Class clause

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The class clause is a dramatic poetic principle that is often associated with the name of Johann Christoph Gottscheds , who tried to transfer the principles of French classical music to German theater. In the tragedy , only the fates of kings, princes and other high class figures should be represented. In contrast, the way of life of bourgeois people should only be brought to the stage in comedies . The principle was justified with the fact that the life of the bourgeoisie lacks size and meaning and the dramatic representation of their people at the height of the fall .

Not only the people on the stage, but also the audience differed in connection with the class clause. This was reflected in the privileges of the Theater in the 18th and 19th centuries: The Court Theater were entitled tragedies (which include serious operas and ballets included) perform, while the proliferating folk theater only comedies (including the comic operas and pantomimes expected were allowed to perform.

Simple explanation

The simplest explanation according to the German Duden is: "Condition, stipulation that in a tragedy the main characters may only be of a high class, in a comedy only of a lower class."

Another explanation reads: “In the 17th and 18th centuries a. a. Set of rules applied by JC Gottsched, according to which only aristocrats were allowed to play the main characters in classical dramas, whereas the lower classes were intended for roles in comedy. "

Reference to the height of fall

The term drop height was the French esthete Charles Batteux ( Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe , 1746 embossed) and much later picked up even by scholars as of Arthur Schopenhauer in his work The World as Will and Representation ( 1819 / 1844 ) . There it is explained that motives such as hopelessness and tragic failure in the tragedy could only be represented meaningfully if the main character had a higher, for example a princely position. None of this can be expressed on the basis of the fates of bourgeois people, since bourgeois people only get into situations from which they can easily be helped.

history

The class clause goes back, if at all, only indirectly to Aristotle . Aristotle does not call for an express class clause in the sense of Gottsched. In his poetics, based on the principle of Kalokagathy, he had reserved tragedy for the conflicts of good or beautiful people, while the affairs of bad or ugly people were to be presented in comedy . This very general statement, which had a recognizability and comprehensibility of the characters in mind, as it applies today to comics or melodramas , has been interpreted socially since the 16th century. In order not to endanger the status of the people portrayed, the element of world reconciliation was introduced after the portrayal of Peter von Matt .

Horace was the first to interpret Aristotle socially ( Epistola ad pisones , known as Ars poetica , from 13 BC). Both Julius Caesar Scaliger (in the Poetices libri septem, published posthumously in 1561 ) and Martin Opitz take up his distinction: the good person according to Aristotle is the nobleman, the worse person the bourgeois. Opitz explains, for example, that tragedy does not suffer if “people of low rank and bad things are introduced” and, conversely, those comedy writers who “introduced the keys and potentates were wrong; because it runs straight back to the rules of the comedy ”( Von der Deutschen Poeterey , 1624, chapter 5).

With recourse to the Aristotelian concept of mimesis , which no longer imitates being, but its (social) manifestations, the tragedy gains a higher suggestive effect on the audience. In Opitz, this is expressly combined with concessions to Christian morality. The class clause found a form that was widely regarded as binding in French classical music: Nicolas Boileau also referred to Horace in L'Art poétique (1674) and had the courtly theater of his time in mind.

Even in Gottsched's times, which were strongly influenced by French absolutism , this basic rule was adhered to, as shown by Gottsched's attempt at critical poetry (1730). The turning point came with Lessing , who based himself on Denis Diderot 's De la poésie dramatique (1758) and his bourgeois model dramas. Lessing provided the basis for a bourgeois tragedy in German, in which the citizens and their problem constellations could be presented, first in Miss Sara Sampson (1755). Some aristocrats such as Frederick the Great demonstratively did not take notice of this. Frederick only tolerated nobles appearing in comedies, but not the bourgeoisie in tragedy ( De la littérature allemande , 1780).

Effects

In the theater of the 19th century, the return to the class clause (see Grand opéra ) or, on the contrary, the demonstrative overcoming of the class clause played a significant role. This is reflected, for example, in the use of the role subjects . There were still actors who specialized in the socially higher serious roles, and those who specialized in the lower comic roles.

Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer precedes her comedy Steffen Langer from Glogau (Berlin 1842) with the instruction:

“The role of Steffen [a journeyman rope worker] is not to be cast by the first comedian, but by the first lover who also plays the outdoorsman. [...] I also wish Klärchen [daughter of the master rope maker] in the hands of the first lover. "

At the end of the prelude, the two “gravely hold each other by the hand but separate as far as possible”. This corresponded to the code of conduct of the noble figures, which is quoted and parodied here because the "simple" behavior had become a social ideal. The audience expected and appreciated the upgrading of the bourgeois characters who were to be portrayed by the higher-ranking actors.

After the First World War , people finally became aware that they had overcome aristocratic rule. A tentative revaluation of the bourgeois figures was no longer necessary. The mostly bourgeois audience was now allowed to feel superior to the noble characters on the stage, which was a reversal of the situation in the court theaters of the 17th and 18th centuries. Century meant where the nobles had laughed at the "bourgeois" comic characters. Gustaf Gründgens , who rarely appeared as a comedian, did not consider it politically inappropriate to give a ridiculous duke in Eduard Künneke's operetta Liselott in 1932 . In the duet sung with Hilde Hildebrand “O God, how are we noble”, he caricatured the refined customs of the nobility against the “madness of these Germans”.

literature

  • Alain Muzelle: ständeklausel , pp 945-946, Bernard Poloni: drop height , pp 375-376. In: Manfred Brauneck, Gérard Schneilin (Hrsg.): Theaterlexikon. Vol. 1, Rowohlt, Reinbek, 5th edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-499-55673-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Class clause. In: www.duden.de. Retrieved May 12, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Class clause. In: www.wissen.de. Retrieved May 12, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer: Steffen Langer from Glogau or The Dutch fireplace. Ulrich, Zurich 1842
  4. ↑ ibid, p. 9

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