The new Menoza

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Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz

The new Menoza or story of the Cumban prince Tandi is a comedy by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz . Written in 1773, it was published anonymously by Weygand in Leipzig in 1774. Goethe had arranged the printing.

title

The Dane Erik Pontoppidan the Younger published in 1742 the novel Menoza, an Asiatic Prince who pulled the world around looking for Christians (German 1754).

content

The play is mostly in and around Naumburg , but also in Dresden and Leipzig.

Captain von Biederling has a new good friend visiting his home in Naumburg - Count Cameleon. To the advantage of the captain, both want to realize an "economic project". The count is not a comfortable guest. He is on the run because he shot another count and is currently hiding with the Biederlings. A Calmucken prince named Tandi, passing through during a European tour, also stops in Naumburg. When the captain announced to his wife that he was also expecting his old friend von Zopf from Trieste , Frau von Biederling protested. It was precisely this one from Zopf, who was to blame for her son's death, that she was extremely unwelcome. Herr von Biederling, the authoritarian, grumpy officer, does not accept the objections of the rebellious woman during the violent marital dispute.

Wilhelmine, the daughter of the house, suddenly has two admirers who ask for her hand - the count and the prince. Which one should she choose? Both are "rich and beautiful". The parents give the daughter the choice. Wilhelmine sways. At first she wants to stay single, but then she confesses her love to the prince. The young couple immediately passed out from happiness. The count, however, does not give up, wants to marry the girl and fights with the captain for this reason.

Wilhelmine and Prince Tandi get married. Herr von Zopf, who has just arrived, tells the new husband that he is Biederling's son and thus Wilhelmine's brother. You faint again. Herr von Zopf had once taken the Biederlings' son with him to Smyrna . The boy had never returned from this trip to the Orient.

Parallel to the above love story, the viewer has to take note of a bitter intrigue in which the count was and is involved. Donna Diana, a Spanish countess, staying in Dresden with her faithful nurse Babet, closely follows the hair-raising events in Naumburg. As the count's "lawful wedded" wife, Diana now has to fear being poisoned at the instigation of the disdainful marriage sponsor. Outrageous: Diana was seduced by Cameleon at home in Spain. The enticed woman had then stolen from her parents and “poisoned” her own father to please the count.

The prince goes to Leipzig and leaves Wilhelmine in Naumburg. She still loves him. On the other hand, Frau von Biederling scolds the refugee as a monster. The only son runs out of the dust without seeing his mother. The mother persuades the daughter to hate her husband so that she can forget him.

Babet, who has meanwhile also traveled to Naumburg with her mistress Donna Diana, puts Wilhelmine in the picture. The nurse Babet had exchanged the babies Diana and Wilhelmine. Wilhelmine is the daughter of a Spanish count, a certain Aranda Velas. The exchange happened in Dresden at the time. Count Aranda Velas was at the court with his family in diplomatic service. Frau von Biederling followed her husband, the captain, to the Silesian theater of war and left her newborn in Dresden. When the Biederlings returned to the Saxon metropolis, they had the wrong baby - an ailing one. The Velas family kept the perfectly healthy child.

So Wilhelmine and the Prince are not siblings. So the prince and donna are brother and sister.

Diana turns the tables. The extremely resolute Donna undertakes an assassination attempt on her husband, the faithless Count. After all, the victim can still pull the knife out of the wound afterwards and inform the audience: “I am murdered.” He is bandaged.

There is a happy ending for Wilhelmine and the prince.

Quote

  • Pleasure without taste is no pleasure .

Testimonials

  • In July 1775 the author wrote to Sophie von La Roche that the Menoza was "a hasty piece in which nothing but the idea can be appreciated".
  • Wieland criticized the piece at the end of 1774. The following year Lenz responded with a review of the New Menoza . In this self-review he laments the “coldness” of the audience when he recorded his piece. But whatever? “Certain gentlemen” see “human nature only in the lace-up of the chain”. At least Lenz admits obvious shortcomings in his comedy. He cites the intrigues of Count Cameleon, which the viewer cannot understand, as an example. But Lenz is neither intimidated by the ever-nagging critics nor by the audience, who just want to laugh. Lenz is basically: "Comedy is a painting of human society, and when it becomes serious, the painting cannot be laughing ... Therefore our German comedy writers have to write funny and tragic at the same time".

reception

  • 1775: Only locksmiths praise the piece.
  • 1775: Wieland hits the nail on the head. Lenz makes his "comedies as improbable" as others make their tragedies likely.
  • With everything unfinished in the piece - the Romantics absorbed Lenzen's thoughts. We can take this comedy today as one of the forerunners of the theater of the absurd .
  • The plays The Hofmeister , The Soldiers and the Menoza substantiate Lenzen's importance as a playwright.

Performances (selection)

  • February 4, 1963: World premiere at the Neue Bühne at the University of Frankfurt / M.
  • 1980: Dramaturgical arrangement by Christoph Hein , 1982 world premiere of this production in Schwerin.
  • 1982: performance at the Vienna Burgtheater ; Directed by Benno Besson
  • November 2014 The new Menoza - Comedy by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz Performance at the Volksbühne Berlin .

literature

  • Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: The new Menoza. Or story of the Cumban Prince Tandi . Weygandsche Buchhandlung, Leipzig 1774 ( reader.digitale-sammlungen.de ).
  • Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: The new Menoza: a comedy . Text and interpretation material provided by Walter Hinck (=  Komedia. German comedies from the baroque to the present . Volume 9 ). Berlin, Walter de Gruyter 1965, OCLC 1017801009 .
  • Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: The new Menoza . In: Britta Titel, Hellmut Haug (Ed.): Works and Writings (=  New Library of World Literature ). tape 2 . Goverts, Stuttgart 1967, OCLC 465707514 , p. 106 ( zeno.org ).
source
  • The New Menoza or Tale of the Cumban Prince Tandi. A comedy. In: Friedrich Voit (ed.): Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Reclam Stuttgart 1992 (1998 edition). With annotations (pp. 479–486) and an afterword (pp. 559–604), ISBN 3-15-008755-4 , pp. 101–172.
Secondary literature
  • Review of the New Menoza. drawn up by the author himself. In: Friedrich Voit (ed.): Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Reclam Stuttgart 1992 (1998 edition), ISBN 3-15-008755-4 , pp. 415-420.
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A – Z. Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 386.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Notes, p. 479, line 13.
  2. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. P. 479, note 101.1.
  3. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. P. 169, penultimate line.
  4. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Afterword, p. 591, line 11.
  5. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Notes, p. 536, line 11.
  6. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Notes, p. 536, line 9.
  7. ↑ Even the attentive reader has to page back, guess and puzzle around in order to figure out the insidious game.
  8. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. P. 420, line 10.
  9. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. P. 536, note 415, line 10 f.
  10. ↑ Voit quotes Wieland in the source, p. 537, note 418,33.
  11. ↑ Voit in the afterword in the source, p. 591, line 13.
  12. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. Afterword, p. 589, line 6.
  13. ^ Friedrich Voit: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz: Works. P. 603, line 11.
  14. ↑ Benno Besson. In: alexander-verlag.com. Alexander Verlag Berlin, accessed on October 3, 2018 : "Besson received the Josef Kainz Medal of the City of Vienna in 1982 (for The New Menoza at the Burgtheater)"
  15. ↑ The new Menoza - Comedy by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Volksbühne Berlin, 2014, accessed on October 3, 2018 .