Münchhausen

The Münchhausiade by Karl Leberecht Immermann stands in a long tradition: it is the grotesque variant of the original Münchhausen legend from the 18th century, which tells of the war, hunting, and travel adventures of the popular Baron von Münchhausen from Bodenwerder. Immermann transforms the fantastic legends of the famous lying baron into a form of the novel that was previously unknown in German literature: contemporary historical, socially critical, comedic, and sharply satirical, a rich and colorful blend of time and cultural critique. Immermann's Münchhausen renews the novel of its time and is one of the most significant epic works of German literature. Karl Leberecht Immermann, now almost forgotten, bids farewell to the educational and didactic novel of classical and romantic literature. Published in 1838/39 and admired not only by Heinrich Heine, his original Münchhausen is a virtuously intertwined story in arabesques. In Immermann's work, Münchhausen is a forced windbag, a Caesar of lies, and a Don Juan of invention—someone who claims truth in his actions and storytelling, inviting the reader, who is addressed and repeatedly involved in the events, to seek the truth. Laurence Sterne's comedic novel Tristram Shandy serves as the great model summoned by the narrator. Münchhausen is also a double novel, telling the story of the Oberhof, a wealthy Westphalian estate, and the cosmos of the rural life of that time; at its center are the Hofschulze and a hunter named Oswald—the counter-world to the decaying realm of the nobility, where Münchhausen's grandson and his servant Karl Buttervogel prattle before the lord of Schloss Schnick-Schnack-Schnurr, before his daughter and the village schoolmaster. The extravagant events are woven into a marriage and love story, with the intertwined worlds unfolding over a period of just a few weeks.