Der grüne Heinrich
grüne Heinrich, Der, a novel by G. Keller, which exists in two distinct versions with the same title. The second version is the one familiar to most readers. Both versions consist of 4 vols.; they appeared respectively in 1854-5 and 1879-80. To a large extent Der grüne Heinrich is an autobiographical novel, but since it was conceived when Keller was 28, and written in his early thirties (1850-3 in Berlin), Heinrich's middle and later life is fictitious, and remains so largely in the second version. In his preface to the original edition, Keller compares the work to a long letter written at widely separated intervals. This image justifies its shapelessness, and also its changes of direction.
The first version of 1854-5 begins in the third person with Heinrich Lee's departure from his Swiss home to study painting. ‘Green’ because he always wears green, he is the only son of a devoted mother, whose love he is not fully able to appreciate. On his journey he is offered a lift in a coach by a friendly count, who is taking leave of his sister and daughter; to both Heinrich is immediately attracted. In Bk. 1, Chap. 4, on his arrival in the capital city (Keller had Munich in mind), Heinrich takes out a manuscript which is set before the reader and continues until Bk. 3, Chap. 3. Entitled ‘Eine Jugendgeschichte’, it is written in the first person and provides the retrospective information necessary for understanding Heinrich's character. Heinrich's account of his childhood is followed, in 17th-c. language, by the story of the 7-year-old supposed witch Emerentia (das kleine Meretlein), who is driven to her death in the name of religion. Recollections of school include an episode in which Heinrich brings about the punishment of four boys by lying, an act of which he feels deeply ashamed in later years. The first stirring of sex occurs when he is allowed to take the part of one of the monkeys (Meerkätzchen) for a company playing Faust in a one-night stand. He falls asleep in the theatre and on waking beats a thundering tattoo on the tympani, until the actress who plays Gretchen retrieves him and allows him to spend the night at the foot of her bed.
At senior school he becomes marginally involved in an act of mass misbehaviour against a teacher, is treated as the main culprit, and expelled. To his perplexed mother he declares his intention of becoming an artist. While staying with relatives in the country he finds himself attracted simultaneously to two women, the young Anna, and Judith, a handsome widow of 30; with them he leads a double life until his departure for home. There he finds the study of art with his teacher Habersaat unprofitable and works on his own. He pays a further visit to the country, but the atmosphere has changed; Anna is away at finishing school, and he and Judith avoid each other. When the rural community celebrates Shrove Tuesday with an open-air performance of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, he takes the part of Rudenz and has some happy moments with Anna, who plays Berta, but afterwards Judith persuades him to spend the evening alone with her.
Bk. 3 begins with Heinrich's decision next morning to return to his vocation as a painter with a competent instructor, Römer; but, owing to the mental derangement from which Römer suffers, the relationship ends in a deplorable breach. Anna is ill, and Heinrich spends much time at her sick-bed; but once more he leads a double life with both women, and on one occasion gazes spellbound on Judith's moonlight bathe. Before he is called up for military service Anna dies, and he breaks with Judith. While he is on parade he detects her as a passenger on one of two wagons which pass, laden with emigrants and their belongings. With this episode ‘Eine Jugendgeschichte’ ends, and the narrative reverts to Munich.
Heinrich works at his painting and makes two artist friends, the Dutchman Lys and the Scandinavian Erikson. All three participate in a pageant representing Nürnberg in the late Middle Ages. Lys, a rich man, has attached himself to an ethereal girl named Agnes; Erikson courts a wealthy and beautiful widow whom Lys, deserting Agnes, attempts to win. Heinrich challenges Lys and seriously wounds him in a duel.
In Book 4 Erikson and Lys go their separate ways, and Heinrich finds his artistic powers flagging. He begins desultory studies at Munich University, and adopts a philosophical pessimism. Having become destitute after four years, he decides to return home on foot. In a state of exhaustion he meets the Count (of Bk. 1, Chap. 3) with the young girl to whom he had been attracted. Now grown to womanhood, she proves to be the Count's foster-child. The Count, who has bought Heinrich's pictures, insists on Heinrich's return to Munich to prove himself as an artist. Heinrich receives two substantial legacies, one from Lys, who has died of his wound, the other from the dealer, who had bought Heinrich's pictures. Once more he decides to go home, but now as a wealthy man. He arrives for his mother's funeral, and learns of the disappointments and hardships of her last years.
The second version of Der grüne Heinrich reproduces much of the earlier version in a more logical order. Abandoning the frame story (see Rahmen), Keller begins with ‘Eine Jugendgeschichte’ in slightly modified form. Anti-clerical passages are toned down, and Judith's moonlight bathe is omitted; two new chapters are inserted (Bk. 3, Chaps. 8 and 9): ‘Das Pergamentlein’, in which the orphan commissioners reluctantly hand over Heinrich's small inheritance, and ‘Der Schädel’, where a skull serving Heinrich for study is made the pretext for a short Novelle about Albertus Zwiehans, whose skull it is believed to be.
At the end of the Shrove Tuesday festivities Lys retires from the duel after a few minutes' fencing. In Bk. 4, Chap. 4, an entirely new and brilliantly executed episode, ‘Das Flötenwunder’, leads Heinrich to realize that he can temporarily stave off destitution by selling his possessions. The buyer is the curiosity-shop owner, Schmalhöfer. As in the first version, Heinrich sets out for home and is admitted, hungry and wet, to the Grafenschloß. He falls in love with the Count's foster-daughter, Dortchen Schönfund, but cannot utter the words of love which might have transformed his life. In this version Heinrich finds his mother on her death-bed, still able to see him but past speech. He takes a post in local government and resigns himself to a restricted, if useful, life. Judith returns from America as devoted to him as ever. The lovers meet, but no marriage takes place, and after some years Judith dies of an illness which she contracts while nursing sick children.
Der grüne Heinrich is often cited as a classical example of the Bildungsroman, but this is true only of the edition of 1879-80. Neither version has a satisfactory conclusion. The first finishes in romantic fantasy; the second has a conciliatory but rather drab ending, suggested by Th. Storm. Keller was evidently unable to invent an ending which would be both adequate and consistent.
