7 h 52 minAudiobook3 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Who do you become when the need to belong pulls against the person you hope to be?
In Jakob Wassermann’s Engelhart Ratgeber, Engelhart is a young man who grows through experience, admiration and disappointment. He wants recognition. He wants to be loved. As ambition meets doubt, the search for a place in the world becomes a search for himself—and for the kind of person he wants to become.
This coming-of-age novel belongs to the German tradition of the Bildungsroman, where experience shapes a young person’s character. Its backdrop is the changing world of Europe around 1900, as old certainties fade. Between inner longing and the demands of society, Engelhart faces the question of how to find his own way.
What you’ll discover
- A self taking shape Follow a young man whose encounters with others help shape his sense of himself.
- The hunger for recognition Explore the ambition of someone who wants to become somebody and be seen.
- The longing for love Meet the desire to be loved alongside the wish to find a place.
- Admiration and disappointment Discover how people admired, and people who disappoint, become part of growing up.
- A world losing certainty Consider a search for identity against a setting where familiar certainties begin to fade.
Who will love it
For readers who love serious German fiction of the early twentieth century and stories of young people finding their place, with inner struggle, moral questions and the search for self.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A novel in the line of formation
- Wassermann and his concerns
- Ambition and longing as driving forces
- A changing world behind the young man
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Engelhart Ratgeber
by Jakob Wassermann · 1905
A young man faces ambition, desire and doubt as he decides who he will become in a changing world.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A novel in the line of formation
Engelhart Ratgeber belongs to a long German tradition, the Bildungsroman. In it a young man is shaped by experience, by people he admires and by those who disappoint him. The reader watches a mind take form over time.
The tradition goes back to Goethe and was still alive in Wassermann's day. Writers of his generation kept the form but gave it a darker, more restless tone. The young hero no longer finds an easy harmony with the world.
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Who wrote Engelhart Ratgeber?
The novel was written by Jakob Wassermann, a German author who died in 1934. He wrote serious fiction about conscience, justice and the loneliness of the individual, and was widely read in the early twentieth century.
What kind of book is Engelhart Ratgeber?
It is a coming-of-age novel, in the German tradition of the novel of formation. Such books follow a young person as ambition, desire and doubt shape who he becomes.
When was Jakob Wassermann writing?
Wassermann wrote in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period of rapid change in Germany and Europe. He died in 1934, and his themes reflect the unease of that age.
The author
Jakob Wassermann
1873–1934 · German novelist
Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934) was a German novelist born in Fürth, Germany. He lived in Munich, Vienna, and Altaussee, Austria, where he died. His novels include Caspar Hauser (1908), The Goose Man (1915), and The Maurizius Case (1928). He also wrote short fiction and essays.
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