Ion Luca Caragiale

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Ion Luca Caragiale

Ion Luca Caragiale (* February 1 July / February 13,  1852 greg. In Haimanale , Prahova district , Wallachia , today IL Caragiale , Dâmbovița district ; † June 9 July / June 22,  1912 greg. In Berlin ) was a Romanian writer . He is considered the most important playwright in Romania.

Life

The son of a couple of actors was closely connected to the theater through the family, and two uncles on his father's side were also actors. He worked as a prompter , theater copyist , proofreader and theater manager , so from 1888 he led the Bucharest National Theater , which was named after him , but also as a newspaper editor , teacher, school inspector and innkeeper.

On October 28, 1948, he was accepted post mortem as an honorary member of the Romanian Academy , along with other famous Romanian writers such as Ion Creangă , Mihai Eminescu and Alexandru Vlahuță .

Voluntary exile in Berlin

Coșbuc , Ciuta, Vaida , Caragiale (right) in Karlsbad, 1911

In 1901, Caragiale was accused of plagiarism in the magazine Revista literară . The magazine published two articles under the pseudonym Caion , in which the claim was made that Caragiales play Năpasta ( German  misfortune ) was a plagiarism of the play Nenorocul ( German  misfortune ) by the Hungarian writer István Kemény . Caragiale found out that the writer C. Al. Ionescu stood behind the defamatory articles, took him to court, won the case without any problems, but was so injured that he decided to move abroad. However, this was only made possible for him in 1904 after he inherited a considerable inheritance. In the same year he moved to Berlin .

After he had given himself a self-imposed writing ban in Berlin, the essay 1907 din primăvară până'n toamnă ( German  1907 from spring to autumn ) was written here in 1907 , in which he described the causes and the course of the peasant uprising . Parts of the essay appeared in advance in the Viennese magazine Die Zeit . He then published the entire essay anonymously in Berlin, signed Un patriot român ( German  A Romanian Patriot ).

Caragiale lived in Berlin until his death. The body was transferred to Bucharest and buried there in the Bellu Cemetery on November 22, 1912 as part of a large funeral service . In order to enable the public to take part in the national funeral festivities, the fare was reduced by 50 percent on all railways in the country. A memorial plaque was erected in his honor at Hohenzollerndamm 201 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . In Berlin-Pankow a stele commemorates the great Romanian writer.

The Romanian filmmaker Alexandru Solomon shot the documentary film Das Brot des Exils in 2001 on the trail of Caragiale in Berlin .

Caragiale's son Mateiu is also an important Romanian writer.

plant

In Romania, Caragiale is not only considered the founder of comic theater, but also one of the most important co-founders of the Romanian national theater in general. His works, especially the comedies, are excellent examples of Romanian critical realism .

drama

The main work of Caragiale, who was mainly a dramatist, was written in the relatively short period of time from 1879 to 1890. During this creative phase he criticized the weaknesses of his environment almost exclusively in comedies, using satire and irony; Caragiale carried out violent attacks especially against the bourgeoisie and nationalistic narrow-mindedness, but the poet also mercilessly mocked weaknesses and mistakes in man himself.

One Stormy Night (1878), for example, makes fun of both the social and family life of the petty bourgeoisie in the Bucharest suburbs. The fear of the bourgeois upstart of every revolutionary event is thematized in the farce Mr. Leonida and the reaction (1879): A carnival firecracker is confused with the shots of the revolution. The comedy The Lost Love Letter (1884), which was at times one of the most frequently performed pieces in his homeland, also shows the playwright as a close observer of social and political conditions. With his first tragedy The False Accusation (1890), which takes place in a village setting and addresses an unpunished murder, Caragiale largely said goodbye to the theater.

In Berlin exile, however, a fragmentary continuation of his comedies Titirca , Sotirescu and Comp .

prose

After 1890, the playwright, who had published his first stories and poems in magazines as early as 1872, switched to storytelling and sketching. His stories and novellas often take up fairytale , imaginative and playful themes. Most of his short stories and sketches are critical of society. The most famous stories include: Mr Goe (Dl Goe), Mitică , The Chain of Weaknesses (Lanțul slăbiciunilor), Telegrams (Telegrame), A Christmas Story (O cronică de Crăciun), Visit (Vizita).

In the years 1893 and 1901 Caragiale also published Moftul român , a satirical magazine that critically examined the “Romanian odds and ends ”.

Film adaptations

  • 1959: telegrams ( telegrams )
  • 1981: Do not be afraid, Jakob! , Film by Radu Gabrea
  • 1981: Why do the bells ring, Mitică? ( De ce trag clopotele Mitică? ), A film by Lucian Pintilie
  • 1988: The inn in the mountains ( Hanul dintre dealuri )

effect

Caragiale exercised the most significant influence in literary history on the theater of the absurd by Eugène Ionesco . This wrote in his Notes et contre-notes : "IL Cargiale is perhaps the greatest unknown dramatic author". Above all, Caragiale's social criticism and his pronounced linguistic humor are recognizable in Ionesco's pieces.

Soon after August 23, 1944 , the Academy made Caragiale a posthumous member. Continuous filming of his works since then are signs of the popularity of the Romanian classic in his home country, which has been a little forgotten in Germany today.

In the Federal Republic of Germany , the deceased in 1912, who, apart from the 1880s , wrote hardly any for the stage, was still considered an important representative of modern theater in the late 1950s ; the GDR held him in honor and on the schedule as a “witty fighter against the bourgeois-Junker class state”. The radio of the GDR brought audio versions of his pieces on the radio, for example Mr. Leonida (this was also school teaching material). A radio adaptation of The Lost Love Letter was made in 1982 .

Ion Luca Caragiale is depicted today on the banknote with the value of 100 Romanian lei . The National University of Theater and Film Arts "Ion Luca Caragiale" in Bucharest is named after him.

Individual evidence

  1. Date of birth according to the birth certificate, see: Constantin Popescu-Cadem: IL Caragiale, recurs la biografie , Revista Manuscriptum, Volume 8, Issue 2 (27), 1977, pages 179-184 (Romanian)
  2. http://www.biografii-online.net/index.php/scriitori/8-romania/14-alexandru-vlahuta-1858-1919
  3. Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung from No. 2729, from Wednesday, December 4, 1912, p. 3
  4. deruge.org (PDF; 694 kB), Roxana Demetrescu: The bread of exile
  5. ^ Gallimard, Collection Idées, no 107, 1962, p. 117

Web links

Commons : Ion Luca Caragiale  - collection of images, videos and audio files