You can rent an apartment in the city
| Data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | You can rent an apartment in the city |
| Original title: |
An apartment is to be rented in the city An apartment is to be left in the suburbs An apartment with a garden is available in Hietzing |
| Genus: | Local posse with singing in three acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Johann Nestroy |
| Music: | Adolf Müller senior |
| Publishing year: | 1837 |
| Premiere: | January 17, 1837 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater an der Wien |
| Place and time of the action: | The action takes place in the 1st act in the city, in the 2nd act in the suburbs and in the 3rd act in Hietzing |
| people | |
|
|
An apartment is to be rented in the city An apartment is to be left in the suburbs An apartment with a garden is to be had in Hietzing is a local farce with singing in three elevators by Johann Nestroy . The piece was written in 1837 and was performed for the first time on January 17 of the same year as a “benefit performance” for Nestroy.
content
Amalie is supposed to marry August, but wants to put him to the test beforehand. Therefore she asks her friend Luise - who is in love with August without showing it - to seduce her groom. Eduard, who is in love with Amalie, sends her secret letters. Mr. von Gundlhuber wants to move out because he needs a bigger apartment ( "So where will I have a place for a boot servant afterwards?" ), The caretaker Cajetan tries to prevent that, because he is very satisfied with the quiet Gundlhuber family. Madam Chaly is also moving and Cajetan is clearing the apartment. With Lisette he tries his luck with a marriage proposal and the hint that he is a house owner himself, she is not averse to this:
- "House owners have rarely loved hopelessly." (1st act, 15th scene)
Eduard asks Madam Chaly, his former lover, to destroy a wax figure depicting his fat father Wohlschmack. He is almost surprised by Dümont and hides in a box that Cajetan plans to take away soon afterwards. At the same time, the Gundlhuber family come to view the apartment and Dumont, who has Cajetan thrown out.
Therese is said to be marrying Eduard, whom she and his father have chosen for her. August begins to fall in love with Luise and decides to tell Amalie. Gundlhuber and his family also burst into this family celebration, cannot be put off and only leaves after he has wreaked havoc.
All the protagonists meet in Hietzing , Eduard wants to steal the wax figure for his father and conquer Amalie, August only thinks of Luise and Cajetan wants to make Madame Stoll's apartment attractive to Gundlhuber as a summer residence. Gundlhuber recreates Madam Chaly, Cajetan watches Eduard and Flint, who throw the wax figure into a well and thinks they have discovered a murder. Gundlhuber, who happened to appear here, was arrested by the Haltauf guard as an alleged perpetrator.
- "Triumph! The first Hietzinger murder goes through my hands. " (3rd act, 24th scene)
Ultimately, all the entanglements are cleared up, the right couples find each other and Wohlschmack rents the quarter in Hietzing for his son Eduard and for Amalie. Gundlhuber remains resigned in the old apartment.
Factory history
According to Otto Rommel's research, the source for Nestroy's posse is said to have been Louis Angely's piece of apartments for rent, a comic painting in five frames set in Berlin - at least for the 1st and 2nd act. Angely's model was probably a French vaudeville . Since Nestroy by the description of the middle-class Viennese philistine Gundlhuber and localization by place names (streets and squares in the inner city , Hietzing , Penzing disappointed) expected by the public glorification of Wienertums, the piece was loudly rejected. After two performances it was over and there was no re-entry into the game program until Nestroy's death.
Obviously, the audience recognized themselves too much in the caricature of Gundlhuber, who was sharply drawn by Nestroy, and liked the figure of the grumpy, cozy caretaker Balsam. Nestroy wrote this role especially for Wenzel Scholz .
Nestroy consoled himself over the diarrhea with one of his successful guest tours, this time to Budapest , where he played the shoemaker Knieriem from The Evil Spirit Lumpazivagabundus , the Seiler Strick from The Two Night Walkers and the Longinus from The Banishment from the Magic Realm .
The original Angelys, premiered in Vienna on March 29, 1837, had also not found a favorable reception with the Viennese public ( "[...] stale, witty and sandy product of Berlin jokes." , Criticism in the Humorist of April 3, 1837).
Johann Nestroy played Herr von Gundlhuber at the world premiere of Eine Wohnung ist zu Rent , Wenzel Scholz the caretaker Cajetan Balsam, Friedrich Hopp the Herr von Heuschreck, Ignaz Stahl the Herr von Wohlschmack, Eleonore Condorussi the Amalie and Nestroy's partner Marie Weiler the maid Lisette .
It was only Karl Kraus who made the farce known again through readings of its adaptation.
Contemporary reception
Contemporary critics noted that the piece not only failed, it was "hissed out with a bitterness [...] that had not been noticed for a long time" ( Wiener Zeitschrift of January 21, 1857). On the same day, the Nestroy always negative critic Moritz Gottlieb Saphir wrote in his newspaper Der Humorist :
- “The piece itself has no other fault than the fact that it was given. [...] It is a very unsuccessful, content and pointless product, it has neither a plot, nor, to make a bad joke, neither a plot nor a grocery store. "
Later interpretations
In Barbara Rita Krebs you can read that An apartment is for rent in the city is one of the five worst failed pieces Nestroy, the other four would be Der Zauberer Sulphurelectrimagneticophosphoratus (1834), Just rest! (1843), Die liebe Anverwandten (1848) and Secret money, secret love (1853).
According to Krebs, the expectations of the contemporary audience for a Viennese folk piece, caused by the popular-sounding title, played an important role in the failure: the - allegedly - non-existent humor of the dialogues and the plot, by which the "naive folk piece comedy" was meant. The coarseness of the drawn "yeast of the people" , which Nestroy had brought on stage, frightened the "better" citizens in the theater, who wanted to avoid contact with the mob, the proletariat. The fact that the poet portrayed the suburban bourgeoisie as stuffy, struck his audience with his attitude towards life. Angely's weak submission is also to blame for the failure. The resulting flat plot, merely replaced by comedy situations (the lover in the closet, the disturbed engagement party), would have been correctly recognized by the contemporary reception.
However, the re-evaluation of the work, for example by Yates , sees it as one of the key pieces of Nestroy's oeuvre . Yates speculates that the mutilation of the text by the censors could have been partly to blame, but this must remain speculation in the absence of a censorship manuscript.
literature
- Helmut Ahrens : I'm not auctioning myself off to the laurel. Johann Nestroy, his life. Societäts-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-7973-0389-0
- Fritz Brukner / Otto Rommel : Johann Nestroy, Complete Works. Historical-critical complete edition in fifteen volumes, ninth volume, Verlag von Anton Schroll & Co, Vienna 1927, pp. 267–366, 590–613.
- Franz H. Mautner (Hrsg.): Johann Nestroys Komödien. Edition in 6 volumes, Insel Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1979, 2nd edition 1981, 2nd volume. OCLC 7871586 .
- Barbara Rita Krebs: Nestroy's Failures: Aesthetic and Social Conditions. Diploma thesis at the humanities faculty of the University of Vienna, Vienna 1989.
- W. Edgar Yates (Ed.): Johann Nestroy; Pieces 12. In: Jürgen Hein / Johann Hüttner : Johann Nestroy, Complete Works, Historical-Critical Edition. Jugend und Volk, Vienna / Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7141-6964-4 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Hietzing = suburb of Vienna, which gained social importance in the 19th century due to its proximity to the imperial summer residence of Schönbrunn Palace ; today Hietzing is the eponymous part of the 13th district
- ↑ The name of the caretaker balm goes on the Altwienerische phrase "Balsam (= bottom line) of a boor" back
- ↑ Chaly is pronounced almost exactly like the Viennese dialect Tschali , which means "gone, lost" ( Peter Wehle : Do you speak Viennese? From Adaxl to Zwutschkerl. Verlag Carl Ueberreuther, Vienna / Heidelberg 1980, ISBN 3-8000-3165-5 ; P. 268.)
- ↑ Penzing = located on the opposite side of the Vienna River from Hietzing ; today the eponymous part of the 14th district
- ^ W. Edgar Yates: Johann Nestroy; Pieces 12. P. 24.
- ^ W. Edgar Yates: Johann Nestroy; Pieces 12. p. 77.
- ^ Franz H. Mautner (ed.): Johann Nestroys Komödien. Pp. 265-266.
- ↑ Helmut Ahrens: I am not auctioning myself off to the laurel. Pp. 191-192.
- ^ W. Edgar Yates: Johann Nestroy; Pieces 12. p. 149.
- ^ Karl Kraus: Letters to Sidonie Nádherný von Borutin, 1913-1936. Newly edited and supplemented by Friedrich Pfäfflin. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89244-934-8 , Volume 1, p. 501.
- ↑ Der Humorist, magazine for jokes and seriousness, art, theater, sociability and custom , editor Moritz Gottlieb Saphir from 1837 to 1862.
- ^ W. Edgar Yates: Johann Nestroy; Pieces 12. pp. 151-152. Greißlerei is the Eastern Austrian expression for a small grocery store - here it is meant as a mocking counterpart to the somewhat more important (grocery) store .
- ↑ Barbara Rita Krebs: Nestroys Failures , pp. 9-10.
- ↑ Barbara Rita Krebs: Nestroys Failures , pp. 38-48.
- ^ W. Edgar Yates: Nestroy and the Reviewers . In: Nestroyana 7 (1987), pp. 28-41.