The son (drama)
The Son is a five-act drama by Walter Hasenclever . It is considered his most important drama and one of the most important dramas of expressionism . The piece traces the inner maturation of an adolescent and addresses a generation conflict. This begins as a private confrontation between father and son and develops in the course of the play into a social conflict that erupts in a revolutionary “fight against the fathers”. At the end the piece returns to the private level.
action
I. act
The son tells his tutor that he did not pass the Matura . He doesn't want to tell his father himself and asks him to send him a telegram. In their conversation, the son's desperate situation comes to light: he feels unloved by the overstrict father and not taken seriously. Almost all pleasure is forbidden to him. The head of house tries to calm him down and says goodbye, assuming that he will now be released by his father.
The son prepares to commit suicide, but then shrinks from it. A friend visits him. The son feels joy in existence again, while the friend is disappointed in life: He believes that he has already experienced everything and that he can no longer feel any real joy in anything. The young lady (the son's governess ) comes in to announce dinner and leaves. The friend raves about the young lady, whereupon the son seems to notice her beauty for the first time.
The friend leaves and the young lady comes back with dinner. She is assigned by the father to report to him daily about the behavior of the son and not to let the son out of the house in the evening. But she feels sorry for her son and lets herself be persuaded to give him the house key. Both get closer, he kisses her, but she quickly turns away.
II. Act
The next evening the young lady confesses to the son that she feels drawn to him. He asks her to come to him at night, which she promises him. He wants to break away from his father and flee with her. She doesn't want to go with him because she doesn't trust his love and believes that he must take the first steps into his freedom alone.
The father comes and reproaches the son for his high school diploma. He announces that he will be even stricter and forbid his books and any other distraction. The son tries to talk to the father at eye level, but the father refuses. Since the son is 20 years old and therefore not yet of legal age, he is at the mercy of the father. He asks his father to take him away from school, as he sees it as a mindless ordeal. He offers the father an equal friendship as a substitute for the father-son relationship. A slap from the father makes the son feel humiliated, but also morally superior. Because of the son's pathetic speeches about freedom and the triumph of youth, the father, who is a doctor by profession, locks him in his room and says he is talking with a fever.
The friend comes through the window, since he was turned away at the front door, and tells the son that his escape has been prepared: helpers have hidden themselves in the garden with revolvers. After he has disappeared again, the young lady comes. The son tells her about his planned escape and flees out the window.
III. act
The friend takes the son to a meeting of a secret society, the "Club for the Preservation of Joy". Before they arrive, Cherubim and Tuchmeyer, two club members, talk about the upcoming evening, for which Cherubim has prepared a speech intended to incite the audience to revolt against the fathers and to propagate an unbridled hedonism . Prince Scheitel, the son of the reigning monarch, enters. He declares his solidarity with the planned revolt, but does not want to take part in it himself, because his origins prevent him from doing so.
When the friend enters, a dispute develops between him and the Cherubim over an ideological question and about who is allowed to express his opinion in a speech. The friend forces him to compromise: a third person should talk. He brings this third person into the room; it is the spiritually completely rapt son. As his friend commands him, he should speak to the crowd gathered in the hall about his suffering. He goes into the hall, the other four stay outside and listen. The son calls for the revolution of the sons against the fathers, the crowd is completely enthusiastic and in an uproar.
IV. Act
The son wakes up in a hotel room with Adrienne, a prostitute. He is completely inexperienced sexually and asks her to continue "teaching" him. After she leaves, the friend enters. He advises him not to stay at Adrienne, but to live up to his responsibility for the uprising that has been started. He admits to having manipulated the son because he considered him a suitable rebel. He now persuades him to put his words into action and shoot his own father. The friend himself informed the father of the son's whereabouts, the police are already on their way; so he has little time to think about it. The son collapses at the thought of parricide, but then decides to do so.
Policemen come in, a commissioner ties the son's hands and leads him away. Since his decision has been made, he does not resist. The friend sees his task in the world over and wants to kill himself with poison.
V. act
In the father's room: The inspector, who has sons himself, tries to convince the father to come to an agreement on good terms with the son. The Commissioner wants to make it clear to him that he sees his son as a gift: Whatever he does, he cannot be hated forever. The father insists on his position of power; he considers every means but “extreme severity” to have failed. Since the son does not recognize the power of the father, the father feels dishonored and wants to cast the son out.
The inspector goes and sends the son in. This is the first time he confronts his father with self-confidence, and even looks down at him. He demands "accountability" for the "crimes" committed against him and demands his freedom. He no longer wants friendship with him, but a final break. He tells him about the nightly meeting and about the uprising that is soon to reach his father and disempower him. The father says that he no longer sees him as his son and that he never wants to see him again. Until he comes of age, he is to be placed in an institution so that society is protected from him. Since the son seems ready to get there by any means, the father gets scared and wants to call the police by phone. The son threatens him with a revolver that he had almost drawn several times before. After a brief moment of stiffening, the father is “moved by the blow”: he falls to the ground and dies.
The young lady comes and realizes what has happened. She wants to stay with him now; but he realizes that he has moved too far away from her inside and can and must remain alone.
people
Except for the three members of the “Club for the Preservation of Joy” and the prostitute Adrienne, no figure bears a name. Hasenclever was interested in representative figures who depict general events, not the fates of individuals.
The son
Since the son never enjoyed any freedom and grew up very isolated, he is very dependent and naive. From the beginning he feels an urge for freedom and enjoyment of life. At first, however, he is paralyzed by self-doubt, so that he cannot muster the energy to break out of the circumstances. Only in the further course of the play, especially through the awakened love for the young lady, the conversations with the boyfriend and the speech in the club, do he develop courage, pride and independence.
The boyfriend
The friend is two years older than the son. His attitude towards life ranges from cynical to morbid. He also believes he recognizes the need for a revolution, but feels himself too weak, burned out, to play a leading role in it. In the fourth act he proves to be a skilled tactician and seducer; this shows his great influence on the son.
The father
The father is a tenacious man of principles. What counts for him are performance, the fulfillment of duties, responsibility, loyalty and honor. Among other things, he gives the reason for the rejection of the son that he has soiled his name. He never lets himself be guided by personal feelings, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have any: When he thinks his son is sick, he also shows pity. He would like to keep the son away from all "dangerous", "immoral" etc. What can be seen as excessive caring at first turns out to be mere tyranny later.
Miss
She is the rationally thinking person in the father's house and at the same time assumes the role of mother. The young lady tries to appease the son and keep him from his extreme plans. Nevertheless, she basically shows understanding for his situation and takes on the role of mediator between father and son.
Minor characters
The tutor only appears in the first act and is only used to expose the father-son conflict. Through him, the son has a contact person to whom he can reveal his emotional situation. He has sympathy for the son and tries to warn and advise him.
The commissioner is also the father of a son. With him, Hasenclever designs a counter-model to his father: He relies on understanding and fatherly love in raising children. Through his professional experience with criminals, he warns the father not to throw the son into the wrong milieu by repudiation.
Adrienne has a pragmatic, rather simple nature and is not even able to follow the son's thoughts. The son is intrigued by their sexual experience; she, however, calls him "little one" and "Bubi".
Cherubim , apparently also motivated by vanity, wants to place himself at the ideological head of the club with his speech. He represents an unbridled enjoyment of life and an anti-bourgeois, anti-moral way of life. His ideology also shows Nietzsche echoes. He is of a fiery nature and represents the cause of the club with a feigned zeal. During an argument with his friend, he initially gets enraged, but surrenders in the face of his coolly played out superiority.
Herr von Tuchmeyer is mainly respected in the club because of his money, but also represents its positions ideologically.
Prince Scheitel is the monarch's son, who is not yet of age, and vacillates between revolutionary zeal (he climbs on a table and sings the Marseillaise ) and fear for the privileges of his descendants.
structure
The external plot of the drama offers only limited access to an understanding of the drama. It is rather the inner tensions of the protagonist that are at the center of the work; The entire dramatic plot is geared towards their development. The others are ultimately only of interest in their relationship with the son.
The first act serves as an exposition: through conversations with the tutor, the friend and the young lady, as well as through the son's monologue , the viewer learns the internal and external situation. A threatening tension is built up around the father, as there is a lot of talk about him, but he himself has not yet appeared.
This desperate situation for the son comes to a head in the second act: The young lady does not dream his dreams, the father declares him insane. This means that the friend's attempts to persuade him to flee fall on fertile ground. The son is torn from his inability to act and forced to make decisions.
Through the III. Act, the generation conflict is transferred from the micro level (father - son) to the macro level (young generation - older generation). The son is cheered, which strengthens him and gives him self-confidence. The visit to a whore in Act IV represents a further stage of development and experience for the son. At the end of this act - again through the influence of the friend - there is the final radicalization: the son's decision to commit patricide .
Through the III. In the process of maturation passed through Act IV and IV, the son has become a different one. This can be seen in Act V, which in some places is a mirror image of Act II. Scene V / 2 contrasts scene II / 2: In both father and son face each other, but the balance of power has been reversed, as have the characters' feelings. The father now feels the fear and helplessness of the son from the second act, and the son feels the power and self-confidence of the father from the second act. This is achieved through external actions such as locking the room (in II / 2 by the father , in V / 2 by the son) even more clearly. These two scenes represent the key scenes for the settlement of the thematized generation problem.
There is a similar contrast between II / 1 and V / 3: both scenes deal with the future of the relationship between son and young lady. In the beginning, the young lady takes the lead in this relationship. At the end of the drama, however, the son has grown up, goes his own way, and leaves the young lady behind. Here, too, a stage direction for the external action makes the internal change evident: She kneels in front of him as he does in the second act.
language
Most of the drama is in a very upscale linguistic style. Especially the passages of the Son are melodramatic charged and convey a particular depth of feeling. Some sentences are reminiscent of the Old Testament in their prophetic style . The son's rebellious speeches have slight echoes of the young Schiller , especially Karl Moor from The Robbers .
Hasenclever treats his characters and their ideas with a slight irony . This applies to the exaltation and naivety of the son as well as to the vague, half-baked ideas of the club members, which are presented with all the more vehemence.
Scenes I / 2, I / 7, II / 6 and V / 3 are written in verse, in rhyming five-part iambi ; in scene II / 6 with male cadence , in the other scenes with alternating male and female cadence. Here the language is particularly emphatic; the expression of feeling is more important than the progress of the action. The first two are monologues by the son, II / 6 is a monologue by the Fräuleins and V / 3 is a dialogue between the two, which seals their separation and closes the piece.
Creation and first productions
Hasenclever wrote the drama in Leipzig and Heyst sur Mer (Belgium) in 1913/14 . He first published it in the Leipzig magazine Die Weisse Blätter in the April, May and June 1914 editions. The first book printing followed in the same year by the Kurt Wolff Verlag in Leipzig.
Hasenclever had sent the son's monologue at the end of the first act to his friend Paul Zech a year earlier for publication in his magazine Das neue Pathos . It was published on August 12, 1913 in No. 3/4 of this journal on page 59. (Alfred Huebner)
The first performance took place on September 30, 1916 in the Kammerspiele of the German Theater in Prague. Directed by Hans Demetz. A performance followed on October 8, 1916 in the Albert Theater in Dresden , directed by Adolf Edgar Licho . For reasons of censorship it was a matinee in front of invited guests.
The first production that did justice to the expressionist character of the play was that by Richard Weichert, which premiered at the Hof- und Nationaltheater Mannheim on January 18, 1918. Weichert relied on strict stylization, renouncing anything pleasing and decorative, and lighting control that was exclusively focused on the son himself. All other figures were just “shadowy” existences; could be understood as reflections of the son's inwardness. Hasenclever attended this production and was very impressed by it.
source
- Walter Hasenclever: The son. A drama in five acts. Nachw. V. Michael Schulz. Stuttgart: Reclam 1994, ISBN 3-15-008978-6