This site offers famous German literary works, classics, translated into English, including some Austrian and Swiss-German books.
It is an indispensable source for anybody who would like to get to know the best German novels and novellas of the past centuries.
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Two novellas:
"Krambambuli"
and
"The District Doctor"
by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
120 pages; perfect bound.
8" x 5"
Austrian writer Baroness (Freifrau) Marie von Ebner Eschenbach (1830-1916) was one of the foremost novelists in the German tongue, and one of the best short-story writers in the world. The Austrian aristocracy with their Slavo-German dependents in the Moravian villages constitute the world of her fiction. Country and city are her theatres, noble and peasant keep the balance. All forms of the short-story are at her command: letters, diaries, dialogues, and that most difficult of all forms, the story within a story.
Where can be found a more concrete and genial characterization of the leading political lords and ladies, more lifelike portraits of officialdom and of the much abused peasantry than in her historic tale "The District Doctor" (1883), which has as its background the bloody peasant uprisings in Galicia in 1846?
Where do we find human sympathy ethically and artistically more refined than in her little masterpiece "Krambambuli" (1883), the story of a dog with spotless pedigree who, like Rüdiger in the Nibelungen, perishes in the vain attempt to serve two masters?
Of the qualities that make up a great writer she has the deep and high truth of substance. She does not view the world in the rosy light of the idyll. She never seeks to avoid the ugly. But more, she puts a high moral interpretation on human life. Her ethics is proof against all egotism and will bear comparison with that of the great moralists, ancient and modern.
Authors and titles on this site: Bernhard Kellermann: "God's Beloved", E. T. A. Hoffmann: "The Sandman. The Elementary Spirit.", Franz Grillparzer: "The Poor Musician", Gottfried Keller: "A Village Romeo and Juliet", Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: "Minna von Barnhelm", Heinrich Heine: "The Rabbi of Bacharach", Heinrich von Kleist: "Michael Kohlhaas", Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: "Krambambuli" and "The District Doctor", Theodor Fontane: "Trials and Tribulations. A Berlin Novel", Theodor Storm: "The Rider of the White Horse" ("The Dikegrave").