Release date is 2026-02-08

Richard Illner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

"Gesammelte Schriften von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1/10)" by Ebner-Eschenbach is a collection of aphorisms, parables, fairy tales, and poems written in the late 19th century. The volume offers keen moral and psychological insights into human nature, society, art, and duty, then dramatizes them in brief allegorical pieces. Expect sharp reflections on virtue and vice, freedom and necessity, justice, pride, love, and goodness, presented with wit, compassion, and a cool eye for self-deception.

The opening of the volume unfolds in successive “Hundreds” of aphorisms that distill experience into pointed, paradox-rich lines about character, will, trust, envy, patience, genius and talent, love and marriage, education, and the snares of vanity and prejudice. It then turns to parables and tales that embody these themes: a deterministic “must-people” society confronts a willful criminal (Die Mußmenschen); petty pride is mocked by a molehill scolding a volcano (Ein Vergleich); a poor street singer is named the true poet while a lauded author is called a day-laborer (Zwei Gräber); Prometheus finds that memory of suffering fetters like iron; Pride crashes against genuine merit; a veiled Stranger shows that human “justice” masks a mix of self-defense, cruelty, and mercy; a windblown leaf mistakes drift for flight; Goodness alone proves unconquerable in a vast battle of virtues and vices; a man regains fortune but loses confidence; and a secret benefactor renounces posthumous credit. Together, these pieces sketch the book’s early arc: crystalline maxims followed by emblematic scenes that test them in life. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Berlin: Verlag von Gebrüder Paetel, 1893