The chalk circle (Klabund)
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| Original title: | The chalk circle |
| Genus: | Play |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Klabund |
| Literary source: | The lime line ( Chinese 灰 闌 記 , Pinyin Huīlán Jì ) by Li Qianfu ( Chinese 李 潛夫 , Pinyin Lǐ Qiánfū ), a Zaju (Chinese chant ) from the 14th century. |
| Premiere: | January 2, 1925 |
| Place of premiere: | City Theater , Meissen |
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The chalk circle is a fairy tale game by Klabund . The premiere took place on January 2, 1925 in the city theater in Meißen , in which Carola Neher , Klabund's future wife, played the role of Hai-tang. The next day the premiere took place in Frankfurt a. M. and on October 20, 1925 at the Deutsches Theater Berlin with Elisabeth Bergner as Hai-tang.
action
The play takes place at the time of some Chinese empire:
The tax farmer Ma drove the silkworm farmer Tschang to his death by his relentless demands. The Tschang family is ruined, and so the mother sells her beautiful daughter Hai-tang to a cathouse. There, Prince Pao falls in love with the beautiful Hai-tang and wants to buy her out, but he is outbid by Ma, who takes Hai-tang as his second wife. When she gives birth to a child, the childless first wife Yü-pei becomes jealous and fears that her husband will abandon her and lose everything. She poisons Ma without further ado and pretends to be the real mother of the child. She suspects her husband's murder of the defenseless Hai-tang, who is sentenced to death by the corrupt judge Tschu-Tschu. Hai-tang's brother, the righteous Chang-ling, is also convicted of subversive activities.
But then fate turns: Prince Pao has meanwhile become emperor and wants to reform the empire. He calls all those sentenced to death and their judges to the capital. The Hai-tang case is being renegotiated before the emperor. Pao draws a chalk circle on the floor and ask the two women to pull the child out of the circle. Yü-Pei brutally pulls the child towards him, while Hai-tang lets it go so as not to hurt him. Then the emperor realizes who the real mother is. The spouse murder can also be solved. Yü-Pei and the corrupt judge Tschu-Tschu are supposed to be convicted by Hai-Tang, but she releases them. Who can judge others when he is not without guilt himself?
Finally, the emperor confesses that he visited her at night in the brothel and made her happy when Hai-tang was sleeping. She herself had always believed that she had only dreamed this night of love. The child, it turns out, is the emperor's son, and Hai-tang becomes Pao's wife and empress.
reception
The piece was extremely well received by the audience. 40 stages wanted to perform the chalk circle. For Klabund the play was a first great success as a playwright, v. a. also in financial terms.
The famous theater critic Alfred Kerr found derisive words for the Berlin premiere of Klabund's chalk circle , his protégé:
“Nice sadness, real pain and external stimulus for the sweet-sweet-sweet destalt of the poor little Hai-tang, who is finally rewarded, but before that, a kiss. (...) Everything innocent: so umsungen-umklungen; Umtöntumsehn ... and reconciled on the Sluss. (...) At Klabund, everything is sweeter. The king (...) is the prince who visited Hai-tang in the joy house, robbed him of the first, not without consequences, smack: the child was from - him. She comes to the throne as his Tönisin. "
The piece was set to music twice as an opera: by Alexander von Zemlinsky (world premiere in 1933 in Zurich ) and by Rudolf Mors (world premiere in 1983 in Bielefeld ). Bertolt Brecht used it as a template for his piece from the Caucasian chalk circle .
expenditure
- Klabund: "Works in eight volumes". In collaboration with Ralf Georg Bogner, Joachim Grage and Julian Paulus, edited by Christian v. Carpenter. Heidelberg: Elfenbein Verlag, 1999–2003. ISBN 978-3-932245-20-6 . Volume 6: "Dramas and Adaptations". 2 volumes, ISBN 978-3-932245-16-9
- Klabund: Complete Works . Amsterdam u. a .: Rodopi u. a. 1998 ff.
Secondary literature
- Kerr, Alfred: “This is the case - theater reviews 1919–1933 and in exile”. Günther Rühle (ed.). Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2001.
- To Klabund and Carola Neher
- Tita Gaehme : Following the dream: the life of actress Carola Neher and her love for Klabund . Cologne: Dittrich 1996.
- Guido von Kaulla : “And burn in his heart”. The actress Carola Neher and Klabund . Freiburg im Br. 1984.
- Matthias Wegner: Klabund and Carola Neher. A story of love and death. Reinbek 1998.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kerr, Alfred: "This is the case - theater reviews 1919-1933 and in exile". Günther Rühle (ed.). Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2001. S. 265f; see digitized version of the criticism of October 21, 1925 in the Berliner Tageblatt .