Goethe in the exam
Goethe in the exam , also “Goethe. A grotesque in two pictures ”, is a short play that premiered in 1908 for the cabaret stage by Alfred Polgar and Egon Friedell .
content
Goethe's spirit appears to a lost pupil and declares himself ready to take the exam in his place ; Subject: Goethe's life and work. To Goethe's surprise, the exam was unsuccessful for him. He knows so much about his youth, family relationships and the interior design of the house on the Großer Hirschgraben that the examiner interrupts this part, irritated. For this, Goethe cannot give the required precise data: “When did Goethe leave Wetzlar ?”, “When did Stella appear ?” Goethe and the examining professors also have different views in cases of doubt in Goethe research . Goethe's statements that Frau von Stein was his “lover” and that he wrote the second part of Wilhelm Meister because he received an advance payment on it - and had already spent it - are felt by the German professors as an insult to a “national shrine”. In the end, a student is recommended to Goethe as a role model, who shines with memorized factual knowledge.
Autobiographical
The Viennese Friedell lived as a teenager in Goethe's native Frankfurt am Main . He did not graduate until the fourth attempt at Konrad Duden in Hersfeld, Prussia . Duden is the representative of exact knowledge.
reception
The play was premiered on New Year's Eve 1907/1908 in the Fledermaus cabaret in Vienna . The role of Goethe, which is written in the Frankfurt dialect , was played by Friedell himself. Although, according to Polgar, the reaction of the audience was divided, 202 more performances in the Fledermaus followed in the same year. Friedell also organized performances outside Vienna and played the main role, for example in Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt and Berlin. Goethe in the exam was also the last role in which Friedell appeared - in the Theater an der Wien - two months before he was driven to suicide by the National Socialists in March 1938.
The play was filmed in 1986 as an advertisement for the Telekolleg of German TV; the role of Goethe was played by Günter Strack , with an original Hessian accent .
output
- Egon Friedell and Alfred Polgar: Goethe: Grotesque in two pictures . Leipzig: Leipzig Bibliophile Evening, 1999 (reprint of the Stern edition, Vienna, Leipzig, 1926) DNB
literature
- Full text
- Roland Innerhofer: The Polfried AG . In: Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler , Johann Sonnleitner, Klaus Zeyringer (Eds.): Comics in Austrian Literature (Philological Studies and Sources; Vol. 142). Erich Schmidt Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-503-03752-7 .
- Michaela Gille: Goethe redivivus as a motif in selected works of recent German literature . Dissertation University of Siegen 2006, pp. 38–45 DNB