The woman on the beast

Data
Title:	The woman on the beast
Genus:	play
Original language:	German
Author:	Bruno Frank
Premiere:	September 27, 1921
Place of premiere:	German Theater Berlin
Place and time of the action:	A jury court today
people
Regine Conti. Zimmermann, President of the Court. Crusius, district judge. Becker, district judge. The prosecutor. The defender. The forensic doctor. The chairman of the jury. Heimerding, juror. Meidel, juror. Nine jurors. A journalist. Betty Wanninger. Mrs. Horka. Otto Fahrenthold, actor. Arnold Zimmermann, high school student. Lechner, usher. A gendarme. Mrs. Ebersbacher. The girl. The beloved. The wife. Audience. Journalists. Women. A recorder. A servant.

The woman on the beast. A drama is a play by Bruno Frank . The first performance took place in 1921 in the Praise Theater in Breslau . The director was Wilhelm Lichtenberg, and the main role of Regine Conti was played by Maria Fein . After Bruno Frank, the play had a great success in German theaters. In 1936/1937 the English adaptation of the piece was made under the title Young Madame Conti. A melodrama performed in London and Broadway .

A middle-class divorced woman is prostituting herself across town because of her disappointment in her marriage. She falls hopelessly in love with a song fanatic, who pretends to be hot love, and can endure him with her handsome income. When she realizes that her lover despises her and only loves her money, she deliberately kills him. In court she confesses her guilt without any ifs or buts and surrenders to her fate without resistance because life no longer has any value for her. She is sentenced to death but, with the help of a friend, is able to evade execution by poison.

Note:

• Roman numerals I – VI in brackets, for example (III): number of a scene.
• Arabic numbers in brackets, for example (77): page number of the print edition #Frank 1921.1 .

action

Place of action: a jury court room.

(I) In a prelude, the cleaning woman and the bailiff get the audience in the mood for the atmosphere with Bavarian chatter. Arnold, a friend of the defendants, indicates to the defense attorney that with his testimony he could save the defendant from the death sentence even against her will. The audience and the court move in, the accused is brought in and the jury is drawn.

(II) After the accused refuses to testify about the motives for her act, even after the public has been excluded, the court proceeds to question the witnesses. Regine's maid complains that the married Stefan Horka, the murdered man, was a no-good and gambler who let her mistress endure her. His former friend Fahrenthold, on the other hand, praises him as a noble, selfless man: "He wanted to lift her up out of her filth ..." (54)

(III) Arnold enters the courtroom and the presiding judge admits him out of turn as a witness. According to him, the defendant confessed to him the reason for her murder. She happened to have overheard her lover in a café while talking to his friend in the most filthy way insulting and mocking her. At that moment, her world collapsed. Arnold gets very excited and is carried out of the hall passed out.

The woman on the beast, woodcut from the Luther Bible , 1534.

Now the defendant no longer hesitates to explain the reasons for her act to the court. She grew up in poor but respectable circumstances. Pretty as she was, she married the first rich man who took her. Her husband made her feel that he had “pulled her out of poverty”: “He had me, I was an object for him.” (72) And he mistreated her out of sadistic pleasure. After separating from her husband, she became the “lover of a whole city”, as her defender called her, or the “joy of a whole city” (23), as Arnold put it, or in the words of the prosecutor: “the great Babel , the woman on the beast! ”(77).

She met Stefan Horka and burned with ardent passion for him. His love outweighed the ostracism of her by the world, all of her passion belonged to him, she wanted to reward him for his love and threw her “sin money” after him - until one day she witnessed her shame in the café: “Fahrenthold, there spit ' I on it. She is boring to me. I can tell you if it weren't for the money ... ”(79) At that moment she decided to extinguish the traitor's life, a resolution that she carried out after a few days.

(IV) After the accused have confessed, the jury must determine their guilt. In the slashing and stabbing that now follows, the twelve jurors present themselves in a full painting of the most varied human temperaments and characters, from the merciless, prevented executioner to the eternally swaying fellow traveler to the compassionate philanthropist. In the last scene the chairman of the jury will resignedly state: "Oh, dear God, out of twelve people there are always nine fools and six rags." (115) The majority of the jury found the accused guilty and the judge pronounced the death sentence.

(V) In a dream face the chairman, who had only grudgingly pronounced the death sentence, sees the defendant on his chair in the courtroom, himself as the defendant and a choir of women ("votes") on the jury. Three women appear: The Maiden, The Lover, and The Wife, all of whom are suing the Chairman (or the man in him?). The judge, however, rejects all complaints with the words: "Fate, fate, not guilt." (106)

(VI) Before the scheduled execution, the judge, public prosecutor and jury chairman meet in the courtroom. The defense attorney arrives and announces the suicide of the accused by poison. Arnold later confesses to his father that he gave her the poison.

people

Court session in Frankenthal, 1824.

accused

• Regine Weber, called Conti, "beautiful, stately woman", 30 years old, murderess of her lover Stefan Horka.

dish

• Chairman: District Court President Zimmermann.
• Assessor: District Judge Crusius, District Judge Becker.
• Public prosecutor: an ice-cold paragraph rider, a “prosecution machine”.
• Defense attorney: Dr. Reuchlin.

Jury

• Chairman, Heimerding, Meidel, nine others.

Witnesses

• Arnold Zimmermann, high school student, 18 years old, son of the district court president.
• Miss Betty Wanninger, "slim, pretty person", 25 years old, Conti's maid.
• Otto Fahrenthold, actor, 34 years old, single, friend of the murdered man.
• Mrs. Sophie Horka, “inconspicuous woman”, 36 years, wife of the murdered man.

staff

• Lechner, usher.
• Mrs. Ebersbacher, cleaning woman.

Dream figures

• In the dream of scene V appear: Regine Conti, the girl, the beloved, the wife.

Emergence

The play “The Woman on the Animal” was Bruno Frank's fifth play. From 1916 to 1919 he had created the two comedies “ The faithful maid ” and “ Bibikoff ” and the two plays “ The Sisters and the Stranger ” and “ The Comforter ”. A few years later he said, perhaps a little coquettishly, that he did not regard his plays as a poetic achievement, but as a source of income "in order to achieve the greatest peace and comfort for writing my novels". In any case, he showed an innate talent as a playwright, and his plays do not allow the conclusion that he only wrote them for the purpose of making a living.

It is not known whether and which real criminal case Bruno Frank provided the template for his play. A decade earlier he had published a novella, " The Mother of a Whole City, " which had an echo of the "Beloved of the Whole City" at the center of his play. In the novella, he described an (honorable) woman who, through her personal “magic”, succeeds in awakening a sleepy provincial town from its slumber. In other novellas and plays, Bruno Frank, as a follower of Schopenhauer's ethic of compassion , repeatedly described people who, for a wide variety of reasons, make other people happy with their unusual behavior. Regine Conti fits into this series, who in the eyes of her young admirer Arnold, as a prostitute, becomes the "joy of a whole city" (23).

Bruno Frank took the title of the play from a fiery speech he had the public prosecutor give, a relentless representative of custom and order:

“Gentlemen of the jury, you are Christian men, you know the holy revelation of John. See, recognize who is puffing up in front of you: the great Babylon, the woman on the beast! Recognize her who is clothed in purple and scarlet and has a name and a secret written on her forehead: the mother of fornication and all abominations on earth! "(77)

According to Ludwika Gajek, Bruno Frank's piece resembled “in some of the recently so successful Lulu Frank Wedekinds ”. Reference was also made to "the dubious similarity of the fable" with the play "Das Geständnis" (The woman, who killed the man) by Ernst Vajda, an "American sensational play" that was played a few months before in the Hamburg Thaliatheater and in February 1921 was released as a feature film under the title " The Guilt of Lavinia Morland ". The parallels, however, are purely external in nature and are based only on the uninhibited, self-determined actions of the main female characters. Erich Freund commented: "Of course, it cannot be assumed that a writer of the Franks rank has committed plagiarism, especially with a sensational junk that is fresh in the memory."

Performances

Praise theater, around 1902.

The first performance took place on September 27, 1921 in the Praise Theater in Breslau . It was the first premiere under Paul Barnay , who from 1921 until the seizure of power held by the Nazis in 1933 as director of the theater. Wilhelm Lichtenberg (1892–1960) directed it, and Maria Fein played the main role of Regine Conti . The audience was included in the court hearing, as Bruno Frank reported in his text book, which was later published: “At the premiere in Breslau ... when the curtain was removed, the court hearing audience was equated with the theater audience. A series of heckling came from the floor. ”The temporary exclusion of the public, as prescribed in the stage directions, was waived (as Bruno Frank added somewhat amused).

The play was a great success in Wroclaw and was performed at least 50 times. In mid-1922 Bruno Frank was able to determine that the drama had been a great success with further performances in Leipzig, Frankfurt, Munich and Hanover, “only in Berlin did it come to an end due to the happy collaboration of cattle dealers and philologists. It's not a good piece, but making it a success doesn't have to be easy. "

The English arrangement of the piece came under the title “Young Madame Conti. A melodrama ”. It premiered on November 19, 1936 at the Savoy Theater in London and saw 50 performances by January 2, 1937. The main role played the film and stage actress Constance Cummings , who was married to Benn W. Levy, one of the two adapters. On March 31, 1937, the play premiered at the Music Box Theater on Broadway in New York, also with Constance Cummings and a few other actors from the London production. The play had 22 performances by the end of April 1937.

reception

The critic Erich Freund, who witnessed the premiere, judged the piece very derogatory. He raised his moral index finger, just as the prosecutor did in the play:

The premiere “brought a surprise to those who are familiar with Bruno Frank's gentle drama 'The Sisters and the Stranger', wrapped in melancholy contemplation. Unfortunately not a pleasant one. This time Frank has made a solid crime story that remains in the jury room from A to Z and looks like a dramatized court newspaper report like one egg to another. "

“But Regina, who continues to pursue her trade while she 'truly loves', has no right to take brutal revenge when she comes across blatant ingratitude from her pimp, whom she pays with other people's money. The discerning listener, who does not follow the author on his way without will, has the oppressive feeling that Frank has misplaced his ethical plea for the murderess out of love, that he wants to morally cleanse a woman who is too dirty to be clean to be able to. "

Stefan Großmann came from Berlin for the premiere. His very subjective criticism stood out pleasantly from the morally sour attitude of Erich Freund. "The critic praised the supposedly 'anti-male attitude' of the work a little coquettishly - which Frank hardly had in mind," and continued:

For the main actress's sake, “if not for Bruno Franks' sake, a dozen directors should have sat in the auditorium. But not one was there. Nobody saw the audience's fascination, nobody felt the pleasant pedagogy of the fiery work, nobody noticed that a German playmaker had forced one of the successes that the German repertoire needs. "

“Bruno Frank's drama shows a jury deliberation as Th. Th. Heine would draw. Pictures from a bourgeois life. Not drawn with pathetic anger, but with relaxed, almost loving scorn. "

The critic LD discusses the performance of the play in the Small Theater Berlin in the Jüdisch-Liberalen Zeitung of January 14, 1921 :

“The young, Jewish author from Stuttgart ... is no longer unknown in modern literature. ... Like so many of the young Jewish authors ... he is one of those compassionate poets whose struggle for a higher ethos and a better social order has something shocking and almost sacred about it. "

In 2008, Ludwika Gajek stated in her study of "The Wroclaw Drama in the Daily Press":

" Maria Fein designed the great hetaera as a sovereign sufferer according to the will of the author, who got stuck in the conventional in the sentimental motivation of the noble whore existence."

“The stormy enthusiasm of the auditorium left no doubt that the new management launched an audience success with this premiere. The 'race against the delight of the flicker screen' (Erich Freund) began. "

Bruno Frank's biographer Sascha Kirchner assessed the piece from today's perspective in 2009:

“The spectacle was effective; It drew its tension from the simple basic idea and the concentration on the main character. The drama does not seem 'pedagogical' to today's reader, because the question of whether Regine Conti obeys a higher degree of justice and should therefore remain unpunished is answered implicitly - but a 'lesson' regarding social conditions is withheld from the viewer. Frank had nothing to do with the 'committed' theater that quickly gained in importance in the 1920s in Brecht's plays or Piscator's productions . He was interested in a dramatic art that exists for itself and does not first have to be legitimized by reference to extra-literary reality. "

Susan Rusinko wrote in 1994 about the English version of the play (Young Madame Conti):

"Demystified of its potential murder-mystery-thriller aura and even of the usual courtroom suspense, the drama is a study of the psychopathic reaction to the general injustice of a society."

"Critics have faulted the play for the absence of some redemptive insight or moral affirmation, thus the lack of positive nature of classical tragedy and the narrow skirting of the psychological analysis of the criminal mind as in Dostoevskian characters."

Quotes

• Bailiff: You should never say anything when you are asked, Ms. Ebersbacher. At Gricht, nothing. (15)

• Arnold: But that she wants to die! That something like this is possible! How many live with a bloody act on their hearts. Now, after the war: - All men in Europe have bloody hands and yet like to live and drink and get married! (21)

• Defender: A city's mistress. The shame of an entire city. - Arnold: I say: the joy of a whole city. (23)

• Regine Conti: It never made sense to me that this earth was a valley of tears. Why should one live without freedom and without joy. There is fine teaching on this, but there is no reason. - District Judge Becker: Religion has reasons. - Regine Conti: Whoever owns religion has in it his joy and his freedom. (73)

• Prosecutor to the jury: You are chosen to condemn more than a single guilty party! The spirit of a whole epoch of immorality stands before you and confesses itself impudently. Gentlemen of the jury, you are Christian men, you know the holy revelation of John. See, recognize who is puffing up in front of you: the great Babylon, the woman on the beast! Recognize the one who is clothed in purple and scarlet and has a name and a secret written on her forehead: the mother of fornication and all abominations on earth! (77)

• Jury to his colleagues: I just want to remind the gentlemen that we are the power, the unassailable power. When we say “murder”, it's head off. And I mean, we say: head off. We owe that to society. We owe it to the moral structure of the world. (85-86)

• Chairman of the jury: Oh, dear God, out of twelve people there are always nine fools and six rags. (115)

Print output

• Bruno Frank : The woman on the animal. A drama. Munich: Three masks, 1921.

Translations

• Bruno Frank ; Hubert Griffith (translation); Benn W. Levy (translation): Young Madame Conti. A Melodrama in Three Acts, a Prologue and an Epilogue. Adapted from the German of Bruno Frank by Hubert Griffith and Benn W. Levy. London: 1938.

Before emigrating to the USA, Bruno Frank lived in London from 1934 to 1936, where he also marketed his works. There he was able to win over the two playwrights Hubert Griffith (1896–1953) and Benn W. Levy (1900–1973) to bring out his play in an English version.

They preceded the play with a prelude that transports the viewer into the night of the murder. The foreplay breaks off when Madame Conti points the gun at her lover, and the audience remains in the dark. In the three acts of the main plot, Madame Conti goes through a court hearing in front of the audience, but only at the end does it become clear that everything only happened in her imagination. In the aftermath she shoots her lover and collapses in a horrible fit of laughter.

literature

• Charles W. Carpenter: Exiled German writers in America 1932-1950. University of Southern California in 1952, pp 37-39 ( "Young Madame Conti"), online: .
• Erich Freund: Breslau. "The woman on the animal". Drama. From Bruno Frank. (First performance in the Praise Theater on September 27, 1921). In: The literary echo , volume 24, issue 4, November 15, 1921, column 219-220.
• Bruno Frank: The woman on the animal. In: Ludwika Gajek: The Breslauer Schauspiel in the mirror of the daily press: the praise theater in the first five years of the Weimar Republic (1918-1923). Wiesbaden 2008, pp 167-170 (world premiere), online: .
• Stefan Großmann : Bruno Frank's new piece [“The woman on the animal”]. In: Das Tage-Buch , 2nd year, issue 40, October 8, 1921, pp. 1215–1218.
• Frank, Bruno. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 7: Feis – Frey. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-22687-X , pp. 250–268, here 258. - With references and reviews.
• Sascha Kirchner: The citizen as an artist. Bruno Frank (1887–1945) - life and work. Düsseldorf 2009, pp. 115–118.
• Susan Rusinko: Young Madame Conti. A melodrama (1936). In: The Plays of Benn Levy: Between Shaw and Coward. Rutherford, NJ 1994, pp 101-106, online: .
• Thomas Siedhoff: The New Theater in Frankfurt am Main 1911–1935: Attempt to systematically appreciate a theater business. Frankfurt am Main 1985, part II, number 456.
• Konrad Umlauf : Exile, Terror, Illegality: the aesthetic processing of political experiences in selected German-language novels from exile 1933 - 1945. Frankfurt am Main 1982, p. 111 (“Young Madame Conti”).
• JP Wearing: The London Stage 1930-1939: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel. Lanham, MD 2014, pp 562-563 ( "Young Madame Conti"), online: .

Web links

• Bruno Frank, Digital Works, Acting .
• Literature by and about The woman on the animal in the catalog of the German National Library

Footnotes

1. ↑ #Gajek 2008 .
2. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , p. 117.
3. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , p. 188.
4. ↑ Bruno Frank # Frank 1910.2 .
5. ↑ The Heaven of the Disappointed , La Buena Sombra .
6. ↑ The Faithful Maid, The Sisters and the Stranger, The Comforter.
7. ↑ See Revelation of John , chapter 17, for example in the Luther Bible .
8. ↑ Frank Wedekind's “Lulu” was premiered in 1919 and Bruno Frank's play in 1921 in Breslau.
9. ↑ #Gajek 2008 , p. 168.
10. ↑ #Friend 1921 .
11. ↑ #Gajek 2008 .
12. ↑ #Frank 1921.2 , p. 8.
13. ↑ #Gajek 2008 .
14. ↑ #Siedhoff 1985 .
15. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , p. 117.
16. ↑ # Frank 1938.4 .
17. ↑ #Wearing 2014 .
18. ^ Internet Broadway Database .
19. ↑ #Friend 1921 .
20. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , p. 117.
21. ↑ # Großmann 1921 , pp. 1218, 1217.
22. ↑ # This year 1999 .
23. ↑ #Gajek 2008 .
24. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , p. 117.
25. ↑ # Rusinko 1994 , pp. 102, 105.
26. ↑ #Rusinko 1994 .
27. ↑ Konrad Umlauf claims that Bruno Frank's play is the "English dramatization of his novel 'Die Junge Frau Conti'". However, Bruno Frank never wrote such a novel.