Gotthelf's Ride

On New Year's Day 1831, an unknown and combative vicar from the Bernese Heiliggeist Church rides to Lützelflüh. It is Albert Bitzius, the rebellious son of a pastor, who is about to take up his fourth and final vicarage in the small village in the Emmental. Five years later, he will gain notoriety with his scandalous first novel "Der Bauernspiegel" published under the pseudonym Jeremias Gotthelf. In concise, almost galloping language, E. Y. Meyer depicts this ride, what transpires in the thirty-three-year-old during the five hours, how he views his life, and what he expects from the future. Not the famous writer Jeremias Gotthelf, now burdened by clichés, is presented, but the little-known young man in his inner conflict: wild passion and affirmation of life, sympathy for the emerging idea of liberalism on one hand and...