A.2: Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters / The Joys and Sorrows of a schoolmaster

[…] because this book deals with a schoolmaster, there will be many who would not want to touch it. It is an old custom to turn up one’s nose when spotting a schoolmaster even from a distance and to start yawning when one as little as only hears about a schoolmaster. And yet, a schoolmaster is, accurately considered, a human being as any other. [ …] This book of course describes the very personal manners of a schoolmaster, such as ‘the way he wears his frock’, but even more so describes the human being, the one that also dwells in your own heart.

Gotthelf`s second novel was entitled Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters (1838/39) (“The Joys and Sorrows of a schoolmaster”), and he announced it with the almost trivialising words, saying that the schoolmasterly narrative would probably attract little attention from the general public. Indeed, Gotthelf simply downplayed the volatile content of his text. Since the liberal turn of 1830/31, reforming the school (educational) system was at the heart of the liberal movement. Gotthelf exposed the conditions in the school system as well as  the schoolmasters’ training and working circumstances as he perceived them. Thereby the novel not only alludes to numerous pedagogic concepts, but he highlights the social role of a schoolmaster as well. The role of the narrator is assumed by the schoolmaster Peter Käser, who divulges his life story in the novel. The examination of primary school teachers, established in the Canton of Berne in 1836 to assess their performance with effect on salaries, provided the novel’s setting. The commission declares Käser unfit. The novel Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters was initially published in 1838 by the Wagnerische Buchhandlung (Wagner`s Publishing House) in Bern. Some ten years later it was followed by an abbreviated and revised second edition. Additionally, Gotthelf’s comprehensive manuscript with corrections in red by an unknown hand has survived.

The new critical edition will contain all renditions of the novel including handwritten notes for the novel. All of this will be presented in its entirety in several volumes. The first part of the series was published in 2017, consisting of the two volumes of the synoptic edition of both printed versions. The parallel edition aligned at the paragraph level allows for a straightforward comparison of the original first print of the Bernese Wagner Publishing House with the revised version for German readers. Gaps are used to easily visualise larger stretches that have been deleted within each paragraph. Gotthelf saw to it that the amount of relevant local political references was considerably reduced for the second print – most likely also due to the fact that many allusions must have lost their original meanings because ten years had elapsed by then. Simultaneously, Gotthelf`s revision of the novel accentuates particularly well how much value he placed on adjusting his text to his audience which had grown larger by then. A case in point is the distinct reduction of idiomatic language and terminology. The edition permits a detailed insight into his revision.

The complex manuscript of the novel reveals the traces of several revisors proofreaders (correctors, lectors), whose work was in turn again double-checked by Gotthelf, who then either accepted or refused the suggestions. Oftentimes, however, singular interventions cannot be traced back to a particular hand, and thus philologists encounter massive challenges in their work. Never-the-less, the edition attempts to reconstruct, as much as possible, this complex process of the textual genesis and therewith to provide an insight into the various steps of the evolving text.