Emilia Galotti
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| Title: | Emilia Galotti |
| Genus: | civic tragedy |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Gotthold Ephraim Lessing |
| Literary source: | Livy : Legend of the Roman Verginia |
| Publishing year: | 1772 |
| Premiere: | March 13, 1772 |
| Place of premiere: | Ducal opera house in Braunschweig |
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Emilia Galotti is a civil tragedy in five acts by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . It was premiered on March 13, 1772 in the Ducal Opera House in Braunschweig by Karl Theophil Döbbelin on the occasion of the birthday of Duchess Philippine Charlotte . Lessing was not present at the premiere and did not attend any of the repetitions later. In his tragedy, he processed the material of the legend about the Roman woman Verginia , which, however, he changed decisively in central places.
Emilia Galotti is a drama of the Enlightenment , which is contrary to the then prevailing French model and also by the by Johann Christoph Gottsched formulated rule poetics settles. Although love is a central theme of this tragedy and Lessing himself wanted to cleanse the subject of his adaptation of the “state interest”, Emilia Galotti is also considered a political play. The arbitrary style of rule of the nobility contrasts with the new enlightened morality of the bourgeoisie . Old feudal ideas of love and marriage meet the new bourgeois understanding of love of sensitivity . This conflict-laden combination once made the piece so explosive.
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Table of contents
The plot, which in itself is not complicated, followed the Verginia story in Livy 's Roman story, or at least its first part.
The Prince of Guastalla , who has fallen in love with Emilia Galotti, learns that she is to marry Count Appiani on the same day. Marinelli, the prince's chamberlain , lets himself be given a free hand to solve the problem and sees to it that Appianis is assassinated and Emilias kidnapped. Emilia's father, Odoardo, learns of the plot from the Prince's former mistress , Countess Orsina, albeit too late; he tries to free his daughter, and when he fails, he stabs her to death at her own request in order to preserve her virtue.
The second part of Livius' story, in which the death of Verginias triggered a successful popular uprising against the tyrant Appius Claudius , has no equivalent in Lessing's play.
Happening on stage
1st elevator (early in the morning in the Residenzschloss)
Prince Hettore Gonzaga processes petitions. He approves one because the name is identical to that of his beloved Emilia Galotti. He puts a letter from his mistress Orsina aside unread.
His court painter Conti brings two pictures: the portrait of this mistress commissioned by the prince and the duplicate of a picture of Emilia ordered by father Galotti. He paid the painter princely.
His chamberlain Marinelli informs him of Emilia's wedding to Count Appiani, which is to take place on the same day. The prince gives Marinelli a free hand to prevent this.
He himself decides to also speak to Emilia while she is attending church.
His Council Rota prevents the ill-considered signing of a death sentence.
II. Elevator (a little later in the Galottis' town villa)
During a short visit to the city, Odoardo Galotti checks his wife Claudia's wedding preparations. He disapproves of Emilia going to church alone. Meanwhile, Marinelli's henchman Angelo asks his former crony, Pirro, who is now in the service of the Galottis, the route of the wedding party to the wedding venue.
Claudia tells her husband of the prince's delight over Emilia at an evening party; Odoardo is appalled about it. He sets off to visit his future son-in-law and then to return to his estate, the place of the wedding ceremony.
Emilia rushes into the room and reports to her mother that the prince spoke to her in church. Claudia reassures her by explaining that it is just courtly gallantry.
Appiani appears and expresses his admiration for his father-in-law; Emilia describes her wedding clothes to him.
Marinelli urges the groom to serve the prince immediately, whom Appiani refuses because of his wedding date; Marinelli incites him to insult; Marinelli denied a duel request by Appianis.
III. Elevator (afternoons in the Dosalo pleasure palace)
Marinelli informs the prince of his failure at Appiani. He lets him in on parts of his intrigue. Shots are fired within earshot of the pleasure palace .
The bandit Angelo tells him about the successful attack: Appiani is dead, as is a bandit.
The Prince and Marinelli watch Emilia rush towards the castle.
Emilia wants to go back to the crime scene to be with her mother and groom; Marinelli prevents this.
The prince apologizes for his behavior in the church in the morning and leads the struggling Emilia into an adjoining room.
A servant announces Claudia's arrival to Marinelli; the chamberlain orders him to send away the people accompanying them.
Claudia confronts Marinelli with her understanding of essential connections that led to the attack on the wedding carriage, the death of the groom and the kidnapping of her daughter; she accuses him of assassination and domination on behalf of the prince. Emilia and Claudia recognize each other by their voices; she rushes to her daughter.
IV. Elevator (afternoon in the Dosalo pleasure palace)
Prince and Marinelli argue which of the two has spoiled the intrigue success.
Orsina is announced; Marinelli promises the prince to remove them.
Orsina, with the help of Marinelli's information, analyzes her situation and insists on the Prince's reception. This shows her out of the castle and orders Marinelli to come over.
Marinelli lets Orsina elicit that Emilia Galotti is with the prince. Since Orsina learned of the encounter with the church and the love that the prince had for Emilia through her spies, Orsina accuses him of murdering Appiani; she wants to bring this to the public.
Odoardo asks Marinelli to take him to Claudia and Emilia; Marinelli is delaying this.
Orsina convinces Odoardo of the princely guilt for Appiani's death and the kidnapping intrigue; Odoardo demonstrates his intention to kill the prince; Orsina gives him a dagger for it.
Claudia confirms Orsina's allegations about the incident and describes Emilia's condition. Orsina fulfills his request to bring Claudia back to town.
V. Elevator (afternoons in the Dosalo pleasure palace)
The prince explains to Marinelli how difficult it is to withhold Emilia from her father; Marinelli promises him a new intrigue.
Odoardo corrects his positive image of Orsina and resolves to save his daughter on his own.
He tells Marinelli his intention to remove Emilia from the residence; Marinelli indicates a hindrance.
In light of this, Odoardo returns to his plan to kill the prince.
In line with Marinelli's plot of intrigue, the prince decides to separate the family members from one another; Odoardo asks to be able to speak to Emilia alone beforehand.
Out of suspicion that Emilia could be in agreement with the prince, he wants to leave Dosalo; their appearance leaves this resolution unfulfilled.
They discuss remaining options for action; Emilia gets Odoardo to kill her.
Odoardo demands that the prince exercise his judicial office over him. The prince banishes Marinelli from court.
To the dramatic characters
The English literary scholar Nisbet emphasizes in his Lessing biography in the chapter on Emilia Galotti the inner turmoil of all characters:
Except for Marinelli, all figures are complicated individuals (and even Marinelli more than a conventional type). They are all unstable, torn between contradicting impulses: the prince between passion and duty, Emilia between emotional insecurity and moral determination, Odoardo between moral rigor and deference to authority, Claudia between inclination to court life and love for decent family life, Orsina finally between love for the prince and thirst for revenge. Under the pressure of rapidly changing circumstances, any one of them could take this or that direction. This pressure is so strong that they have little time to think, and with a few exceptions, their fast-paced and laconic dialogues allow only limited insight into their mental state.
For linguistic design
Nisbet accentuates the leap in literary development through this drama and its stimulating effect for the following epoch of Sturm und Drangs, but also sees difficulties in the consistent implementation of the innovations:
The piece stands out for its stylistic originality and its contrast to the tragedy conventions of the time. The colloquial informality, bluntness and coarseness of his language ("Hofgeschmeiß", "Dich Kuppler!", "A whole monkey" etc.) give the dialogue a naturalness that is unusual for tragedies before 1772, which is also reflected in the sudden outbursts of passion (e.g. . in Elevator III, Stage 6), which was soon to be imitated by the Sturm und Drang movement. Only occasionally, for example in some of Orsina's speeches, did the rhetorical declamation of the classical tragedy still prevail, and the literary allusions and poetic images of Emilia's and her father's in the closing scenes seemed strained and artificial. But apart from Emilia's disturbed account of her encounter with the prince in church, there were no longer narrative parts and the nine monologues (by the prince, Claudias, Marinellis and Odoardos) were short, lively and spontaneous.
Stylistically, the short, haunting and powerful dialogue in most of the scenes stands out, which quickly pushes the plot forward and shows the pressure the characters are under. The rapid fire of the alternate speeches in the first act, with its wit, quick-wittedness and aphoristic, even epigrammatic formulations, is a perfect match for the prince and his cultivated entourage. It is less suitable for Emilia's and her parents' world, where one occasionally misses the spontaneous expression of feelings that one would expect in moments of crisis - such as in Emilia's faltering report on the incident in the church; too often the characters would ponder, argue, or even philosophize about their feelings with a level of awareness that was difficult to reconcile with their dire situation. Also Emilia Galotti testify as already Miss Sara Sampson , the transition from older, more pronounced artificial conventions to a higher degree of realism, with the opposition of the two tendencies sometimes make too much noticeable.
Interpretative approaches
Emilia Galotti is one of the most widely interpreted literary works in German. The following directions have been particularly strongly advocated:
1. Political interpretations (as a contrast between the prince or the absolutist court and the Galotti family) can be summarized in three groups:
a) accentuation of an opposition between the nobility and the bourgeoisie,
b) Position of the ruler in relation to the subject,
c) Analysis of the interaction patterns that lead to the hopeless confrontation.
Regarding a) Marxist research in particular simply identified the Galotti family with the bourgeoisie and combined the class antagonism with the confrontation of virtue - on the bourgeoisie - and vice - on the noble side - (Mehring, Rilla [see bibliography]).
To b) Others see the concentration of power as the prerequisite for the tragedy catastrophe (Alt, Nisbet).
To c) If one sees the prerequisite for Emilia's death in behavior as an expression of the egocentricity of all characters, one discovers diverse impulses for reconciliation in the drama, whereby Lessing shows the unnecessary of the tragic outcome (Ter-Nedden).
2. Sociological interpretations emphasize the opposition between court and family. On the one hand: The prince allows himself 'civil' - z. B. sensitive - feelings, whereby he falls out of the social role assigned to him (Eibl). On the other hand: Since Odoardo Galotti regards the world outside of the family as vicious, his daughter Emilia feels her sensual nature as a danger of being seduced (explicitly in Act V, Appearance 7).
3. In intellectual historical interpretations, an undoubted validity of Christian sexual morality in the 18th century, including Lessing, is assumed: The 'virtue test' for this is the sacrifice of sensual enjoyment in favor of moral values (Wittkowski). Emilia and Odoardo would pass this test in the two final appearances (Dilthey, von Wiese). In contrast, critics of this interpretation emphasize Lessing's (religious) critical stance. Odoardo's virtuous trigorism made Emilia appear as a victim of her upbringing (Hillen, Wierlacher, Ter-Nedden, Alt).
4. Studies on psychology in the 18th century are linked to this position. Lessing takes up Leibniz's concept of 'unconscious perceptions'; he succeeds in a further advance into the dark realm of the soul (Fick, Košenina).
5. Ter-Nedden made a religious-philosophical expansion in his interpretation in 2011: He combines the psychological dilemma that shapes all figures (against better understanding, everyone is overwhelmed by their affects again and again) and their religiosity (constant talk of the figures about a damning God at the same time constant violation of fundamental Christian commandments). This natural egocentricity of man shows itself to be an enlightenment-resistant truth of the myth of original sin. Lessing shows how religious ideas as self-fullfilling prophecy cause the tragic outcome; the reader has the task of recognizing the natural concatenation of cause and consequence (cf. Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 30th piece, 1768) as man-made and accordingly avoidable.
6. There are also psychoanalytic and feminist interpretations (Neumann, Prutti and Wurst, Stephan, Frömmer), but they accept the problem of underlaying ideas and theories of the 20th century on an 18th century drama.
7. This is avoided by formal historical investigations that place the work in literary traditions:
Thus, by means of the structural model of eighteenth-century comedy, the Commedia dell'arte, which Lessing uses in a clever inversion in Emilia Galotti, the tragic content can be politically interpreted (Müller).
In the superimposition of two models of tragedy (character tragedy up to IV, 7 and plot tragedy from IV, 8) a break in the work is seen (Meyer).
Lessing's confrontation with the Virginia material is interpreted as a requirement of the original (Schröder) or, in the opposite direction, as anti-Virginia (Ter-Nedden).
An agreement on a common basis for interpretation is not foreseeable.
Important research divergences
Many interpreters of "Emilia Galotti" indicate that they are not completely happy with their interpretation; some openly admit their perplexity. Others cite the principle that interpretations are tied to time or interpreters, and the particularly courageous ones criticize Lessing for not having solved the tasks that he had set for himself. In view of this situation that has now existed for many decades, a radically different approach is fascinating has largely prevailed among major Lessing researchers (e.g. FICK 2016), but is still ignored by many others - especially in school-oriented literature -: TER-NEDDEN 1986, 2011 and 2016.
In 1986 Ter-Nedden decidedly opposed the political-sociological direction of interpretation of "Emilia Galotti" that had prevailed since the 1970s. B. against the following summary by Mattenklott:
The strict polarization of court and family spheres, to which the assignment of vice of the court and virtue of the citizens corresponds exactly, illustrates the social thrust of Lessing's anti-court criticism.
In contrast, Ter-Nedden's central thesis is:
No external compulsion drives the heroes to death, but their blindness to possible ways out.
Lessing's traditionally motivated starting point in “Emilia Galotti” is the motif of the daughter murder out of love of freedom or virtue (as in Lessing's Livy source): In this is the lightning-fast transition from good to evil (to which every person is exposed), from love to virtue to the worst crime against the virtue of love materialized in an unsurpassable way. Odoardo is Lessing's tragic hero par excellence because, in extreme delusion, he demonstrates in an exemplary manner the one step that separates the attitude of this "pattern [s] of all male virtue" (II.7) from the worst crime. Odoardo did not take this step alone; all other figures contributed to his fall into sin and even anticipated it in their own way - first and in an equally exemplary manner the prince, already in Act I (1986, p. 184): through the merciless reference of his love Orsina to that for him closed past (I.1), through the unhesitating power of attorney for Marinelli to allow anything to prevent Emilia's wedding (I.6), through his hasty, thoughtless readiness to sign a death sentence (I.8) and through his confession of love in front of Emilia during a service (between Acts I and II).
Similarly, in the second act, many appearances ended with the fact that chances of communication were missed: Pirro concealed the planned robbery from his master; Odoardo missed Emilia's return from church; Emilia conceals from Appiani the encounter with the prince; Appiani asked Marinelli to take the walk to the Prince (1986, p. 205).
The decisive factor for judging Odoardos and Emilias in the 7th appearance of Act V, which is disturbing to most of the interpreters, is the provisional pre-trial detention, which prevents Emilia's "removal from the world" (by locking up in the monastery, according to Odoardo in V.5) and that Princes should be given the opportunity to see and speak to them. According to Ter-Nedden, this pre-trial detention is in itself nothing that could become the subject of a life-and-death struggle without delusion (1986, p. 232). At the end (v.7), as at the beginning (II.6), Emilia flees from the birth of her own imagination; and indeed it is by no means a still unconscious inclination towards the prince, which must be nipped in the bud with the help of her father's dagger, but rather a delusional fear of sin, the echo of the misanthropic virtue of her father's virtue, which drives her into such blind fear ( 1986, p. 208).
In this way Lessing replaced the framework within which the traditional dramatic fighting took place, i.e. the poles "victory" (of counter-violence, also in Livy) and "defeat" (of violence), with the poles "seduction to violence" and " Leadership to Reason "(1986, p. 235). It is not the villain's crime that is worthy of tragedy - such a problem is trivial - but the deed of the virtuous hero is the scandal worth depicting in Lessing's moral philosophy (1986, p. 244).
In 2016 Ter-Nedden added to this interpretation:
The motif of the virgin's flight from the aggressive sexuality of male rulers into death is one of the timeless patterns of action, the variants of which can be found everywhere, in ancient myths as well as in products of the contemporary (trivial) cultural industry (2016, p. 313) . With Lessing, on the other hand, his heroine does not flee from male violence, but rather from her own female sexuality in a religiously based fear of sin; that is unheard of - in the past and still today (2016, p. 314). The fact that one cannot preserve a person's virtue by killing them - like Odoardo his daughter - goes without saying (2016, p. 321).
The Emilia scandal is based on a misunderstanding: Lessing - according to Ter-Nedden - transforms a child murder, which is celebrated as a political and moral test of virtue in Livy and in the conventional Virginia dramas, into the misdeed of a deluded virtue hero. Most interpreters would not recognize this and therefore accuse him of being blinded (2016, p. 319).
The task that Lessing has set himself to solve, however, is to identify the path to death as the result of a delusional aberration, and indeed - and this probably contributes significantly to the misunderstanding - without the characters the empathy and sympathy of the To withdraw viewers (2016, p. 377).
To the problem of the genre
The following three voices show the range of judgments made by literary scholars on the question of whether Emilia Galotti can be described as a " bourgeois tragedy ":
Alexander Košenina sees Emilia Galotti as a “bourgeois tragedy par excellence”. Already the material, the conflict between the prince's court and the Galotti family, which demonstrates a tragic “seduction of bourgeois innocence by the noble ruler”, speaks for this classification. But also the suitability of the piece for a realistic, realistic staging characterizes the piece, in that the audience is not presented with an impressive work of art or an impressive heroine, but a psychologically depicted vulnerable title heroine and other realistic characters with whom the audience can identify and identify whose fate it takes part.
Hugh Barr Nisbet, on the other hand, points out that Lessing initially referred to his planned piece in 1758 as “a bourgeois Virginia”, but that the subtitle is missing in the completed version. Lessing also deleted the adjective "bourgeois" from the subtitle of Miss Sara Sampson in the new edition of his collected tragedies, which also appeared in 1772 - although it is not known whether he considered the term unnecessary or whether he wanted to distance himself from other pieces from this period . However, some early critics did not see Emilia Galotti as a bourgeois tragedy in the usual sense. In 1773, the play critic CH Schmid classified it in “a middle genre between the bourgeois and the heroic tragedy”, and August Wilhelm Schlegel stated in his lectures from 1809–11: “It is not actually a bourgeois tragedy, but a court tragedy in Conversationstone. “The audience, who would have expected a tragedy like Miss Sara Sampson , felt alienated by the play, with whose characters they could not identify and whose feelings were not depicted with tears.
In more recent studies, Emilia Galotti is understood in a much more complex way and the socio-political content is brought to the fore. According to Hugh Barr Nisbet, the piece "creates distance and encourages reflection, and the ending is disturbing and unsettling instead of touching and cathartic ." While the class difference between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy was particularly emphasized in Marxist studies in the 1960s and 1970s, there is now agreement that the Galotti come from the lower landed gentry . The decisive difference is therefore not a class difference, but one "between rulers and subjects, public and private spheres and above all between courtly society and family life in a small circle and the corresponding mutually incompatible values."
Cornelia Mönch even understands Emilia Galotti as a kind of "accounting for the almost 20-year history of the bourgeois tragedy". For example, Odoardo's murder of his daughter was critical of tradition that could hardly be understood by the audience at the time. In the tradition of the bourgeois tragedy, however, such murder of relatives is irritating and cannot be reconciled with the idea of a “school of morals”. Lessing himself addressed the question of the genre in his play when Odoardo speaks to the prince in V.8: “Perhaps you expect that I will turn the steel against myself in order to end my deed like a stale tragedy ? - You are wrong. ”The reference to the blood crying for vengeance once again arouses the“ horizon of expectations of the doctrine of poetic justice ”, but Lessing disappoints and irritates his audience by neither fulfilling traditional expectations nor a new, acceptable solution offer. According to Cornelia Münch, this would “ defuse the traditional dagger point of Emilia Galotti ”.
Historical background
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Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Emilia Galotti stands in the tradition of literary adaptations of the Roman Verginia legend . In order to forestall possible censorship , he does not relocate the action to one of the typically German small principalities he actually intended , but to Guastalla , an Italian duodecent state of the Renaissance that belongs to the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna . The Prince Hettore Gonzaga is a fictional character, but there was actually a Gonzaga family that had ruled Mantua since 1328 . Ferrante, a brother of Federigo II, had owned the county of Guastalla since 1539. With the death of Duke Joseph Maria von Guastalla in 1746, the younger Gonzaga line died out. In 1748 its territories went to Parma .
Lessing, who suffered from lack of money throughout his life because he was not averse to gambling, wanted to indirectly ask his master, the Duke of Braunschweig, for a pay increase. He did this more or less discreetly in the second scene of the book, when the artist Conti was talking to the prince about the fact that "art goes for bread". In fact, his salary was soon increased.
Lessing worked on the Verginia material for over fifteen years. He not only translates various documents dealing with the legend, but also the beginning of Samuel Crisp's tragedy Virginia (1754). Lessing's letters document that he himself has been pursuing the plan for a “bourgeois Virginia” since 1757. In the New Library of Sciences and Arts , Lessing, together with Friedrich Nicolai and Moses Mendelssohn, put out a competition to which German tragedies should be sent. Lessing decides to take part in the competition anonymously and for this purpose writes his Emilia Galotti , which he does not, however, complete on time. In a letter he informs Friedrich Nicolai:
“For he [Lessing] separated the history of Roman Virginia from everything that made it interesting for the whole state; he believed that the fate of a daughter who is killed by her father, to whom her virtue is more valuable than her life, is tragic enough in itself, and capable enough to shake the whole soul, even if it is not an overthrow whole constitution followed. "
Trivia
Emilia Galotti plays an essential role in Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther , as Werther and Charlotte von Buff (Stein) have a lot in common with this piece.
Film adaptations
- D 1913: Emilia Galotti , (Director: Friedrich Fehér )
- GDR 1958: Emilia Galotti , (Director: Martin Hellberg )
- D 1970: Emilia Galotti , (Director: Ludwig Cremer )
- D / CH 2004: Emilia , (Director: Henrik Pfeifer )
- AT / D 2003/2005: Emilia Galotti , (Director: Andrea Breth , TV Director : Andreas Morell )
Settings
- Herbert Fritsch staged the tragedy as an opera buffa with music by Mozart.
- The Dutch musician Marijn Simons wrote an opera of the same name in one act, which premiered in 2014.
Radio plays (selection)
- 1946: Emilia Galotti - Director: Ludwig Cremer ( NWDR Hamburg )
- 2006: Emilia Galotti - Director: Leonhard Koppelmann ( SWR / MDR )
Current issues
- Emilia Galotti. A tragedy in five acts. Reclam, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-15-019225-2 (text and context, edited by Thorsten Krause), ISBN 978-3-15-019262-7 (study edition, edited by Elke Bauer and Bodo Plachta).
- Elke Monika Bauer: Emilia Galotti: a tragedy in five acts. by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, historical-critical edition. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-484-10848-7 (also dissertation Uni Osnabrück 2001).
- Emilia Galotti. Miniaturbuchverlag Leipzig, Simbach am Inn 2014, ISBN 978-3-86184-251-4 .
literature
General literature on drama
- Wilfried Barner et al. (Ed.): Lessing. Epoch - work - effect. 5th, revised edition. Beck, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-406-32065-1 .
- Gesa Dane: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Emilia Galotti. Explanations and documents. Reclam , Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-016031-6 , pp. 26-27, 34-35, 37, 42-43.
- Monika Fick: Lessing manual. Life - work - effect. 4th edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2016, ISBN 978-3-476-02577-7 .
- Beate Herfurth-Uber: Lessing, Emilia Galotti, hearing & learning, knowledge compact in 80 minutes. With key scenes from a production at the Hessian State Theater Marburg . Interview with the director Karl Georg Kayser. MultiSkript, Eppstein 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-021494-3 . (Audio CD)
- Sebastian Kaufmann, Günter Saße : Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Emilia Galotti. (= Schroedel Interpretations. Volume 28). Schroedel, Braunschweig 2012, ISBN 978-3-507-47724-7 .
- Theodor Pelster: reading key. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Emilia Galotti. Reclam, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-015318-2 .
- Wolf Dieter Hellberg: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Emilia Galotti. Interpretation aid for high school and high school. Klett learning training, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 978-3-12-923137-1 .
Special literature on the interpretive approaches
- Peter-André Alt: Tragedy of the Enlightenment. Basel 1994.
- Wilhelm Dilthey : The experience and the poetry. 13th edition. Stuttgart 1957 (first 1906).
- Karl Eibl: Identity Crisis and Discourse. In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society. Volume 21, 1977, pp. 138-191.
- Monika Fick: Confused perceptions. Lessing's Emilia Galotti. In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society. Volume 37, 1993, pp. 139-163.
- Judith Frömmer: From the political body to body politics: Male speech and female chastity in Lessing's Emilia Galotti. In: German quarterly for literary studies and intellectual history. Volume 79, 2005, pp. 169-195.
- Gerd Hillen: The stubbornness of virtue. In: Lessing-Yearbook. Volume 2, 1970, pp. 115-134.
- Alexander Košenina: Literary Anthropology. The rediscovery of man. Berlin 2008.
- Gert Mattenklott: Drama - Gottsched to Lessing. In: Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow (Ed.): Between Absolutism and Enlightenment: Rationalism, Sensibility, Sturm und Drang, 1740–1786. Reinbek 1980, pp. 277-298.
- Franz Mehring : The Lessing legend. A rescue. (1893). In: Thomas Höhle et al. (Ed.): Mehring: Gesammelte Schriften. Volume 9, Berlin 1963.
- Reinhart Meyer: Hamburg Dramaturgy and Emilia Galotti. Wiesbaden 1973.
- Klaus-Detlef Müller: The legacy of comedy in bourgeois tragedy. Lessing's Emilia Galotti and the commedia dell'arte. In: German quarterly for literary studies and intellectual history. Volume 46, 1972, pp. 28-60.
- Peter Horst Neumann: The price of maturity. About Lessing's dramas. Stuttgart 1977.
- Hugh B. Nisbet: Lessing. A biography. Munich 2008.
- Brigitte Prutti: image and body. Female presence and gender relations in Lessing's dramas: Emilia Galotti and Minna von Barnhelm. Wuerzburg 1996
- Paul Rilla: Lessing and his age. (= Lessing, Collected Works. Volume 10). 2nd Edition. Berlin 1968.
- Jürgen Schröder: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Language and drama. Munich 1972.
- Horst Steinmetz: Understanding, misunderstanding, not understanding. On the problem of interpretation, primarily using Lessing's “Emilia Galotti” as an example. In: Germanic-Romance monthly. Volume 37, 1987, pp. 387-398.
- Inge Stephan: "So virtue is a ghost". The image of women and the concept of virtue in the bourgeois tragedy in Lessing and Schiller. In: Lessing-Yearbook. Volume 17, 1985, pp. 1-20.
- Gisbert Ter-Nedden: Lessing's tragedies. The origin of modern drama from the spirit of criticism. Stuttgart 1986.
- Gisbert Ter-Nedden: Lessing's dramatized philosophy of religion. A philological commentary on Emilia Galotti and Nathan the Wise. In: Christoph Bultmann, Friedrich Vollhardt (Ed.): Lessing's Philosophy of Religion in Context. Hamburg 2011.
- Gisbert Ter-Nedden, The Stranger Lessing. A revision of the dramatic work. , ed. v. Robert Vellusig, Stuttgart 2016.
- Alois Wierlacher: the house of joy or why does Emilia Galotti die? In: Lessing-Yearbook. Volume 5, 1973, pp. 147-162.
- Benno von Wiese : The German tragedy from Lessing to Hebbel. 1st part: tragedy and theodicy. Part 2: Tragedy and Nihilism. 6th edition. Hamburg 1964 (first 1948).
- Wolfgang Wittkowski: House fathers in Lessing's drama and Sturm und Drangs. Frankfurt am Main 2013.
- Karin A. Wurst: Family love is 'true violence'. The representation of the family in GE Lessing's dramatic work. Amsterdam 1988.
Web links
- Emilia Galotti in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany )
- Emilia Galotti at Zeno.org .
- Digitized version of the 1772 edition at Projekt Gutenberg
- Contents of all performances from Emilia Galotti
- Figure lexicon for Lessing's dramas in the online literature lexicon portal
Individual evidence
- ^ Rolf Hagen: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in Braunschweig. In: Gerd Spies (Hrsg.): Festschrift for the exhibition: Brunswiek 1031, Braunschweig 1981. The city of Heinrich the Lion from its beginnings to the present, orphanage printing house, Braunschweig 1981, p. 636.
- ^ Karl Eibl: Civil tragedy. In: Hans-Friedrich Wessels (Ed.): Enlightenment. Koenigstein / Ts. 1984, pp. 66-87, here p. 67.
- ↑ The Galotti family is often wrongly described as middle-class , even though they are part of the lower nobility. In fact, in the so-called bourgeois tragedy of the 18th century, it is typically not the people but the problems of a bourgeois nature.
- ^ Hugh Barr Nisbet: Lessing. A biography. Munich 2008, p. 638.
- ↑ Hugh Barr Nisbet, Lessing. Eine Biographie , Munich 2008, p. 646.
- ^ Hugh Barr Nisbet: Lessing. A biography. Munich 2008, p. 641f.
- ↑ After Monika Fick: Lessing manual. 4th edition. Stuttgart 2016, pp. 347-366.
- ↑ See Horst Steinmetz: Understanding, misunderstanding, not understanding. On the problem of interpretation, primarily using Lessing's “Emilia Galotti” as an example. In: Germanic-Romance monthly. Volume 37, 1987, pp. 387-398, here p. 397f.
- ↑ See Steinmetz 1987, especially pp. 388 and 391ff.
- ↑ See Steinmetz 1987, pp. 389 and 395. In summary, also Nisbet 2008, pp. 651, 652, 656, 659, 660 and 663.
- ↑ Gert Mattenklott, Drama - Gottsched to Lessing. In: Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow (Ed.): Between Absolutism and Enlightenment: Rationalism, Sensibility, Sturm und Drang, 1740–1786. Reinbek 1980, pp. 277-298, here p. 294.
- ^ Gisbert Ter-Nedden, Lessings Trauerspiele , Stuttgart 1986, p. 164; Ter-Nedden's works are cited below in abbreviated form with the year and page number.
- ↑ See also Monika Fick, Lessing-Handbuch. 4th edition. Stuttgart 2016, pp. 354–357.
- ↑ Gisbert Ter-Nedden, The Stranger Lessing. A revision of the dramatic work. ed. v. Robert Vellusig, Stuttgart 2016, succinctly summarized and critically recognized in the review by Monika Fick in The Eighteenth Century. In: Journal of the German Society for Research in the Eighteenth Century. Volume 42, Issue 1, 2018, pp. 148–150. Ter-Nedden's third Emilia-Galotti interpretation mentioned at the beginning, the 2011 portrayal of the philosophy of religion, is so self-contained that a summary hardly seems possible: Gisbert Ter-Nedden, Lessing's dramatized philosophy of religion. In: Christoph Bultmann et al. (Hrsg.): Lessings Philosophy of Religion in Context. Berlin 2011, pp. 283-335.
- ↑ Alexander Košenina: Literary Anthropology. Berlin 2008, pp. 165f.
- ^ Hugh Barr Nisbet: Lessing. A biography. Munich 2008, pp. 651–653.
- ↑ Cornelia Mönch: Deterrence or Compassion. The German civil tragedy in the 18th century. Tübingen 1993, pp. 156-158.
- ↑ From Helmut Göbel: Lessing in Wolfenbüttel: 1770–1781 .
- ↑ Article on the Fritsch opera on "Nachtkritik.de"
- ↑ "Emilia Galotti" in gripping music. In: Rhein-Zeitung.de , October 27, 2014.
