mathematics

The Stony Heart

The Stony Heart is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Stony Heart rather than just read about it. In short: The Stony Heart (German: Das steinerne Herz. Historischer Roman aus dem Jahre 1954 nach Christi) is a 1956 novel by the German writer Arno Schmidt.

Key takeaways

The Stony Heart belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Stony Heart to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Stony Heart from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Stony Heart (German: Das steinerne Herz. Historischer Roman aus dem Jahre 1954 nach Christi) is a 1956 novel by the German writer Arno Schmidt.

Plot The biographer Walter Eggers researches the 19th-century statistician Friedrich Jansen in 1954. Eggers visits Jansen's estate in Ahlden where he meets Jansen's granddaughter Friede. He starts to scheme and seduce Friede in order to gain access to Jansen's book collection. The intrigues take Eggers to East Berlin, where Friede's husband has a mistress. There are many literary references, including to Jean Paul's Siebenkäs and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Elective Affinities. The title is a reference to the 1827 fairy tale "The Cold Heart" by Wilhelm Hauff; there is also a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann called Das steinerne Herz, but it is unrelated to Schmidt's novel.

Publication The novel was written between November 1954 and the end of April 1955. It was not published by Rowohlt Verlag, which previously had been responsible for Schmidt's titles, because his 1953 novel Lake Scenery with Pocahontas had faced charges for being pornographic and blasphemous. The Stony Heart was instead published by Stahlberg Verlag in 1956 after Schmidt agreed to make some changes. Bargfelder Bote published the original, unedited version in 1986. Dalkey Archive Press published it in English translation by John E. Woods in 1997.

References

Further reading Uelzmann, Jan (2013). "Consumption and Consummation: Domestic Tales of the Economic Miracle in Arno Schmidt's 'Das Steinerne Herz'". The German Quarterly. 86 (2): 180–197. JSTOR 42751407.

External links Suhrkamp

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Stony Heart

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Stony Heart claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Stony Heart before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Stony Heart ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Stony Heart

In research: The Stony Heart appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Stony Heart in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Stony Heart is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1956 German novels, Cultural depictions of mathematicians, Lower Saxony in fiction, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Stony Heart outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The Stony Heart in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Stony Heart means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Stony Heart out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Stony Heart in simple terms?

The Stony Heart (German: Das steinerne Herz. Historischer Roman aus dem Jahre 1954 nach Christi) is a 1956 novel by the German writer Arno Schmidt.

Why does The Stony Heart matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Stony Heart?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Stony Heart.