Michael Kohlhaas: Aus einer alten Chronik (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek)

Just back from a long train journey, I took the opportunity to read Michael Kohlhaas in German. I can't imagine this text in English; it somehow seems simultaneously modern, and of the time in which the story is set. The actual language hardly intrudes at all, but there are particular words or phrases whose recurrance or juxtaposition hints at darker, hidden meaning; horrible things are described with equanimity, but there is always just a hint of deeper feeling beneath the surface. The foreword coins the phrase "anti-rhetoric"- a deliberate toning down of the descriptive passages, in order to focus attention on single moments, character's reactions, or a gesture.Anyone who cannot find happiness on earth is unlikely to find it at the book fair either. If we imagine Heinrich von Kleist in one of the trade-fair halls, if only for a second, then that famous sentence comes to mind that Kleist wrote to his brother-in-law: „I ask God for death, and you I ask for money." There is no more concise and drastic a way of describing the drama of the artist twixt a wish for salvation and a fear of impoverishment, between transcendence and dull life in the here and now, the poet's soul tossed hither and thither.Back in he day, I remember as many as three biographies attempting to shed light on the Kleist phenomenon. Brief, sound and with pointed quill, the effort by Herbert Kraft („Kleist". Live and Works, Aschendoff Verlag), while Jens Bisky declares Kleist with great passion and stylistic verve to be the „greatest German political poet" and tries to show in what delicate constellations the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution found their way into Kleist's life and works. Gerhard Schulz is interested more in the life than the work, („Kleist". A Biography, C. H. Beck), treating this and that enigma in the poet's biography, such as the nebulous trip to Würzburg, as mere balloons: Easily he deflates them. For all the cold logic as regards the details of Kleist's life, Gerhard Schulz preserves his respect for the secrets of poet's life as a whole.

It is beyond me to discuss this title. I had a hard time reading it from the get go. I googled the book quite frequently to get the gist of it and it seems, I think, we are supposed to sympathize with Kohlhaas. I thought he was a selfish, pig-headed, violent idiot and thought he should have just taken his horses back and got on with his life instead of causing such pain and anguish in the name of so-called "justice". I call it revenge. I really tried to force myself to finish, perhaps becoming enlightened eventually, but at the 60% mark just had to put it aside as not for me. I can't complain though, out of the 14 books I've read for this club so far this is the first that I have DNF'd and the really the first that I didn't even enjoy at least to 3 stars.

Too many people know how good this is for me to be able to add anything.

An old folk revenge story, but it reads like something much more modern - at least with some of its portrayals and themes. I'll have to try more Kleist in the future.

In 16th-century Brandenburg a horse dealer, Michael Kohlhaas, sets out for business in neighboring Saxony, where he maintains a second home. At the border, a crooked knight seizes two of his horses. It later turns out that the horses were worked almost to death and that one of Kohlhaas's servants was harassed and abused by the knight's men.The rest of the story is about Kohlhaas's quest for justice from the Elector of Saxony. Justice is repeatedly denied, though, since the crooked knight has friends and kin in high places. A driven Kohlhaas then rebels against the state by forming his own army, which attacks several Saxon towns.One interesting idea in the story concerns the role of the state. The state exists to provide justice to its inhabitants, from which it follows (according to one of the Elector's counselors) that by denying justice to Kohlhaas they have expelled him from the state, so that he is no longer subject to its laws; as a result, he's not so much a criminal as a foreign power making war against their state.The tale at times comes across as a revenge story with Kohlhaas refusing to forgive his enemies (as his wife and Martin Luther urged him to do). At other times, though, the story seems to present a clash between two laws: the human law that derives from the ruler and a higher, natural law that rulers ignore only at their peril. This is the law that Kohlhaas, expelled into the state of nature, aims to uphold.In the end, it is Kohlhaas' willingness to die for this law that gives him more power than the Saxon potentate who fears for his own fate.Kleist thoroughly vilifies the Saxons, who in his own day were allied with Napoleon against Kleist's beloved Prussia.

On the surface this is a story of Michael Kohlhaas's run in with the political characters of his country. He is first taken advantage of and when he seeks justice he receives anything but justice. The other level that this is written from is regarding Napoleon and it is written in this veiled manner to avoid persecution for his writing. The story is basically realistic until toward then end when he has a piece of paper from a gypsy character that reportedly has a prophecy against one of Kohlhaas's tormentors which the man wants to get his hands on. It is a bit of supernatural with all the harsh realism that gives some home to a very harsh ending.

Interesting novella. Seeking justice for a wrong, circumstances and his own extreme actions get away from the main character. The bureaucracy and rulers of various German principalities presented. Supposedly darkly comic in spots, I missed that. I don't know if the author's original German was made up of such knotty sentences, but it was difficult to read. I enjoyed it anyhow.

_Michael Kohlhaas_ is a fictionalized account of an actual historical event. A horse trader from Brandenburg on a journey to Saxony is falsely extorted for a border crossing by the Squire Wenzel von Tronka, who also keeps two of Kohlhaas’ horses as surety against the trader’s inability to pay. Upon arriving at Saxony, Kohlhass learns that, as he suspected, the border tax was a ruse and on his return journey demands his horses back from the squire. Instead he finds that the servant he had left in charge of the horses was beaten and run out of the castle, and the horses so maltreated and overworked that they are on the point of dying. Infuriated, Kohlhaas demands reparation and thus a saga of justice denied begins.

How far would you go to redress wounded pride? At what point is the pursuit of justice an exercise in diminishing returns or even downright revolt? When is a citizen justified in renouncing his duties to the state if the state does not provide him with protection and justice? All of these questions are examined in this smart and compelling novella written by Heinrich von Kleist in the 19th century. It is obvious that von Kleist sympathizes with Kohlhaas throughout the tale, and the reader can’t help but do the same. Squire Tronka is pictured as the worst kind of nepotistic nobleman, calling on his family connections at court to have all of Kohlhaas’ lawful attempts at receiving justice thwarted. As Kohlhaas’ frustration mounts, so does ours. When his wife, who had pleaded with her husband to be allowed to carry his final petition to the court of the Elector in the assurance that this last ditch attempt to breach the courtly barriers of favouritism and ritual would be successful, is brought back to his home wounded and near death as the result of a mishap at court he can take no more.

Kohlhaas sends a decree to Tronka demanding that his horses be fattened and brought back to health at the Squire’s expense and returned to the horse dealer, along with reparation for the injuries suffered by his servant at the hands of the Squire’s men. Of course, this produces no result and so Kohlhaas, driven to the edge of endurance acquires a troop of men and proceeds to Tronka castle, intent on taking justice for himself if no one else will grant it to him. Kohlhaas is obviously not a man who believes in the old adage about revenge, for he takes his hot and at the end of a flaming torch as he burns Tronka castle to the ground. He pursues the Squire with a blind eye, killing nearly all whom he finds in the castle without distinction and while we may look at his response as extreme I have to admit that I couldn’t help but experience a bout of schadenfreude at the Squire’s turn from a smug, insolent bastard into a frightened, mewling kitten who probably pissed his pants when we discover that
the Squire, who, to the accompaniment of immoderate laughter, was just reading aloud to a crowd of young friends the decree which the horse-dealer had sent to him, had no sooner heard the sound of his voice in the courtyard than, turning suddenly pale as death, he cried out to the gentlemen—"Brothers, save yourselves!" and disappeared.
Uncaring of the safety of his guests, Tronka escapes Kohlhaas’ vengeful hand via a secret door and makes haste to a convent that is run, not surprisingly, by his aunt. Kohlhass, disappointed but not defeated, pursues his quarry and a game of cat and mouse ensues. It turns out that the Squire had managed to piss of many more than just the poor horse dealer and as Kohlhaas proclaims his just vengeance to the world, men start to flock to his banner. Soon he is an out-and-out outlaw, burning down the towns that dare keep his victim from Kohlhaas’ hands and the state decides that it must intervene. Matters take a roller coaster turn as Kohlhaas first defies the authorities stating that he is justified in his actions, whatever “laws” he may be breaking, for:
"I call that man cast out," answered Kohlhaas, clenching his fist, "who is denied the protection of the laws. For I need this protection, if my peaceable business is to prosper. Yes, it is for this that, with all my possessions, I take refuge in this community, and he who denies me this protection casts me out among the savages of the desert; he places in my hand—how can you try to deny it?—the club with which to protect myself."
A point that many philosophers might debate, on either side, but a compelling argument nonetheless. Finally Kohlhaas approaches Martin Luther himself, and after some argument the latter agrees to intercede for him to the elector in the name of justice.

It’s at this time that the story takes yet another turn and Kohlhaas the outlaw becomes Kohlhaas the plaintiff as he is apparently granted amnesty for his ravages in the countryside and waits for the interminable grind of the courts to proceed to his case. Of course things do not run smoothly and the ups and downs of Kohlhass’ fortunes are many. In the end it can be said that Kohlhaas both receives and satisfies the requirements of justice and the story itself is a very compelling one that asks some important questions. I enjoyed this work thoroughly. It was a gripping examination of human nature that presents us with a problem that has no easy answers.