Adolf Erlin

Adolf Erlin, also called Professor Erlin, is Philip Carey’s German tutor and the head of the Heidelberg household where Philip lodges. His daily lessons introduce Philip to Goethe and German literature, while his vehement denunciations of modern theatre and Wagner reveal a scholar whose confidence in cultural judgment is matched by an attachment to older standards. The contrast between his thunderous public opinions and his habitual deference to his wife makes him a comic but revealing figure in Philip’s education abroad.

Identity and Household

Erlin is a middle-aged professor with a large fair head turning gray and mild blue eyes. He speaks English correctly, in a somewhat archaic register learned from English classics rather than conversation; his speech can therefore make words Philip has encountered in Shakespeare sound unexpectedly colloquial. His wife, Helene, calls their establishment a family, not a pension, although the distinction is difficult to define. At dinner, sixteen people gather in a long, dark room, where Helene sits at one end and carves. The insistence on German conversation leaves the shy Philip largely silent, listening to the company in which he is to live.

The professor’s household combines formal instruction and communal lodging. Philip has a room in a turret overlooking the trees of the Anlage, with the bed set in an alcove so that the desk gives the room a different character. On arriving, he unpacks his books and recognizes that he is at last his own master. Erlin’s presence soon gives that independence an intellectual structure: he becomes the teacher who directs Philip’s reading and frames the cultural atmosphere of the household.

Teaching and Literary Judgment

Erlin gives Philip a lesson every day and prepares a reading list that leads toward the final achievement of Goethe’s Faust. As an intermediate exercise, he ingeniously assigns Philip a German translation of a Shakespeare play already studied at school. The method makes Philip encounter familiar literature anew through another language, while Erlin’s own English—formed by reading rather than ordinary speech—embodies the same crossing between literary study and lived conversation.

Goethe’s standing in Germany is a subject of historical and political argument around the household table. In the aftermath of the war of 1870, admirers hear the artillery of Gravelotte in the wildness of the Walpurgis Night and treat the poet as a glory of national unity. Erlin, by contrast, hates the Prussians and finds in Goethe’s Olympian composure a refuge from the present generation. The difference shows that admiration does not carry a single political meaning: the same writer can serve patriotic enthusiasm for some and, for Erlin, shelter from the political temper of the time.

Erlin’s response to contemporary theatre is far less composed. Discussing a controversial dramatist whose play had recently been staged in Heidelberg, he loses his customary calm, beats the table, and overwhelms dissent with his deep voice. He calls the play obscene, describes sitting through it as an experience of boredom and nausea, and imagines that the police ought to close the playhouses. He insists that the performance threatens the family, morality, and Germany itself. When Helene asks him to calm himself, he shakes his fist at her and declares that he would sooner see his daughters dead than let them listen to the play. The extremity of the outburst turns cultural criticism into a defence of domestic and national order.

Wagner and the Limits of His Authority

Erlin treats Richard Wagner differently. He classes Wagner with the controversial dramatist, but responds not with anger but with amused laughter: Wagner, in his view, is a successful charlatan, and that very success offers material for comedy. He has seen Lohengrin and found it dull but acceptable; Siegfried, however, makes him lean his head on his hand and bellow with laughter. He claims it has no melody and imagines Wagner laughing at audiences who take the work seriously. Raising his beer glass, he predicts that Wagner will be forgotten before the nineteenth century ends and says he would exchange all Wagner’s works for a single opera by Donizetti.

This confidence is both an expression of Erlin’s critical taste and a measure of its limits. He speaks as though the future of artistic reputation were settled, and his dismissal of Wagner rests on a preference for the musical standards he already trusts. The professor can be an engaging interpreter of cultural disagreement, but the certainty of his predictions makes him a comic counterpoint to the changing artistic world Philip is beginning to encounter.

Character, Marriage, and Narrative Role

Erlin’s indignation does not describe his entire character. He is ordinarily mild and undertakes no action in his life without consulting Helene. The contrast between his theatrical denunciations at the table and his reliance on his wife unsettles the image of the authoritative male scholar he performs in argument. His anger is genuine in the scene, but it does not translate into corresponding independence at home; the household’s practical authority is more complicated than his speeches imply.

For Philip, Erlin is at once a tutor, host, and specimen of intellectual life. The professor supplies a disciplined course of study and a lively encounter with debates over German literature, theatre, and music. At the same time, his mixture of learning, polemical certainty, comic taste, and domestic dependence prevents him from standing as a simple model of authority. Through him, Philip’s Heidelberg experience joins education to observation: books are not only assigned, but argued over by people whose tastes disclose their politics, generational anxieties, and place within the household.