This thesis delineates the Swiss author Gottfried Keller's philosophy of life based on interpretations of three of his stories. The tales used in this study are Pankraz, der Schmoller and Das verlorne Lachen from Die Leute von Seldwyla, Band I, 1856, and Band Ii, 1874, respectively, and Der Landvoqt von Greifensee from the Ziricher Novellen, 1878.This study found that the keystone of Gottfried Keller's philosophy of life is responsibility. After accepting the challenge of personal responsibility in becoming what he is capable of becoming (Sichfinden) it is man's obligation to consider the needs of his fellow man and country--his civic responsibility. In addition this thesis has discussed the elements of religion, death, and love in Keller's philosophy of life.

Inaugural-Dissertation--Philosophische Fakultät--Kiel, 1964. / Bibliogr. p. 376-383. Index.

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My dissertation, Ways of Living: An Ethical Realism in the Prose of Gottfried Keller, takes as its focus the extensive discourse in mid-nineteenth century German letters on what constitutes a properly “realist” work of literature. My study examines three major works by Gottfried Keller: Der grüne Heinrich, the Leute von Seldwyla cycle, and the political satire Martin Salander. I consider these prose works as a response firstly to the call by critics like Julian Schmidt and Gustav Freytag for a return to das Reale, as they called it, and secondly to the contemporaneous developments in the French and English novel. Keller, I argue, is less interested in offering a comprehensive social portrait of his native Switzerland than he is in exploring contrasting ethics, or modes of disposition towards the world: resentment and affirmation, parsimoniousness and wastefulness, sensuality and renunciation. To this end, Keller uses the familiar structures of Realist prose, like the construction of characters as types, the extensive description of physical objects, or the use of narrative topoi like the marriage plot, to dramatize conflicts between various Lebensarten: self-sacrifice in service of an unattainable ideal or fleeting happiness in the here and now, for example. For Keller, then, the “objectivity” championed by the Realists is above all a way of directing the reader’s attention towards the crises of value underpinning the most unremarkable of people and the most mundane of occupations. In Keller’s prose, I conclude, Realism is less an aesthetic program than a way of comporting oneself, a survival mechanism by means of which the hard truths of life, above all the vanity of human endeavor and the painful renunciations demanded by the world of work, are poeticized in order to make them bearable.

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This thesis is divided into two main parts. The first, comprising the three initial chapters, looks, in chapter one, at the specifically German origins of the Bildungsroman, its distinctive features, and the difficulties surrounding its transplantation into the literary contexts of other countries. Particular attention is paid to the ethical dimension of the genre, i.e. to the relation between the individual self and the exterior world, and how it affects individual formation. The focus then shifts to American literature, and the term 'narrative of initiation' is recommended as a credible alternative to 'Bildungsroman'. Allowing for similarities between them, it is none the less strongly suggested that the Bildungsroman of German origin and the American narrative of initiation should be seen as being intrinsically different, principally because of the different cultural backgrounds that shaped them. Several features of the theme of initiation are postulated as decisive factors in the discrepancies between the initiatory narrative and the Bildungsroman. Analysis of six texts - three of each literary tradition - follows, to provide support for the theoretical discussion of the terms introduced in chapter one. Three Bildungsromane are considered in the second chapter, namely Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Stifter's Der Nachsommer and Keller's Der grune Heinrich, and three narratives of initiation in chapter three: Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Crane's The Red Badge of Courage and Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Their relevance to the tradition of German and American fiction as a whole and as precursors of Mann's Der Zauberberg and Hemingway's The Nick Adams Stories is considered. A direct comparison between Mann's and Hemingway's texts constitutes the second part of this thesis, wholly contained in chapter four. In addition to a comprehensive critical reading of both narratives, the contemporaneity of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories is taken into account, and consequently special consideration is given to the texts' close relation with the cultural and historical realities of the early twentieth century, particularly the impact of the First World War. With the assistance of Jung's theories, an increased awareness of death and of the dark side of the psyche - though dealt with differently in both texts - is put forward as a significant factor in the deviation of Der Zauberberg and The Nick Adams Stories from the traditions of the Bildungsroman and of the narrative of initiation. This departure leads to a re-appraisal of the relation between the protagonists and their society, and to a new ethical attitude that presupposes different, more modem conceptions of what Bildung and initiation represent in the context of the early twentieth century. How and why they changed and if they survived as literary notions are questions this thesis attempts to answer.