The Schroffenstein family

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Schroffenstein family is Heinrich von Kleist's first work. The tragedy appeared anonymously in 1803 and was premiered on January 9, 1804 in the National Theater in Graz.

History of origin

Kleist wrote the piece in Paris and on the Scherzliginsel in the Aare in Thun , Switzerland . He traveled with his sister to Paris via Dresden, only to decide on a simple life as a farmer in Thun; a project that he gave up shortly afterwards. During this time he worked on both his debut The Schroffenstein Family and Robert Guiskard, Duke of Normans and The Broken Jug . The play was originally supposed to be titled The Thierrez Family and play in France, then Kleist moved the setting to Spain (under the title The Ghonorez Family ). The final location of the action, medieval Swabia, was recommended to Kleist by Ludwig Wieland (1777–1819), son of Christoph Martin Wieland .

The tragedy Romeo and Juliet (1597) by William Shakespeare served as a literary model . Kleist reworks fabrics from famous models several times. Or he can be measured against great role models, such as Giovanni Boccaccio and Miguel de Cervantes in his stories . This also applies to his drama Amphitryon . A comedy based on Molière already gives the basis in the title, while Robert Guiskard is even based on the ancient tragedy poetry (with an ancient choir, for example). Kleist, who was born into an aristocratic milieu, its tendency to want at these models contest begin.

Shaping the tragedy

Structure and language

The piece is divided into five acts and follows the tension of classical drama theory, but not the unity of time, space and action. The drama is written in blank verse .

Directory of persons

  • Rupert, Count von Schroffenstein, from the Rossitz family
  • Eustache, his wife
  • Ottokar, her son
  • Johann, Rupert's natural son
  • Sylvius, Count von Schroffenstein, from the Warwand family
  • Sylvester, Count von Schroffenstein, his son, ruling Count
  • Gertrude, his wife, stepsister to the Eustache
  • Agnes, her daughter
  • Jeronimus von Schroffenstein, from the Wyk family
  • Altdöbern, Santing, Fintenring, Rupert's vassals
  • Theistine, vassal of Sylvester
  • Ursula, a gravedigger widow
  • Barnabe, her daughter
  • A maid of the Eustache
  • A bailiff
  • A gardener
  • Two hikers
  • Knight. Clergy. Court servants

action

The location of the action is medieval Swabia. The Schroffenstein family is a torn family that has been enemies for a long time and lives in two houses, which are separated according to their ancestral seat in Rossitz and Warwand. But the two branches are chained to one another by an old-handed inheritance contract: If one branch dies, the other inherits its property. Hence, there is deep distrust and aversion between the houses. The action begins in the first act with the Rossitzer standing around the coffin of the youngest son Peter. He was found dead and mutilated (his little finger is missing on his left hand); beside him stood two men of the Warwander with a bloody knife. Rupert makes his wife and son Ottokar swear by the Lord's Supper to take revenge on Sylvester's entire killer house . This oath binds the Rossitzers to exterminate the Warwander line, because they seem to have been the commissioners for the murder. But Ottokar loves Agnes, Sylvester's daughter. They try to reconcile the families, much like Jeronimo, Ottokar's uncle. Jeronimo does a detective work in the play and tries to uncover the murder of Peter. But only Ottokar discovers that Peter drowned while playing and that Ursula's finger was cut off for a magic potion that she wants to brew. Agnes and Ottokar, who meet in a cave in the mountains, decide to swap clothes and thus protect Agnes from Rupert, who approaches to seek revenge. But the two run separately into their own parents' arms - Ottokar, disguised as Agnes, is stabbed to death by his father Rupert, Agnes by her father Sylvester, who believes that it is the person who is concerned about his dead body alleged daughter bowing to her murderer. The patriarchs are reconciled over the corpses of their children.

interpretation

Kleist's debut, like all of his later dramas, is radical, contradicts the common literary conventions of his time, is bursting with violence and pessimism, and is surprisingly modern. In the end none of the problems is solved, the viewer did not experience catharsis , but a strange situation arises. The catastrophe at the end of the piece is laughed at: This is fun to laugh at! , Kleist has Johann, illegitimate offspring of Rupert, who fell into madness during the plot. And Ursula, who was the originator of all the horror, says succinctly: If you kill yourselves, it is an accident! Kleist biographer Günter Blamberger divides the drama into three tragedies:

  • The social tragedy
  • The language / knowledge tragedy
  • The family tragedy

In I, 1 the church bailiff von Rossitz says to Jeronimo: Well, sir, the inheritance contract is part of the matter. / Because that is just as if you said that the apple / does not belong to the fall . It is this agreement that the Schroffenstein family tears up and ultimately exterminates (no heir lives on at the end of the play). This echoes Rousseau, who in his treatise on the origins and foundations of inequality among people (1755) considered the emergence of property to be the end of the "golden age". Man's misery begins with greed for possessions and fear of fellow human beings. But Kleist rejects this utopia. The state of nature is not paradise. He lets Rupert say: But nothing more of nature./ It's a delightful fairy tale of childhood, / Of mankind about the poets, their wet nurses, / Told. Trust, innocence, loyalty, love, / religion, the fruit of the gods are like / the animals that speak. He points morality, religion and trust in the basic love of relatives to one another in the realm of fables, like talking animals. Kleist's drama is a radical rejection of a naive utopia of innocence and says: homo homini lupus .

Kleist's crisis in Kant, which led to dropping out of his studies, made him reject the rationalism and optimism of the progress of the Enlightenment. In the play, Kleist fundamentally criticizes the human capacity for knowledge. The play begins with a wrong interpretation of a death and ends with a wrong interpretation that leads to the death of the children. The protagonists learn nothing and are guided by fear and vindictiveness in place of reason. According to this piece, man is not sensible; he is violent and instinctive.

The third dimension is the generation conflict. The children Ottokar and Agnes defend themselves against the hatred of their families, so they turn against the respective fatherly authorities who want to force them into this hostility. The families are noble, not middle-class. The conflict does not unfold, as in Lessing's tragedy, for example, along a contrast between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, the former being the moral winner for the sake of virtue; but Kleist stands out from the bourgeois authors of his time. This is partly what makes it unique in German literature.

Generic question

The play, which Kleist himself called Trauerspiel , cannot be clearly assigned to the tragedy . Rather, attention must be paid to the ironic distancing that suggests the tragicomic end. Kleist does not take his piece seriously, in the end there is aporia and hopelessness. Kleist's debut ends in nihilistic pessimism. The Schroffenstein family has more in common with modern hybrid forms of tragic comedy and Shakespeare's mixture of comedy and tragedy (for example in Macbeth ) than with the strict poetics of Gottsched or the ancient theory of drama.

reception

The contemporaries largely ignored the work. It was premiered in Graz on January 9th at the "Grazer Nationaltheater". A positive review by Ludwig Ferdinand Huber appeared in the journal Der Freimüthige . The few readers who read the piece, which appeared anonymously, were put off by the violence and the lack of emotion or resolution at the end. Nobody from the literary world of Germany around 1804 recognized the ingenious nature of the ambiguous and profound work.

Productions (selection)

Film adaptation

The piece was adapted for the film by Hans Neuenfels . His film Die Familie or Schroffenstein was produced in 1983 for ZDF .

Text output

  • The Schroffenstein family: a tragedy in five acts. Stuttgart, Reclam 1986. (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, 1768.) ISBN 978-3-15-001768-5
  • The Schroffenstein family. A tragedy in five acts. Text output, online
  • Heinrich von Kleist: Complete Works. Brandenburger Edition Vol. I / 1: The Schroffenstein Family. Ed. by Roland Reuss. Frankfurt a. M. 2003. ISBN 3-87877-330-7

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Axel Schmidt 2006
  2. ↑ Kleist, Heinrich von: Complete Works, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf. Munich / Zurich 1961, p. 52: I, 1
  3. ^ Kleist, Heinrich von: Complete Works, Droemersche Verlagsanstalt Th. Knaur Nachf. Munich / Zurich 1961, p. 130: V, 1
  4. ^ Blamberger, Günter : Heinrich von Kleist. Biography S. Fischer Frankfurt a. M. 2011, p. 175
  5. ^ Blamberger, Günter : Heinrich von Kleist. Biography S. Fischer Frankfurt a. M. 2011, p. 172
  6. ↑ Eva-Maria Magel: The soul quality of others. In: FAZ.net . February 28, 2008, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Review of the staging from the Coburger Tageblatt of September 27, 2010  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed on May 1, 2012, 7:59 p.m.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.landestheater-coburg.de  
  8. ↑ Review by Magdalena Sporkmann