Der Teufelsschlosser : Dramatisches Gedicht in 3 Aufzügen mit Anlehnung an die…
"Der Teufelsschlosser" by Adele Gaus-Bachmann is a verse drama in three acts written in the late 19th century. Rooted in the Vienna Stock-im-Eisen legend and set in the late medieval city, it follows the gifted locksmith Martin Mux after he strikes a Faustian bargain with a devil in a red cloak to secure fame and mastery—on the condition that he banish love from his life. The work explores ambition versus compassion, the
moral cost of success, and how denying love corrodes personal and civic bonds. The opening of the play shows Mux, locked out at Vienna’s Rotenturmtor, meeting the Devil (the Rothmantel) and agreeing to thirty years of prosperity if he eradicates love from his actions. He triumphs in a public contest by crafting the famed lock for the “Stock-im-Eisen,” is hailed as master, and immediately turns cold, forsaking his sweetheart Lene and courting his master’s daughter Agnes. Act II jumps forward: amid revelry, a vision of Love pleads with Mux, but he rebuffs every appeal to compassion—he refuses aid to an injured dog, a blind beggar, and the impoverished Lene, and he cruelly dismisses Joseph, a one-handed former journeyman who secretly loves Mux’s daughter Lisbeth. Lisbeth and Joseph confess their love and plan to meet; Lisbeth then begs her father’s consent and, forced to choose, declares she will follow Joseph into poverty, asking only for her father’s blessing as the scene breaks. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.html.images | 292 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.epub3.images | 585 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.epub.images | 588 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.epub.noimages | 283 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.kf8.images | 929 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.kindle.images | 888 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77667.txt.utf-8 | 155 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77667/pg77667-h.zip | 718 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Gaus-Bachmann, Adele, 1869-1945 |
|---|---|
| Title | Der Teufelsschlosser : Dramatisches Gedicht in 3 Aufzügen mit Anlehnung an die Wiener Stock-im-Eisen-Sage |
| Original Publication | Regensburg: J. Habbel, 1906. |
| Credits | Richard Illner, Alpo Tiilikka and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) |
| Language | German |
| LoC Class | PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures |
| Subject | Austrian drama -- 20th century |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77667 |
| Release Date | Jan 10, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 167 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |