A Very German Christmas Read online

  www.newvesselpress.com

  Edited Translations Copyright © 2020 New Vessel Press

  “After Christmas” / “Nach der Weihnacht” by Hermann Hesse © Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2003.

  All rights reserved and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin.

  “Interview with Santa Claus” / “Interview mit dem Weihnachtsmann” by Erich Kästner © Thomas Kästner

  “Every Year Once Again—The Client Gift” / “Alle Jahre wieder—das Kundengeschenk”

  by Martin Suter © Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich, Switzerland. All rights reserved.

  “In the Outer Suburbs” by Peter Stamm was first published in English in Strange Gardens and Other Stories by Other Press, New York. Translation copyright © Michael Hofmann 2006.

  Reprinted with permission of Other Press LLC.

  “Christmas with the Buddenbrooks” / from Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods, translation copyright © 1993 by Penguin Random House LLC.

  Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  “Christmas Not Just Once A Year (Part II)” by Heinrich Böll, from The Collected Stories, published by Melville House, 2011. Copyright © Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch. Translated by and © Leila Vennewitz.

  Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Melville House.

  “Martin’s Christmas Wish” from Erich Kästner The Flying Classroom. Text and illustrations

  © 1935 Dressler Verlag; English language translation © Anthea Bell 2014, Pushkin Press

  “The Loan” / “Die Leihgabe” from Wolfdietrich Schnurre Als Vaters Bart noch rot war

  © 1996 Piper Verlag GmbH, München/Berlin

  Cover design by Fernando Morte

  Book design by Beth Steidle

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Various

  A Very German Christmas: The Greatest Austrian, Swiss and German Holiday Stories of All Time / various authors.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-939931-88-7

  Library of Congress Control Number 2020935345

  I. Austria, Switzerland, Germany—Fiction

  Table of Contents

  THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER

  The Brothers Grimm • Germany

  AFTER CHRISTMAS

  Hermann Hesse • Germany

  BERLIN AT CHRISTMASTIDE

  Heinrich Heine • Germany

  CHRISTMAS

  Kurt Tucholsky • Germany

  INTERVIEW WITH SANTA CLAUS

  Erich Kästner • Germany

  THE SEPARATION

  Ilse Frapan • Germany

  EVERY YEAR ONCE AGAIN—THE CLIENT GIFT

  Martin Suter • Switzerland

  THE CHRISTMAS BOX

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe • Germany

  IN THE OUTER SUBURBS

  Peter Stamm • Switzerland

  ADVENT

  Rainer Maria Rilke • Austria

  CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

  Arthur Schnitzler • Austria

  CHRISTMAS WITH THE BUDDENBROOKS

  Thomas Mann • Germany

  CHRISTMAS NOT JUST ONCE A YEAR

  Heinrich Böll • Germany

  ON CHRISTMAS EVE

  Helene Stökl • Germany

  NUTCRACKER AND THE KING OF MICE

  E. T. A. Hoffmann • Germany

  CHRISTMAS IN COCHINCHINA

  Joseph Roth • Austria

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  Peter Rosegger • Austria

  MARTIN’S CHRISTMAS WISH

  Erich Kästner • Germany

  THE LOAN

  Wolfdietrich Schnurre • Germany

  O TANNENBAUM

  Ernst Anschütz • Germany

  THE ELVES AND THE SHOEMAKER

  The Brothers Grimm

  There was once a shoemaker, who worked very hard and was very honest, but still he could not earn enough to live upon; and at last all he had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of shoes.

  Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning to rise early in the morning to his work. His conscience was clear and his heart light amid all his troubles; so he went peaceably to bed, left all his cares to Heaven, and soon fell asleep. In the morning after he had said his prayers, he sat himself down to his work; when, to his great wonder, there stood the shoes already made, upon the table. The good man knew not what to say or think at such an odd thing happening. He looked at the workmanship; there was not one false stitch in the whole job; all was so neat and true, that it was quite a masterpiece.

  The same day a customer came in, and the shoes suited him so well that he willingly paid a price higher than usual for them; and the poor shoemaker, with the money, bought leather enough to make two pairs more. In the evening he cut out the work, and went to bed early, that he might get up and begin betimes next day; but he was saved all the trouble, for when he got up in the morning the work was done ready to his hand. Soon in came buyers, who paid him handsomely for his goods, so that he bought leather enough for four pair more. He cut out the work again overnight and found it done in the morning, as before; and so it went on for some time: what was got ready in the evening was always done by daybreak, and the good man soon became thriving and well off again.

  One evening, about Christmastime, as he and his wife were sitting over the fire chatting together, he said to her, “I should like to sit up and watch tonight, that we may see who it is that comes and does my work for me.” The wife liked the thought; so they left a light burning, and hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind a curtain that was hung up there, and watched what would happen.

  As soon as it was midnight, there came in two little naked dwarfs; and they sat themselves upon the shoemaker’s bench, took up all the work that was cut out, and began to ply with their little fingers, stitching and rapping and tapping away at such a rate, that the shoemaker was all wonder, and could not take his eyes off them. And on they went, till the job was quite done, and the shoes stood ready for use upon the table. This was long before daybreak; and then they bustled away as quick as lightning.

  The next day the wife said to the shoemaker, “These little wights have made us rich, and we ought to be thankful to them, and do them a good turn if we can. I am quite sorry to see them run about as they do; and indeed it is not very decent, for they have nothing upon their backs to keep off the cold. I’ll tell you what, I will make each of them a shirt, and a coat and waistcoat, and a pair of pantaloons into the bargain; and do you make each of them a little pair of shoes.”

  The thought pleased the good cobbler very much; and one evening, when all the things were ready, they laid them on the table, instead of the work that they used to cut out, and then went and hid themselves, to watch what the little elves would do.

  About midnight in they came, dancing and skipping, hopped around the room, and then went to sit down to their work as usual; but when they saw the clothes lying for them, they laughed and chuckled, and seemed mightily delighted.

  Then they dressed themselves in the twinkling of an eye, and danced and capered and sprang about, as merry as could be; till at last they danced out at the door, and away over the green.

  The good couple saw them
no more; but everything went well with them from that time forward, as long as they lived.

  1806

  AFTER CHRISTMAS

  Hermann Hesse

  In the days after the Christmas festivities, I uneasily eyed a few packages that were lying around on top of my chest of drawers and causing me to worry. These were things I received as gifts but for which I had no need and that now had to be exchanged. This is how it’s always done, and it’s astonishing that after the Christmas rush the saleswomen in nice shops manage to spare so much good cheer for the days of gift returns. Nonetheless, I don’t like doing these errands. Shopping is difficult enough for me, and I tend to put it off—and now to make exchanges, to go into the stores, to deal with people, and once again take an interest in matters that have already been dealt with! No, I can’t stand it, and if it were left solely up to me, I would simply put the unusable gifts in a drawer, and leave them there forever.

  Luckily my lady friend understands these things quite well, and I asked her to accompany me to three shops. She did so happily, not just to please me, but also because it was fun for her, it was a kind of sport, a kind of art that gave her joy. So we went together to the glove shop, where we greeted everyone, unwrapped my Christmas gloves, and I, fidgeting nervously with my hat in my hand, sought just the right manner of speech with which one customarily undertakes such transactions, but I didn’t quite succeed and so let my helper do the talking. And sure enough, the magic flowed, they smiled, they took back—thank God—the gloves, and suddenly I stood before an array of colorful shirts and was allowed to choose one of them. That suited me, so I played the expert, recalling after some thought my collar size, and soon, carrying a new package, we left the shop, where in the aftermath of celebrating the Savior’s birth one can now spend an entire day exchanging walking sticks, gloves, and hats.

  It went equally well with the new fountain pen. I had to press into a crowded store, perch in front of a pleasant young woman, receive writing paper and several pens to select from, and while seated there I wrote and drew flowers, stars, and initials on a page until it was full. I left with one of the pens I had tried out, and then if writing were to still prove tiresome for me, it could not be the fault of the pen; it’s a golden pen from America, one fills it with a golden lever, and golden words stream joyfully forth. But I need it more for drawing. Gratefully I put the small golden creation with its golden tip into my bag and went on, trudged to the optician, to whom I had to confess that my new reading glasses didn’t serve me well and that he should take them back and make a new pair. Shielded by my lady friend, emboldened by my success with the shirt and the pen, I entered purposefully into this glazed realm, was listened to, and indeed the good man took back my glasses. I never would have believed it. I myself wouldn’t have done it in his place.

  The victory lap through the three dreaded stores, the trek in the cold winter wind with my friend, the transformation of three embarrassing packages into three delightful ones was reason enough to render me chipper and grateful. As part of the exchange of the gloves, I even managed to obtain a compact pocket mirror that I was able to present as a gift to my escort.

  On the way home I was very pleased and wanted to get back to work, to deal with all the unread letters that had piled up over the last days. I recalled my childhood and how the days after Christmas were so beautiful, with every morning’s awakening and every return home involving the reward of new gifts and rejoicing in their possession. Once I received a violin, and even woke up in the middle of the night to touch it and gently pluck the strings. Once I was given Don Quixote, and every stroll or walk to church, even every meal was an unpleasant interruption from my blissful reading.

  This time I hadn’t received such thrilling things. The violin, the book, the toy, the skates no longer offer such splendor and magic to old people. Three boxes of good cigars stood there—that was reassuring—and some wine and cognac with which I could while away the evening. The new fountain pen was nice, but it was ill-suited for holding close to my heart and indulging in the delight of ownership.

  There was however one thing, one gift, that was truly worth celebrating, truly extraordinary and magical, that one could take out in quiet moments, rapturously inspect, that you could look at and fall in love with. I took it out and sat by the window. It was, beautifully mounted under glass, a splendid exotic butterfly that went by the name of Urania and came from Madagascar. The beautifully built creature with slender, powerful wings and a rich scalloped pattern underneath floated gently on a branch, its upper body striped green and black and with rust-red hairs below and its tiny head gleaming golden green. The upper wings were patterned in green-and-black, and on the visible side a splendid warm and golden glowing green, but on the back side a very cool, tender silver sprinkled Veronese green, in which the crystalline wing ribs shimmered nobly. The underwing, however, fantastically jagged, displayed aside from the green and black pattern, a large gleaming field of deep gold, that in the light seemed almost copper red, even scarlet, whimsically covered with dark black patches, and at the bottom, the butterfly was, like the hem of a woman’s gown, trimmed with a fine blend of short blond-and-black fur. Besides this the underwing had another special quality and characteristic: it was traversed by a short, dreamy zigzag line of pure white that dissolved to some extent into the entire wing, and made it into a loose play of air and gold dust and appeared to forcefully repel fantastic beam-like rays. There was something splendidly mysterious and kindly about this Madagascan butterfly, this airy African dream of green, black, and gold that could not be found on Christmas tables anywhere else in the city. To return to this was a joy, to immerse oneself in its presence a celebration.

  For a long time, I sat bent over this stranger from Madagascar and let it enchant me. In many ways it reminded me, in many ways it admonished me, it spoke to me of many things. It was the image of beauty, the image of fortune, the image of art. Its form was a victory over death, its play of colors a smile of superiority over impermanence. It was a unique, beaming smile, this preserved dead butterfly under glass, a smile of many sorts, appearing variously as childish to me, then ancient and wise, soon combatively shaking, then painfully mocking—beauty always smiles this way, so smile all creations in which life appears to have permanently curdled, the beauty that has become a perpetually flowing form, whether it be a flower or an animal, an Egyptian head or the death mask of a genius. It was superior and eternal, this smile, and it was, when one lost oneself in it, suddenly ghostly wild and crazy, it was beautiful and cruel, tender and dangerous, full of paramount reason and full of the wildest folly. Wherever life for an instant appears to be fully formed, it has this contradictory aspect. There is no great music that doesn’t at times seem to us like childish laughter and then at others like the deepest grief. Beauty is always like that everywhere: a lovely mirrored surface beneath which chaos lies in wait. Fortune is always like that everywhere: gleaming for a magical instant and then fading again, blown away by the breath of the death imperative. This is high art, the lofty wisdom of the select forever and everywhere: smiling knowingly into the abyss, assenting to suffering, and the play of harmony amid the eternal death throes of contradictions.

  The fleeting purple could be sweetly glanced amid the golden splendor, the dark black-and-green marks tautly stretched over the wing ribs, with the slender spikes of color playfully sending out sparks. You lovely guest, you enchanting alien! Did you fly from Madagascar specially to fill my winter evening with a colorful dream? Did you run away from the paint box of the eternal mother just to sing me an old song of wisdom about the unity of contradictions, to teach me again what I already so often knew and have so often forgotten? Did a patient human hand so neatly preserve you and glue you on your branch, so that for a lonely hour a sick man would be enchanted with your sparkling playfulness, to console himself with your silent dreams? Were you killed and put under glass so that your eternal suffering and dying could console us, so the immortal sufferin
g and dying of the great sufferer, curiously beloved and comforting to the true artist, could instead lift our souls from their desperation?

  Evening light plays palely over your shimmering golden wings, slowly the red gold dissolves and soon all the magic, enveloped by darkness, can no longer be seen. But still the game of eternity is continually playing itself out, the brave artist’s game of the endurance of beauty—the song plays on in my soul, in my thoughts the colorful rays continue to flicker with life. The poor beautiful butterfly didn’t die in vain in Madagascar, the anxious hand didn’t preserve its wing and antennae so carefully and lastingly for nothing. This tiny embalmed pharaoh will bear witness to me about its empire of the sun for a long time to come, and when it has long since disintegrated and I too am long gone, then somewhere in some soul something of its blissful play and wise smile will flourish and continue to be passed along, just as the gold of Tutankhamun still gleams today, and the blood of the Savior still flows in our time.

  1928

  BERLIN AT CHRISTMASTIDE

  Heinrich Heine

  This year we have had very little snow, and consequently we have scarcely heard the sleigh bells and the cracking of whips. As in all great Protestant towns, Christmastide plays the chief part in the great winter comedies. One week beforehand everyone is busy purchasing Christmas presents. All the costume shops and all the jewelry and hardware merchants make display of their choicest articles as our dandies do their learned acquaintances. On the Sc.hlossplatz are erected a crowd of wooden stalls hung with clothing, household goods and toys, and the sprightly Berliners flit like butterflies from shop to shop, buy, gossip, ogle, and show their taste and themselves at the same time, to admiring onlookers. But it is in the evening that the fun is at its height; for then these charmers, often with the whole of their respective families, with father, mother, aunt, brothers, and sisters, are to be seen, pilgrimaging from one confectioner’s stall to another, as though to the stations of the cross. These dear folks pay their two groschen for entrance money, they feast their eyes to their heart’s content on the exhibition, on a lot of dolls made of sugar or of comfits, which are displayed tastefully one beside the other. Lighted round about, and stored within four walls painted in perspective, they form a pretty enough picture. The amusing point of the thing is that these sugar puppets frequently represent some real and well-known personage.