Im Schloß
Im Schloß, a Novelle by Th. Storm, written in 1861, and published in 1862 in Die Gartenlaube. An Erinnerungsnovelle, it consists of five parts dealing with the last descendants of the aristocratic owners of a castle. Anna is the author of the central section of the Novelle, Die beschriebenen Blätter, in which she relates the story of her life leading to her separation from her husband and her return to the solitary Schloß. But the tragic events of her life, the death of her brother in childhood, the death of her own child, and her social isolation in the castle because of her alleged unfaithfulness to her husband, are in the end compensated by the prospects of a happy future. The sudden death of her husband enables her to marry Arnold, her brother's former tutor and a noted scholar, to whom her true affection has always belonged. Anna's first marriage was arranged by her father, who was intent on maintaining the family's superior social status. Storm makes Anna's consent to this marriage her sole guilt. As long as her husband lives she remains faithful to him, despite rumours accusing her of disloyalty; but she emerges from this first marriage emancipated from social prejudice.
Storm uses Arnold and the figure of Anna's uncle Christoph to express his most personal views on a changing social structure, in which both the aristocracy and the institution of the church are seen as historical forces of the past which are now being superseded by a humane, free-thinking, and educated middle class. Christoph is a philosopher and a naturalist, and through his influence Anna abandons the faith of her childhood and understands nature's cruelty which man can mitigate through love, an emotion born of man's fear of loneliness. This and the awareness of the transience of life, to which the family portraits of past times also bear witness, form the ideological background to her maturing love for Arnold, who is a descendant of the humbly born youth whose portrait inspired her fantasy as a girl, and which forms the story's principal leitmotiv.
