The Rider on the White Horse: Englisch Lektüre A2 - B2 E-Book

Theodor Storm

• Herausgeber: adlima GmbH
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Englisch lernen mit klassischen Werken. Die Bücher dieser Reihe eignen sich für Jugendliche und Erwachsene, die mit klassischen Werken ihre Lesefähigkeit verbessern wollen. Englisch Niveaus A2 bis B2. Durchgehend in englischer Sprache. "Der Schimmelreiter" ist eine der bekanntesten Novellen von Theodor Storm. Die Geschichte, angesiedelt in einem norddeutschen Küstendorf, thematisiert den Kampf des Menschen gegen die Naturgewalten und den Aberglauben der Dorfgemeinschaft. Die Geschichte dreht sich um Hauke Haien, einen ambitionierten und intelligenten jungen Mann, der innovative Ideen zur Verbesserung der Deiche hat. Hauke steigt durch seinen Fleiß und seine Intelligenz auf und heiratet Elke, die Tochter seines Vorgängers, was ihm den Weg ebnet, selbst Deichgraf zu werden. Nachdem er Deichgraf geworden ist, setzt Hauke seine fortschrittlichen Pläne um, einen neuen, besseren Deich zu bauen. Trotz seiner fachlichen Fähigkeiten stößt er jedoch auf Misstrauen und Widerstand in der von Aberglauben durchdrungenen Dorfgemeinschaft. Sein Kampf wird zusätzlich erschwert durch mysteriöse Vorfälle und das Misstrauen, das sein unheimlicher Schimmel bei den Dorfbewohnern weckt. "Der Schimmelreiter" ist eine tiefgründige Erzählung über Menschlichkeit, Isolation und den unerbittlichen Kampf gegen unaufhaltsame Kräfte. Storm verwebt in seiner Novelle Realismus mit Elementen der norddeutschen Sagenwelt und schafft so ein packendes, atmosphärisch dichtes Meisterwerk der deutschen Literatur.

Leseprobe

Theodor Storm

The Rider on the White Horse: Englisch Lektüre A2 - B2

Englisch lernen mit klassischen Werken. Die Bücher dieser Reihe eignen sich für Jugendliche und Erwachsene, die mit klassischen Werken ihre Lesefähigkeit verbessern wollen. Englisch Niveaus A2 bis B2. Durchgehend in englischer Sprache.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Impressum

Chapter 1

I am riding along a dike in a heavy storm. To my left is the empty marshland, to my right the sea. I can only see gray waves crashing against the dike and splashing me and the horse. The sky and the earth are indistinguishable. The moon is mostly hidden by clouds. It is freezing. My hands are so cold that I can hardly hold the reins. The crows and seagulls are drifting across the land with the storm. It is getting dark, and I can hardly see my horse's hooves. Not a soul is in sight.

The weather has been bad for three days now. I have been staying with a relative on his farm. But today I have to go to the city, which is a few hours away. I set off in the afternoon. “Wait until you get to the sea,” my cousin calls after me. “You'll turn back. Your room will remain empty!”

As the storm gusts push me off the dam, I briefly consider turning back. But the way back is longer than the way to town. So I pull up the collar of my coat and ride on.

Now I see a dark figure on a horse on the embankment. It is a white horse with a rider in a fluttering dark cloak. Burning eyes look at me from a pale face. I hear no hoofbeats and no panting of the horse. But the rider passes me directly.

I am still thinking about it when the figure suddenly flies past me again. The cloak almost brushes against me. It disappears silently into the distance.

I ride slowly after him. When I reach the spot, I see the water of a large pool glistening down in the marshland. They call the deep pools Wehle there, which have been torn into the land by storm surges.

Despite the dam, the water is still very agitated. The rider could not have stirred it up, and I no longer see him. But I see something else, many lights shimmering in front of me. Right in front of me, halfway up the dam, is a large, illuminated house. I see people inside and can hear them despite the storm. My horse goes down the path to the house by itself. It leads me to the door. I recognize it as an inn. In front of the windows, I see the beams with rings for tying the horses.

I tie my horse and hand it over to a servant who comes to meet me. “Is there a meeting here?” I ask, because I can clearly hear people's voices and the clinking of glasses.

“The dike warden and a few others. It's about the high water!” the servant answers.

When I enter, I see about a dozen men sitting at a table. There is a punch bowl on it, and a particularly stately man seems to be in charge.

I greet the men and ask if I can join them. They allow me to do so. “You are keeping watch here!” I say to one man. “It is bad weather outside!”

“Yes,” he replies. “We here on the east side believe that we are safe now. But it is not safe on the other side. The dams there are older. Our main dam was already reinforced in the last century. We just have to hold out here for a few more hours. We have people outside who will report to us.”

Before I can order anything, they are already pushing a steaming glass over to me. I learn that my friendly neighbor is the dike warden. We talk and I tell him about my strange encounter on the dam. He becomes attentive, and suddenly I notice that all the conversations have stopped.

“The white rider!” someone from the group exclaims, and everyone seems frightened.

The dike warden stands up. “You don't have to be afraid,” he says. “This doesn't only affect us. In ‘17, it also hit the other side. You should be prepared for anything!”

I get goosebumps. “Excuse me!” I ask. “What about the white rider?”

A small, thin man in a black coat is sitting behind the stove. He has not taken part in the conversation, but his eyes show that he is not here to sleep.

The dike reeve points to the man. “Our schoolmaster,” he says loudly, “will be able to tell you the story best. But not as well as my old housekeeper, Antje Vollmers.”

“You are joking, dike reeve!” says the schoolmaster in a weak voice from behind the stove. “You want to compare me to your stupid dragon!”

“Yes, yes, schoolmaster!” replies the dike reeve. “But with dragons, such stories are best told!”

The schoolmaster smiles smugly and says, “We don't quite agree on that.”

The dike warden whispers in my ear, “He's still a bit haughty. He used to study theology and stayed here as a schoolmaster because of a failed engagement.”

The schoolmaster comes out of his corner and sits down at the table next to me. “Tell us, tell us, schoolmaster,” some of the younger men call out.

“Very well,” the schoolmaster says to me, “I'll gladly tell the story. But there's a lot of superstition in it.”

“Please don't leave out the superstition,” I say. “I will decide for myself what I want to believe.”

Chapter 2

The old man smiles at me knowingly. “Well then!” he says. “In the middle of the last century, there was a dike reeve here. He knew a lot about dams and locks. But he had hardly read any books by experts. He taught himself.

Maybe you've heard of Hans Mommsen, who was a farmer but still made compasses, clocks, telescopes, and organs. The father of the dike reeve was a bit like this man. He had a few fields and a cow. In the fall and spring, he measured the land, and in the winter, he sat in his room and drew. The boy usually sat with him, looking over the pages of his book, watching his father.

One evening, the boy asks his father why the things he writes have to be the way they are and not different. The father doesn't know the answer and says, “I can't tell you that. It is just the way it is. If you want to know more, go and find a book on the floor tomorrow. It's called ‘Euclid’. The book will explain it to you!”

The next day, the boy goes to the floor and quickly finds the book, as there aren't many books in the house. The father laughs when the boy puts the book on the table. It is a Dutch Euclid. Neither of them understand Dutch. “Yes, yes,” says the father, “my father's book. He understood it.” The boy, who doesn't talk much, looks at his father quietly and asks, “Can I keep it?”

When the father nodded, the boy showed him a second, half-torn book. “That too?” he asked again.

“Take both!” said Tede Haien. “They won't be much use to you.”

But the second book was a small Dutch grammar. Winter is still long, and when the gooseberries bloom in the garden, the boy understood Euclid almost completely.

“I know,” says the narrator, “that the same is said of Hans Mommsen. But for us, there is the story of Hauke Haien. Because that is the boy's name.”

The father sees that the boy is not interested in cows or sheep and barely notices when the beans bloom. So he sends his boy to the dam, where he has to cart soil with other workers. “That will cure him of Euclid,” he thinks.

The boy carted soil, but he always had Euclid in his pocket. When the workers took a break, he sat with the book on his wheelbarrow. And when the floods rose in the fall and work stopped, he sat on the dam and stared at the murky water for hours.

Only when the water washes over his feet and the foam splashes into his face, Hauke moves a little higher and stays there again. He hears neither the lapping of the water nor the cries of the seagulls and shorebirds. He sees only the edge of the water, beating again and again against the same spot and washing away the dam.

After looking at it for a long time, he nods or draws a soft line in the air with his hand, as if he wants to give the dam a gentler slope. When it gets so dark that he can't see anything anymore and only hears the tide, he goes home half soaked.

One evening he enters the room where his father is working at his measuring instruments. His father starts, “What are you doing outside? You could have drowned! The water is biting into the dam today.”

“Yes,” says Hauke, “but I didn't drown.”

“No,” his father replies after a while, looking at his face, “not this time, anyway.”

“But,” says Hauke, “our dams are bad!”

“What do you mean?” asks his father.

“The dams!” Hauke replies. “They're no good, Father!”

His father laughs. “What do you mean, boy? You're a child prodigy!”

The boy is not distracted. “The water side is too steep,” he says. “If it comes as it has often come, we can also drown behind the dam.”

The father gets his chewing tobacco and puts it behind his teeth. “How many carts did you push today?” he asks angrily. He notices that the dam work does not distract the boy from thinking.

“I don't know, Father,” the boy says. “As many as the others, maybe a few more. But the dams have to be different!”

“Well,” his father says, laughing, “maybe you'll become a dike reeve and make them different!”

“Yes, Father!” the boy replies.

Even after the end of the dam work in October, Hauke Haien continues to go out to the bay. He expects the storms in November like children expect Christmas. During a spring tide, he lies alone at the dam despite the storm and the weather. When the seagulls cackle and the waves rage against the dam, tearing away pieces of the grass cover, Hauke laughs angrily. “You can't do anything right,” he shouts, “just like people can't do anything either!”

Sometimes he brings a handful of soil with him.

---ENDE DER LESEPROBE---