Agamemnon's Death (Drama)

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Agamemnon's death is a verse drama of the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Gerhart Hauptmann , which was created and June 1942 to January 1944 on 10 November 1947 in the Kammerspiele of the Deutsches Theater Berlin under the direction of Heinz Wolfgang Litten with the music of Herbert Baumann premiered was . Walther Süssenguth played the title role in the one-act play - the 2nd part of the Atriden tetralogy - Gerda Müller the Klytämnestra, Fritz Rasp the Aigisthos, Horst Drinda the Orest, Ingo Osterloh the Pylades, Käthe Braun the Elektra and Eduard von Winterstein the Thestor.

The tragedy is an adaptation of The Assassination of King Agamemnon by Aeschylus .

Gerhart Hauptmann on a painting by Lovis Corinth from 1900

content

In Argolis , where in the mountains near Mycenae hidden Demeter temple, ten years after the end of the first part of the tetralogy : Orestes , Pylades and Elektra ask the temple guards Thestor , a former farmer, about the fate of the Greeks at Troy. The aged seer Thestor, father of the priest Kalchas , condemned by the nemesis , does not understand the language of the gods on the subject and can only hope for the life of the Greek warriors. Orestes and Electra are concerned about their father Agamemnon , the army leader of the Greeks against Troy. Thestor appears to be justified in worrying in other respects as well. Queen Clytemnestra pursued her two children Orestes and Electra, because they saw with their own eyes what was happening at court: The mother has her lovers Aegisthus wrongly charged to the king.

Agamemnon, "the mighty conqueror of Ilion ", returns home, well guided by Tyche , "from the storms of a sea of ​​blood" and appears "worn out, pale and old-fashioned" as a beggar in rags; at his side Kassandra - daughter of Priam . On the way back from Troy, the Achaeans were shipwrecked. Poseidon let the "golden robbery" from Troy sink irretrievably into the waters. The Greeks cannot recognize their king. Thestor thinks Kassandra is a Phrygian . King Agamemnon, for his part, thinks the daughter Elektra is a peasant girl. He puts the Greeks in the picture. Troy is "just a pile of gray ashes". While the father and daughter finally recognize each other, Elektra believes Iphigenia , the “innocently pure virgin”, had been murdered on the altar by the father in Aulis . Agamemnon, who only slaughtered a Hind , agrees with the daughter:

"... you see in me
the daughter murderer who curses himself ... "

A little later, Agamemnon confesses to Thestor that since he sacrificed his daughter on the altar, she has been persecuting him as an Empusa .

Clytemnestra appears. When she finally has to recognize her husband, he demands the end of her “torrent-like blaring” and demands a bath. She wants to fix that for him. Thestor accuses the Queen of her sin with Aigisthus. Then Clytemnestra undeterred: “In my hand alone is all power”. She wants to avenge her daughter Iphigenia. Then the seer Kassandra: Iphigenia live. Kassandra sees clearly into the future: “A husband falls by his wife's hand, but I by the knife of her courtier!” So ​​it happens. Clytemnestra kills in Demeter Temple, this "weltvergeßnen sanctuary of the Earth Mother and Persephoneiens ," the king Agamemnon by Aegisthus Opferbeil and stabs Kassandra. The seer had previously prophesied that Orestes would murder his mother, Clytemnestra. Thestor calls Aigisthus a vile useless person and is pierced with the sword by the offended man.

Quotes

  • Agamemnon to Thestor: "Show me the places where there is no danger lurking around people."
  • Clytemnestra to the Greeks: "Get used to the terrible!"

reception

  • 1954: Fiedler compares Hauptmann with the much more matter-of-fact Aeschylus: “Hauptmann's figures ... all appear ... in a mythical twilight, so that the gloomy prophetess [Kassandra] differs only gradually from the rest of the group of people, because everyone has a mysterious connection with superreality. "
  • 1993: Seyppel looks back to January 1944, when Gerhart Hauptmann revised the play in Agnetendorf and draws a parallel between the inglorious return of Agamemnon and the withdrawal of the Wehrmacht .
  • 2012: Sprengel writes that both one-act plays ( Agamemnon's death and Elektra ), "immersed in the haze of the" Hecate time "... linked the first with the last part of the tetralogy. Hauptmann had the idea of ​​expanding the Iphigenie diptych into a four-part piece from Franz Servaes .

Adaptations

radio play

First broadcast as a radio play by Hanns Korngiebel on July 28, 1946 in DIAS West Berlin (DIAS - wire radio in the American sector).

literature

Book editions

First edition:
  • Agamemnon's death. Elektra. Tragedies, the Atrid Tetralogy, part two and three. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 1948
Output used:
  • Agamemnon's death. Tragedy. P. 395–440 in Gerhart Hauptmann: Selected dramas in four volumes. Vol. 4,543 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1952

Secondary literature

  • The atrid tetralogy . P. 76–82 in: Gerhart Hauptmann: Selected dramas in four volumes. Vol. 1. With an introduction to the dramatic work of Gerhart Hauptmann by Hans Mayer . 692 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1952
  • Agamemnon's death . Pp. 108–113 in Ralph Fiedler (* 1926 in Berlin-Röntgen ): The late dramas of Gerhart Hauptmann. Attempt at an interpretation. 152 pages. Bergstadtverlag Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn , Munich 1954
  • The atrid tetralogy . P. 247–263 in Peter Sprengel : Gerhart Hauptmann. Epoch - work - effect. 298 pages. CH Beck, Munich 1984 (Beck's elementary books), ISBN 3-406-30238-6
  • Joachim Seyppel : Gerhart Hauptmann (heads of the 20th century; 121). Revised new edition. Morgenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-371-00378-7
  • Agamemnon's death (1947) . P. 242–244 in: Friedhelm Marx : Gerhart Hauptmann . Reclam, Stuttgart 1998 (RUB 17608, Literature Studies series). 403 pages, ISBN 3-15-017608-5
  • Daria Santini: Gerhart Hauptmann between modernity and tradition. New perspectives on the Atriden tetralogy. Translated from the Italian by Benjamin Büttrich. 172 pages. Verlag Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1998 (Diss. University of Pisa 1995, publications of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Gesellschaft, vol. 8). ISBN 3-503-03792-6
  • Peter Sprengel : Gerhart Hauptmann. Bourgeoisie and big dream. A biography. 848 pages. CH Beck, Munich 2012 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-406-64045-2

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Heinz Wolfgang Litten (born June 14, 1905 Halle (Saale) ; † August 24, 1955 in East Berlin ), actor and director, 1935/36 senior stage director at the Stadttheater Bern , there later as an actor and director ( note in the theater dictionary of Switzerland ).
  2. ↑ When Agamemnon appears a little later in the one-act play, he tells Thestor about the theater of war Troy, whose son Kalchas had "defected himself". Thestor takes it calmly and replies visionary: "He is ... in Hades , where we will all soon find ourselves again in the Night of Eternal Peace." (Edition used, p. 419, 7th Zvu)
  3. ↑ Towards the end of the drama, Elektra reports on the happy homecoming of Menelaus and Helena in the Corinthian port. Their ships are "filled almost to the point of sinking with slaves, purple and gold". (Edition used, p. 433)
  4. ↑ See end of Act 5 in the play Iphigenie in Aulis .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marx, p. 247, 17. Zvo
  2. ^ Fiedler, p. 108, 10. Zvo
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 413, 4th Zvu
  4. ↑ Edition used, p. 425, 8th Zvu
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 419, 11. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 436, 16. Zvo
  7. ^ Fiedler, p. 111, 9. Zvo
  8. ↑ Seyppel, p. 73, 12th Zvu
  9. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 688, 4th Zvu
  10. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 688, 1st Zvu
  11. ^ Agamemnon's death Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 1948