The Happy Ones

Bernhard, Marie, 1852-1937Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.7

Word count: 197K words
Chapters: 20

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Die Glücklichen by Marie BernhardAuthor: Bernhard, Marie, 1852-1937,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: May 2, 2018

Editor's review

This German novel by Marie Bernhard belongs to a clear narrative tradition in German literature and works well as advanced German reading material. The title means "The Happy Ones"; the story revolves around the characters' fates and life circumstances, and its style typifies German fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: full sentence structures, detailed description, and character relationships interwoven with the social setting. As a public-domain eBook from Project Gutenberg, its value lies not in market popularity but in offering German learners and literature enthusiasts a freely accessible, moderately long original text. Reading it lets you experience the rhythm of older narrative forms and observe the written German of the period. If you are looking for reading material that doesn't depend on a translation yet conveys the feel of German literature, this text deserves a place on your list; if you are only after fast-paced plotting, adjust your expectations.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners with intermediate German who want to improve their reading through an original novel
General readers interested in German literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Organizers who need public-domain electronic texts for classroom extensive reading or book clubs
Literature lovers who enjoy narratives of character and fate and don't mind an older narrative pace

Not a good fit for

Readers with no German who want a Chinese translation
Contemporary genre-fiction readers who prefer fast pacing and strong suspense
Beginners who need extensive notes or a guide to get into the text

Reading tips

Read the first two chapters straight through, noting recurring character names and relationships, then continue.
With long sentences, first map out main and subordinate clauses; don't look up every word—keep the reading flowing.
After each chapter, write three sentences in German summarizing the plot to check comprehension and build vocabulary.
You can pair it with German audio or a translation for reference, but read the original first and check afterwards.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What German level is this book suitable for?

Intermediate German reading ability is recommended—enough to handle longer sentences and literary description. If you have passed B1 or an equivalent test, you can try reading it through with a dictionary; A2 readers are better off reading excerpts or pairing the text with a translation rather than tackling the whole book at once.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

This is a public-domain eBook, freely available, in German, classified under Germanic literature. It contains no modern publisher's introduction, notes, or exercises, so readers need to supply background knowledge themselves; it suits those who can set their own reading pace.

What can I gain from reading this book?

Mainly two things: exposure to the narrative language and written conventions of original German literature, and a sense of the social and everyday atmosphere of the period through the story of its characters' fates. It is not a language textbook and does not teach grammar systematically, so readers need to build up their knowledge actively while reading.

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About the author

Bernhard, Marie, 1852-1937 Author

Marie Bernhard (Bernhard, Marie, 1852-1937) was a German-language writer active around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her life and nationality are only sparsely documented in publicly available sources, and the library currently holds just one work by her, Die Glücklichen. Judging from the title and the language of this work, her writing appears to belong to the narrative tradition of German-language literature that concerns itself with individual fate and the texture of everyday experience, with a plain, realistic tone and an eye for the emotional shifts and changing circumstances of ordinary people. Because verifiable material is so limited, her education, career, circle of acquaintances and the full range of her writing cannot be established, and scholarly discussion of her remains scattered. Die Glücklichen therefore serves as the main window onto her writing and offers some reference value for the study of German-language women's writing and middle-class life subjects of the period.