Atrid tetralogy
The Atriden Tetralogy is a dramatic cycle by the German writer Gerhart Hauptmann , which is an adaptation of the ancient models of Euripides , Aeschylus and Sophocles . Hauptmann had worked on this late work in iambic meter, which appeared in 1944, for four years.
Plot and individual works
The gods are enraged at the killing of an Artemis hind by a Mycenaean warrior. They ask Agamemnon , king of Mycenae , to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia before he is allowed to continue his campaign against Troy . The sacrifice is made when three priestesses kidnap Iphigenia to Tauris . When Agamemnon returns to Argos , his wife Klytaimnestra takes blood revenge and kills him because of his guilt for the alleged death of his daughter. But shortly afterwards, Clytaimnestra also dies. Her daughter Elektra instigated her brother Orestes to kill the vengeful mother. Out of insight into the laws of an inhumane world, in which man seems helplessly surrendered to the power of the gods, Iphigenia finally offers herself to the gods as an atonement in Delphi .
The Atriden tetralogy consists of four individual works:
- Part 1: Iphigenia in Aulis . Tragedy (5 acts). Berlin (Suhrkamp) 1944. Made 1940–1943. Premiere November 15, 1943 Vienna, Burgtheater; Director: Lothar Müthel ; with Ewald Balser (Agamemnon), Käthe Dorsch (Klytämnestra), Käthe Braun (Iphigenie), Helmuth Krauss (Kalchas)
- Part 2: Agamemnon's death . Tragedy (one act). Berlin (Suhrkamp) 1948. Made in 1942. Premiere November 10, 1947 Berlin, Deutsches Theater, Kammerspiele; Director: Heinz Wolfgang Litten ; Music: Herbert Baumann ; with Walther Süssenguth (Agamemnon), Gerda Müller (Klytämnestra), Fritz Rasp (Aigisthos), Horst Drinda (Orest), Ingo Osterloh (Pylades). First broadcast as a radio play: July 28, 1946, DIAS Berlin
- Part 3: Elektra . Tragedy (one act). Berlin (Suhrkamp) 1948. Made in 1944. Premiere November 10, 1947 Berlin, Deutsches Theater, Kammerspiele; Director: Heinz Wolfgang Litten
- Part 4: Iphigenia in Delphi . Tragedy (3 acts). Berlin (S. Fischer) 1941. Made in 1940. Premiere November 15, 1941 Berlin, Staatliches Schauspielhaus; Director: Jürgen Fehling ; Stage design: Rochus Gliese ; Music: Mark Lothar ; with Hermine Körner (Iphigenie), Maria Koppenhöfer (Elektra), Bernhard Minetti (Orestes), Gustav Knuth (Pylades)
reception
During the Second World War , only the first part of the tetralogy, Iphigenie in Aulis , directed by Lothar Müthels at the Burgtheater in Vienna, and the fourth part, Iphigenie in Delphi , at the Staatliches Schauspielhaus Berlin by Jürgen Fehling, were premiered. The second and third parts were shown for the first time after the end of the war at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in the Soviet zone of occupation .
In view of Gerhart Hauptmann's membership in the NSDAP and the special appreciation of Hauptmann by the National Socialists, who included him as one of the six most important writers on the special list of irreplaceable artists and freed him from all war obligations, the cumbersome Atriden dramas are rare been listed.
Erwin Piscator intended to contribute to the rehabilitation of Gerhart Hauptmann , who initiated his management at the Free Volksbühne in West Berlin with the first complete performance of Hauptmann's tetralogy Die Atriden . Piscator's production at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm , the then house of the Free People's Stage, caused a sensation in October 1962. The director reduced Hauptmann's entire text to a total of ten acts , interpreted the work as an “encoded indictment against the Nazi regime” and made extensive use of documentation from the war. The Berlin production was shown 72 times.
Another staging of the entire work in February and March 1989 at the Bielefeld Theater with rearrangements and ruffles aimed in particular to make the political psychology of the material visible and was in parts based on Piscator's formal language. The production, directed by Dieter Reibles , was largely received positively.
literature
- Susanne Aretz: The sacrifice of Iphigeneia in Aulis: the reception of the myth in ancient and modern dramas (= contributions to antiquity , volume 131), Teubner, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-519-07680-2 (dissertation University of Cologne 1997 / 1998, 553 pages).
- Edyta Danowska: The Atriden Tetralogy: Gerhart Hauptmann's mythical model . In: Orbis Linguarum . tape 23 , p. 67–74 ( PDF ( Memento from May 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive )).
- Peter Delvaux: Ancient Myths and Current Events. Structure of meaning and time references in Gerhart Hauptmann's Atriden-Tetralogie (= Amsterdam publications on language and literature . Volume 100 ). Rodopi, Amsterdam 1992, ISBN 90-5183-424-1 (dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).
- Peter Delvaux: Suffering should teach. Historical connections in Gerhart Hauptmann's Atriden-Tetralogie (= Amsterdam publications on language and literature . Volume 110 ). Rodopi, Amsterdam 1994, ISBN 90-5183-709-7 .
- Dietrich Meinert: Hellenism and Christianity in Gerhart Hauptmann's atrid tetralogy . Balkema, Amsterdam / Cape Town 1964, DNB 575057602 .
- Alexander Martin Pfleger: Gerhart Hauptmann's atrid tetralogy. "... the Kere Strudel ..." - divinity and humanity in conflict (= Eleusis . Band 12 ). Kovač, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-8300-0868-6 .
- Daria Santini: Gerhart Hauptmann between modernity and tradition. New perspectives on the Atriden tetralogy (= publications of the Gerhart-Hauptmann-Gesellschaft . Volume 8 ). Erich Schmidt, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-503-03792-6 (translated by Benjamin Büttrich).
- Reiner Tack: Atreus's house. The Atrid Myth from Antiquity to the Present . Bouvier 2017. ISBN 978-3-416-04021-1