Socio-Critical Poetry: "Kein Hüsung" and "Urgeschichte Mecklenburgs @museum.de

M: "The greed of the privileged class was allowed to continue to deal arbitrarily with those who were [...] almost without rights. [...] So there was no pause in the 'slaughter of the peasants', as it was brutally dubbed, and consequently, most of them have been slaughtered up to and including our own times."

F: The words of Reuter's friend Ernst Boll, summing up the situation of Mecklenburg's peasants and day labourers, who had no rights. Reuter wrote a literary work to match: the verse narrative "Kein Hüsung" denounces the arbitrariness and backwardness of Mecklenburg's state legislation, which granted landowners almost unlimited decision-making power over the weal and woe of their day labourers.

M: "Kein Hüsung" tells the story of the day labourer couple Johann and Marie, who are denied a home and the right to settle by the landowner, and hence the right to marry. In the heat of the moment, Johann kills the landowner and is forced to flee to America. Marie stays behind, gives birth to an illegitimate child and later goes mad and dies. When their son reaches the age of ten, Johann sends for him to come to America, so that he too can live a life in freedom.

F: Although the subject matter is tough, and the work doesn't make light reading, "Kein Hüsung" is one of the most impressive portrayals of feudal conditions in 19th century Mecklenburg. It was published in 1857. But the subject continued to haunt Reuter. A little later, he started work on "Urgeschicht' von Meckelnborg" – a hard-hitting satire on backward Mecklenburg.

M: "To date, we Germans have a complete dearth of political satire."

F: That was something he wanted to change. But where to start, given the omnipresence of real-world satire?

M: "I would gladly have enclosed a snippet of my "Urgeschichte" to learn your opinion, were I not currently working on it with great merriment. The book will only be completed [...] very slowly [...], since the most wonderful state foolery still [...] occurs here daily."

F: Reuter spent years working on his "Urgeschicht'", but finally laid it aside in 1865. The work would only be published after his death.