[In the following excerpt, Godwin-Jones examines what role Gotthelf's “implied readers” played in the writing of his novels, asserting that while he regarded the lower classes as his audience, his works were read primarily by the upper classes.]

“Gotthelf wird verehrt oder ignoriert … Die Snobs zeigen in den meisten Teilen des deutschen Sprachgebiets nicht das geringste Interesse für ihn, was sicher nicht nur auf die sprachlichen Schwierigkeiten der Lektüre zurückzuführen ist. Der Schweizer ist doch zu gesund, zu wenig brüchig, als dass er für eine modernisierende Interpretation besonders geeignet erschiene.”¹ Friedrich Sengle's assertion is confirmed by the absence of major studies of Gotthelf's works in recent years.² The Swiss pastor's overt didacticism coupled with his inattention to form and his idiosyncratic style are out of step with contemporary literary fashion. Moreover, Gotthelf's works are so spontaneous and so unself-conscious that they appear to defy treatment by contemporary critical methods. Yet there is one modern approach—reader-response criticism—through which important insights into Gotthelf's works can be gained.³ Much has been written on Gotthelf's didacticism as well as on the narrative structure of his novels, but there has been little examination of the relationship between the two. A study of the reader's role in the novels can reveal if and how Gotthelf's expressed intentions for each novel are reflected in their respective narrative strategies. Furthermore, a novel-by-novel analysis can show how the reader's role was affected by Gotthelf's changing views on the social function of his fiction.

Any thorough analysis of Gotthelf's novels requires a consideration of their underlying purpose. It is a gross distortion to interpret his fiction divorced from the social, political and religious aims which led to its creation.⁴ Gotthelf's views on the social and political conditions of the Switzerland of his day are abundantly present in his fiction. Yet while acknowledging this fact, one must keep in mind that these are works of fiction, not simply vehicles for propagating the author's views. With the exception of his first two works, all of Gotthelf's novels use a third-person narrator, who not infrequently voices his views on the action and digresses on a variety of subjects. This fact has led a number of critics to assert that the narrator of the novels is identical with the author.⁵ There are, however, different kinds of narrators in the novels; surely not all are to be identified with the author.⁶ The sarcastic, almost insulting narrator of Der Geldstag, for instance, is very different from the pious, self-effacing narrator of Geld und Geist. While it is true that the increased amount of commentary in the later novels points to a more direct incorporation of the author's social and political views, this does not mean that the narrator in these works can be unequivocably equated with the author.⁷ One critic has shown that the attitudes of narrator and author toward the protagonist in Gotthelf's last novel, Die Erlebnisse eines Schuldenbauers, are quite different.⁸

One must also be careful to distinguish the authorial intent in Gotthelf's novels from the narrative strategy. By narrative strategy I mean the directives given the implied reader for reading the text. This does not necessarily correspond to the intention the author had in writing the novel and which he may have expressly stated.⁹ In Gotthelf's case this is particularly true due to the fact that he was an instinctive writer who did not rigidly follow carefully conceived plans in writing his novels. Likewise, it is important to distinguish between the implied reader and the characterized or fictional reader.¹⁰ The latter is the reader who is directly addressed by the narrator in the text, who through the questions or reactions attributed to him by the narrator is portrayed in a certain way. By the implied reader or the reader's role I refer to the intended recipient of a set of attitudes, values and beliefs which emerge from the way in which the story is told. The actual reader may or may not accept the role assigned him in the text, but he must react to the values he is asked to embrace.¹¹

The pedagogical nature of Gotthelf's fiction clearly affected the kind of reader's role built into the novels. Gotthelf wanted to direct the reader in a specific direction. One immediate consequence is a certain fullness in Gotthelf's narratives. Due to the didactic nature of his fiction reader interest could not be stimulated, as it is in other novels, by the presence of what Wolfgang Iser calls Leerstellen, gaps which the reader is to fill in in order to complete the narrative.¹² For Iser a text not containing such Leerstellen is ineffective: “Sinkt der Leerstellenbetrag in einem fiktionalen Text, dann gerät er in Gefahr, seine Leser zu langweilen, da er sie mit einem steigenden Mass an Bestimmtheit—sei dieses nun ideologisch oder utopisch orientiert—konfrontiert.”¹³ That Gotthelf's novels do manage to sustain reader interest points to the fact that Iser's theory does not cover all types of fiction. Indeed, Walter Muschg points out that one of the pleasures in reading Gotthelf's fiction stems from its completeness: “Vor allem führt er seinen Leser in eine durchaus sinnvoll geordnete Welt … In dieser Welt gibt es keine leeren Stellen … Man ist in Gotthelfs Welt durchaus daheim, vielleicht mehr als in der eigenen. Darin liegt das unvergleichliche Glück, das er seinen Lesern gewährt.”¹⁴ A major focus of this study will be an examination of the various ways in which Gotthelf builds reader interest while at the same time directing the reader to adopt a certain set of beliefs and attitudes.

In order to understand Gotthelf's relation to the implied reader in his novels it may be helpful to examine briefly his conception of his actual readers.¹⁵ This is a complex question, in part because the readership Gotthelf was addressing differed from work to work, and in part because he himself did not always have a clear view of his intended readers. There is no doubt, however, that Gotthelf was initially motivated to write fiction out of a desire to change certain aspects of Swiss society.¹⁶ His first work, Der Bauernspiegel, strives to reflect the lives of the rural Swiss in order to change them. As Gotthelf makes clear in the preface, the reader was to see his own life mirrored in that of the hero. Yet the preface also evokes the author's hope that the book may be read outside of Switzerland: “Lebe aber auch du wohl, mein lieb Büchlein, mein erstgeborenes! Du sollst wandern gehen in fremder Herren Länder, sollst an fremde Türen klopfen, sollst um freundlich Herberge bitten!”¹⁷ This ambition is evinced as well by the fact that a number of dialect terms are explained in the novel. Thus the readership Gotthelf had in mind in writing the novel is not nearly as clear-cut as it first appears. This is equally true of works which were directed at even more specific readerships. Uli der Knecht was intended to be “Lektüre für Dienstboten”, yet the second half of the novel clearly drifts away from this purpose.¹⁸

Anne Bäbi Jowäger offers an example of the confusion in Gotthelf's own mind over who his readership really was. The novel originated from a request by the Bernese Health Commission for a popular brochure against quack medicine. The brochure developed, however, into a two-volume novel which in the latter chapters almost entirely ignores the original purpose. When the novel was first published, Gotthelf admitted: “Die Leute werden nicht recht wissen, was sie damit machen sollen” (5, 305). Yet he felt the book might be more popular among certain readers than the Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters: “Darum wird hier der eigentliche Reiz des Schulmeisters abgehen, während es fürs niedere Publikum geniessbarer wird. Doch ich habe mich noch alle Male getäuscht über das Urteil des Publikums bei einzelnen Büchern, es wird wahrscheinlich auch diesmal der Fall sein” (5, 244). His uncertainty later gave way to a conviction that the Swiss were consistently buying and reading his books, including, presumably, Anne Bäbi Jowäger.¹⁹ In the novel itself, however, he speaks of the fact that “dieses Buch nicht bloss für die lieben Mitburger bestimmt ist” (VI, 431). Finally, in another letter soon afterwards, Gotthelf expressed his disappointment over being misunterstood by his readers: “Eine rege Zeit gab mir Hoffnung, einwirken zu können in die bedeutsamern Angelegenheiten meines Vaterlands durch klares Aufdecken der Verhältnisse. Diese Hoffnung täuschte mich. Dagegen fand ich, woran ich nicht dachte, einen weiteren Leserkreis und die Hoffnung, dass ein späteres Geschlecht es erkennen werde, wie gut ich es mit meinem Lande gemeint” (6, 151). Thus in the end Gotthelf pinned his hope on a future generation, not on his comtemporary Swiss readers.

By 1846 Gotthelf's major works were being published in Berlin, far from his original intended readership. In fact, Uli der Pächter was written at the specific request of Gotthelf's publisher, Julius Springer, for whom Gotthelf had produced standard German versions of two early novels. Gotthelf's Swiss friends deplored this development and warned him that he was drifting away from his true role as a Volksschriftsteller. His cousin Carl Bitzius was especially outspoken in this regard: “Was zum Teufel schreibst du jetzt für Deutschland? Ich wollte, Elsass, Sachsen, Preussen, Thüringen, usw wären alle—ich weiss nicht wo! Das kömmt gewiss nicht gut; je länger, je mehr wirst du deiner Aufgabe entfremdet; es ist jammerschade!” (6, 171). Gotthelf himself saw no contradiction in publishing works for his Swiss readers in Germany, as he wrote in a letter to an admirer in 1851:

Den Vorwurf, ich schreibe für das Ausland, begreife ich entweder nicht, oder er kömmt her von einem Missverständnis oder einer unchristlichen, bloss spiessbürgerlichen Anschauung. Meine Werke werden allerdings im Aussland gedruckt, aber enthalten durchaus schweizerischen Stoff in schweizerischen Sprachformen und haben Tendenzen, die so weit reichen als der christliche Sinn geht … Der Feind, den ich bekämpfe, ist der gemeinsame aller Christen, ist allenthalben innerhalb den christlichen Märchen, ist noch dazu von aussen herein hauptsächlich gekommen. Da ist denn doch die Hauptsache, dass dieser Feind wirksam bekämpft werde und nicht von Positionen aus, wo man ihn gar nicht erreicht. Solche Positionen sind aber die schweizerischen Buchhändler.

(9, 139)

Gotthelf's late fiction, despite the local Swiss settings, does address social problems of European dimensions, as recent scholars have shown.²⁰ Critics have also pointed, however, to a motivation for having his works published in Berlin which Gotthelf fails to mention here: he was paid more by Springer than he would have earned from a Swiss publisher.²¹

Not all of Gotthelf's later works were first published by Springer. Some were initially published in periodicals or series sponsored by various organizations for the propagation of popular literature.²² These societies considered Gotthelf a pre-eminent Volksschriftsteller. The editor of the Allgemeines Volksblatt der Deutschen, Dem Bürger und Landmann zur Belehrung und Unterhaltung, for example, wrote Gotthelf: “Sie verstehen das Volk und das Volk versteht Sie … Sie suchen Ihren Ruhm darin, auch in die Hütten edlen Samen auszustreuen” (6, 105). Irenäus Gersdorf, head of the “Verein zur Hebung und Förderung der norddeutschen Volksliteratur”, wrote: “Da Sie mir das grosse Vorbild eines wahren Volksschriftstellers sind, und da ich erst mittelst Ihrer Schriften habe recht begreifen lernen, was eine Volksschrift sei, so muss ich alles dran setzen, Sie für meinen Plan zu gewinnen” (5, 329). Gotthelf enjoyed such praise, as his long letter in response to Gersdorf demonstrates. In the letter he defends himself against the charge made by his friend Karl Hagenbach that some of his works, such as Anne Bäbi Jowäger, are “Volksromane für gebildete Leser” and states his intention not to change his writing, adding, “In diesem Entschlusse unterstütze mich das Volk selbst, indem es meine Schriften ohne Vermittlung nicht nur las, sondern auch kaufte und immer noch kauft” (5, 332-3). What evidence Gotthelf had to support this assertion is not known. It cannot be expected that lower-class readers would write Gotthelf letters of praise such as he received from upper-class readers. The latter included a number of German noblewomen, foremost among whom was the Princess of Prussia.²³ These letters do not disprove Gotthelf's claims that he was writing primarily for the Swiss lower and middle classes, but they do show that Gotthelf was popular among a class which was not his intended readership.

Springer believed that he had found readers for Gotthelf in all classes of German society. Yet he must have counted the larger portion of Gotthelf's public in the upper classes, as can be seen from his comments on Gotthelf's use of dialect: “Der schweizerische Dialekt in den Erzählungen macht mir viel Kopfzerbrechen. Es ist nicht zu leugnen, dass dieser einem umfassenden Eingang Ihrer Volksschriften in die unteren Schichten des deutschen Volkes hinderlich ist. Auf der anderen Seite ist er ein Teil des Wesens Ihrer Erzählungen, und seine Ausmerzung würde dem Charakter derselben gar nahe treten und beeinträchtigen. Dazu kommt, dass die Erzählungen der Sammlung ihr Publikum mehr in den höheren Schichten erhalten werden, und so bin ich nicht abgeneigt, gerade den Dialekt, der in letzteren als etwas Pikantes sehr zusagt, stehen zu lassen” (7, 202). Gottfried Keller, while living in Berlin, testified to the great popularity of Gotthelf's novels in northern Germany. He voiced doubt, however, as to whether these works were read by the common people: “Wir haben überhaupt nach gar keinen Bericht, ob unsere Volksschriftsteller in den Hütten des Landvolks ebenso bekannt seien wie in den Literaturblättern und allenfalls bei den Bürgerklassen der Städte.”²⁴ Farmers have neither the time to read, he claimed, nor the money to buy Gotthelf's books. Moreover, if they were to open one of them, they would not understand much of what they found there: “Wie kann er von dem Volke, das er haben will, das Verständnis solcher eleganten Metaphern verlangen?”²⁵ At the same time, Keller took pains to point out that Gotthelf was not catering expressly to upper-class readers: “Trotzdem er in seinem Genie und in seiner gewonnenen Verbreitung die besten Mittel dazu hatte, tat er nie den unschuldigen Schritt, jenen schlechten Kreisen der grossen Welt, welche für so viele literarische Reaktionärlinge die Lebensluft liefern, entgegenzukommen; keinen einzigen derben oder unästhetischen Ausdruck strich er, um sich für den Salon der hochmögenden Residenzdame möglicher zu machen.”²⁶

Many modern critics have embraced Keller's view that Gotthelf was not read by the lower classes.²⁷ One factor which Keller did not take into consideration in his assessment of Gotthelf's readership, however, was the availability of his works through lending libraries and colporteurs. One recent study has shown that lending libraries experienced an explosive growth in the German-speaking countries in the first half of the nineteenth century and that by 1850 they could be found in virtually every village.²⁸ Moreover, this was an institution used by all classes of society.²⁹ It still remains true, however, that the working classes, including farmers and farm hands, after working long hours most likely had little time or energy to devote to reading. That every Swiss farm family possessed a copy of Uli der Knecht and read it on Sundays and holidays, as the French critic René Taillandier claimed, clearly presents an idyllic picture of Swiss farm life.³⁰ Another critic, the German Johann Schmidt, believed Gotthelf had his principal readership among the lower and middle classes in the cities, a view seconded by at least one modern critic.³¹

In his review of Uli der Knecht Gottfried Keller compares at some length the pleasure of reading Gotthelf's novel to that of reading Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. This comparison evokes the literary exoticism which has been seen as an important reason for Gotthelf's popularity in Germany.³² Kurt Batt, for example, writes: “Die Dorfgeschichte wurde nicht zuletzt durch ihn [Gotthelf], wenn auch ohne seine Mitschuld, zu einer marktgängigen Modeware, weil sie den städtischen Lesern eine weithin unbekannte literarische Gegenwelt, eine Art binnenländischen Exotismus, präsentierte.”³³ Of course singling out this element in the reception of Gotthelf's works indicates that the bulk of this readership was to be found outside of rural Switzerland. More recent critics have pointed to another reason for Gotthelf's popularity, particularly in Germany. They suggest that Gotthelf's works provided a possible model for solving pressing social problems. Werner Hahl, for example, points out that the growing pauperism and the development of capitalist industry were major sources of concern in Germany.³⁴ Conservatives, their eyes on France, worried that capitalism would create in Germany a dissatisfied proletariat ripe for revolt. Gotthelf's espousal of a patriarchally organized social structure offered an attractive alternative. Works such as Uli der Knecht or Jakobs Wanderungen demonstrated how the poor could be integrated into the middle class through their own efforts.

Friedrich Sengle sees the fact that Gotthelf's collected works in the first Springer edition (1856-58) sold so poorly as an indication of a significant shift in literary taste.³⁵ After 1850 the popularity of the Dorfgeschichte in general was on the wane. A new, more realistic novel was capturing the reader's fancy. At the same time, after the 1848 revolutionary wave the social, economic and political situation had changed. A return to pre-industrial social models, such as that advocated by Gotthelf, no longer offered a viable alternative. Moreover, Gotthelf's last major works had been too strident and intolerant to be popular. In 1898 a new collected edition under the editorship of Ferdinand Vetter began publication, but the volume of sales was disappointing and the edition was never completed.³⁶ It was not until shortly before World War I that interest in Gotthelf began to revive. A new historical-critical edition of his works began publication in 1911, an ambitious project which was completed only in 1977.³⁷ Also in 1911 Adolf Bartels wrote an introduction to his edition of Gotthelf's selected works in which he praised the Swiss pastor as a forerunner of naturalism and stressed Gotthelf's role as a portrayer of traditional Swiss customs and way of life.³⁸ In 1913 Gabriel Muret published his well-balanced and intelligent analysis of Gotthelf's fiction, the first careful examination of his works.³⁹ Spurred by the appearance of the historical-critical edition, Walter Muschg and Werner Günther published seminal works on Gotthelf in the 1930's.⁴⁰ While Muschg's book offers a mythic-psychological interpretation of Gotthelf, Günther provides a formal analysis of his fiction. The two Swiss critics have subsequently published extensively on Gotthelf and have contributed greatly to the re-establishment of Gotthelf's place as a major figure of nineteenth-century German literature.⁴¹

Notes

1. Friedrich Sengle, Biedermeierzeit, III (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1980), 952. Of course, the uncritical adulation of Gotthelf by some Swiss critics offers the other extreme. Note in this connection Werner Günther's statement that only Swiss critics can fully appreciate Gotthelf, Neue Gotthelf-Studien (Bern: Francke, 1958), p. 215.

2. There have been, however, a number of dissertations; see note 37.

3. On reader-response criticism, see Susan Suleiman and Inge Crosman, eds. The Reader in the Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), Jane P. Tomkins, ed. Reader-Response Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) and W. Daniel Wilson, “Readers in Texts,” PMLA [Publications of the Modern Language Association of America], 96 (1981), 848-863.

4. Sengle's note of caution here is well taken: “Der von der modernen Kritik immer wieder gemachte Versuch, zwischen dem Dichter und dem Theologen, dem ‘Künstler’ und dem ‘Didaktiker’ zu unterscheiden, ist zum Scheitern verurteilt, denn die Lehre durchdringt das gesamte Werk des Berners … Im strukturellen Sinn sind die didaktischen Partien Gotthelfs nicht wegzudenken. Sie sind nicht nur Anhängsel, sondern in vielen Fällen die Achsen der Romane,” (Sengle's emphasis) p. 923.

5. See Alfred Reber, Stil und Bedeutung des Gesprächs im Werke Jeremias Gotthelfs (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), p. 16, Christine Thaler, “Die Zwischenrede des auktorialen Erzählers im Romanwerk Jeremias Gotthelfs,” Diss. Universität Wien 1968, p. 40 and Ueli Jaussi, Der Dichter als Lehrer. Zur prabolischdidaktischen Struktur von Gotthelfs Erzählen (Bern: Haupt, 1978), p. 91.

6. Sengle has pointed out (p. 924) that the pseudonym Jeremias Gotthelf in itself implies that the author was playing a role in his novels not identical with the real-life Lützelflüh pastor. This is evident even in the non-fictional Armennot. After a tirade against “high art”, Gotthelf writes: “Diese sind nicht Worte eines Zeloten oder eines frömmelnden Träumers. Bhüet ist Gott davor! Jeremias Gotthelf ist kein Zelot, kein Träumer, aber er ist ein Schweizer, hat gerne jedes Ding an seinem Ort, nicht ums ganze Haus herum den Mist, nicht bei einander Stall und Wohnung, nicht in einem Schauspielhause den Himmel; er will kein Spazierstöckchen als Schlachtsschwert, keine Tänzerin als Göttin, er lässt nicht gelten Tändelei für Lebensernst, nicht Kunstsinn statt Christensinn, nicht künstlerische Fertigkeit als Gottähnlichkeit” (p. 412). The passage points to the author's awareness that he is writing from the standpoint of “Jeremias Gotthelf”, whose character is that of a solid Swiss citizen-farmer, not identical to Pastor Bitzius.

7. Christiane Thaler considers Gotthelf to have violated the structure of the novel in his later works due to the extensive commentary only marginally integrated into the stories, p. 55. Gotthelf himself, however, did not consider his creations novels; in fact, he was not writing within any given literary tradition. Thus, to chastise him for ignoring literary forms distorts the nature of his fiction.

8. Werner Hahl points out that the narrator's commentary is harsher to the protagonist than is his eventual fate, “Jeremias Gotthelf und der Rechtsstaat. Dichtung im Kontext der Rechts- und Verfassungsgeschichte am Beispiel der Erlebnisse eines Schuldenbauers,” Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur, 1 (1979), 87.

9. See Martin Krumbholz, Ironie im zeitgenössischen Ich-Roman (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1980), p. 18.

10. I follow in this W. Daniel Wilson's distinction and terminology.

11. See Krumbholz, p. 19 and Wolfgang Iser's comments on the reader's role in Vanity Fair in The Implied Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), Chapter Five.

12. See Wolfgang Iser, Die Appellstruktur der Texte (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1970), pp. 14ff, and The Implied Reader, Chapter Eleven.

13. Iser, Appellstruktur, p. 16. See also his comments on authorial commentary: “Der Autor selbst beseitigt Leerstellen, denn er möchte mit seinen kommentierenden Bemerkungen die Auffassung der Erzählung einheitlich machen. Solange dies jedoch die einzige Funktion des Kommentars bleibt, muss die Beteiligung des Lesers am Vollzug der in der Geschichte liegenden Absicht sinken. Der Autor selbst sagt ihm, wie seine Erzählung zu verstehen sei. Dem Leser bleibt dann bestenfalls noch die Möglichkeit, einer solchen Auffassung zu widersprechen, wenn er aus der erzählten Geschichte andere Eindrücke zu gewinnen glaubt,” p. 20. Gotthelf's commentaries fulfill a more complex role than simply exposing the author's views on social and political issues or on the actions of the characters; they are an integral part of the narrative strategies. See Sengle's comment, note 4.

14. Walter Muschg, Jeremias Gotthelf: Eine Einführung in seine Werke (Bern: Francke, 1960), p. 232.

15. See W. Daniel Wilson's discussion of the relationship of the implied reader to the real reader, “Reader in Texts,” pp. 859-60.

16. Of course, the psychological motivation involved can not be ignored. See his letter to Carl Bitzius, Werke 4, 279-283.

17. Jeremias Gotthelf, Sämtliche Werke, I (Erlenbach-Zürich: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1921), p. 391. All subsequent references are to this edition (1911-1978) and are indicated by volume and page number in the text; Roman numbers are in reference to the original twenty-four volumes, Arabic numbers in reference to the eighteen Ergänzungsbände.

18. This shift is explored in detail in Chapter Three of this study. Of course, this phenomenon, i.e. the novels' outgrowing of their tendentious origins, is a familiar one in Gotthelf's works.

19. Werke, 5, 332. Josef Burkhalter had doubts on this score, saying that Anne Bäbi Jowäger in comparison with earlier works was “weniger geeignet, den Reiz zum Lesen bei dem Volk zu erwecken,” (6, 56-7). See also Gotthilf Döhner's comment, v. 6, p. 83.

20. See Brandmeyer's study and Werner Hahl, “Gesellschaftlicher Konservatismus und literarischer Realismus. Das Modell einer deutschen Sozialfassung in den Dorfgeschichten,” in Realismus und Gründerzeit. Manifeste und Dokumente zur deutschen Literatur, ed. Max Bucher et al, I (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976).

21. See Muschg, Gotthelf. Die Geheimnisse des Erzählers (Munich: Beck, 1931).

22. An example of such organizations is the “Verein zur Verbreitung guter und wohlfeiler Volksschriften,” headed by Gotthilf Döhner. To what extent the publications of these societies were read by the lower and not the middle class is difficult to determine.

23. Other letters came from Caroline von Gratfenried and Sophie von Ehrenstein; see v. 7, p. 175, p. 191 and p. 200.

24. Gottfried Keller, Sämtliche Werke (Bern: Benteli, 1948), XXII, 43-44.

25. Keller, p. 63.

26. Keller, p. 111. Roy Pascal echoes this view, considering Gotthelf's uncertainty over his reading public a positive factor: “There was then a confusion in his purpose which he never disentangled—a most salutory one, which saved him on the one hand from an excessive utilitarian parochialism, and on the other from thraldom to the moral and asthetic conventions of the cultured classes,” The German Novel (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), p. 105. That Gotthelf eventually came to an awareness that he was writing predominately for an urban public, as Sengle claims (p. 900), is an interesting supposition, but one which lacks any concrete evidence, either in Gotthelf's letters or in his fiction.

27. See Kurt Batt, “Jeremias Gotthelfs Erzählungen,” Sinn und Form, 16 (1964), p. 609, and Peter Mettenleiter, Destruktion der Heimatdichtung (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1974), p. 342.

28. Alberto Martino, “Die deutsche Leihbibliothek und ihr Publikum,” in Literatur in der sozialen Bewegung. Aufsätze und Forschungsberichte zum 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Alberto Martino (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1977), p. 7.

29. Martino, p. 15.

30. Winfried Bauer, Jeremias Gotthelf: Ein Vertreter der geistlichen Restauration der Biedermeierzeit (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1975), p. 140.

31. Bauer, p. 140. Bauer believes that Gotthelf's works were primarily intended for those involved in some way in education: “[Gotthelf] wollte doch primär, auch wenn er nicht selbst zugab, alle die ansprechen, die irgendwie mit Volkspädagogik zu tun hatten, Pfarrer, Lehrer, Ärzte, Regenten, erst sekundär das Volk selbst, und dann wieder besonders die, welche die pastoral-pädagogische Absicht seiner Erzählungen akzeptierten und nicht nur aus Lust an Abenteuerlichem oder Sentimentalem zum Buche griffen,” p. 141. There is, however, with the exception of Leiden und Freuden eines Schulmeisters, no indication in Gotthelf's letters or works that this was the readership he was primarily addressing.

32. See Julian Schmidt's comments on Gotthelf's realism in Bucher, pp. 176-77.

33. Batt, p. 609. Another comment from an East German critic, Henri Poschmann, the editor of the Aufbau edition of Gotthelf's works, points in the same direction: “Seinen grossen schriftstellerischen Erfolg im 19. Jahrhundert verdankte er vielmehr gerade dem bürgerlich-städtischen Publikum, das er von Grund aus verachtete und das seine derbe Bauernprose als etwas fremdartig Sonderbares genoss, um sich durch sie aus der eigenen, von wachsenden Widersprüchen zerrissenen, zunehmend sinnentleerten Welt in ein Refugium phantastisch empfundenen Naturdaseins entrücken zu lassen,” Werke (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1971), p. xxx.

34. See Brandmeyer, Sengle, Werner Hahl, “Gesellschaftlicher Konservatismus und literarischer Realismus,” and also Sven-Aage Jørgensen, “Weerth und Gotthelf als Dichter des Proletariats. Ein kritischer Vergleich,” in Geist und Zeichen. Festschrift für Artur Henkel, ed. Herbert Anton, Bernhard Gajek, Peter Pfaff (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1977), pp. 57-67.

35. Sengle, p. 951.

36. Ferdinand Vetter, ed. Die gesammelten Werke von Jeremias Gotthelf. Volksausgabe seiner Werke im Urtext (Bern: Schmid und Francke, 1898-1900), ten volumes.

37. See note 17.

38. It is Bartels as well who was responsible for the view of Gotthelf as a forerunner of Blut und Boden literature. See Karl Fehr, Jeremias Gotthelf (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967), p. 86.

39. Gabriel Muret, Jeremias Gotthelf. Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris: F. Alcan, 1913).

40. Muschg, Die Geheimnisse des Erzählers and Günther, Der ewige Gotthelf (Erlenbach-Zürich: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1934). Günther re-titled and substantially revised the book for its second edition, Jeremias Gotthelf. Wesen und Werk (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1954).

41. For other works by Muschg and Günther see notes 1 and 14. Surveys of Gotthelf criticism are to be found in Friedrich Sengle, “Zum Wandel des Gotthelfbildes,” GRM NF, 7 (1957), 244-253, Sengle, Biedermeierzeit, III 88-951, Roger Paulin, “Jeremias Gotthelf,” in Zur Literatur der Restaurationsepoche. 1814-1848, ed. Jost Hermand and Manfred Windfuhr (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970), pp. 263-84 and Mettenleiter, pp. 12-22.