Uli der Knecht, Uli der Pächter

Jeremias Gotthelf: Uli the Farmhand / Uli the Tenant. Both volumes in one book.

Uli the Farmhand: First edition of the original version under the title "How Uli the Farmhand Becomes Happy": Zurich and Frauenfeld 1841 with the subtitle "A Gift for Servants and Masters." First edition of the High German version: Berlin 1846.

Uli the Tenant: First edition: Berlin 1849.

New edition, edited by Karl-Maria Guth, Berlin 2023.

The text is based on the editions: Jeremias Gotthelf: Selected Works in 12 Volumes. Edited by Walter Muschg, Zurich: Diogenes, 1978.

Cover illustration: Jeremias Gotthelf, painting by Johann Friedrich Dietler, 1844.

Set in Minion Pro, 11 pt.

The Hofenberg collection is published by Henricus - Edition Deutsche Klassik GmbH, Berlin.

About the author: Born in 1797 in Murten, Switzerland, as the son of a Reformed pastor, Albert Bitzius completed his theology studies in Bern in 1820. He undertook study trips to Berlin, Weimar, Leipzig, and Dresden, became a vicar and parish assistant, and finally in 1832 a pastor in Lützelflüh. He advocated for compulsory education and became a school commissioner. In addition to his journalistic work, which was mostly unsigned, he began writing in 1836 and tirelessly published novels and stories that sometimes provide a shockingly realistic insight into the poverty of rural existence in the 19th century. On October 22, 1854, Jeremias Gotthelf, as he called himself after the main character of his debut work, died in Lützelflüh from a pulmonary embolism, a powerful storyteller of the highest order.