Schmelzles Reise nach Flätz

[This page by Catherine J. Minter]

Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle Reise nach Flätz; Army Chaplain Schmelzle’s Journey to Flätz (1809)

One of Jean Paul’s more accessible works, Schmelzles Reise nach Flätz was one of the two ‘specimens’ of Jean Paul’s writing included by Thomas Carlyle in his German Romance in 1827. Carlyle described Schmelzle as one of Jean Paul’s most finished shorter humorous pieces, an opinion echoing the author’s own favourable view of this work. Schmelzle may also be taken as an example of Jean Paul’s late period, which broadly speaking saw the publication of increasingly political and satirical works.

Superficially, the content of this comic character sketch is simple enough. The former army chaplain Schmelzle, who has recently deserted his post, travels to Flätz with a petition asking that he be granted a ‘catechetical’ professorship. Appropriately in the light of his cowardice, his petition is rejected out of hand. Anticipating and arming himself against disaster and misfortune at every turn, but continuously harping on his own courage, the figure of Schmelzle is intended by Jean Paul as a caricature of the false bravado that was rife in Prussia before the defeat by Napoleon’s forces in 1806.

The whimsical digressions that the reader encounters in many of Jean Paul’s earlier works here reappear in a new form: a running commentary of footnotes, which having been randomly inserted by the printer (so Jean Paul would have us believe) bear no relation to the text whatsoever. In Schmelzle as in several of his earlier works, Jean Paul plays a role as a character in his own fiction, here appearing as one of the army chaplain’s motley crew of fellow passengers and an ironic observer of reality. Schmelzle contains an appendix, ‘Beichte des Teufels bei einem großen Staatsbedienten’; ‘The Devil’s Confessions to a High-Ranking State Official’ in which the political satire that is covert in the body of the work is much more obvious.

Further Reading

Jean Paul, ‘Army-Chaplain Schmelzle’s Journey to Flaetz’ and ‘Life of Quintus Fixlein’, trans. by Thomas Carlyle (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1991)

Jean Paul, Des Feldpredigers Schmelzle Reise nach Flätz, ed. by J. W. Smeed (London: Oxford University Press, 1966)

J. W. Smeed, ‘Jean Paul und die Tradition des theophrastischen Charakters’, Jahrbuch der Jean-Paul-Gesellschaft 1 (1966), 53-77