The fourth commandment (Anzengruber)
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| Title: | The fourth commandment |
| Genus: | Folk play in four acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Ludwig Anzengruber |
| Publishing year: | 1878 |
| Premiere: | December 29, 1878 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna |
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The fourth commandment is the most famous play by the Austrian playwright Ludwig Anzengruber .
Anzengruber's image of life is in the tradition of the Old Viennese Volkstheater and is a discussion of the church's doctrine about observing the Old Testament, fourth commandment according to the Catholic way of counting: “You should honor your father and mother so that you live long and prosper on earth . ” ( Ten Commandments ). Using the example of three families (Hutterer, Schalanter, Schön), Anzengruber shows how the fourth commandment is alienated, even turned into its opposite, if it is misused by parents to the misfortune of children. The piece is written in dialect and is considered a pioneer of naturalism .
content
Hedwig, the daughter of the materialistic landlord Hutterer, loves the penniless piano teacher Robert Frey. Her father forbids the relationship with the man who is not befitting and forces her to marry the rich bon vivant Stolzenthaler. He is of the opinion: "Parents always know better what is good for their children, and if I had to force you, I would also force you to be happy. You should be better off in the world than we are, the parents should make sure that the children are always a bit better off than they were. ” In her need, Hedwig turns to the priest Eduard, den Son of the caretaker family, who advises her to strictly adhere to the fourth commandment, which he interprets as an indication of the children's absolute obedience to their parents.
The Schalanter family lives in the neighboring house. His father, a master craftsman, is a drinker, his mother a matchmaker. Their children, daughter Josepha, who had a relationship with Stolzenthaler, and son Martin, who serves as a soldier, were neglected by their parents. Herwig, the grandmother, warns the children - albeit unsuccessfully - of their parents' bad example.
A year has passed, Hedwig has given birth to a sickly child, her marriage to Stolzenthaler is not a lucky star. Robert Frey, the piano teacher, is Martin Schalanter’s superior in the military and does not make life easy for him there, as Martin is unreliable and undisciplined. When Frey runs into Hedwig on the street, he asks her to speak to her. They agree on a meeting point, but Martin Schalanter and his father overhear them. Martin wants to take revenge on Frey for the harassing treatment in the military and reports to Stolzenthaler. He, who claims for himself to be allowed to betray his wife, believes he has been betrayed by Hedwig and throws her out.
Frey is waiting at the agreed inn. The Schalanter family appear and sit down at the table with him. In the following dispute, in which Frey says to Martin, "You really are, as can be expected from a person whose father is a drunkard and whose mother is a matchmaker!" Martin shoots Robert Frey. While Frey is brought into town dying, Hedwig arrives and experiences his death. Martin Schalanter is arrested and sentenced to death.
Hedwig is divorced from Stolzenthaler, her child has died and she herself has a broken existence that is close to death. In the end, your father Hutterer realizes his guilt. The priest Eduard advises Hedwig: “God, who imposed such difficult trials on you, will also give you the strength to endure them.” Hedwig replies: “No phrases, Reverend. - Do you know what it is called when someone puts an exam to get a result that he can expect quite well in advance? It's called experimenting. Years ago a medic lived in our house whom I, as a little girl, loathed with all my heart, because he cut up poor rabbits alive. He knew exactly how far he could rely on the strength of these little animals, whether they would stay dead under the knife, or how long they could be kept alive and suffering if he gave them strength through good care, the trials to suffer'. - Do you want me to believe that God is such a doctor? "
On death row, Martin Schalanter only wants to receive the gardener's son Eduard, his former school friend who has become a priest, but not his parents. Martin admits to Eduard that he was jealous of his parents' house. Suddenly his grandmother visits him shortly before the execution. The priest is a witness of this encounter: Martin realizes that the grandmother was right in her judgment about the parents and says to the priest in response to his reproach “Remember the fourth commandment!” The famous sentences: “It's easy for you, you don't know that for some it is the greatest misfortune to be told about their parents. If you teach the children in school: Honor your father and mother, tell your parents from the pulpit that it should be like that. "
time and place
The events of the second and third act take place a year after those of the first on the same day, from afternoon to evening; the fourth act a few weeks later.
Place of action: Vienna and the surrounding area. In his Volksstück, Anzengruber moved the action area to the edge of the new city of Vienna.
Time: the present.
censorship
Since Anzengruber's play is directed against an uncontested parental claim to power, but is also to be interpreted as an attack on false authorities in general, it had to endure violent state censorship measures in order to be allowed to perform at all. The theater censors initially wanted to simply ban the performance of the play, whereby the title also played a decisive role, as did the position of priest Schön and his influence on the actions of the other characters.
The censorship files of December 10, 1877 criticize the "play rich in unpleasant scenes and fateful reflections" and sees the tendency as "decidedly questionable" , namely "in and of itself and because of the way it was carried out" . It goes on to say: “Apart from this dubious tendency, which merges the disproportion between the duties of the parents and their actions with an unquestioned criticism of the most unimpeachable of all commandments in its true and real sense, it must be particularly emphasized that those in the last act The priest's repentance shows that he is rash and hasty in proclaiming the fourth commandment, that is, by means of a decidedly wrong interpretation of the same, discredits the priesthood and not only ascribes the much greater part of the guilt for the specifically mentioned accidents to the intervention of the priest Schön, but - per analogiam and inflating the concrete case tendentiously to abstract dogma - the clergy in general accuses the clergy of influencing the resolutions of the lay people contrary to their profession. "
At the urging of the artistic director of the theater in der Josefstadt, Eduard Dorn , a permit could be obtained at the last moment. The censors wanted the title “The fourth commandment”, which indicated a general validity of the text, to the title “Verorben durch Elternschuld”, which only includes the specific case. Life picture in 4 acts ”changed to know. In the end, approval was given for a piece that actually had no title. It had to be called "A people's piece in four acts by Ludwig Anzengruber", 27 text passages, especially those relating to the fourth commandment, were deleted.
When the director of the Deutsches Volkstheater , Emmerich von Bukovics , wanted to perform the play again in 1890, the fight for the title flared up again. This was then approved, but most of the deletions were maintained. The last deletions were not lifted until 1898.
Performance history
The premiere on December 29, 1878 in the Theater in der Josefstadt did not initially bring the hoped-for success and was not only heavily criticized by the church. The censorship had obviously distorted the piece so badly that the quality was badly affected and the performance was probably also poor. The Illustrierte Wiener Extrablatt wrote: " It is better to leave your work unperformed before entrusting it to such forces." In Austria, the big city drama only caught on after Anzengruber's death and the success of the play in Berlin in 1890 .
After Anzengruber's successes in Berlin through performances of his plays Der G'wissenswurm (1887) and Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (1888) at the Deutsches Theater by Adolph L'Arronge and Heimg'funden (1888) and Der Meineidbauer (1889) at the Lessing Theater by Oscar Blumenthal In 1889 the Free Stage Berlin Association finally asked whether Anzengruber could be present at the performance of the Fourth Commandment in October, but the latter had to say no. The performance was only scheduled for the second half of the season - which Anzengruber did not see any more. Anzengruber became a member of the Freie Bühne Berlin shortly before his death: "In Berlin I am being done justice - there I am!" On March 2, 1890, the play came out in Berlin without the censorship-ordered deletions and was given by Austrian actors also the corresponding local tone. It was only through this performance that the path to the success of the piece in Austria was secured.
After the Berlin performance, Theodor Fontane confessed that he didn't know anything more shocking than the third and fourth acts, which he placed above Tolstoy's Die Macht der Darkis: “The piece is interesting from beginning to end. The third and fourth acts are dramatic creations of the very first order and I don't know anything at all, including the greatest, which would have been more shocking to me. "
The performance in the Graz Parktheater on October 26, 1890 also caused a sensation. The poet Peter Rosegger expressed his conviction that the people should be given free entry to this “wonderful and morally educating folk drama” . Church circles protested, however, against the play's title and tendency, the clerical Grazer Volksblatt refused to accept the playlist and wrote against the play. The prince-bishop had preached against the performance in churches in Graz. In Vienna, too, St. Stephen's evening preacher announced a cycle of sermons on the Fourth Commandment . He found behind it “seduction to fornication, to disobedience to parents and to disbelief” .
The columnist and theater critic Ludwig Speidel defended Anzengruber and wrote: “The drama is not aimed at children, does not deal with obedience, but rather an example and education question and preaches to parents who are only too needy of this sermon: when you show your children If you want to keep the gallows, keep them from what the rope stands on, and if you want to see them in honor, then live in honor yourself. "
The Berlin critic and theater director Otto Brahm called Anzengruber an "angry moral judge, a real punisher, who visualized the ruin of Old Vienna and the brutalization of New Vienna with equally harsh truth" and of "all theatrical whitewashing of all painting with honey colors eternally hostile stay. " ( Critical Writings on Drama and Theater , 1913)
After the performance in 1890 in the Deutsches Volkstheater with Ludwig Tyrolt and Ludwig Martinelli as father and son Schalanter, Pepi Glöckner-Kramer as Josefa and Alexander Girardi as Stolzenthaler, which was allowed to use the original text for the first time, the critic suddenly wrote indignantly; "How was it possible that such a specific Viennese poem could be forgotten, suppressed, overlooked and ignored for thirteen years?"
As a psychological study, the piece was also valued by Sigmund Freud . For him, Anzengruber was "one of our best poets."
In later years performances follow a. a. 1942 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich (director: Leopold Lindtberg ) with Therese Giehse as Mrs. Schalanter, 1952 at the Volkstheater Vienna (director: Leon Epp ) with Karl Skraup , Dagny Servaes and Hans Putz as the Schalanter family and Pepi Glöckner-Kramer as the grandmother, at the theater der Josefstadt (director: Ernst Lothar ) with Karl Paryla as Martin Schalanter, 1970 at the Volkstheater Wien (director: Gustav Manker ) with Herbert Propst , Wolfgang Hübsch , Hilde Sochor , Brigitte Swoboda as the Schalanter family and Kitty Speiser as Hedwig and in 2005 at the theater der Josefstadt (director: Herbert Föttinger ) with Alexander Pschill as Martin Schalanter and Elfriede Ott as grandmother.
Film adaptations
- 1912: Short film (subtitle You should honor your father and mother ) Director: Charles Decroix with Frida Richard and Ernst Rückert . Production: Deutsche Mutoskop und Biograph (DMB).
- 1914: The fourth commandment production by the Viennese art film industry .
- 1920: Martin Schalanter's last course. A tragedy for parents Direction and screenplay: Richard Oswald . Instrumentation: Hans Homma (Hutterer); Emmy Schleinitz (Mrs. Hutterer); Lola Kneidinger (Hedwig); Cornelius Kirschner (shellant); Alice Hetsey (Mrs. Schalanter); Louis Ralph (Martin); Ally Kay (Josepha); Ferdinand Bonn (Stolzenthaler); Josef König (young Stolzenthaler); Philippine Russek (grandmother); Carl Kneidinger (Schön, gardener); Viktoria Pohl-Meiser (Mrs. Schön); Werner Schott (Eduard, secular priest); Robert Valberg (Robert Frey); Wilhelm Schmidt (Johann Duncker); Rudolf Merstallinger (apprentice). Production: Leyka-Film GmbH (Vienna), Richard Oswald-Film GmbH (Berlin)
- 1950; The fourth commandment (subtitle Die Kupplerin ) Direction and screenplay: Eduard von Borsody with Attila Hörbiger (Schalanter), Dagny Servaes (Barbara Schalanter), Hans Putz (Martin Schalanter), Inge Egger (Josefa), Auguste Welten (grandmother), Alfred Neugebauer (Hutterer), Alma Seidler (Sidonie Hutterer), Brigitte Ratz (Hedwig), Fritz Imhoff (Stolzenthaler), Erik Frey (August Stolzenthaler), Karl Skraup (caretaker Schön), Annie Rosar (Anna Schön), Erich Auer (Eduard Schön) , Carl Bosse (Robert Frey), Leopold Rudolf (assistant Johann)
- 1964: The fourth commandment filming for the 75th anniversary of Anzengruber's death for ORF , directed by Walter Davy , with Helmut Qualtinger as Schalanter and Walter Kohut (Martin), Erika Pluhar (Josefa), Gretl Elb (Barbara), Maria Waldner (grandmother), Fritz Schmiedel (Hutterer), Erika Ziha (Sidonie), Gudrun Erfurth (Hedwig), Harry Fuss (Stolzenthaler), Kurt Sowinetz (Johann Dunkler), Veit Relin (Robert Frey), Sepp Löwinger (Jakob Schön, gardener), Elisabeth Karlan (Anna ), Bruno Dallansky (Eduard), Carlo Böhm (Katscher), Rudolf Rösner (Mostinger, landlord), Herbert Propst (Atzwanger)
novel
The fourth commandment was also edited as a novel by André Mairock "based on the original edition of Anzengruber's folk piece" .