Debit_and_Credit
Debit and Credit
Novel by Gustav Freytag
Debit and Credit (German: Soll und Haben, 1855) is a novel in six volumes by Gustav Freytag. It was one of the most popular and widely read German novels of the 19th century.[1][2]
It was translated into English as Debit and Credit by Georgiana Malcolm née Harcourt in 1857.
The novel concerns a Polish uprising against German colonization in Prussian Poland, where German settlers are seen as displacing the ethnically Slavic Polish inhabitants. Freytag unequivocally endorses this displacement, espousing ardent Anti-Polish sentiment and German racial superiority, stating that "there is an old warfare between [Germans] and the Slavonic tribes; and [Germans] feel with pride that culture, industry, and credit are [their] side. Whatever the Polish proprietors around [them] may now be—and there are many rich and intelligent men among them—every dollar that [these proprietors] can spend, they have made, directly or indirectly, by German intelligence. Their wild flocks are improved by [German] breeds; [who] erect the machinery that fills their spirit-casks."[3]
The novel, a Zeitroman[4] or "social novel", deals with interactions among broad segments of German society during the 19th century. The classes represented are the mercantile or bourgeois class, the nobility, and the Jews:
- The bourgeois Schröter family represents Freytag's view of the ideal bourgeois type, invested in order, honesty, and solid virtue.
- The noble Rothsattel family represents the old nobility, who try to preserve their privileges in a changing society. Their struggle to avoid their impending financial ruin portrays this dynamic.
- The Jewish Ehrenthal family are money-lenders and speculators. Veitel Itzig is a criminal employee of the family.
In 1977, the novel came close to being filmed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but after a debate about its alleged anti-semitic content this project was abandoned.