Three German bakers as depicted in 19th century Russian literature

Abstract

   This article investigates the stereotypical image of a German baker in Petersburg. Our analysis is based on the following works of three writers: Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, Vladimir Ivanovich Dal’s story “A Person’s Life, or A Walk along Nevsky Prospect” and Pyotr Andreyevich Karatygin’s vaudeville “The Bakery, or a Petersburg German”. The article concludes that the components, constituting the images of the Germans are very similar, these components being their national character, mentality, features of everyday life and speech characteristics. The type of a German baker reflects the peculiarities of German craftsmen from Petersburg in the mid-19^th century. Because of the large number of such artisans, they were well known to the inhabitants of the capital. The images, created by the authors, are typified: the characteristic features of the German bread merchants were easily recognizable by their contemporaries. The writers portrayed them as the ones immersed in a limited world of petty-bourgeois interests, everyday problems and everyday life. The attitude of the authors towards the German characters is full of both good humor and undisguised irony over the limitations of their lives, the desire to show their superiority over the Russians, elevating their craft to the rank of art. The article examines in detail P. A. Karatygin’s vaudeville “The Bakery…” little known to the general reader, its very genre suggesting a comic basis.