The snob
| Data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | The snob |
| Genus: | comedy |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Carl Sternheim |
| Publishing year: | 1914 |
| Premiere: | February 2, 1914 |
| Place of premiere: | Deutsches Theater Berlin (Director: Max Reinhardt ) |
| people | |
|
|
The Snob is a comedy in three acts of the cycle from the bourgeois heroic life of Carl Sternheim . It follows as the second part of the mask trilogy on Die Hose . The third part follows in 1913 . The play was premiered in 1914 under the direction of Max Reinhardt .
action
Sternheim records the planned, ruthless ascent of a newly rich citizen in Wilhelmine society. With the help of his choppy, telegram-like style, he gives the dialogues staccato-like speeds.
The focus of the piece is Christian Maske (the son of the protagonist Theobald Mask out of his pants and his wife Luise). After economic advancement, he wants to follow social. He breaks with his past and restructures his life. He pays Sybille Hull, who supported him and taught him manners, and sends her away. In the same way, the parents are paid for the services provided to him in the first 16 years of his life and are sent to Zurich . He makes the bankrupt Count Palen a friend and marries his daughter Marianne. But the now widowed father also appears at the wedding. Christian sees himself threatened by the presence of the simple father, who attracts the Count's interest because the father initially disapproves of the wedding because he realizes that both belong to different classes. But the impending disaster does not materialize; the father finds satisfaction in the son's successful career. As the last prank for the time being, Christian accuses his mother of adultery, in order to be able to appear as the illegitimate son of a Parisian viscount and thus as a descendant of a French nobleman and finally to step out of the shadow of bourgeois origin.
Christian lives for his career. It should carry him out of the middle class and into the aristocracy . He only cultivates human relationships in order to benefit from them. But people are more complicated than accounting, which he notices when his father comes to the wedding.
Film adaptations
- 1986: The Snob (studio recording)
literature
- Hermann Korte: Sternheim, Carl: Comedies . In: Kindler's Literature Lexicon in 18 volumes . 3rd, completely revised edition. Munich 2009 (with further evidence).
Web links
- Figure lexicon for The Snob by Eckhard Fischer in the portal Literaturlexikon online