The beaver fur

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Publisher's cover of the first print

The beaver fur (with the subtitle: A thief comedy) is a socio- critical drama created between 1892 and 1893 and at the same time a milieu study by Gerhart Hauptmann (1862–1946). The work is still counted as part of the literary epoch of naturalism .

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The play takes place “somewhere around Berlin . Time: Septennat fight towards the end of the eighties [19th century] ”. Most of the characters speak Berlin dialect .

Mother Wolffen is a resolute laundress, married to the clumsy and fearful ship's carpenter Julius Wolff. In the opening scene she comes home with a poached roebuck and unexpectedly meets her daughter Leontine, who has escaped from her position with the rich reindeer Krüger. She was supposed to move a pile of wood into the stable in the late evening hours. Mother Wolffen, who always brings out righteousness, wants to send back her disobedient, not overly hardworking daughter. However, when she learns that they are “nice dry clubs”, she allows Leontine to stay for one night. Mother Wolffen wants to steal the wood that has not yet been stored in this way overnight.

While mother Wolffen sells the roebuck allegedly found to Spree skipper Wulkow, her youngest daughter Adelheid tells that Mrs. Krüger recently gave her husband a valuable beaver fur . When Wulkow heard this, he declared that he would easily pay sixty thalers for such a fur. With this sum, however, Mother Wolffen could settle most of her debts. She secretly decides to get the fur in question to sell to Wulkow.

Wood and beaver fur are stolen. Kruger filed a complaint. The head of office of Wehrhahn only feels bothered by this. As an official of the Wilhelmine state, he is primarily interested in tracking down "dark existences, politically ostracized, elements hostile to the Reich and the king". So he seeks to meet the private scholar Dr. To have Fleischer arrested on charges of lese majesty because he subscribes to about twenty different newspapers and regularly receives free-spirited writers.

Since the head of the office, Wehrhahn, handled Krüger's complaint slowly, Krüger called again. This time mother Wolffen is also present. The result is a grotesque, parodic negotiation that comes to nothing: Mother Wolffen can cleverly avert any suspicion. The thefts are not solved.

Naturalistic influences

Mother Wolffen is the most important character in the play. She knows how to guide the people she comes into contact with and how to get what she wants from them. She fights against her poor circumstances, which is atypical for naturalistic dramas in which the hero usually obeys the laws of his social environment as if paralyzed. It is typical of naturalism , however, that social reality is reproduced directly and unadorned. This also applies to the beaver fur . Characteristic for its design are the accuracy of the milieu description and the use of the "language of life", everyday language with all the tingings of dialect, jargon and colloquial language. The person who is determined by the milieu is depicted (Ms. Wolff tries to get out of this milieu, however).

Autobiographical elements / role models

Hauptmann let personal things flow into the figures of his beaver fur and used people he knew from the time of Erkner as models. In 1937 he explained in the introductory words to the "Biberfurz" film : "I got to know all the characters of the 'Beaverfur' in Erkner."

Thus Hauptmann, who was spied on during his stay in Erkner - because of social democratic inclinations - puts himself in the writer Dr. Fleischer. The model for Wolffen's mother was the attendant Marie Heinze (1846–1935), who worked in the Hauptmann's household during the time in Erkner.

The figure of Wehrhahn's head of office also comes from Hauptmann's area of ​​experience. The public rejection of the " weavers " by the conservative representatives of the empire tempted him to expose a typical representative of this regime with the inflated head of office. The specific role model for the comedy figure is the Erkner headmaster and registrar Oscar von Busse (1844–1908), with whom the captain had some unpleasant encounters. In the autobiographical book The Adventure of My Youth , Hauptmann characterizes the head of the Erkner administration as "political hotspur who smelled elements dangerous to the state everywhere".

In Reindeer Krüger the author traces his landlord Nicolaus Lassen (1816–97); however, a fur had not been stolen from him, but his son-in-law, the teacher Julius Ashelm.

First performance and criticism

The premiere of the beaver fur took place on September 21, 1893 in the Deutsches Theater Berlin, with Else Lehmann and Georg Engels in the leading roles. The open ending surprised the audience so much that they just sat there in anticipation of a dissolving ending.

Otto Neumann-Hofer wrote in a review of the Berlin premiere that the curtain after the fourth and last act "beheaded the intrigue as if with a sharp sword"; And he described the reaction of the premiere audience as follows: “The audience doesn't put up with that. It is there like the hungry animal looking for its prey. If you tear it away from his mouth, it gets wild. And so the audience went wild and hissed out the most beautiful German farce that was offered to them. ”( Berliner Tageblatt , September 22, 1893)

Contemporary criticism accused Hauptmann of poor composition in his piece and that with the open ending he had avoided the critical consequences of his piece. More recent criticisms, however, believe that the open ending emphasizes the narrow-mindedness of those who appear to be the pillars of the ruling society, since the head of office himself was too narrow-minded to approach the thefts with open eyes, and therefore not be cleared up. The critics complained about the lack of “poetic justice”. They primarily thought of Ms. Wolff, who left the play unconverted and unpunished, but less of Wehrhahn's chief officer, who grossly violated his official duties and persecuted the innocent citizen.

The play has developed into Hauptmann's most successful comedy on stage since it was staged by the German Volkstheater in Vienna in 1897. The poets Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Arthur Schnitzler, among others, expressed their enthusiasm for this performance (see below).

reception

  • “Small painting without any action of importance, which is only boring to such an extent. […] It is hardly to be expected that the dreary work will see several performances. ”(Judgment of the Berlin censorship authority, March 4, 1893)
  • Arthur Schnitzler : “You cannot imagine how delighted I was with the 'beaver fur'. It's nice to see a big guy so cheeky and funny. ”(Letter to Otto Brahm , April 5, 1897)
  • Hugo von Hofmannsthal : "Yesterday I saw the 'Biberpelz' [in Vienna] without ever having read it: that's good through and through, in a decent sense witty." (In a letter to Otto Brahm, April 10, 1897 )
  • Reinhold Schneider : “The 'beaver fur' is, as a glorification of the thief and a mockery of the judiciary, destructively revolutionary; the piece documents a strange human and artistic weakness of the great designer, which, at the same level, can hardly be found again. "(R. Schneider: Winter in Wien. Freiburg i. Br. 1958, p. 88)

Film adaptations

The beaver fur (1928)

Hauptmann's play was first filmed in 1928 as a silent film . Lucie Höflich played Wolffen's mother, directed by Erich Schönfelder .

The beaver fur (1937)

A second film was made in 1937 under the direction of Jürgen von Alten . The German premiere took place on December 3, 1937. The film, based on the script by Georg C. Klaren , largely followed the original. Actors included Heinrich George as Baron von Wehrhahn, Ida Wüst as Frau Auguste Wolff, Rotraut Richter as Adelheid, Sabine Peters as Leontine, Heinz von Cleve as Dr. Fleischer, Ernst Waldow as Motes, Ewald Wenck as Julius Wolff, Eduard Wenck as Reindeer Krüger, Blandine Ebinger as Mrs. Krüger, Albert Florath as Schiffer Wulkow and Hilde Seipp as singer.

The beaver fur (1949)

The third film was made in 1949 under the direction of Erich Engel . The script was written by Robert Adolf Stemmle .

The beaver fur (1962)

In 1962 the play was filmed again for German television . John Olden wrote the script and directed. The main role was played by Olden's wife Inge Meysel , who, along with Edith Schultze-Westrum , who often played this role on stage, was one of the mother's best actresses. In the other roles played u. a .: Willi Rose as Julius Wolff, Konrad Georg as Motes, Ernst Schröder as von Wehrhahn, Maria Körber as Leontine, Paul Edwin Roth as Doctor Fleischer and Fritz Wagner as Reindeer Krüger.

The beaver fur (1975)

A further adaptation was created in 1975 under the direction of Franz Peter Wirth .

In 1983, the German TV radio of the GDR showed a theater version of the Volksbühne Berlin directed by Helmut Straßburger and Ernstgeorg Hering with Gabriele Gysi , Günter Junghans , Ursula Karusseit , Klaus Mertens , Hartmut Puls , Hans Teuscher , Harald Warmbrunn , Daniel Loof and Marianne Wünscher

Radio plays

Edits

An arrangement by the Berlin ensemble , directed by Bertolt Brecht , which merged the two Hauptmann dramas The Beaver Fur and The Red Rooster into a six-act act of Beaver Fur and Red Rooster , premiered on March 24, 1951 in the Kammerspiele of the German Theater in Berlin . On April 15, 1951, Hauptmann's widow Margarete prohibited further performances of this version. Parts were published in 1952; A complete print took place in 1992 in the large annotated Berlin and Frankfurt editions of Brecht's works .

An arrangement by Jan Liedtke and Philippe Besson , which combines beaver fur and red rooster under the title Red Rooster in Beaver fur , premiered on January 19, 2014 in the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin. Directed by Philippe Besson, the main roles were Katharina Thalbach , Pierre Besson , Anna Thalbach , Nellie Thalbach , Roland Kuchenbuch, Sebastian Achilles, Jörg Seyer and Ronny Miersch.

literature

expenditure

  • The beaver fur. A thief comedy. Paperback edition from Ullstein.
  • The beaver fur. A thief comedy. Annotated edition. Edited by Werner Bellmann . Epilogue: Stephan Kraft. Reclam, Stuttgart 2017 (UB 19165).

Research literature

  • Andrea Bartl: Naturalistic tragic comedies: Gerhart Hauptmann's “The Beaver Fur” and “The Rats”. In: AB: The German-language comedy. Metamorphoses of the Harlequin. Stuttgart 2009, pp. 167-185.
  • Werner Bellmann: Gerhart Hauptmann, "The Beaver Fur". Explanations and documents . Stuttgart 1978. - Revised and supplemented edition, Stuttgart 2006.
  • Stephan Kraft: At the end of the comedy. A theoretical story of the happy ending . Göttingen 2011. [On the beaver fur : pp. 326–343.]
  • Heike Mück: Lesson unit comedy. Gerhart Hauptmann's "The Beaver Fur". An aesthetic research approach. Stuttgart 1981.
  • Gert Oberembt: "The beaver fur". A naturalistic comedy. Paderborn 1987.
  • Roger Paulin: Captain, "The Beaver Fur". In: Landmarks in German Comedy. Edited by Peter Hutchinson. Oxford [et al.] 2006, pp. 119-132.
  • Hans Joachim Schrimpf: The unrivaled social: the comedies of Gerhart Hauptmann “The beaver fur” and “The red rooster”. In: The German comedy. Edited by Hans Steffen. 2. Tl. Göttingen 1969, pp. 25-60.
  • Oskar Seidlin: Original myth “Somewhere around Berlin”. About Gerhart Hauptmann's double drama Mother Wolffen . In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 43 (1969) pp. 126–146.
  • Wolfgang Trautwein : Gerhart Hauptmann: "The beaver fur". In: Dramas of Naturalism. Interpretations. Stuttgart 1988, pp. 179-212.

Web links

Wikiversity: Cover and title page of the first edition  - course materials

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Centenar edition, XI, 1157.
  2. ^ Centenar edition, VII, 1044.