Barbara Blomberg (Zuckmayer)

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Barbara Blomberg is a play by Carl Zuckmayer . The first performance of the piece took place in Konstanz in 1949 .

Historical background

Barbara Blomberg was the daughter of a master belt maker in Regensburg . She is said to have inherited her beautiful looks from her mother and her immense assertiveness from her father. A son emerged from a liaison with Emperor Karl V during the Regensburg Reichstag in 1546 ("Tatort": Golden Cross). He was later named Don Juan d'Austria and became famous mainly for his victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 . Barbara Blomberg died in 1597 in Codiles in Spain.

In Regensburg, a small palace right next to the Golden Cross is known as the “Barbara Blomberg House”, and a statue on Regensburg's Zieroldsplatz near the old town hall has been commemorating the “Savior of the West” Don Juan D'Austria for several years.

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When Major Kegel, Barbara's husband, is stabbed, the well-kept secret that Barbara is the mother of Don Juan D'Austria is revealed. When Duke Alba investigates this politically explosive topic, Barbara refuses to go to Spain, and with finesse she even manages to wrest the promise from the somewhat awkward, easily bewitched nephew of the Duke, despite the presence of the suspicious secretary Albornoz, to assign her the Schlösschen Lamoral and an appropriate following for an "indirect member of the royal family". At Lamoral, Barbara's love for Ratcliff, a well-known spy she has hired as a secretary, develops; Likewise, her daughter Karoline, whom Barbara's heart is attached to, falls in love with van Hoghstraate, a Flemish nobleman who hides in a secret chamber in Lamoral, as he is suspected of having participated in an assassination attempt. When Ratcliff is later arrested after Alba has died, and whose secretary Albornoz tries to usurp the rule, Barbara travels to meet her son Don Juan, who is to be the new governor in Belgium, and pleads for the rescue of her lover. Impressed by the appearance of his mother, whom he previously thought was only "mean", don Juan gives in to her request, but in the same conversation can persuade his mother to go to Spain, to the residence of his foster parents. In the epilogue one finally learns that Don Juan was poisoned - probably on the orders of his half-brother, King Philip.

Literary classification

In the case of "Barbara Blomberg" Zuckmayer, in comparison to " Captain von Köpenick " or " Des Teufels General ", it is a rather insignificant drama by the versatile writer. It belongs to the genre of the socially critical folk piece. Together with Marieluise Fleißer and Ödön von Horváth , Zuckmayer is one of the representatives of this genre.

features

  • folk characters, rooted in the landscape
  • linguistic expression according to social position
  • no completely broken characters (specialty at Zuckmayer)
  • nothing extreme, image of balance
  • rigid opposites are overcome out of responsibility towards people
  • even after the defeat there is still human dignity and will to live, a perspective and hope for the future (life as a whole: indestructible power)