The Comforter

Data
Title:	The Comforter
Genus:	play
Original language:	German
Author:	Bruno Frank
Premiere:	October 10, 1919
Place of premiere:	Schauspielhaus Munich
Place and time of the action:	Berlin, Haus Landenberg (1st and 3rd act) and Rottacker's studio (2nd act).
people
Privy Councilor Landenberger, doctor Sibylle, his wife Lena Rottacker, painter Schwendy, painter HC Habusnig, art dealer Wilhelmine Schuppe, housekeeper A servant A porter

The Comforter. Play in three acts from 1919 was Bruno Frank's fourth play . The world premiere took place on October 10, 1919 in the Munich Schauspielhaus, with further performances in Berlin, Hamburg and Stuttgart. The print edition of the piece was published in 1919 by Musarion Verlag in Munich.

Overview

Sibylle, the happily married wife of the doctor Dr. Landenberger, enters a relationship with the painter Rottacker, who is in a creative crisis, out of pity. When Landenberger found out about the adultery, he was deeply affected, but forgave his wife with resignation.

action

Note: Numbers in round brackets, for example (49), refer to the corresponding pages in the printed edition #Frank 1919.2 .

Sibylle is happily married to the busy doctor Privy Councilor Landenberger. This saves the life of the famous painter Rottacker through a dangerous biliary operation. Rottacker doubts the sense of his work and fears that he has outlived himself. He wants to give an account of his life's work at a “Rottacker Memorial Exhibition”.

Before the exhibition opens, Rottacker visits the Landenbergers and is commissioned to portray the landlady. During many sessions, Sibylle and the painter get closer. He confesses to her that he is suffering from his life and desperate for his work, because, he complains in self-talk: "You have struggled in a field where you are not the greatest!" (49)

He fell in love with her, he confesses to Sibylle, but the suffering from art has now been replaced by the suffering from the unfulfilled love for her. As a "comforter" in his desperate sadness, Sibylle surrenders to the painter, out of pity, not out of love (49):

“Sibylle (bows down to him): Poor! Dear!
Rottacker: Oh Sibyl, I love you so much!
Sibylle (very soft and compassionate): Come ... (She leans closer to him, her arm around him. Quiet, comfortingly motherly): Come!
Rottacker (still incredulous): Sibyl? Your mouth? Really? Really?
Sibylle (whispering): If you do suffer ... If you suffer so much ... (she bends down completely to him, kissing) "

Sibylle believes that she will not take anything away from her husband because he is the only one she loves. The painter flourishes through his relationship with Sibylle and is filled with new courage to live. However, he soon realizes that the situation will be intolerable for Sibylle in the long run and wants to move out of town. In the meantime, Sibylle's unhappy cousin Lena reveals to the doctor out of displeasure that his wife is cheating on him. In a farewell scene between Sibylle and Rottacker, they are surprised by Landenberger while they embrace. Both try to explain extensively what Landenberger must remain inexplicable. Finally Landenberger forgives his wife resignedly, but not without hope for the future together with his wife.

background

pity

Like Thomas Mann and Iwan Turgenjew, Arthur Schopenhauer was one of Bruno Frank's “household gods”. In keeping with Schopenhauer's ethic of compassion, he had chosen compassion as the central motif of his play. The motif is announced at the beginning of the play in a telephone conversation by Landenberger. He's supposed to operate on a sixteen-year-old maid who was impregnated by a young lad: “The good thing fell awful. Now the knife has to be on. Can't say no! Has too much pity to say no! "(2)

Landenberger's wife Sibylle has a good heart. During long portrait sessions, the painter Rottacker confesses to her that he is unhappily in love with her. He is dissatisfied with his life and his work, and only the fulfillment of his longing can save him. Sibylle is moved by the painter's deep sadness and longing and gives herself to him out of pity, she becomes his “comforter”. However, it does not stop at this single incident, rather a lasting relationship develops between the two, until Rottacker breaks the relationship out of consideration for Sibylle.

dialect

Although of upper class ancestry, Bruno Frank had great sympathy for the “common people”, who in his pieces are often characterized by their dialect. Wilhelmine Schuppe, the housekeeper of the painter Rottacker, speaks to Berlin and impresses with her robust, clear manner. The porter, who is also Berlin, suffers from the oppression of the energetic woman. The vernacular speakers add to the serenity of the action, but they are not demonstrated.

The Privy Councilor Landenberger also occasionally speaks in Berlin, the stage direction states that “it is not uncommon for him to speak a desired dialect” (1). With the respected doctor, the dialect is a sign of his modesty and his agreeable disposition.

Creative crisis

Bruno Frank's biographer Sascha Kirchner suspects: "Rather, the play seems to speak of the author's suffering at his own creative limits."

The respected painter Rottacker is in a creative crisis. He doubts the meaning of his work and believes that the next generation will disregard him. Landenberger, who operated on Rottacker on the gall, diagnosed not only a physical illness in him:

• This disease now, it is not a disease at all, it is a crisis. The organism fails. It is a standstill. Ebb away. Beginning of inner death. (8–9)

In the course of the piece, Rottacker gives insights into his state of mind:

• I am curious whether the privy councilor was right to save my life. (13)

• Sibylle: You torment yourself where others would gladly rest on fame and achievement.

Rottacker: Yes, that requires a robust mind. - Or grace.

Sibylle: The grace?

Rottacker: Yes, the chosen one. The feeling of belonging to the five or six men who really mean something in every century. (36)

• All my life I have stood there as if in front of a glass wall. Clearly, within my grasp, I saw what I wanted to accomplish, clearly, with every line, every shadow, only separated from me as if by bare air - and yet I couldn't grasp it. (47)

reception

• For the world premiere in Munich, Berliner Börsen-Zeitung, October 16, 1919:

His theme, which requires the finest spiritual development in order to become believable, resists the dramatic spirit that is intent on explosion and concentration. So two thirds of the work are nothing but meaningful dialogues inspired by his spirit, but at times touching the limits of sentimentality.

• Hedwig Pringsheim , Diaries 1917–1922, page 317, October 10, 1919:

... evening with Alfred u. Katja to the Schauspielhaus for Bruno Frank's première “The Comforter”, which I like better reading than the, despite Else Heim's , sub-mediocre performance, which is boring and seemed weak, even had a disputed respectable success.

• Lion Feuchtwanger , A Life As Intense As Possible: The Diaries, page 18, October 1919:

October 10, 1919: Premiere “The Comforter”, poor performance, success with clicks.

October 11, 1919: Reviews of "Comforter" for me are very good. After the premiere with Elias, Waldau, Frank, Hoerschelmann, the Heims, Ms. Speyer, the Hagen and a lot of people together.

October 15, 1919: The "comforter" is deposed.

• Bruno Frank's biographer Sascha Kirchner judged the piece in 2009:

Once again, “compassion” and the resulting service to others emerged as the central movement of Bruno Frank's writing. “Pity for the great pain in the world” was the basic motif of his work, as he explained to the young Klaus Mann in an interview in 1926. Here it appears to have been forced through adultery in a way that is appropriate for the stage and therefore not credible. In view of the Munich premiere in October 1919, it was rightly criticized that Frank lacked the dramatic power to "highlight the people themselves, to let them appear fresh and directly before the viewer". The characters lack plasticity and the consequent dramatic escalation of the conflict that leaves Rottacker lonely at the end - lonely as at the beginning. Rather, the play seems to speak of the author's suffering at his own creative limits. This feeling alone did not constitute a viable stage play.

Print output

• The Comforter. Play in three acts. Munich: Musarion, 1919, pdf .

literature

• Frank, Bruno. In: Renate Heuer (editor): Lexicon of German-Jewish authors. Archive Bibliographia Judaica, Volume 7: Feis – Frey, Munich 1999, Pages 250–268, here: 257.
• Sascha Kirchner: The citizen as an artist. Bruno Frank (1887–1945) - life and work. Düsseldorf: Grupello, 2009, pages 108–110.

Web links

• Literature by and about The Comforter in the catalog of the German National Library

Footnotes

1. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , page 108.
2. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , pages 108–110.
3. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , page 110.
4. ↑ Alfred u. Katja: Alfred Pringsheim , Hedwig's husband, and Katia Mann , her daughter and Thomas Mann's wife.
5. ↑ #Kirchner 2009 , page 110.