The alpine king and the misanthropist
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| Title: | The alpine king and the misanthropist |
| Genus: | romantic-funny original magic game in two acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Ferdinand Raimund |
| Music: | Wenzel Müller |
| Publishing year: | 1828 |
| Premiere: | October 17, 1828 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater in the Leopoldstadt , Vienna |
| Place and time of the action: | The action takes place on and around Rappelkopf's estate |
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The Alpine King and the Misanthrope is a romantic and comical original magic game in two acts by Ferdinand Raimund . The first performance took place on October 17, 1828 as a benefit event for the poet in the theater in the Leopoldstadt .
content
While Astragalus is returning home from the hunt with his entourage, Malchen awaits the return of her lover August from his study vacation in Italy. Rappelkopf, who has become a misanthrope because of bad experiences, is strictly against this connection. He hates his wife Sophie, who still loves him, just because she supports them both. He accuses his first three deceased wives of having died “out of malice” .
When the King of the Alps appears, Malchen's maid Lieschen runs away in horror, because she is convinced:
- "Don't you know that every girl who sees the King of the Alps will be forty years older at that moment?" (Act 1, fourth scene)
Astragalus promises Malchen and August to help them and to ensure an early wedding. In Rappelkopf's house the servants complain about the unjust treatment, Sophie tries to calm them down by informing them that they have called her brother Silberkern over so that he can have a serious word with the landlord.
- “I can't let you go because my brother arrives today or tomorrow, who can do a lot about my husband. As long as you have to endure the whims of your Lord. " (Act 1, tenth scene)
But Rappelkopf is convinced that his brother-in-law took advantage of him when he ruined a Venetian department store and made him poor. After learning from Lieschen that the two young people had met secretly, he accuses his wife of betraying him. When the servant Habakuk ( "I was in Paris for two years, but I never saw a gentleman like that." ) Tries to prick chicory with a kitchen knife , Rappelkopf suspects the completely perplexed of wanting to murder him on behalf of Sophie. He smashes his furniture and angrily runs out into the woods.
There he comes to the poor hut of the coal burner and offers him money so that he can move out with his family and leave the hut to him. Although the Köhlers are soon persuaded, they sadly leave their home with a farewell song:
- "Well then, you quiet house,
- We pull out of you sadly. " (First act, twentieth scene)
Astragalus comforts the desperate relatives and the servants and promises to quickly see to the conversion of the misanthropist. Due to a flood, he forces Rappelkopf to agree to his plan: Astragalus transforms into Rappelkopf, who he lets take on the shape of Silberkern. Now Rappelkopf has to experience how his likeness deals brutally and unjustly with his family and servants. In the beginning he agrees with its rough nature, but soon it becomes too much even for him:
- “I'm a mad man! I'm really starting to get disgusted with myself. I would never have thought that in my life. " (Second act, tenth scene)
And on top of that, he has to hear that those around him, so harassed by him, still stick to him, and only hope that it would change for the better. When Astragalus curses his family, he furiously demands a duel - Rappelkopf is supposed to shoot Rappelkopf, which he believes would be suicide. But Astragalus jumps out of anger and desperation into the torrent and at that moment Rappelkopf and his family are transported to the temple of knowledge. There he promises to change - especially because Silberkern reports that his fortune has been saved - he brings Malchen and August together and embraces his wife begging for forgiveness:
- "Children, I am a retired misanthropist, stay with me and I will spend my days quietly in the Temple of Knowledge." (Act II, scene fifteen)
Factory history
According to the judgment of the literary scholar Heinz Politzer, "Raimund had started to tailor his comedies, he ended up writing them from his soul." Even contemporaries recognized that the poet with the double person Rappelkopf / Astragalus Self-portrait created in which the misanthropist bears traits of himself. This mistrust, this paranoia towards everything and everyone, however, also reflects the atmosphere of the Austrian Empire in the Vormärz, when Mr. Biedermeier withdrew to his own private life and largely avoided the public.
Most of the play was created in the great outdoors, so much loved by Raimund, one scene on May 28, 1828 at Himmelreich in Brühl near Mödling , the second a few days later on his 38th birthday (June 1) in nearby Sparbach . The rest of the piece was finished in June. As always with him when he was working in the great outdoors, Raimund finished relatively quickly. He called his work an "original magic game" to point out that there was no literary model, but that the fable with the psychological problem it contained was his very own invention. In the “Köhlerhütten scene” many literary researchers see an “astonishing realism of the social misery” for the Biedermeier conditions .
Raimund had used the idea of self-confrontation earlier, twice in the farmer as a millionaire , namely root / youth and root / age and later in the spendthrift with Flottwell / beggar. In the Alpenkönig , however, this constellation is most vividly realized.
In the figure of the hilarious servant Habakkuk, who claims to have been "two years in Paris" - as his standing phrase goes - the poet has , as it were, bestowed the theatrical Thaddädl with the "consecration of art" by comfortably displaying the solemn stupidity of the stupid servant has spread. Habakkuk is the buffoon , so stands as Colombina , the crispy maid Lischen at his side. They are both poetic descendants of Florian and Mariandl from Raimund's earlier work The Diamond of the Spirit King .
Raimund played the Rappelkopf, Katharina Ennöckl his wife Sophie, Franz Tomaselli the Habakkuk.
Musical editing
- In 1828 Wenzel Müller, the composer of the musical interludes in the piece, wrote a Singspiel.
- In 1829, under the title Der Geisterkönig und der Menschenfreund, a parodic arrangement with music by Wilhelm Reuling was performed, which the Viennese audience failed to see.
- In 1903 the opera Alpenkönig und Misanthrope premiered in Dresden . The composer was Leo Blech , Raimund's text was transposed into an opera libretto by Richard Batka . Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler prepared an adaptation of this text for the 'Berlin version' of the opera entitled Rappelkopf (1917) .
- For the opera Rappelkopf by the composer Mark Lothar , premiered in Munich in 1958, Wilhelm Michael Treichlinger created the libretto based on Raimund's template
The simple way of "Farewell, you quiet house" has become a folk song .
Contemporary judgment
Franz Grillparzer gave the judgment of the contemporaries about this work:
- "One must have wandered through the desert of the latest poetry, felt how natural truth and life threaten to withdraw from the conceptual framework of talentless exuberance in order to fully experience the refreshing nature of this fresh spring."
Later interpretations
According to Rudolf Fürst , this is the first work by Raimund in which the poet has shown himself to be a psychologist. He also judges:
- “Here one is no longer hurt by the bell jingling of the fool's cap, which the author has put on to satisfy an audience eager for light fare; nor through the poet's vain striving to make himself and the reader at home in a colorful fabulous world composed of heterogeneous [inconsistent] components. "
Kurt Kahl's verdict is to see Raimund's work as an attempt at self-healing in the cloak of a comic-romantic fairy tale.
- "Just as in the play the misanthropist can only be cured by being confronted with his own ego, Raimund also seeks to master his temperament by writing."
The King of the Alps is only brought onto the stage to enable Rappelkopf to confront himself with a magic trick. This trick enables the poet to let a development, which in real life take place over a long period of time, take place in just a few scenes.
Franz Hadamowsky states that Raimund's progress in designing a stage character can be clearly seen in a comparison between Fortunatu’s root from the farmer as a millionaire and Rappelkopf. The magical world is used more and more by the poet merely as an aid in developing the plot.
In Hein / Mayer you can read that Raimund's baroque tradition, Austrian Enlightenment ( Josephinism ) and more recent psychology combined the motif of the misanthropist with the idea of the improvisation. Timon of Athens ( Shakespeare ), The Misanthrope ( Molière ) for Rappelkopf, The Mountain Spirit or the Three Wishes ( Josef Alois Gleich ) for Astragalus could have been his role models .
Film adaptations
- 1965: The Alpine King and the Misanthrope , staging by Rudolf Steinboeck , picture direction Günther Anders , with Paul Hörbiger as Astragalus, Attila Hörbiger as Rappelkopf, Alma Seidler as Antonie and Heinz Ehrenfreund as August Dorn
literature
- Rudolf Fürst (Ed.): Raimund's works. First and second part. German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.
- Franz Hadamowsky (Ed.): Ferdinand Raimund, Works in Two Volumes, Volume I, Verlag Das Bergland Buch, Salzburg 1984, ISBN 3-7023-0159-3 .
- Jürgen Hein / Claudia Meyer: Ferdinand Raimund, the theater maker at Vienna. In: Jürgen Hein / Walter Obermaier , W. Edgar Yates , Volume 7, publication by the International Nestroy Society, Mag. Johann Lehner Ges.mbH, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-901749-38-1 .
- Kurt Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund . Friedrich-Verlag, Velber near Hanover 1967.
Web links
- Role directory and text on ferdinandraimund.at/stuecke/alpenkoenig
Individual evidence
- ↑ Astragalus = resonance with the astral body , the "soul envelopment" or astra (stars) and galus (festive clothing), that is, starry cloak ; a more likely interpretation is a connection to "Astragalus frigidus", glacier tragacanth , an alpine plant
- ↑ Linarius = possible connection to "Linaria alpina", alpine toadflax
- ↑ in the first version of the manuscript it was still called Antonie ; the first name of his partner Toni Wagner was intended as a reference to her loving patience with Raimund
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 113.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 119.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 134.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 164.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. P. 176.
- ↑ a b c Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund , pp. 71–79.
- ↑ a b Hein / Meyer: Ferdinand Raimund, the theater maker at the Vienna. Pp. 59-61.
- ↑ resch = Bavarian, Austrian: lively, lively; self-confident in Viennese too
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. S. LXXI.
- ↑ Facsimile of the theater slip in Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, p. 430.
- ↑ Constantin von Wurzbach : Reuling, Wilhelm . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 25th part. Kaiserlich-Königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1873, pp. 346–350 ( digitized version ).
- ↑ Ernst Rychnovsky: Leo Blech . Verlag des Dürerblatt, Prague 1905. P. 40 ff
- ↑ Walter Abendroth Is the Volksoper still possible: reflections on Mark Lothar's “Rappelkopf” and its Munich premiere . In: Die Zeit, September 11, 1958. http://www.zeit.de/1958/37/ist-die-volksoper-noch-moeglich/komplettansicht
- ↑ a b Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, pp. 101-102.
- ^ Prince: Raimund's works. Second part. S. LXVII.
