Company in autumn

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Gesellschaft im Herbst is a one-act play in seven pictures by Tankred Dorst , which premiered on July 2, 1960 under the direction of Heinz Joachim Klein in the Small House of the Mannheim National Theater.

content

The widowed Countess Athalie de Villars-Brancas, mistress of Croix des Anges, wants to sell her slowly rotting property to Mr Costeneau, head of a travel company. Charles Toussaint, archivist in the manuscript department of the Lyons library , comes forward with various documents to the elderly lady. The evidence that the family treasure worth around 94 million francs, buried in a chest directly in the castle under the hall, is said to have survived the plundering in 1789 . The countess doesn't want to sell anymore. After the journalist Poisinet published the news, the young Marcel de Rochouart suddenly becomes interested again in his former bride Claire-Hélène after a year of absence. The elderly countess finally wants to bring her 30-year-old only child under the hood.

Soon over fifty workers under the leadership of the building contractor Paul Bigot undermined the castle on three sides; systematically penetrate the labyrinth of underground passages. The cracks in the already dilapidated walls are widening. Claire-Hélène has to move into the hall; camps there with Marcel in a kind of shack. Bigot has set up a construction office in the hall next to the shed. The Countess did not hire Bigot at all. The entrepreneur argues convincingly with the decency of his workforce. The mistress of Croix des Anges finally wants to pay. She gets the money from one of her loyal friends, the notary Testière. At first he sees himself unable to do so, but is duped by the journalist Poisinet. The journalist also finds a job in the hall of the castle. His typewriter rattles.

Poisinet's news of the excavations reaches from France to America. The businessman Fox, who is also entrusted with the supervision of the wards deposited by orphans, travels from overseas with good reason. He learned of the misappropriation of these facilities by a certain Testière. Mr. Fox, better known in France under the name Martinez, apparently persuaded the tour operator Costeneau to cover the sum of money. Incidentally, Martinez is also the boss of the digging crowd. The American owns all the newspapers Poisinet writes for.

The chest is found, but is only supposed to be broken into at the festivities for Hélène's engagement with Marcel.

Marcel can't wait. All he finds in the chest is sand, earth and broken flower pots. The groom sneaks away the second time.

Count Henri, the countess's blessed husband, who died twenty years before the start of the plot, had sold the treasure to the American Fox while he was still alive.

shape

Funny dialogues amuse the viewer. The morbid nobility is ridiculed. Tankred Dorst demands grotesque situations as a style element in a stage instruction . These are to be generated by interlinking the real with the imagination. It looks like this, for example: When Toussaint fails to find what he is looking for on his nerve-wracking treasure hunt, Hélène, Marcel and the castle caretaker throw him down from the hall into the vault.

It is only in the last of the seven pictures in the play that a new post-war society dominated by international capital , in the person of the businessman Fox, penetrates the audience with power.

reception

  • In Barner's literary history, Dorst is portrayed as walking in the footsteps of Frisch and Dürrenmatt .

literature

Used edition

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günther Erken in Arnold, p. 85, right column, 2nd entry from above
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 73 middle
  3. ↑ Barner, p. 269, "The poetic and the absurd drama"