11. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

On her seventieth birthday on September 13, 1900

She sees the world as it is; but from the point of view of the distinguished Austrian salon. This sentence could briefly summarize the strengths and weaknesses of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, who celebrates her seventieth birthday on 13 September. The living and educational conditions of the social class emerge as the background to her narrative art, which once allowed Count Anton Auersperg to mature into the much-celebrated poet Anastasius Grün. He was the poet of freedom that emerges when not the son of the people, but the cavalier who descends to the people and is filled with the general ideas of human dignity and cultural progress becomes a singer. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach is the aristocratic lady with a heart filled with infinite kindness for all things human, who unabashedly depicts the darker side of noble circles as well as the life of the working classes, but the latter not without the share that belonging gives, and the latter not without the tinge of strangeness that is created when one has only come into contact with the people as the noble lady of the castle servant. No matter how intimate and warm the poet's description of a child of the people in her story "Bozena" (1876), with its unpretentious sufferings and joys, one does not hear someone speaking who has suffered and rejoiced with her, but the kind lady with the mild view of life and light-heartedness. You can clearly see what is being referred to here if you read a village story by Peter Rosegger immediately after Ebner-Eschenbach's "Dorf- und Schlossgeschichten" (1883 and 1886). Here the man speaks who, as an itinerant journeyman tailor, sat at table with the people, there the lady of the manor who never got much further than shaking hands with the people. Do not misunderstand this. There is no hint of that "condescending" manner in the stories of this poetess that must offend; but nowhere can she deny the count's blood that flows in her veins, nowhere can she deny the aristocratic upbringing she has enjoyed, nowhere can she deny the sentiments of the social circles in which her life has moved.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach was born Countess Dubsky in the Moravian castle of Zdislavic to an aristocratic family. She was an imaginative, exceptionally impressive girl. At an early age, she developed a decided tendency to expand her knowledge of the world and people in all directions. Those who knew her as a girl have much to say about her vivacity and enterprising nature. The Moravian aristocratic circles from which she grew up had long been characterized by liberal, progressive views. This distinguished them favorably from the reactionary Bohemian aristocracy. The people with whom the young countess came into contact had something extraordinarily interesting about their way of life. The Zdislavic estate is not far from the Hungarian border; when you grow up in such an area, you get to know the most diverse customs and habits offered by the mixture of the most varied tribes. Through her marriage, in 1848, to Baron von Ebner, Countess Dubsky was transplanted into Viennese society. She can only be fully understood from the ideas of this society. A prominent trait of this society is the cult of the "good heart". With this good heart alone, it is believed that the great world-shaking issues of the present can be mastered. It is significant that an Austrian member of parliament, whose thoughts are rooted in this society, said publicly not long ago that nothing could be achieved by legal means to equalize the great social differences; the most effective means of combating the suffering of the proletariat could only be private charity, the goodwill of the better-off. Love and benevolence are the leitmotifs that emerge in almost all of Ebner-Eschenbach's works. The same character trait led another Lower Austrian aristocrat, Berta von Suttner, to launch the well-known peace movement.

Another characteristic of this Austrian aristocratic society is a preference for moderation, for a certain beauty of external forms. The poet's art of storytelling accommodated this preference to a high degree. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach's portrayal is not without passion; but this passion has something detached about it; it remains within certain limits. Anything tempestuous, anything radical is missing in the calmly flowing description; the desires and demands of life are always accompanied by the admonition to renounce. The calm, balanced view of the world, which has brought her increasing recognition as a storyteller over the last two decades, made it impossible for Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach to achieve success in the field in which she first sought it, as a dramatic poet. Although the most influential and insightful stage directors took an interest in her performances, her dramatic creations remained without effect. Her tragedy "Mary Stuart in Scotland" was performed in Karlsruhe in 1860 and her one-act play "Doctor Knight" in Vienna's Burgtheater in 1871. Neither made a significant impression, nor did the drama "Das Waldfräulein", performed at the Vienna Stadttheater in 1873, which one would have thought would have been captivating through its depiction of modern Viennese society. This artist lacked dramatic power; the quiet beauty of her portrayal could only be expressed in the narrative. When, from the mid-seventies onwards, she turned almost exclusively to this field, she was soon fully appreciated. The academic-literary circles were the most unreserved in their support of her. What the German science of beauty has presented as the ideal qualities of a work of art: Evenness and harmony, can be found realized to a high degree in Ebner-Eschenbach's novellas and novels. They are almost an illustration of many a university lecture on the demands of beauty and art. It is characteristic that the University of Vienna has just awarded the poet an honorary doctorate on the occasion of her seventieth birthday.

A fine observer speaks her mind in the two collections of "Dorf- und Schlossgeschichten" (1883 and 1886) and in the two-volume novel "Das Gemeindekind" (1887). However, all of the characters portrayed there lack something to make them completely comprehensible to us within the social class to which they belong. They are portrayed too little from their very own feelings and imaginations; they only present their outer side, not the intimate traits of their minds. But if one disregards all of this, one must still feel a captivating effect from the deep, intimate way in which the narrator tries to place herself in the souls of others. She is even able to portray the emotional life of animals with warmth, as in the story "Krambambuli", which can be found in the collection "Neue Dorf- und Schlossgeschichten" (1886).

The poet knows how to portray social evils and prejudices in a sympathetic and artistic way. The mildness and kindness of her disposition lends her descriptions, when she comes to such areas, a haunting, poignant language. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach reached her peak in this direction in "Gemeindekind". How a socially uprooted person becomes a burden to his surroundings, how an almost lost person is put back on the right path: this is described here with inner truth and at the same time with a warmth that has compassion and understanding for every human aberration. The love of a broad narrative art is particularly evident in this book. The poet likes to linger in places where it is possible to exhaust people's emotions in all directions, where one can really immerse oneself in the enjoyment of the people and fates portrayed. She is less successful in cutting a plot short and bringing it to a conclusion, which requires a fast pace and strong contrasts. This can be seen in the story "Unsühnbar" (1890), in which a woman who makes a mistake in her marriage seems completely unfounded in her passion. The plot demands rapid developments here, and Ebner-Eschenbach is only equal to the calm, measured steps of fate and the human heart. Perhaps the stories that speak most deeply from the poet's own soul are those that appeared three years ago under the title "Alte Schule". Here she has chosen material that made it necessary to avoid any strong tone. A quiet, contemplative wisdom prevails here, as the artist has always loved it, a devout calm that does not avoid the hardships of life, but wants to put them in a mild light. Because this trait is in her, in one of these stories she juxtaposes the man who has matured to inner harmony and quiet happiness with the young man who is whipped by the storm of his passions; and in the other, we see the contrast between the renunciate, self-satisfied spirit and the man who is floundering in ambition and tormented by his desires.

As a thorough connoisseur, the narrator describes the goings-on and fates of the aristocratic classes. Here she is completely in her element. She knows how to fathom the souls without rest. How the members of this social class suffer from the hollowness of their prejudices, how they long to escape from these prejudices and yet are bound by the strongest ties within them: this is what we see in all its truth when we read stories such as "Die Freiherrn von Gemperlein" or "Muschi". It can be said that the poet has created a style for such material that is characteristic in the highest sense. Nowhere else does the Austrian aristocratic German in which she writes flow so naturally from the material as when she portrays people who have been part of her environment for most of her life. She can also be sharply critical and satirical. There she also deals with people and living conditions that in reality show none of the harshness and unevenness that she loves so little in her art. When she depicts the "noble" circles, she also seems to find the best confirmation of her creed, which is probably that, despite all suffering and hardship, a balancing justice prevails in the world, a benevolent world order that is to be praised.

This creed also appears in numerous passages of her "Aphorisms", a collection of which was published in 1880 and whose serene wisdom was so well received that it went through several editions. These core sayings are as tasteful in form as they are meaningful in content. A striving for clarity in the big and small questions of existence is expressed here. A woman speaks to us who observes sharply and faithfully, who knows how to reflect on herself and who has known how to draw the most beautiful treasure of wisdom and morality from this introspection. And the unpretentious, modest form in which great truths are often presented has a particularly beneficial effect in this proverbial wisdom.