Artist (Tankred Dorst)
Künstler is a play by Tankred Dorst , which premiered on February 1, 2008 under the direction of Christian Pade in the Bremen Theater.
Stations on the life path of the communist Heinrich Vogeler from the Worpsweder district are traced.
action
While Heinrich was painting the Worpswede summer, he met Martha , seven years his junior , who was still a young girl at the time. Years later, the two become a married couple. Rainer - adored by his Clara - comments on Martha's first years of marriage with Heinrich: Martha, a girl who was previously so tender, grows wider after each birth and Heinrich's art becomes more and more insecure.
The "free love life" in the Worpswede artists' colony is discussed. Martha is cheating on Heinrich with Kurt. Kurt, allegedly a poet and later a painter, who stayed in Heinrich's Worpsweder house, the Birkenhof - called Barkenhoff in Low German - provoked the painters in the Sunday round in the Birkenhof with his rebellious speeches. Otto then calls Kurt a snob. Kurt doesn't rest; disputes the wife of the host Heinrich. Fritz throws Kurt out of the house. Heinrich's question to Martha whether she would like to follow Kurt is not answered in the affirmative by the adulteress.
During the First World War , the Worpsweder Kreis lost the painter Hans . Heinrich curses the emperor . Actually, Ludendorff wants to have the communist Heinrich shot. The painter's comrades in Worpswede prevent this; let him be sent to an asylum without further ado.
Heinrich, who is visited by the patron Roselius , raves about his communist collective Birkenhof; speaks of his Russian admirers. Roselius makes it clear that the singular Worpswede communism only works with financial aid from German capitalists.
Fritz denounced the communist activities in the Birkenhof to the police. Otto pulls himself together with Kurt in Worpswede. Both paint. Heinrich, meanwhile released from the institution, appears with his new love, the 26 years younger Sonja Marchlewska - daughter of the Polish Spartacist Julian Marchlewski . Sonja is pregnant. Heinrich's new child is to be born in free Russia . Sonja stamps the communist project Birkenhof as a bourgeois dream.
Martha entertains Sonja with homemade apple cake. The pregnant woman does not touch the baked goods. Martha wants to stay in Worpswede with her children. She tells of reports to the police, written by Fritz. Content: The hustle and bustle on the Birkenhof. In the middle of Martha's speech, Tankred Dorst makes a leap forward over two decades: Heinrich is degenerating into the average poster painter in Russia. Subject: Stalinist propaganda. Henry's Russian son is killed in World War II . Martha became a very old woman in just a few minutes.
Tankred Dorst, however, provides the future sketched by Martha in more detail in the remaining ten scenes. Heinrich's son Petya - through and through Stalinist blindness - finds no common denominator in conversation with the indulgent father Heinrich. In Germany, meanwhile , the SA smashes the Birkenhof. Kurt visits Heinrich and Sonja in Moscow. The newcomer is supposed to make a film about the Soviet achievements on behalf of the Western Europeans. Heinrich, on the other hand, wants to hear something about Martha. Kurt, who can only visit Germany illegally, tells about Fritz, who portrays Nazi celebrities .
It is also Kurt who ultimately reports on the miserable end of the terminally ill Heinrich on a primitive farm in the steppe of Kazakhstan .
Subplot
The piece is more complex than the summary above might suggest. For example, Roselius Paulas had to hide pictures of the Nazis. In addition, the viewer learns details about the young Paula, her marriage to Otto and the early death of this important German painter. Some of Rainer's statements on art and artists - for example on the occasion of Rodin's visit to Paris - are worth mentioning; for example: "Art cannot repeat itself."
radio play
- May 27, 2007, Deutschlandradio Kultur : Artists . Director: Jörg Jannings . With Ingo Hülsmann as Heinrich Vogeler.
reception
- Andreas Schnell at nachtkritik.de : Artist - Tankred Dorst's play about Heinrich Vogeler. Starless utopia
- February 2nd, 2008 at focus.de : Artists
- Brief discussion at Suhrkamp : Synopsis
- Short discussion at theatertexe.de : artist
literature
Text output
- Tankred Dorst: artist. One piece. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2007 (edition suhrkamp 2515). 106 pages ISBN 978-3-518-12515-1 .
- Artist pp. 221–287 in Tankred Dorst. Prospero's island and other pieces. Collaboration with Ursula Ehler . Work edition 8 (Contents: Othoon . Purcell's dream of King Arthur . The desert . I'm only here temporarily . Artist. Prospero's island . To practice the earthly (Frankfurt poetics lectures)). Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2008 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-518-42039-3 , 416 pages (used edition).
Web links
- Advertisement by the Bremen Theater for the premiere
- Advertisement of the Bremen production on YouTube
Remarks
- ↑ In the piece appear in Worpswede or are mentioned by the characters: Rilke , Paula Modersohn-Becker , Otto Modersohn , Fritz Mackensen and Hans am Ende .
- ↑ This is apparently a case of poetic freedom. Because Tankred Dorst doesn't tell who Kurt should be. Kurt quotes, however, from an allegedly his own poem: "Death rolls behind old foreheads ..." (Edition used, p. 263, 7th Zvo). Its author is not called Kurt, but Ludwig - Ludwig Bäumer . Although he had an affair with Martha, he was unable to visit Heinrich in Moscow around 1933. Because Ludwig Bäumer died in 1928. Accordingly, Kurt can be a "composite" figure. Perhaps Kurt Schwitters could be of interest to the Tankred Dorst researcher in this context.
- ↑ That appears as further poetic freedom. Vogeler's son died in Worpswede in 2005.