ModernGermanLiterature18801950

THE LITERATURE OF RACE AND SOIL 439

Die Schopfungt with its quaint and humorous picture of the seven
days of Creation, is delightful. WaggerPs racy humour is at its
best in his for a great part anecdotal short stories; Frohliche Armut
(1948) tells the story of his boyhood in the Gasteiner Tal, and the
tales of Die Pfingstreise (1946) and Drei Er^ahlungen (1952) are also
autobiographical. His botanical avocation comes out in Das Lob
der Wiese (1950), while Heiteres Herbarium (1950) is a book of
flower aquarelles with a commentary in humorous verse. Kleines
Erdenrund (1951) by Hanns Arens is an introduction to WaggerPs
work in anthology form with commentary. Carinthia has its de-
lineator in JOSEF FRIEDRICH PERKONiG (1890- ), one of the few
humorists otBIubo. The humour has a sad ending in Der Scbinder-
hannes %iebt ubers Gebirg (193 5): a wretched tramp frightens the life
out of the Almbauerinnen (the women who tend the cattle in
summer on the high mountain patches of pasture) by telling them
he is the terrible robber Schinderhannes; the villagers lie in wait
for the poor devil and shoot him. In Nikolaus Tschinderle, ILduber-
bauptmann (1936) a tailor despised by his girl shows his prowess
as a fantastic robber, an Eulenspiegel with the brain waves of
Don Quixote. In Honigraub (1935) a wise old beekeeper at the
edge of the village has a moral lapse - he starves his bees, so that
they find their food in the hives of his neighbours; with dire local
consequences - but all comes well in the end. In 'Lopud, Insel der
Helden (1934) Perkonig descends from his bare mountains to a
magic island on the Dalmatian coast.

The Sudetenland has quite a school of Blubo. The historian
of tribal literature, Josef Nadler, is a Sudeten German; so too is
the popular novelist KARL HANS STROBL (1877-1946), whose Die
Vaclavbude, Der Scbipkapass and Das Wirtshaus Zum Konig Pr^emysl*
(1913) deal with the modern conflict of Czechs and Germans, while
his Die Packet des Hus (1929) is a historical novel of Bohemia.1 The
veterans of the Sudeten regional novel in the strict sense of the
word are Gustav Leutelt, a teacher's son from Gablonz, and Hans
Watzlik. In Sieb^igjahre meinesluebens GUSTAV LEUTELT (1860-1945)
describes his life in a glass works, and the glass industry is the
background of Wilder aus dem ILeben der Glasarbeiter, Huttenbeimat,
and Der Glaswald. His best novels are Das syteite Gesicht (1911) and
DieKdnigshauser (1906). HANS WATZLIK (1879-1948), 'der Dicbter des

1 Strobl's most characteristic fiction (Efeagaba/Ruperfts, 1908) belongs to
the fantastic, supernatural tale (p. 72).