Hastenbeck

Hastenbeck, a narrative (Eine Erzählung) by W. Raabe, written in 1895-8, and published in 1899. It is Raabe's last completed work, and bears as a motto the words of Freiherr vom Stein: ‘Ich habe nur ein Vaterland, das heißt Deutschland.’ Set in the second year of the Seven Years War (see Siebenjähriger Krieg), it tells of Pold (Leopold) Wille, a young painter in the service of the Duke of Brunswick, who is conscripted into the Hanoverian army, and deserts after the Convention of Kloster Zeven following the defeat at Hastenbeck. Ill, exhausted, and a fugitive, he finds shelter in the village of the girl he loves; she is Hannchen, a foundling brought up in the parsonage of Pastor Holtnicker and his wife. An old widow, known as die Wackerhahnsche, takes charge of the couple. Pold is befriended by Captain Uttenberger, a Swiss in French service billeted as a sick man in the parsonage. With his aid Pold escapes a French provost patrol, and makes his way with his sweetheart and die Wackerhahnsche through forest country to the Duke of Brunswick's temporary refuge in Blankenburg. On the way die Wackerhahnsche persuades Pastor Störenfreden of Derenthal, who was to have received Hannchen from her foster-parents as his wife, to marry the couple; she also wins the Duke's favour for the couple, thus ensuring their safety.

This slender story attracts an immense and vivid historical background. Raabe uses the characters to evoke the intense suffering and misery brought by the war. Simultaneously he uses literary motifs, especially the pastoral poetry of Salomon Geßner, to suggest the literary renaissance, and the power of the enlightened spirit, which was to mark the age following the Seven Years War. In this sense the story is a patriotic historical novel, aptly matched by Raabe's choice of motto, and conceived in his humane manner with no trace of chauvinism.