Fear of hell

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Data
Title: Fear of hell
Original title: The T -
The Obsessed
Genus: Posse with singing in three acts
Original language: German
Author: Johann Nestroy
Literary source: Dominique ou le Possédé , by Jean Baptiste d'Epagny and Jean-Henri Dupin
Music: Michael Hebenstreit
Publishing year: 1849
Premiere: November 17, 1849
Place of premiere: Carl Theater
Place and time of the action: The action takes place in a large city and its immediate surroundings
people
  • Baroness Adele von Stromberg , an orphan
  • Freiherr von Stromberg , brother of her late father
  • Freiherr von Reichthal , brother of her late mother
  • von Arnstett , State Secretary
  • von Thurming , Chief Justice
  • Pfrim , an old cobbler
  • Eve , his wife
  • Wendelin , son of both
  • Rosalie , maid of the Baroness Adele
  • Johann , servant at Stromberg
  • Gottfried, Ignaz , servants at von Thurming
  • a commissioner
  • a closer
  • Porter at Arnstedt
  • Leni , his daughter
  • a rifle clamp at Stromberg
  • a blacksmith
  • a coal burner
  • a chimney sweep
  • Officer, sergeant of the gendarmes
  • First gut
  • Second gut
  • Servants, workers, gendarmes

Hell fear is a farce with singing in three acts by Johann Nestroy . The play was written in 1849 , the year after the revolution of 1848, and was premiered on November 17, 1849 at the Carl Theater in Vienna .

content

The criminal Freiherr von Stromberg wants to force Adele, his niece, to enter a monastery so that he can seize her inheritance. He took Baron von Reichthal, Adele's other uncle, to prison two years ago on false accusations. But Reichthal was able to escape with the help of the prison guard Wendelin Pfrim. He confesses to his mother:

"Yes, now I must of course say all kinds of things, so listen to my wife's mother; I have therefore become a prison warden because our benefactor, the good noble Baron Reichthal, was a prisoner and waited in vain for help; and only deßtwegen I am now an apparently criminal Through Gone because our benefactor through my Help 'a happy Come Through is. " (Act I, 8 th  Scene)

Reichthal now wants to ask Judge Thurming for help. He secretly married Adele and on the run from the two surprising uncles he asks Wendelin to exchange clothes with him. However, he believes that he has the devil in front of him and is terrified as hell , since all subsequent events seem to confirm his suspicions.

“This lining also has such a curious warmth - an infernal product! I knew a woman who was a fury who wore a wrapper like that. Everything is the same, I g'hör 'the devil. " (Act I, 11 th  Scene)

After many entanglements, Reichthal's innocence turns out, Stromberg is brought to justice, and the young couple can openly confess to their marriage. Wendelin, who already wanted to go on a pilgrimage with his father, finally not only realizes his mistake, but also wins the hand of Rosalie, Adele's maid.

Rosalie: "Forever!"
Wendelin: “No, only for a lifetime, the 'forever' reminds me of the devil's contract. Until now I only eingebild't me, that I Satan Zugehör 'have, I hope not, that you make it a reality. " (III. Akt, 23 ste  Scene)

Factory history

The play was written in 1849 and premiered on November 17 of this year at the Carl Theater in Vienna. As a template was named on the theater bill: “The plot is partly modeled on the French of d'Epagny and Dupin.” This meant the play Dominique ou le Possédé (first performance 1831) by Jean Baptiste Rose Bonaventure Violet d'Epagny and Jean-Henri Dupin , a three-act comedy that was played in the time of Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642). This work was published in the German version of Forst in Brno in 1832 and was translated in the same year by Ignaz Campe with the title Dominique . In 1833 the work was performed in Vienna in the Theater in der Josefstadt in the translation by Josef Kupelwieser with the title Peregrin's Wahn und Leiden or The Obsessed . In a preliminary work, Nestroy had also considered the title The Possessed . Another anonymous German adaptation was published with the title Dominik or Das Bündniß mit dem Teufel in 1844. All of these versions are likely to have been known to Nestroy and were also used as templates, as text comparisons show.

Nestroy largely retained the original text, but transformed the main character Wendelin (in the original Dominique) from a soldier from the time of Richelieu and King Louis XIII. into a prison guard in the post-March period (after 1849). The political intrigues of the bill were reduced to legacy sneaking. The scenes around the shoemaker Pfrim and the porter with his daughter were Nestroy's own invention, in which he - as often in his preliminary work - had already thought of Wenzel Scholz (Pfriem) and Alois Grois (porter) as actors. With the farcical end to the prevented pilgrimage to Rome, the author once again emphasized the comical trait of father and son Pfrim.

In encrypted form, he packaged ideological and political issues in connection with the revolution of 1848 and reflects the depressing futility of the revolt: Not only do the powerful hold on to the existing order, but the powerless have internalized it so much that every change, according to their belief, cannot come about with right things. Wendelin sings in a couplet :

"I leave my 'superstitions' to me
Raub'n by ka Enlightenment. " (II. Act, 17 th  Scene)

Johann Nestroy played the role of Wendelin, Wenzel Scholz the father Pfrim, Franz Gämmerler the chief judge of Thurming, Alois Grois the porter (who bears the name Paul on the theater bill).

This farce was created at a time when the return to the “real folk play” demanded by both critics and the public coincided with pre- and post-revolutionary features on the stages. From this one can understand the failure of the piece. It was removed from the program after just five performances and has not been played since 1849. It was not until 1948 that a new performance took place at Scala Vienna , in an arrangement by Karl Paryla and with music by Hanns Eisler . Some passages that were previously deleted due to censorship reasons were added. At the Vienna Nestroy Festival in 1961, the work was performed in an almost legendary performance in the Theater in der Josefstadt with Hans Moser as Pfrim and Hans Putz as Wendelin and was the highlight of this festival and of Moser's theater career. Further performances took place in Stuttgart (1974), at the Linz State Theater (1976, director: Gustav Manker), in the Volkstheater Vienna under Gustav Manker (1977, with Heinz Petters , Herbert Propst , Dolores Schmidinger and Rudolf Strobl ), in the Vienna Burgtheater under Leopold Lindtberg , in Graz (1987) and during the Reichenau Festival (1994). A plan by Helmut Qualtinger to stage Höllenangst in 1987 was thwarted by his death.

An autograph manuscript Nestroy entitled The T - 3 ter  Act , 38 pages of text with border corrections, is still available; also an autograph couplet (I, 7), owner's note "Siegfried Löwy" and the couplet by Wendelin (I, 14).

Hebenstreit's presumably handwritten score has been preserved; the text and the Quodlibet (III. 15) are missing .

Contemporary reception

The contemporary comments were consistently negative and the audience was also negative about the piece.

The foreign paper of November 17, 1849 (No. 274) wrote a devastating criticism, but praised the acting achievements:

“The audience came into the theater with great anticipation, but left it with complete disappointment. […] Nestroy was an excellent actor; He and Mr. Scholz saved the piece from complete destruction through their excellent game and an indestructible comedy. [...] The house was filled in all of its wide spaces. "

The Austrian Courier of November 20, 1849 (No. 276, p. 1104) particularly criticized the ending and missed Nestroy's usual joke, but also praised the actors, but described Hebenstreit's music as "- mildly - mediocre" :

“The first and second acts, although not as richly endowed with humor as Mr. Nestroy's other stage work, entertained by the excellent play of all actors, and some very successful song texts; in the third act, it appeared that unfavorable cuts had been made, leading to a hasty and very unsatisfactory conclusion. [...] The public of Vienna has long since pronounced this judgment, and to fight against such a judgment would really mean scorning public opinion. "

The Austrian Volksbote of November 20 (No. 281) found that Nestroy had made a mistake in the choice of material; the Viennese audience of November 21 (no. 267, p. 2136) called the play "a dry skeleton hung with word jokes and ambiguities that have been read together" .

Later interpretations

In 1908 Rommel 's work was judged very critically:

“The comical use of the belief in the devil, which Nestroy had taken over from the original that was playing at the time of Richelieu, was criticized as antiquated, whereas in 1842 it was still very piquant; Even the inclusion of tried and tested comic charges, such as the drunk shoemaker Pfrim, a dull copy of the immortal knee strap, a rough caretaker and his sensitive daughter, did not help the inadequate piece. "

A hundred years later, the author Katharina Wurzer wrote a much more positive review on the occasion of a performance of the play Hell Anxiety in 2013:

“In view of the historical background of the revolution of 1848, Nestroy pointed out the difficulties in the renewal of a social order. Security is only one of the prices that has to be paid for it. The characters in "Hell Fear" are secretly married, are on the run or feel controlled by others without realizing that they could change their fate themselves. Reality and fiction meet on the drive to the Vatican. Illusions are not always perceived as such and one would rather not face one's own fears. "

Jürgen Hein dealt particularly with the person of Wendelin, she was

“On the one hand, a figure from the comedy world who shares the fate of the other characters, that they are played with and that they are acted on, but on the other hand, transcends this horizon and, in his critique of 'fate', which approaches the world order with skepticism, himself as a fighter for humanity and justice and shows freedom. "

Wendelin's limited scope for action shows the political reality of the time in which the revolutionary ideas would have remained utopian after the restoration after 1849. In this figure, however, the two levels of 'obsessed' and 'realist', which were only poorly held together by the comedy plot, could be clearly recognized. Despite this inadequacy, there are some indications that Nestroy used this figure even more than many others - Titus in the talisman , Peter Span in the insignificant - as a mouthpiece for his own point of view.

text

literature

  • Fritz Brukner / Otto Rommel : Johann Nestroy: Complete Works. Historical-critical complete edition in 15 volumes, fifth volume, Schroll, Vienna 1925.
  • Jürgen Hein (Ed.): Johann Nestroy, Pieces 27 / II. In: Jürgen Hein, Johann Hüttner , Walter Obermaier , W. Edgar Yates : Johann Nestroy, Complete Works, Historical-Critical Edition. Franz Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna 1996, ISBN 3-216-30238-5 .
  • Franz H. Mautner (Hrsg.): Johann Nestroys Komödien. Fifth volume. Edition in 6 volumes, Insel Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1979, 2nd edition 1981.
  • Otto Rommel: Nestroys Works. Selection in two parts, Golden Classics Library, German publishing house Bong & Co., Berlin / Leipzig / Vienna / Stuttgart 1908.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schliesser = prison guard, jailer
  2. ↑ Cocker = hunting companion, who had to keep the gun ready to fire
  3. ↑ coal burner = charcoal burner
  4. ↑ Chimney sweep = chimney sweep
  5. ↑ Gensdarm, Gendarm = from the French gens d'armes , originally armored cavalry, from 1849 mounted country police
  6. ^ Fear of hell = tremendous fear; probably based on Book of Psalms I, 116: Fear of Hell .
  7. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. P. 18.
  8. ↑ Wickler = a large, hip-length, colored, coat-like or cape-like shawl worn by women in the Biedermeier period , sometimes with a turn-down collar or hood
  9. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. P. 25.
  10. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. P. 90.
  11. ↑ a b Facsimile of the theater slip in Jürgen Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. P. 277.
  12. ↑ Facsimile of the print edition in Jürgen Hein: Johann Nestroy, Pieces 27 / II. Pp. 279-321.
  13. ↑ Facsimile of the printed edition of Both's stage repertoir in Jürgen Hein: Johann Nestroy, Pieces 27 / II. Pp. 322-340.
  14. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. Pp. 102-104.
  15. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. Pp. 54-56.
  16. ^ Mautner: Johann Nestroys Komödien. Pp. 278-279.
  17. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. P. 154.
  18. ↑ Manuscript collection in the Vienna City Hall , shelf marks IN 33.395, 208.462.
  19. ↑ Music collection of the Austrian National Library , call number sm 8495.
  20. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. Pp. 131-144. (for the entire chapter on contemporary reception )
  21. ^ Rommel: Nestroys Works. S. LXXIX.
  22. ↑ on media & culture platform junQ.a
  23. ↑ Hein: Johann Nestroy, pieces 27 / II. P. 119.