Karl Borromeo Alexander Sessa

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Karl Borromäus Alexander Sessa (born December 20, 1786 in Breslau , Prussia ; died December 4, 1813 in Breslau) was a German doctor and playwright.

Life

Alexander Sessa initially received private tuition at home, he only briefly attended the Matthias Gymnasium in Breslau and studied philosophy in Breslau with a master's degree and then medicine in Breslau and Halle an der Saale . After the Napoleonic closure of the University of Halle , he moved on to the ophthalmologist Georg Joseph Beer at the University of Vienna in 1806 . He received his doctorate from the University of Frankfurt an der Oder in 1808 . Sessa settled in Breslau as a general practitioner and was beginning in 1813 at the outbreak of a typhoid epidemic to District Medical Officer ordered. He wrote several treatises on eye diseases which were published in the Silesian Correspondenzblatt .

Johann Michael Voltz , Johann Nussbiegel : Illustration to Jacob's war deeds (around 1819).
People of the plot in Unser Verkehr (1825).
Anonymous: Jacob's war acts and wedding. Performed in Düsseldorf in 1816

Sessa has been writing poetry and plays since childhood. His poems, which he recited in the Silesian Society for Patriotic Culture , of which he was a member of the medical profession, remained unprinted. As a stage writer he was a dilettante, but as the general practitioner of the actor Ludwig Devrient he had a connection to the Breslau stage. Presumably as a reaction to the Prussian Emancipation Edict of 1812 , he wrote a farce in which the social aspirations of the Jews are caricatured. The focus is on the depiction of the greed for effortless enrichment, which "the Jews", overhistorically, rule in their way of acting. The audience is presented with Jewish figures whose linguistic accent denounces their efforts at acculturation. The theater posse, the structure of which gives the actors space for improvisation and slapstick and interaction with the audience, does not play in bourgeois houses and spiritual interiors, but on the street in the ghetto , to which the protagonist Jakob returns at the end, now again as a street vendor.

Under the (Jewish) pseudonym Samson Eidechs , his play Die Judenschule was premiered on February 13, 1813 in Breslau, but the play was removed from the theater censors after two performances because of its obviously anti-Jewish content. Sessa died of typhus that same year.

Devrient took the play with him to Berlin when he was engaged at the Royal Theater in March 1815 . The play was rehearsed there under the title Our Traffic and announced that he and Albert Wurm were to play the main male roles in the production . Because of the anti-Jewish content, Israel Jacobson intervened with State Chancellor Hardenberg , who banned the premiere at the last minute, to the displeasure of the actors and the assembled premiere audience, which, however, had the opposite effect; perhaps [the Jews] would have acted more sensibly if they had not revealed their sensitivity , nevertheless it was a fair self-defense, so Ludwig Börne 1818. In the substitute performance and in other appearances, the comedian Wurm made hints and gestures related to the play and its prohibition, thus increasing the public's curiosity. The press took on the matter and, increasing its circulation, brought sensational reports, glosses and satires about the ban. The Berlin theater newspaper Dramaturgisches Wochenblatt printed individual scenes in advance and tried to increase the number of its subscribers. The morning paper published in Tübingen for educated classes reported on August 1, 1815, of a shouting for “Our traffic” and quoted the demand that the Jews should not enforce themselves . The Berlin police chief Paul Ludwig Le Coq saw the unrest and put pressure on Hardenberg to release the piece. The dispute over the performance had intensified into a social power struggle.

A version revised by the theater manager Carl von Brühl and thus allegedly defused was approved by the censorship and was first performed on September 2, 1815. The play Our Traffic was an unprecedented box-office success for the Schauspielhaus and in the same year it was staged in Braunschweig and Halle and in the following year also staged in Bremen, Wroclaw, Frankfurt am Main, Kassel, Cologne, Königsberg and other German cities . The Dramaturgisches Wochenblatt published a complete text in mid-October 1815 under the title Our Traffic .

The play Our Traffic was imitated and sequels of the plot were staged, without it being clear today what part of Sessa's posthumous works in it. Even after the initial excitement subsided, the piece had become so well established in the German comedy world that Reclam Verlag printed it in 1868 as volume 129 in the Reclams Universal Library . In 1938, 13 editions (editions) had been counted by then, and translations into Danish (1816) and Swedish (1818) can also be found. The play was also distributed with anti-Jewish illustrations.

As a literary response, counterparts were written, for example by Julius von Voss Euer Verkehr, 1816, and by Simon Höchheimer Der Spiegel für Israeliten. A counterpart to the farce: "Our traffic", 1817. The literary theater criticism showed the weaknesses of the play and was indignant about the mob portrayed, while approving or underestimating the political impact of the play. Rahel Varnhagen classified the play among the anti-Jewish precursors of the Hep-Hep riots in 1820.

The Germanist Elisabeth Frenzel summarized the success story from the National Socialist point of view in her dissertation at the University of Berlin in 1940 The Shape of the Jew on the Newer German Stage . After the end of National Socialism, she did not mention her dissertation and the appreciation of the posse contained therein, nor the posse and the posse writer Sessa in her overview work on German poetry. In 1998, Martin Gubser put two sessas performed antics under the category of literary anti-Semitism .

expenditure

The play Our Traffic and the play Jacob's War Acts and Wedding were published posthumously. The authorship of our traffic is guaranteed by the performance in Breslau and the obituary, but this is not clear for the second piece. It is also unclear what else comes from Sessa in the edited version of the text by Carl von Brühl. The following overview is essentially based on Volkmar Eichstädt (1938).

Our traffic

  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our traffic. From a Christian. Haberland, Königsberg 1815.
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our traffic. A farce in a file. Based on the handwriting of the author. o. O. [around 1815].
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our traffic. Haas, Vienna [around 1815].
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our traffic. 2nd edition with some additions. Dyk in Comm., Leipzig 1815, further editions: 4th, 1817; 5., Oehmigke, Berlin 1825; 6., Oehmigke, Berlin 1832.
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our traffic. Expedition of the weekly dramatic newspaper, Berlin 1815.
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our traffic: a farce in an elevator (= Reclam's Universal Library. Volume 129). Reclam, Leipzig [circa 1868].
  • The Jewish school. Editor Karl Konrad. Flemming, Breslau / Dt. Lissa 1936.

Jacob's wartime and wedding

  • [without statement of responsibility]: Jacob's war acts and wedding. Carnival farce in three acts. Also as a continuation of “Our traffic”. Boselli, Kanaan [Frankfurt am Main] 1816.
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Jacob's war acts and wedding. Posse in 3 acts. 2nd, increased and thoroughly improved edition. Boselli im Comm., Kanaan [Frankfurt am Main] 1816.
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Jacob's war acts and wedding. Posse in 3 acts. Also as a continuation of “Our traffic.” 3rd, increased and thoroughly improved edition. Boselli im Comm., Kanaan [Frankfurt am Main] 1816 ( scan in Google book search).
  • [without statement of responsibility]: Our intercourse, and Jacob's war deeds and wedding. Two dramatic antics. Vienna 1817 ( scan in Google book search).
  • Jacob's wartime and wedding. Mardi Gras spears in three lifts. Also as a continuation of: “Our traffic.” Hammer, Krakau [1816] ( scan in Google book search).

Counterparts and side pieces

  • Julius von Voss : Your traffic: farce in one elevator. Counterpart to the Jewish school or our intercourse, by Dr. Sessa. In: Latest German Schaubühne. 1817. Volume 5, pp. 247-289.
  • Aaron in a tight spot, or the groom as a bride. A play with seriousness and joke in three acts. Berlin, 1818.
  • Simon Höchheimer : The mirror for Israelites. A counterpart to the posse: "Our traffic". Campe, Nuremberg 1817.
  • Carl Friedrich Solbrig : The Jews in a tight spot. A farce in one act. Side piece to: Our traffic. And the village school. Two dramatic antics. v. Schütz, Magdeburg 1819 ( scan in Google book search).
  • J. Treuherz (jun.): The engagement, or: The bridegroom in the fur iron. Carnival posse in one act. A side piece to the posse: "Our traffic". L. Oehmigke, Berlin 1833 (2nd edition. 1863, OCLC 253992392 ).

Reviews

  • Friedrich Karl Julius Schütz : About the Posse: "Our traffic", and its author. In: Newspaper for the elegant world. Jg. 15, 1815, Sp. 1737-40, 1745-49.
  • Ludwig Börne : Our traffic. Posse. Dramaturgical sheets [1818?]. In: Ludwig Börne: All writings. Melzer, Düsseldorf 1964, pp. 415-421.

literature

obituary

Secondary literature in descending order

  • Monika Schmidt, Bjoern Weigel: Our traffic (Posse by Karl Borromäus Alexander Sessa, 1815). In: Handbook of Antisemitism . Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Volume 7: Literature, Film, Theater and Art. 2014, pp. 509-511.
  • Andreas Englhart: The theatricality of the public scandal surrounding Karl Boromäus Alexander Sessa's play “Our Traffic”. In: Andreas Englhart u. a. (Ed.): The foreign public. Staging of cultural alterity in the long 19th century. Münster, 2010, pp. 97–117.
  • Monika Schmidt: Sessa, Karl Boromäus Alexander. In: Handbook of Antisemitism. Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Volume 2/2: People L – Z. 2009, pp. 764-766.
  • Mark H. Gelber: Ludwig Börne's theater criticism and anti-Semitism, his reviews KBA Sessas and Shakespeare. In: Frank Stern, Maria Gierlinger (Ed.): Ludwig Börne. German, Jew, Democrat. Structure, Berlin 2003, pp. 159–171.
  • Martin Gubser: Literary anti-Semitism: Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century. Wallstein, Göttingen 1998, p. 151 f.
  • Matthias Richter: The language of Jewish figures in German literature (1750-1933). Studies on form and function. Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 1995.
  • Hans-Joachim Neubauer : Figures of Jews. Drama and theater in the early 19th century. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1994.
  • Lothar Ehrlich: Karl Borromäus Alexander Sessa's posse 'Our traffic' (1813) as an anti-Jewish signal on the theater. In: University of Halle: Traditions and the search for tradition of German fascism. 1988, pp. 9-17.
  • Hans-Joachim Neubauer : "On request: Our traffic". About an anti-Jewish theater farce in 1815. In: Rainer Erb , Michael Schmidt (ed.): Anti-Semitism and Jewish history. Studies in honor of Herbert A. Strauss. Wissenschaftlicher Autorverlag , Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-88840-239-5 , pp. 313-327.
  • Charlene Ann Lea: Emancipation, assimilation and stereotype. The image of the Jew in German and Austrian drama (1800-1850). Bouvier, Bonn 1978.
    • Charlene Ann Lea: The image of the Jew in German and Austrian drama, 1800-1850. Typed, PhD, University of Massachusetts, 1977. Xerographie 1989, pp. 187-204.
  • Gotthard German : Sessa, Karl Borromäus Alexander. In: Jewish Encyclopedia . 1906.

Web links

Commons : Karl Borromäus Alexander Sessa  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ First name Alexander according to the death report in the Silesian Provincial Gazette. 1813, p. 570.
  2. ↑ Table of contents at Horst Denkler : Restoration and Revolution. Political tendencies in the German drama between the Congress of Vienna and the March Revolution. Fink, Munich, p. 143 f.
  3. ↑ Hans-Joachim Neubauer: On request: Our traffic. 1987, p. 323.
  4. ↑ Hans-Joachim Neubauer: On request: Our traffic. 1987, p. 324.
  5. ^ "Traffic" in the sense of social traffic, handling, see traffic. In: Jacob Grimm , Wilhelm Grimm (Hrsg.): German dictionary . tape 12 : L, M - (VI). S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1885, Sp. 625-626 ( woerterbuchnetz.de ).
  6. ^ Wurm, Albert Aloys Ferdinand in der Deutschen Biographie , accessed on March 29, 2019.
  7. ^ Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews from the earliest times to the present. Volume 11: History of the Jews. From the beginning of the Mendelssohn period (1750) to the most recent period (1848). Leiner, Leipzig 1900, p. 318.
  8. ↑ Charlene Ann Lea: The image of the Jew. 1977, p. 202.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Neubauer: On request: Our traffic. 1987, p. 316.
  10. ↑ Charlene Ann Lea: The image of the Jew. 1977, p. 200.
  11. ↑ Carl Friedrich Solbrig : The Jews in a tight spot. Side section to: Our traffic. And the village school. Two dramatic antics. Schütz, Magdeburg 1819.
  12. ↑ Sessa, Our Traffic. (PDF; 1.5 MB) In: Reclam-Verlag: List of the volumes already published up to 1898 (up to April 1898), p. 20.
  13. ↑ Hans-Joachim Neubauer: On request: Our traffic. 1987, p. 320.
  14. ↑ Simon Höchheimer: The mirror for Israelites. A counterpart to the posse: "Our traffic". Campe, Nuremberg 1817 ( digitized ).
  15. ↑ Hans-Joachim Neubauer: On request: Our traffic. 1987, p. 316.
  16. ^ Elisabeth Frenzel: The figure of the Jew on the newer German stage. Konkordia, Bühl 1940. Dissertation from the University of Berlin, 1940. Book edition: Jewish figures on the German stage. A necessary cross-section through 700 years of role history. Deutscher Volksverlag, Munich 1940, here: pp. 76–113.
  17. ↑ Martin Gubser: Literarischer Antisemitismus: Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century. Wallstein, Göttingen 1998, p. 151 f.
  18. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Volkmar Eichstädt: Bibliography on the history of the Jewish question. Volume 1: 1750-1848. Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 1938, pp. 57–59.
  19. ↑ Bibliography of Germany or weekly directory of all new books, music and art materials coming out in Germany. Volume 8. 1833, p. 142 f., Scan in Google book search.
personal data
SURNAME Sessa, Karl Borromeo Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lizard, Samson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and playwright
DATE OF BIRTH December 20, 1786
PLACE OF BIRTH Breslau , Prussia
DATE OF DEATH December 4, 1813
Place of death Breslau , Prussia