Count Benjowsky or the conspiracy on Kamchatka

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Graf Benjowsky is a five-act play by August von Kotzebue published in 1795. The playwright took the material from the autobiography of the title hero Moritz Benjowski : Des Count Moritz August v Beniowski Travels through Siberia and Kamchatka via Japan and China to Europe , which was published in German by Voss in 1790 in Berlin .

action

Count Benjowsky was exiled by Russia and deported to Kamchatka to work as a serf peasant in an exile colony for the rest of his life. On the way he saves the ship, which gets caught in a storm. When he arrives - this is where the play begins - he is already a celebrated hero, so that all sides try to use him for their own purposes.

In the course of a rapid and dense development, Benjowsky became, among other things, the governor's confidante, his daughter's fiancé and the leader of a prisoner revolt. He is repeatedly betrayed, exploited and lied to. There are assassinations out of revenge, jealousy, addiction to profit. On the night of the planned uprising, he has to choose between his various obligations.

In the end, the uprising succeeds and Benjowsky is able to flee with his fellow prisoners.

background

The piece is based on the life of Moritz Benjowski , a Slovak-Hungarian nobleman and adventurer. A few years later, Kotzebue himself was arrested in Russia and deported to Siberia. He describes the events of his exile in " The strangest year of my life ".

Performance history

The Count Benyowszky was performed on December 17, 1794 at the Court Theater in Weimar, in an institution of Christian August Vulpius after Vulpius's own piece on the same subject had failed. In Berlin, where August Wilhelm Iffland directed the theater, the drama saw 40 performances from 1796. Further productions took place in Frankfurt, Braunschweig, Prague and in many other places.

literature

  • Count Benjowsky or the conspiracy on Kamchatka . A play in five acts by August von Kotzebue. Leipzig: Paul Gotthelf Kummer , 1795 (no current edition available)
  • Ulrike Leuschner: Count Benjowsky or the conspiracy on Kamchatka. In: Kotzebue's dramas. A lexicon. Edited by Johannes Birgfeld, Julia Bohnengel and Alexander Košenina. 2nd Edition. Hanover: Wehrhahn 2020. pp. 87–89.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Meier: The 'trivial classic'. Popular literature as a cultural complement. In: Christian August Vulpius: A correspondence on the cultural history of the Goethe era . Volume 1: Letter texts. Edited by Andreas Meier. De Gruyter, S. XI-CLXXXVII, here: S. LVIII-LVIV.
  2. ↑ Monika Siegel: I had a penchant for enthusiasm ... The life of the writer and translator Meta Forkel-Liebeskind as reflected in her time . Dissertation, Berlin 2001. Available as a pdf at http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/222/1/Meta.pdf . Here: p. 95.