können, wenn sie etwas länger wäre. Gerne hätte ich auch einfach mehr atmosphärische Beschreibungen gehabt - das kann Storm in meinen Augen nämlich sehr gut. So bleibt alles leider ein wenig nebulös.

[Dilshat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Маленькая старомодная повесть, где, в общем-то, ничего не происходит, старик сидит и вспоминает девушку, в которую был когда-то влюблен, но так ей об этом и не сказал. И она была в него влюблена, и тоже ничего не сказала, вышла за другого.
Никто никого не убил, никому не изменил, не сошел с ума. Все про тайные внутренние движения души. Читаешь как драгоценность в руках держишь.

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

An old man contemplates a love lost when he was young...after reading two novellas by Storm, I am confounded by the degree of sentimentality, and I am even more confounded that in his case, I do not mind it a bit! :-)

[Camelia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A re-read. Childhood favorite. Still love it.

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay to read, better than the other German books we had to read for school. Still not my favourite.

[FelixTheMonarchist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich habe dieses Werk für die Schule gelesen. In meiner Erfahrung nimmt man Bücher, die man lesen musste, oft als schlechter war, als sie tatsächlich sind. Ein gutes Beispiel sind die großartigen Werke Hemingways, die oft von Leuten aus den USA beschimpft werden, die diese in der Schule lesen mussten. Ich habe auf diesen Effekt Rücksicht genommen und hoffe, dass meine Bewertung dadurch nicht schlechter wurde.

Theodor Storm ist ein sehr gut lesbarer Schriftsteller der sich durch eine flüssige Sprache auszeichnet.

Das Werk handelt von verpasster Liebe. Ein alter Mann blickt zurück auf seine Jugend und das Mädchen, dass er damals geliebt hat.

[Cathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it.

[olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

das sind meine star-cross‘d lovers

[David Knapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reinhard und Elisabeth sind beides Keks und hätten sich einfach mal sagen können dass sie (immer noch) Bock auf den anderen haben.

[Pinkes Einhorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Wunderschön geschrieben, aber der Inhalt an sich war nichts besonderes

[جلجامش Nabeel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first English translation of those two lovely novellas by Theodor Storm, who is considered one of the best loved German authors.

In the first novella “the lake of the bees” storm took us to navigate with him in his memories, as this novella was inspired by his first love story. It is a pure, simple and sad-ending love story, in which he tried to show us the great grief we might achieve for ignoring our promises or letting the chance go by so simply, he tries to show us that the chance comes only once.

The novella is full of dreamy, romantic natural images with which we can travel into such a lovely imaginary world. We can notice the easy flawless language of his, his love to depict the natural environment of northern Germany as well as his wide knowledge in botany, music, poetry, folk songs and literature.

In the second novella “the quiet musician” is also inspired from his relation with his son and it discusses the father-son relationships and the importance of self-confidence to achieve someone’s success. As his main character Christian Valentin, a talented yet impaired pianist, who had failed to perform well in his first concert and thus he left his job and became a piano teacher and found his success in his talented pupils’ success. The novella gave us both happy and sad feelings at the same time. While Valentin failed to leave something in the musical world during his life, we can see how a talented pupil of his became a great opera singer who always introduces herself as that wholly unknown man pupil, and performed one of his compositions by a well known orchestra bands. The whole novella can give us the impression that the talent alone is never enough and should be accompanied by self-confidence. Again his language was fluent and simple and shows a wide knowledge in music and literature.

A quote I like
Between the shadows of the earth and the dark depths of the sky, human life lay slumbering, with all its unsolved puzzles.

Gilgamesh Nabeel

[Morbid Swither · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread; this was an assignment in German Literature coursework at Hardin-Simmons University. A brief and quiet book written smack-dab in the middle of the 19th Century by an author beloved in his native Germany. “Immensee” (“The Lake of the Bees”) is noteworthy to me for the sustainment of a consistent elegiac narrative voice, the pleasure of its evocations of pastorality and landscape, and the richness of its symbolism. Some note the subtlety of its latent political messages, which mostly were lost on me. As a fine example of literary realism, and one marked unusually by a poetic sentimentality, this book is worth reading. My fondness for it, and ultimately what warranted a second read, was the sublimity with which the narrator, Reinhardt, recalls the bygone days of his youth and his dissolved early romance with the darling Elisabeth. The novella’s effectiveness in reflecting on memory and loss, and certainly how it achieves to offer so much more than what would met the eye, made this a great choice to revisit. Though not nearly as angsty as a piece of Sturm und Drang, the Romantic themes are sublimated in a neatly constructed work that seems to have made an impression on the bourgeois German writers of the 20th Century, as well as—though to a lesser extent—the masterful Peter Handke.

[Eirini D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ένα μικρό διαμαντάκι είναι αυτή η νουβέλα, ενός, όχι ιδιαίτερα γνωστού στη χώρα μας, Γερμανού συγγραφέα του 19ου αιώνα. Με κύρια χαρακτηριστικά την απλότητα και την καθαρότητα του λόγου αλλά και με έντονα τα στοιχεία του λυρισμού και του ρομαντισμού, το κείμενο συγκινεί, δημιουργεί εικόνες και κυρίως καταφέρνει με έναν συμπυκνωμένο αλλά ουσιαστικό τρόπο να μεταφέρει μια ιστορία ανεκπλήρωτου έρωτα και διάψευσης προσδοκιών, στο πλαίσιο μιας ολόκληρης ζωής, από τα παιδικά χρόνια μέχρι τα γεράματα. Ιδιαίτερα αξιόλογη η μετάφραση από τον Ηλία Τρανταφύλλου των εκδόσεων Λέμβος, που με ρέουσα γλώσσα, πετυχαίνει το κείμενο να διαβάζεται απνευστί. Αξίζει να το αναζητήσετε και να το διαβάσετε!

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alter Mann denkt an seine Jugendliebe Elizabeth. Schön, aber ein wenig absehbar und die Sprache ein wenig angestaubt. Sie heiratet einen anderen und stürzt alle ins Unglück. Muss denn das sein?

Highlight: „Er sah auf ihr [Elizabeths Hand] jenen feinen Zug geheimen Schmerzend, der sich so gern schöner Frauenhände bemächtigt, die nachts auf krankem Herzen liegen.“

7/10

[Ursy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really loved this story. It was very touching and indeed reminiscent of the much later Thomas Mann novellas. At times the characters, especially Erich and Elisabeth, seemed undeveloped and it was difficult to find motivations for their actions. On the whole, though, I thought this was a very nice story.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the 1950 English translation. The quintessential German romantic novella of unfulfilled love where the main character is unable to reconcile romantic idealized love with earthy practical life. It is achingly beautiful, like an extended poem.

[Anna Hal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein einfach wirkender und doch so tiefgründiger Rückblick auf das Leben. Vielleicht ist Immensee die Art Geschichte, die man ohne zu hohe Erwartungen oder vorherige Informationen über den Hintergrund lesen sollte, um sich von ihren Bildern ganz einnehmen lassen zu können.