The girl from the fairy world or the farmer as a millionaire

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Data
Title: The girl from the fairy world or the farmer as a millionaire
Genus: Romantic original magical fairy tale with singing in three acts
Original language: German
Author: Ferdinand Raimund
Music: Joseph Drechsler , Ferdinand Raimund
Publishing year: 1826
Premiere: November 10, 1826
Place of premiere: Theater in the Leopoldstadt , Vienna
Place and time of the action: The action begins in the morning of the first day and ends in the evening of the second. Played partly in the fairy realm, partly on earth.
people
  • Lacrimosa , a mighty fairy, banished to her cloud castle
  • Antimonia , the fairy of repugnance
  • Borax , her son
  • Bustorius , magician from Varasdin
  • Ajaxerle , Lacrimosen's cousin and magician from Donau-Eschingen
  • Zenobius , steward and confidante of the fairy Lacrimosa
  • Selima, Zulma , fairies from Turkey
  • Hymen
  • Cupid
  • The satisfaction
  • The youth
  • The old age
  • The envy, the hatred , milk brothers
  • Lira , the nymph of Carlsbad
  • Illi , mail carrier in the spirit realm
  • Tophan , valet of hatred
  • Nigowitz , a subservient spirit of hatred
  • a Triton, first and second fury , sound artist
  • a spiritual guard
  • a satyr
  • the morning, the evening, the night, the nonsense, the indolence
  • nine spirits as guardians of the magic ring
  • a genius of the night
  • Ghosts of the night
  • several wizards and fairies
  • a genius as a lantern boy
  • a servant of Bustorius
  • a servant of the fairy Lacrimosa
  • Fortunatus Wurzel , formerly a forest farmer, now a millionaire
  • Lottchen , his foster daughter
  • Lorenz , formerly a cowherd at Wurzel, now his first valet
  • Habakkuk , servant
  • Karl Schilf , a poor fisherman
  • Musensohn, Schmeichelfeld, Afterling , Wurzels drinking brothers
  • a locksmith
  • a carpenter
  • Several servants at root, journeymen, people

The girl from the fairy world or The Farmer as Millionaire is a romantic magical fairy tale with singing in three acts by the Austrian playwright Ferdinand Raimund . The premiere took place on November 10, 1826 in the theater in the Leopoldstadt .

content

The fairy Lacrimosa wants to marry her daughter Lottchen with the son of the fairy queen out of arrogance. This is why Lacrimosa takes her fairy power, banishes Lottchen to earth and only wants to lift the curse when the girl rejects all wealth and becomes the wife of a poor man. This has to take place before her 18th birthday. Lacrimosa hands her daughter over to the poor forest farmer Fortunatus Wurzel with the task of simply bringing her up and marrying her to a good man. But envy had cast an eye on Lacrimosa, which turned him off. In revenge, he ensures that Wurzel finds a great treasure. The farmer builds a palace for himself in the city, wants nothing more to do with Lottchen's connection with the fisherman Karl Schilf and finds a rich son-in-law.

Therese Krones as a youth, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber after Moritz von Schwind , around 1826

A few days before Lottchen's 18th birthday, Lacrimosa invited ghosts and magicians to her fairy palace and pleaded for help:

“For fourteen years he was true to his word; but for over a year I've been living in excruciating fear [...] therefore, in my greatest need, I have now had them gathered together, [...] ” (first act, third scene)

All spirits, but especially Ajaxerle and Bustorius promise this immediately and Ajaxerle is commissioned to travel to earth.

Lottchen complains about the harshness of Wurzels, who forbade poor Karl to deal with her. But through Ajaxerle's mediation, the two lovers meet and the magician plays the courtship at root. He rejects him and swears that he will only allow the connection until he looks so rotten and gray that he belongs on the Aschenmarkt. Then he throws Lottchen out angrily, but Lottchen finds refuge in satisfaction:

"You sit next to me on my moss-covered throne, and the most beautiful canopy, the serene sky, stretches over us." (Second act, third scene)
Ferdinand Raimund as an ash man with the ash crutch under his arm. Lithograph by Josef Kriehuber, around 1826 after Moritz von Schwind

While Wurzel celebrates with his drinking companions, the visit of a strange young gentleman is reported. It is the youth who appeared to terminate the friendship at Wurzel ( “Little Brothers Fine” , see below). As soon as she has left, night falls and a second guest arrives, old age. It scornfully draws attention to Wurzel that everything will now be different and that all the ailments of old age will take root:

"My dissolute cousin, the bad stomach, that will be the first to give you the honors, and my cousin, the gout, has already assured me that she cannot wait to press you to her soulful heart. " (Second act, ninth scene)

Root curses envy and his wealth, wishes himself back to his forest home and he is already standing in front of his half-ruined hut.

Now envy asks hatred to take over the further execution of the vengeance. Hatred lures Karl into a magic bowling alley, where the one who hits all nine receives a rich diamond ring, but the missing one is certain to die. Karl, who believes that wealth will pave the way for him to Lottchen's hand, dares the cone push and wins the ring.

He has had a magnificent palace built and is looking for Lottchen. This comes along with the satisfaction to get Karl to throw away the ominous ring. As an ash man , the roots come and get into conversation with the satisfaction he thinks is the cook. He has become someone else and has seen his arrogance as a rich man:

“Yes, I am poor, and I am also a fool! Yes, my cook, I did a nice cooking. It's over with me. " (Third act, eighth scene)

Karl meets Lottchen in the palace, wants to marry her and shower her with riches, but under a spell of satisfaction Lottchen faints immediately when she sees diamonds. Karl, who was still hesitating, throws the ring away for her sake, the power of hatred is broken, the fisherman is a poor man again, fulfilling the condition of the fairy saying. Lacrimosa, once again in possession of their ghost power, presents the bride and groom with a fisherman's estate and Wurzel has turned from an ash man back to a satisfied forest farmer:

"Alloh! Now I am back in my element! My beauty was in the displacement office, now I have it released. " (Third act, sixteenth scene)

Music (selection)

The allegorical figure of the youth says goodbye to Fortunatus Wurzel with the famous song “Brüderlein fein” . The melody probably did not come from the composer Joseph Drechsler, but from Ferdinand Raimund himself; Drechsler only orchestrated the melody.

Leo Fall wrote the music for the one-act folk play Little Brothers Fine, based on a libretto by Julius Wilhelm . The main character here is the composer Joseph Drechsler himself. The title of this work alludes to the famous song and the allegorical figure of the youth also appears. The work was premiered in Vienna in 1909.

→ See also the article on the “ Aschenlied ” from the magic fairy tale, the couplet is sung by Fortunatus Wurzel.

Factory history

The old Viennese Volkstheater , which had brought more and more parodies and satires to the stage at the beginning of the 19th century , was still associated with the traditional magic piece . In order to make a difference to the parodic magic game, Raimund called his third piece a "romantic original magic fairy tale with song", because magic fairy tales are fairy tales in which allegorical figures and also fairies or magicians intervene in the lives of the people.

It is noteworthy that not the first title, which refers to the spirit realm, but the second with reference to earthly reality later prevailed, which is a sign that the author's merits in the (partial) overcoming and humanization of the magical fairy tale had been correctly assessed by the viewer than by the author himself.

This piece is the first in which Raimund does not rely on templates, which he wants to express in the title with the word "original". He describes it as a magical fairy tale in which the human world became the actual place of action, where three dramatic strands intersect: Lacrimosa's redemption through the two lovers, plus the two educational or corrective actions of Wurzels and Karl. Here the author combines two of the traditional motifs of the Viennese folk theater, namely improvement and redemption from a curse. The fairy world is also seen by some literary historians as a reflection of the multi-ethnic Austrian state after the Congress of Vienna (1814/15) and before the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (1867).

Raimund's central theme is summarized in the sentence “Wealth does not offer satisfaction”, which is why he also allows personified satisfaction to appear. As an allegory of itself, it stands opposite the figure Wurzels as an allegory of transience, a synthesis of the Biedermeier worldview.

Raimund himself wrote the following very personal remark to Karl Ludwig Costenoble about his thoughts on the creation of the piece:

"And so 'The Farmer as Millionaire' came about, in which there are a lot of clumsy little things that I only added because I was afraid the audience would find him too serious."

Presumably he meant by the "clumsy little things" specifically the framing of the earthly plot with the fairy and ghost story that the audience is accustomed and loved.

The allegories and symbols that have become stage characters are a determining part of the action (in addition to satisfaction, youth, age, envy, hatred, the times of day, etc.). Raimund also used biographical memories: the fisherman recalls the profession, the Swabian Ajaxerle of the home of his ancestors on his mother's side, in Lottchen he probably erected a memorial to the secret helper of his love, Toni Wagner's sister Charlotte; even the farmer Wurzel is said to have been an acquaintance of the poet (see below under Later Interpretations ).

For the eighth performance on November 21, 1826, the theater ticket indicates the following cast: Raimund himself played Fortunatus Wurzel, Friedrich Josef Korntheuer played Bustorius and old age, Franz Tomaselli played Lorenz, Therese Krones the youth, Katharina Ennöckl the satisfaction.

As it happened again and again then, Raimund also had to struggle with unauthorized performances of his works; on January 15, 1830, he wrote to the actor and theater director Ludwig Ferdinand Pauli (1793–1841):

“I was also given my 'girl from the fairy world' at the Schaubühne in Leipzig , which is also under your direction , without the book and music of this magic game having been obtained from me. I therefore kindly ask you to kindly inform me how the same was obtained without paying for it. "

Contemporary reception

The contemporary theater critics attested to the author that with this work he had "opened a new way for folk poetry" .

Later interpretations

In Rudolf Fürst one can read that in his third piece Raimund allowed the introduction to the realm of the spirits to be more extensive, but also more clumsy, than in his previous works. This allegorical part combines lush imagination with not excessive clarity or logic, which, however, did not detract from the success of the audience. The core of the plot, however, the story of the rich farmer, means a poetic feat.

Kurt Kahl states that although Raimund made use of the baroque theater structure in the upper and human worlds, she tried to connect these levels more closely and thus "to achieve a kind of pseudo logic" . If in his second piece, The Diamond of the Ghost King , the possible fatherhood of Longimanus for Eduard is only hinted at, then Lacrimosa's motherhood for Lottchen is actually described in the girl from the fairy world . In Fortunatus Wurzel, the poet moves away from the buffoon in its various manifestations towards a character from contemporary reality; Ajax alder or Bostorius would rather correspond to this classic Hanswurst figure. Raimund had a real role model for the root, namely a rich landowner from Berndorf named Postiasi.

Franz Hadamowsky recalls that this work was written after Raimund's severe nervous disease (June to September 1825). It was a great step forward, for the first time he had invented an action that was close to life, without, however, completely leaving the field of magic. And for the first time, the basis is an independent, thoroughly worked out plan.

In Hein / Mayer is noted that the word in the subtitle means "fantastic" or "atmospheric" have "romantic". The double title - actually a legacy from the Jesuit theater - shows the two interconnected locations and areas of the play and thus overcomes the traditional dichotomy of the magical fairy tale - the world of spirits and human beings - at least partially.

Modern actors (excerpt)

Many famous actors appeared in the roles of this work:

In 1996 Karl-Ernst Herrmann created the sets for the play at the Wiener Festwochen

literature

  • Rudolf Fürst (Ed.): Raimund's works. First part. German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.
  • Franz Hadamowsky (ed.): Ferdinand Raimund, works in two volumes, volumes I and II, 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

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. Pp. 111-112.
  2. ↑ In Raimund's time, the ash man collected ash residues in households and inns on his own account; at the Aschenmarkt (in Vienna there was none at the time) he sold them as the basic material for potash production (only wood ash at that time)
  3. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. P. 130.
  4. Ash crutch = wooden tool for shearing the stove
  5. ↑ to do the honors = to pay his respects, come to visit
  6. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. P. 140.
  7. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. P. 152.
  8. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. P. 160.
  9. ^ Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund , pp. 48–49.
  10. ^ Günter Holtz: Ferdinand Raimund - the beloved hypochondriac. His life, his work. Peter Lang, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-6313-9162-5 .
  11. Frank Schaumann: Shape and function of the myth in Ferdinand Raimund's stage works. Bergland-Verlag, Vienna 1970.
  12. a b c Hein / Meyer: Ferdinand Raimund, pp. 39-40.
  13. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. S, XLI.
  14. a b Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, Volume I , pp. 96-97.
  15. Facsimile of the theater ticket in: Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, Volume I , pp. 96–97.
  16. ^ Hadamowsky: Ferdinand Raimund, Volume II , p. 496.
  17. ^ Prince: Raimund's works. First part. S, XLI, XLIV.
  18. ^ Kahl: Ferdinand Raimund , pp. 21, 48, 50.