Release date is 2026-04-19

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

"Gesammelte Schriften von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (3/10)" by Ebner-Eschenbach is a collection of stories written in the late 19th century. The volume’s foremost piece here, Lotti, die Uhrmacherin, follows Lotti, a gifted, plain, unmarried watchmaker sustained by her late father’s horological legacy, her loyal foster-brother Gottfried, and the lingering wound of a broken engagement to a volatile young poet. It promises psychologically precise portraits of work, love, pride, and conscience in a bustling urban milieu.

The opening of the volume presents Lotti waking to a chorus of clocks, feeding pigeons, and surveying neighbors, before the narrative settles into her modest flat, her tools, and the library and annotated books of her father, the master watchmaker Feßler. A loving tour of his famed collection of historic timepieces (from Nürnberger “eggs” and jewel-encrusted French works to a rare Mudge sea watch and a cherished wooden Dilger heirloom) underscores craft, lineage, and devotion; we learn Feßler has died and Lotti has refused rich offers to sell. Gottfried arrives with news he has opened a shop and wants her beside him—his sign reads “G. & L. Feßler”—but her flustered, noncommittal reply disappoints him; a Duplex watch he brings triggers Lotti’s memory when she finds her hidden inscription from the day she gave it to her fiancé. A flashback recounts how the charming poet Hermann von Halwig insinuated himself into Feßler’s workshop, dazzled all with his first book (dedicated to the master), won Lotti’s heart and engagement, then soured with vanity, volatility, and demands for adoration; as his fame rose and quarrels grew, Lotti delayed the wedding, and at last, in a quiet, late scene, she asks him to part as friends, saying they have long been separated already. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Berlin: Verlag von Gebrüder Paetel, 1893