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  Hebel does not play down the harshness of existence, least of all the horrors of war. He condemns cruelty and senseless destruction, but more often he likes to tell how humanity can relieve suffering and how kindness or Christian virtue can be shown by anyone, by emperors and peasants alike. The great who exercise clemency or gratitude and are fair and just are not presented as faultless heroes, they are simply behaving as good men; their acts are all the more exemplary because they are done by individuals with common human failings. Very ordinary men and women too can perform what are almost miracles of kindness and justice. They do not need to be Lutheran or even Christian. That God operates through the most unlikely of men and women is cause for marvel and heartfelt gratitude. Thus tolerance is one of the great virtues espoused by the Hausfreund and set against arrogance and bigotry. It is extended most noticeably to the Jews. Hebel bases stories on their wiliness and love of profit, but he suggests that those characteristics are not in themselves despicable and that Jews would be no different from everyone else if they were treated fairly and accorded equality as citizens and fellow human beings.

  Hebel’s sympathy with the little man might suggest revolutionary leanings. But his political stance is best described as cautiously liberal. He intimates that in a revolution the most unsuitable persons may be appointed to positions of authority (‘A Willing Justice’, p. 150), deplores acts of disloyalty or betrayal, and reports with approval how Napoleon restored law and order to revolutionary France. Like many German liberals at the time, he saw Napoleon not as a warmonger and tyrant but as the bringer of political and social reform. He illustrates the foolishness of rebelling against the given system of authority. Thus Andreas Hofer, celebrated in the Austrian Tyrol as a national hero, is presented in the Schatzkästlein (p. 122) as an obstinate fool who causes unnecessary suffering. In Hebel’s age it was not unnatural to appreciate the value of political stability and to question the wisdom of the mob. His intended audience, citizens of a small state, were involved, as soldiers, victims or onlookers, and with various degrees of enthusiasm or reluctance, in events beyond their control. We do not need to be familiar with the details of each stage of the Napoleonic Wars, or to know, for instance, why Germans became allied with the French, in order to identify with this sense of powerlessness, and to appreciate the need felt in such times to hold fast to basic human values and find security in simple religious faith.

  It will be clear that Hebel did not deal with narrowly local matters. The ordinary reader, he wrote, is curious, he wants to hear about things outside his own experience, about events beyond his village, town or state. So he tells of recent historical events and of curious or extraordinary happenings far away from the confines of Baden. He knew that great changes in contemporary Europe could threaten not just political but also moral and religious stability, and so often his stories show that good and admirable qualities remain good and admirable in any circumstances. For all his fascination with man’s weaknesses and quirks Hebel was convinced that there was such a thing as human dignity, an enduring value which could be reconciled with tolerance and good humour.

  The publisher of the Schatzkästlein, which went into a second edition in 1818, urged Hebel to prepare another volume of pieces from the Hausfreund after 1811, but in vain. It seems that Hebel was worried that such, often frivolous, things hardly befitted a man of his standing in the church establishment. (Not everyone needed to know that he kept an owl and a tree frog as pets.) The almanac for 1815 had caused him some unpleasantness. One anecdote in it, ‘Pious Advice’ (p. 150), was deemed offensive by the Catholic Church – reacting, perhaps, to attempts (which Hebel deplored) by the agents of the Lutheran almanac to force it upon Catholic households – and the whole almanac for that year had to be reprinted. Hebel’s involvement in the Hausfreund after that would have been minimal but for the fact that a plan to contribute to another calendar fell through, so that the pieces he wrote for that separate venture could make up the volume for 1819. His great concern now was that the churches should work together for the benefit of the people. When in 1818 he was made Prelate of the Lutheran Church in Baden and thus became a member of the Diet in Karlsruhe (this parliament was one of the progressive results of the Napoleonic upheavals) he was concerned mainly with welfare measures to help widows and orphans, the blind and the deaf and dumb, and in this he worked closely with his Catholic counterpart. He also supported moves to liberalize the censorship of publications. His main preoccupation, however, was to bring the two Protestant Churches in Baden closer to each other.

  In 1818 he began his Bible stories for children (Biblische Geschichten). They were intended to be used in both Lutheran and Reformed schools, which indeed they were, after their publication in 1824, until 1855. (There were moves in the Catholic hierarchy, much to Hebel’s gratification, to place them in Catholic schools too.) Baden as Grand Duchy included large areas of population in the Reformed Palatinate, and thanks largely to Hebel’s endeavours the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Baden were united in 1821. He wrote parts of the liturgy which was used for more than thirty years. For this contribution to church history he was awarded an honorary doctorate in theology by the University of Heidelberg. It was while travelling between Mannheim and Heidelberg to examine students of theology that he died, of cancer it seems, in September 1826. In 1824 he had lost a great part of his wealth when his banker, a friend of his, went bankrupt. Characteristically the loss had been borne philosophically; Hebel was more concerned with the plight of his friend than with his own misfortune.

  Each year on Hebel’s birthday a ceremony, organized by the Hebel Foundation of Basel, takes place in his honour in his native Hausen. There are speeches, prizes for the young who recite his poems, gifts for virtuous fiancés or newly-weds, and a meal at which the oldest parishioners are the guests of honour. The celebration recalls a man whose work endeared itself to the local community and acted as its cultural ambassador. His fame went far. Tolstoy was able to recite some of Hebel’s stories by heart. In translation they were popular with teachers and pupils alike in Russian schools. Their continuing appeal to adults throughout Germany (who fall in love with Freddy Tinder, the Sly Pilgrim [p. 31] and ‘Kannitverstan’ at an early age) is attested by the appearance every few years of a new inexpensive edition of his works. Such popularity and Hebel’s early adoption as a text for schoolchildren seem, however, to have discouraged searching literary analysis of his work. Between the two world wars the influential critical rebel Walter Benjamin could accuse the literary establishment of having ignored Hebel’s achievement by declaring his jewels of prose fit only for peasants and children. (Benjamin’s friend Bertolt Brecht was to emulate, in his Kalendergeschichten [Tales from the Calendar] of 1948, Hebel’s special art of using a brief story to make a particular point to a particular public.) Yet in fact Hebel never lacked fervent admirers among intellectuals. The philosopher Martin Heidegger, for instance, had an almost religious respect for Hebel, and though his approach may not convince everyone, there can be no doubt that he was reacting to something essential in Hebel’s work, not only to his models of the art of prose narrative but to what earlier generations had been content to call naturalness. It was undoubtedly that secure naturalness that appealed so strongly to Kafka as a contrast to his own abysses of uncertainty. Hebel had no problems deciding what was true and what was right, when it was appropriate to laugh and when to cry, and the modern reader may well, like Kafka, find welcome relief from some of the products of modernism (and its successors) in an author who is eminently accessible, is not ashamed of sentiment, is cheerful and humorous and sane and humane.

  The present edition brings, in translation, a selection from the Schatzkästlein of 1811, several pieces from later issues of the Hausfreund, one story (‘Mr Charles’, p. 161) that Hebel published elsewhere, and one (‘The Glove Merchant’, p. 166) which was first printed after his death. As translator I am grateful to Celia Skrine, who kindly looked through an early draft of many of the
items in this volume, made suggestions for improvements and, equally important, gave encouragement. My thanks also to my publisher who retained his enthusiasm for the project throughout. He and I present this volume to the English-speaking world as Kafka presented his copy of the Schatzkästlein to an acquaintance, ‘um Hebel eine Freude zu machen’, but trusting that it will give pleasure to its readers too.

  Further Reading

  The literature on Hebel in English is sparse and to be found in academic periodicals. Two general essays suitable for the reader without German, but likely to be found only in university libraries, are: C. P. Magill, ‘Pure and Applied Art: A Note on J. P. Hebel’ in German Life and Letters, new series 10 (1956–57), pp. 183–188; J. Hibberd, ‘J. P. Hebel’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 90, edited by J. Hardin and C. Schweitzer (Detroit, 1989), pp. 128–132.

  The most accessible books in German are: U. Däster, J. P. Hebel in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek, 1973) and R. M. Kully, Johann Peter Hebel (Stuttgart, 1969); W. Zentner, J. P. Hebel (Karlsruhe, 1965), is a fuller biography. L. Rohner, Kalendergeschichte und Kalender (Wiesbaden, 1978), places Hebel’s stories within the history of German almanacs. Ambitious readers may also wish to consult Walter Benjamin, ‘Zu J. P. Hebels 100. Geburtstag’ in Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften II (Frankfurt am Main, 1955, reprinted 1977) and Martin Heidegger, ‘Sprache und Heimat’ in ÜberJohann Peter Hebel (Tübingen, 1964 – tributes and essays by Heidegger, Theodor Heuss, Carl J. Burckhardt, Werner Bergengruen and others).

  The original Hausfreund has been reproduced in facsimile as Hebel, Der Rheinische Hausfreund, Faksimiledruck der Jahrgänge 1808–15 und 1819, edited by L. Rohner (Wiesbaden, 1981). Hebel’s Schatzkästlein is available in a convenient paperback with annotations by W. Theiss (Stuttgart, 1981, later reprints). Volumes 2 and 3 of Hebel’s Sämtliche Schriften, edited by A. Braunbehrens et al (Karlsruhe, 1990) contain all his stories.

  A Note on Currency

  Gold doubloons and louis d’or should cause readers no problem. But they may wish to note that two silver coins, the thaler and the gulden (rendered as guilder), were in use in Baden and other German states in Hebel’s time. They may be thought of as British crowns and halfcrowns, though they were worth rather less and varied in value according to where they were minted. Hebel sometimes called thalers silver crowns, and used the abbreviation fl (florin) for gulden. There were sixty kreuzers to a gulden. The name kreuzer has usually been retained in the translation, but for coins representing fractions or multiples of the kreuzer it sometimes seemed more natural to speak of pennies and farthings. Hebel himself assisted his German readers by occasionally switching from a foreign currency, e.g. French livres or francs, into thalers.

  What a Strange Creature is Man

  A King of France was told by his valet about a man who was seventy-five years of age and had never been outside Paris: he had only heard talk of country lanes, the fields or springtime. You could tell him the world outside had come to an end twenty years ago, he’d have to believe you. The King asked if this man was ill or feeble. ‘No,’ said the valet, ‘he’s as healthy as a fish in water.’ Did he suffer from melancholy? ‘No, he’s as happy as a sandboy.’ Did he have to work to support a large family? ‘No, he’s well-to-do. He simply doesn’t want to see anything else. He’s not curious.’ The King was intrigued and desired to see this man.

  A King of France’s desire is soon fulfilled, not every one of them of course, but this one was, and the King talked with the man about this and that and asked if he had always been happy and well. ‘Yes, Sire,’ he replied, ‘all my seventy-five years.’ Was he born in Paris? ‘Yes, Sire! I could scarcely have got in any other way, for I’ve never been out.’ ‘That surprises me,’ replied the King. ‘That’s why I had you summoned. I hear that you are in the habit of taking suspicious walks to one or other of the city gates! Do you know you have been watched for some time?’ The man was astonished by this accusation and said it couldn’t be him, someone of the same name perhaps or something like that. But the King cut him short: ‘Not another word! I trust that in future you will not leave town again without my express permission!’

  A real Parisian ordered to do something by the King doesn’t spend long wondering if it’s necessary or whether there isn’t a better way of going about things, he does as he’s told. Our man was a real Parisian, though when the mail coach passed him on his way home he thought, ‘You lucky people in there, you can leave Paris!’ Once home he read the paper as he did every day. But this time he didn’t find much in it. He looked out of the window, but for once there was nothing of interest there. He started to read a book, but suddenly that seemed so pointless. He went for a walk, he went to the theatre, to the inn, but now it was all so dull. So the first quarter of the year passed, and the second, and more than once he said to those sitting next to him in the inn, ‘My friends, it’s a hard verdict, seventy-five years in Paris without a break, and now I am told I’m not allowed to leave town.’

  Eventually in the third quarter he couldn’t bear it any longer, and day after day he requested permission, the weather being so glorious, or nice and fresh from the rain. He would gladly pay for a trusty man to escort him, two if necessary. But it was no good. When however one painful year to the day had passed, and he came home that evening and asked his wife with a frown, ‘What’s that new carriage doing outside? Is someone making fun of me?’ she replied, ‘My dear, we’ve been looking for you everywhere! The King has given you the coach and permission to drive in it wherever you like.’ ‘Ma foi!’ the man answered, and his face had relaxed, ‘The King is just!’ ‘But what do you say,’ his wife continued, ‘why don’t we go for a drive in the country tomorrow?’ ‘Well now,’ said the man, and he showed no emotion, ‘we’ll see! If not tomorrow, perhaps another day. And anyway what would we do out there? Paris is nicest from the inside.’

  The Silver Spoon

  An officer in Vienna was thinking, ‘Just for once I’ll dine at the Red Ox,’ and into the Red Ox he went. There were regulars there and strangers, important and unimportant people, honest men and rascals such as you’ll find anywhere. They were eating and drinking, some a great deal, others little. They talked and argued about this and that, about how it had rained rocks at Stannern in Moravia, for instance, or about Machin who fought the great wolf in France.* When the meal was almost over one or two were drinking a small jug of Tokay to round things off, one man was making little balls from bread crumbs as if he were an apothecary making pills, another was fiddling with his knife or his fork or his silver spoon. It was then the officer happened to notice how a fellow in a green huntsman’s coat was playing with a silver spoon when it suddenly disappeared up his sleeve and stayed there.

  Someone else might have thought, ‘It’s no business of mine,’ and said nothing, or have made a great fuss. The officer thought, ‘I don’t know who this green spoon-hunter is and what I might let myself in for,’ and he kept as quiet as a mouse, until the landlord came to collect his money. But when the landlord came to collect his money the officer, too, picked up a silver spoon, and tucked it through two button holes in his coat, in one and out the other as soldiers sometimes do in war when they take their spoons with them, but no soup. As the officer was paying his bill the landlord was looking at his coat and thinking, ‘That’s a funny medal this gentleman’s wearing! He must have distinguished himself battling with a bowl of crayfish soup to have got a silver spoon as a medal! Or could it just be one of mine?’ But when the officer had paid the landlord he said, without a sign of a smile on his face, ‘The spoon’s included, I take it? The bill seems enough to cover it.’ The landlord said, ‘Nobody’s tried that one on me before! If you don’t have a spoon at home I’ll give you a tin one, but you can’t have one of my silver spoons!’ Then the officer stood up, slapped the landlord on the shoulder and laughed. ‘It was only a joke we were having,’ he said, ‘that gentleman over there in the green jacket and me! - My green friend, i
f you give back that spoon you have up your sleeve I’ll give mine back too.’ When the spoon-hunter saw that he had been caught in the act and that an honest eye had observed his dishonest hand, he thought, ‘Better pretend it was a joke,’ and gave back his spoon. So the landlord got his property back, and the spoon thief smiled too – but not for long. For when the other customers saw what had happened they set about him with curses and hounded him out of the Holy of Holies and the landlord sent the boots after him with a big stick. But he stood the worthy officer a bottle of Tokay to toast the health of all honest men.

  Remember: You must not steal silver spoons!

  Remember: Someone will always stand up for what is right.

  The Cheap Meal

  There is an old saying: The biter is sometimes bit. But the landlord at the Lion in a certain little town was bitten first. He received a well-dressed customer who curtly demanded a good bowl of broth, the best his money would buy. Then he ordered beef and vegetables too for his money. The landlord asked him, all politeness, if he wouldn’t like a glass of wine with it. ‘Indeed I would,’ his guest replied, ‘if I can have a good one for my money.’ When he had finished, and he enjoyed it all, he took a worn six-kreuzer piece from his pocket and said, ‘Here you are, landlord, there’s my money!’ The landlord said, ‘What’s this? You owe me a thaler!’ The customer answered, ‘I didn’t ask for a meal for a thaler, but for my money. Here it is. It’s all I have. If you gave me too much for it then that’s your fault!’ It wasn’t really such a clever trick. It called only for cheek and a devil-may-care view of the consequences. But the best is yet to come.