Niclas Ulenhart Biography

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Niclas Ulenhart

Although nothing at all is known about Niclas Ulenhart himself, his Historia von Isaac Winckelfelder und Jobst von der Schneid (History of Isaac Winckelfelder und Jobst von der Schneid, 1617), published half a dozen times during the seventeenth century, has an important place in the reception of Miguel de Cervantes in Germany and the inauguration of a native Schelmenroman (picaresque novel). Not only was Ulenhart the first German author to adapt a Cervantes work into a language other than Spanish, but he adapted it so successfully to a German environment that it took until 1868 to discover Ulenhart's model.

Several generations of scholars have speculated about Ulenhart's life, but no information has come to light apart from the internal evidence the text of his novel provides. Early in the twentieth century Ulenhart was thought to be the grandson of the Augsburg Reformation printer Philipp Ulhart, but no record of an Ulenhart family has been found in Augsburg archives. Nicolaus Heinrich, the publisher of the novel, was located in Munich; Historia von Isaac Winckelfelder und Jobst von der Schneid was, however, printed in Augsburg. Since Munich was the only significant publishing center in the southeastern region of the empire, it does not necessarily follow that Ulenhart must have been a citizen of either of the two towns. Much more likely is the hypothesis of Ulenhart's origin in Prague, the setting of his work. The name Niclas Ulenhart may even be a pseudonym.

It took until 1648 for the first incomplete translation of Don Quixote, Cervantes's masterpiece of 1605 and 1615, to appear in German translation. Since 1613 Don Quixote had, however, gained wide acclaim as a legendary figure through Dutch and French intermediaries. Even more popular in the first half of the seventeenth century were the twelve tales in Cervantes's Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Stories, 1613), among them Rinconete y Cortadillo, the story of two youths who strike up a friendship in a country inn and decide to become vagabonds and travel to Seville. On the road they rob some travelers; but when they steal purses from people in town, they learn that they must be licensed by Monipodio, the underworld boss of Seville. After an initiation the two thieves are admitted to the beggars' fraternity, which observes strict principles of religious behavior and thus serves as an ironic mirror of the legitimate Christian society. Rinconete y Cortadillo is considered the earliest Cervantes novela, conceived most likely during the poet's stay in Seville in 1602-1603, as well as the most accomplished one: it is full of life, memorable scenes, and ambiguities, bordering on an objective portrayal of manners and customs.

Ulenhart does not mention Cervantes, although he concedes that his version may have an equivalent "in forma authentica" (in authentic form). He did not translate the original but made an ingenious adaptation of it to German requirements. He followed the outlines of the plot of Rinconete y Cortadillo but changed the setting, the characters of the leading figures, and the style to such a degree that he ended up using twice as many pages as Cervantes.

Ulenhart's novel is set not in staunchly Catholic Seville but in Prague's Old Town, which teems with Jews, Catholics, Hussites, and Protestants. The plot unfolds in a district bounded by the Jewish quarter, the Hradschin Palace, the cathedral, and the marketplace. The fourteen-and fifteen-year-old picaros of Cervantes's story turn into twenty-one-or twenty-two-year-old vagrants. Ulenhart also changes his protagonists' backgrounds: Rinconete's father, a seller of indulgences in the struggle against the Moors, has been turned into a Calvinist vicar, whose strictness becomes unbearable to his son Isaac and pushes him onto the road of absolute freedom. Cortadillo's father is a deceitful tailor who taught his son the art of picking pockets, whereas Jobst can no longer stand to live in a Moravian Anabaptist community. Like their Spanish models, the youngsters meet on the road, living from hand to mouth but surviving on different foods: Cervantes's wine from the Guadacanal region, citrus fruit, white bread with cheese, olives, and crabs are replaced by Rhine or Franconian wine, bratwurst, bratfisch, roast pig, loin of veal, and goose. The underworld boss Monipodio and his female counterpart Señora Pipota also undergo considerable changes. Monipodio reemerges as Zuckerbastel (sugar daddy), somewhat more congenial and also more demonic than his model, a mix of incongruous features as his leather pants and slippers clash with his black face. The best example of Ulenhart's successful transposition is his renaming of Pipota: she becomes Maruschka, an endearing pet name for this thieving old woman with a big heart and a strong sense of piety who before and after successful thefts prays fervently to her saints.

Cervantes's diction is elegant and precise; no word is superfluous. Prominent among his stylistic features is his elliptic speech, modeled after the terseness of classical Roman authors. Transferring the Sevillian story to a German-speaking Bohemian environment, Ulenhart lost this Spanish brevity; his readers needed explanations, interpretations, and arguments. The result is a vibrant, popular, yet poetic style, which in its diversity and amplitude perfectly mirrors the Bohemian milieu and in its own way matches Cervantes. Ulenhart is a master of the German language; he even adapts the jargon of the Spanish picaros to the corresponding terms of German Rotwelsch (thieves' cant). On account of his involved periods, his diction has been compared to a poetischer Kanzleistil (poeticized chancery style) typical of the early baroque period around 1600. But whereas Aegidius Albertinus translated from Spanish in the service of the Counter-Reformation, and Hans Ludwig Kuffstein did so for the sake of improved courtly manners, Ulenhart's novel has no extraliterary purpose. He wrote not for courtly society but for anyone who would enjoy a tale about genuinely German rogues.

With its many editions, Historia von Isaac Winckelfelder und Jobst von der Schneid was so successful that Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen could open his novel Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (The Adventurous Simplicissimus German, 1669) with a reference to the "Zuckerbastels Zunfft zu Prag" (Zuckerbastel's guild in Prague), as if his readers would know about it fifty years after the first edition of Ulenhart's work. The popularity of Historia von Isaac Winckelfelder und Jobst von der Schneid prompted another author, La Zelande, to transfer the same plot from Prague to Lisbon in Der Alten und Newen Spitzbuben ... Practiquen (The Tricks ... of Old and New Rogues, 1682). Willibald Alexis (pseudonym of Georg Wilhelm Häring) probably went back to Cervantes's original or a close translation of it when he composed his youthful short story "Die ehrlichen Leute" (Honest People, 1825), recasting the plot in the Berlin underworld.