Poor Heinrich (drama)

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Poor Heinrich (1902)

Poor Heinrich - A German Sage is a drama by the German poet Gerhart Hauptmann . The premiere took place on November 29, 1902 at the Vienna Burgtheater . The drama is an adaptation of the verse epic The poor Heinrich von Hartmann von Aue and can be assigned to the neo-romanticism .

action

The drama , which is divided into five acts , tells the story of the nobleman Heinrich von Aue, who withdraws from his upscale life due to an illness and plans to die. First, however, he returns to a farm where the farm Gottfried, his wife Brigitte and their daughter Ottegebe live. He had already been there a few years ago and, for a joke, called Ottegebe my little husband . Despite his leper , the girl is very devoted to the man. When Heinrich leaves one day to die in the forest, Ottegebe falls into a deep depression and no longer eats or speaks. Her father and Father Benedikt, who knew the girl to be very religious, ask Heinrich for help, as they fear that the girl will increasingly fall into Satan's hands. Heinrich reacts dismissively, however. Thereupon Father Benedikt takes Ottegebe to himself. When Heinrich later intrudes into the monastery, there is a dispute with the father. Ottegebe joins them and disappears with Heinrich. She plans to go to a Salern doctor who can relieve Heinrich of his suffering if a virgin of marriageable age gives her life for him. Finally they both return to the castle in Aue. Heinrich crowns Ottegebe and they are married by Father Benedikt. After a kiss and Ottegeebe's sentence: “Now I'm going to die the sweet death!” He also puts on the crown.

Emergence

Hauptmann developed the drama after many drafts and redesigns between 1897 and 1902. At this time, the author was in a life crisis because he had separated from his wife Marie Hauptmann in the mid-1890s and had since lived with his new partner Margarethe Marschalk, whom he had Married in 1904. Hauptmann's dramas of this era are characterized by a particularly dark design. Poor Heinrich forms the main work alongside Fuhrmann Henschel (1898), Michael Kramer (1900) and Rose Bernd (1903).

Differences to the original by Hartmann von Aue

Some differences emerge from the adaptation of Hartmann von Aue's medieval text and its transformation into dramatic form. This is how Hauptmann integrates the author of the epic, Hartmann von Aue, into the plot, although Hartmann von der Aue calls him . He is also a knight like Heinrich and a good friend of the leper.

Another difference is that in Hartmann von Aue's work, no one except Heinrich had a name. Hauptmann, on the other hand, gave the secondary characters names and thus identity.

In addition, Hauptmann changed the time in which the plot takes place. By moving to the time of the Crusades , Hauptmann makes him a confidante of Emperor Frederick II and gives him a brilliant prehistory. After the successes of the Crusades, Heinrich fell into a leper. In the medieval original by Hartmann von Aue, this action time was not possible, as von Aue died in 1220, but the said crusade did not begin until 1228.

reception

Burgtheater around 1900

The drama The poor Heinrich is an adaptation of the medieval verse epic The poor Heinrich von Hartmann von Aue. This was taken up several times. It was the subject of numerous translations and adaptations, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, as it was one of the best-known and most popular German poems of the Middle Ages, alongside Walther von der Vogelweide , the Nibelungen saga and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Grail myth Parzival .

The drama Poor Heinrich was premiered on November 29, 1902 at the Burgtheater in Vienna . With this drama, Hauptmann was again in the audience's favor for the first time after several rather unsuccessful plays. However, the recipients of the poor Heinrich were divided. The naturalists , whose pioneer Hauptmann had been with his naturalistic dramas at the end of the 19th century, accused Hauptmann of betraying his roots, since the drama no longer had the oppositional position of earlier works. Instead, Captain developed with Poor Henry a poet for Wilhelmine ownership and more towards educated middle class . In the future, too, his works should contain little critical. He met "an audience, which no longer current at the ungenehm-threatening theming and problematisation action was situated expectations." 1905 he was u. a. The Grillparzer Prize awarded for the third time for Poor Heinrich .

Radio plays

literature

  • Gerhart Hauptmann: Poor Heinrich , Frankfurt a. M. 1961 ISBN 3-15-008642-6
  • Ursula Rautenberg (ed.): Hartmann von Aue, Der arme Heinrich , Stuttgart 1987
  • Reinhild Schwede: Wilhelmine Neo-Romanticism - Escape or Refuge? , Frankfurt a. M. 1987

swell

  1. ^ ANNO, Neue Freie Presse, 1902-11-29, page 17. Retrieved on September 27, 2019 .
  2. ^ Fritz Martini: Epilogue , in: Gerhart Hauptmann: Der arme Heinrich , Frankfurt a. M. 1961, p. 94
  3. ↑ Reinhild Schwede: Wilhelmine Neo-Romanticism - Escape or Refuge? , Frankfurt a. M. 1987, p. 93