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determined to be an extinct species of giant salamander. Meyers Konversationslexikon, 4th ed., s.v. “Andrīas
Scheuchzēri,” accessed July 31, 2013, http://www.retrobibliothek.de/retrobib/seite.html?id=100760.
55. Thedel von Münchhausen explicitly and enthusiastically refers to Buchius as “ein Held, ein Heros” (17:146).
56. Katharina Grätz points out that the change in ownership, purpose, and décor of the hunting lodge marks this
site as one that is swept up by the currents of historical change. It serves as a contrast to the home of Heinrich
Weyland, which accumulates history and conserves “die Zeugnisse vergangenen Lebens.” Katharina Grätz,
“Erbe und Sammler in Wilhelm Raabes ‘Wunnigel’: Der Zerfall einer literarhistorischen Allianz,” Zeitschrift
für deutsche Philologie 116.4 (1997): 530.
57. The name consists of the elements “ans” (God) and “helm” (helmet) and has the figurative meaning of
“protector of God.” The Penguin Dictionary of First Names, comp. David Pickering (New York: Penguin,
2004), s.v. “Anselm.”
58. Leo Berg, Das sexuelle Problem in Kunst und Leben, 5th ed. (Berlin, 2001), 36, quoted in Urte Helduser,
“pater incertus,” 164.
59. Grätz, “Erbe und Sammler,” 541.
60. Citing Gayle Rubin’s essay “The Traffic in Women,” Walter Erhart explains that the bourgeois
“Familiengesellschaft” of the nineteenth century was not only defined by individual family units, but also by
the system of trade in which sons were expected to form their own family units and daughters circulated
between families as objects of exchange. The sons’ masculinity was thus determined by their ability to
conduct these trades. Erhart, Familienmänner, 58.
61. Of course, it was also significant for writers and intellectuals, such as Goethe or Winckelmann, and their
understanding of aesthetics and art.
62. David A. Jackson, Theodor Storm: The Life and Works of a Democratic Humanitarian (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1992), 34.
63. For example, Renate takes place around the turn of the eighteenth century and much of Zur Chronik von
Grieshuus is set in the seventeenth century.
64. The basic plot of Draußen im Heidedorf, for example, revolves around the investigation of the disappearance
and death of a peasant in a small village community in Schleswig-Holstein.
65. Storm sprinkles bits of Low German into many of his prose works, but Bötjer Basch stands out as one novella
with particularly frequent occurrences of this dialect.
66. Regina Fasold, Theodor Storm (Stuttgart; Weimar: Metzler, 1997), 31.
67. Practically every major scholarly work on Theodor Storm makes sure to cite Fontane’s criticism of Storm’s
“Husumerei” and “Provinzialsimpelei” from his Storm-essay published in 1896: both Jackson and Fasold
cover it in their discussions of Storm’s and Fontane’s relationship, Peter Goldammer references it in the
introductory chapter to a volume on narrative strategies and patriarchy in Storm’s work, as does Louise
Forssell in the introduction to her monograph on the treatment of masculinity in Storm’s late prose, to name
just a few. The intention of this reference is usually to bring up a common criticism of Storm’s writing (by a
famous contemporary, no less) and to proceed to “vindicate” the author by showing that upon further analysis
there are more complex and universal themes in Storm’s writing than critics such as Fontane would argue.
68. The notion of culpa patris, i.e., the father’s guilt, extends as a common thread through many of Storm’s
novellas and has been widely acknowledged as a major motif in his fiction. The idea that the genetic stock can
potentially deteriorate from generation to generation is one that increasingly preoccupied Storm as he became
more familiar with Darwin’s theories on heredity, but as Goldammer notes, he imbued these theories with an
almost mystical element of “Erbsünde” and imagined it fatalistically as part of the laws of nature. Because this
element of Storm’s works has received significant attention, it does not figure into my main argument in this
section, but it is certainly connected to it. Peter Goldammer, “Culpa patris? Theodor Storms Verhältnis zu
seinem Sohn Hans und seine Spiegelung in den Novellen ‘Carsten Curator’ und ‘Hans und Heinz Kirch,’” in
Stormlektüren: Festschrift für Karl Ernst Laage zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Gerd Eversberg, David Jackson, and
Eckart Pastor (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000): 148.
69. Dieter Lohmeier, “Der Herr Etatsrat: Wirkung und Würdigung,” in Theodor Storm: Sämtliche Werke in vier
Bänden (Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag Deutscher Klassiker, 1987), 3:776.
70. In many instances, Storm’s characters drown in the actual sense of the word by falling into wells (e.g., Aquis
submersus) or being swallowed by a bog, a lake, or the sea (e.g., Auf dem Staatshof, Auf der Universität,
Draußen im Heidedorf, Der Schimmelreiter). In some cases drowning takes the more figurative form of
alcoholism (e.g., Der Herr Etatsrat) or the character’s actual death by drowning results from his succumbing
to alcoholism (Carsten Curator).