Im Kampf um die Ideale, die Geschichte eines Suchenden : ein Gegenwartsroman
"Im Kampf um die Ideale, die Geschichte eines Suchenden" by Georg Heinrich Bonne is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows a reform‑minded physician who, exhausted by the squalor and hardness of modern urban life, signs on as a ship’s doctor and turns travel, debate, and introspection into a quest for hope, duty, and workable social renewal. The story blends a personal search with sharp critiques of big‑city misery,
alcohol culture, church rigidity, and complacent elites, while championing love, responsibility, and practical reform. The opening of the novel frames a friend’s deathbed bequest—“wave‑rings of my spirit”—before the first‑person narrator confesses burnout from battling poverty, disease, and hypocrisy. Seeking renewal, he retreats to the Lüneburg Heath, encounters symbolic visions of Hope and Duty, and decides to cross the sea to regain distance and strength. He departs a frozen Hamburg, finds calm aboard, watches Heligoland’s beacon fade, and sings the might of the North Sea, even as he mourns the loss of true Christian love behind a façade of charity. A stop in Antwerp brings Rubens’s Descent from the Cross (a lesson in love and discipline) and horror at Inquisition relics, sharpening his critique of church and society; he also broods on shipping policy, canals, and Junker obstruction, appealing to the Kaiser’s better self. Back at sea, a gallery of fellow passengers appears, a Channel storm rises, and fears of British naval might flicker. At table he argues for temperance with statistics and economics, links alcohol to social decay, urges decentralized cities, public control of land, fast radial transit, and clean rivers, recalling Hamburg’s cholera. Finding steadiness in the captain’s quiet mastery, he looks back to his mother’s counsel, his schoolboy leadership through literature instead of drinking, early charity with his sister, clashes with drink‑dulled teachers, and a move to a kinder school, ending this section by noting two decades spent swimming against the current. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Bonne, Georg Heinrich, 1859-1945 |
|---|---|
| Title | Im Kampf um die Ideale, die Geschichte eines Suchenden : ein Gegenwartsroman |
| Original Publication | München: Verlag von Ernst Reinhardt, 1917. |
| Credits | The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Language | German |
| LoC Class | PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures |
| Subject | Temperance -- Fiction |
| Subject | German fiction -- 20th century |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77887 |
| Release Date | Feb 8, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 303 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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