Colleague Crampton

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Colleague Crampton is a comedy in five acts by the German Nobel Prize winner for literature Gerhart Hauptmann , which premiered on January 16, 1892 in the Deutsches Theater Berlin with comedian Georg Engels in the title role.

Gerhart Hauptmann on a painting by Lovis Corinth from 1900

Emergence

After the dramas Before Sunrise (1889), The Peace Festival (1890) and Lonely People (1891), Gerhart Hauptmann tried a comedy , more precisely a character comedy. He had the idea in November 1891 after looking at Molière's miserly in Berlin . The model for his colleague Crampton was provided by the professor of painting James Marshall , an original that Gerhart Hauptmann had seen from 1880 to 1882 at the Breslau Art and Trade School .

content

Harry Crampton, renowned professor at the art academy in a Silesian town of around 300,000 , is a dutiful drinker. His 18-year-old pretty, stately daughter Gertrud explains the phenomenon to the relegated 19-year-old art student Max Strähler as follows: “You probably know that I usually have to lead Dad, he can't go alone. If he goes alone he gets dizzy ... you may know that Papa didn't come home that night. "

Max introduces his 32-year-old brother, the factory owner Adolf Strähler, to the professor. As the guardian of the orphan Max, Adolf thanks the orphan Max for the good words that the well-known professor found for the beginner who was driven out of the academy. Crampton has no sense in such a conversation at the moment, because the Duke is just visiting the Academy. Unfortunately, the distinguished guest does not come to the painter's class, as announced, but leaves the art academy early. Because the drinker Crampton is in debt, his impeachment is imminent. His apartment has already been officially sealed.

Gertrud knows Maxen's 30-year-old sister, the widow Agnes, from the conservatory . The young girl confides in the woman: The parents' marriage is about to end. Gertrud is supposed to go to her mother, but wants to stay with her father and asks Agnes for a few days asylum - only until the father is found. The professor has disappeared without a trace.

Crampton vegetates drinking beer and playing cards in the back room of a nasty bar .

Adolf is wondering why Brother Max rented two adjacent studios for a proud 3000 Marks and bought the furniture from Crampton's studio that went under the hammer.

Max finds Crampton and puts the astonished professor in the picture: his sister Agnes wants to take Gertrud in.

Max and Gertrud get engaged. Agnes is pleased and Adolf accepts the event without comment. The fiancées, fooled with joy, set up the professor's new studio - it has good light - with their father's old furniture. Max leads Crampton from the dive bar into the new studio. The professor is touched. The young couple is allowed to marry. It seems like Crampton is on the mend. He wants to portray Agnes for 600 thalers and maybe paint a concert hall in Görlitz .

More premieres

filming

reception

  • 1892: The theater critics perceived the comedy "as a successful character study that was effective on the stage". However, more than a hundred years later, Marx calls it “a sentimentally transfigured memory image of the early eighties”.
  • 1952: According to Mayer - if we look at the art-hostile environment of the drinker Crampton - instead of comedy a tragedy could have been made out of the material.
  • 1993: Seyppel condemns the play as a failure.
  • 1995: Leppmann writes that when Hauptmann advanced to the Deutsches Theater Berlin with the play, his family's respect increased - also because it would have been financially profitable as the first product. The audience at the premiere received the piece in a friendly manner. It is true that Hauptmann did not provide world literature with it, but Prof. Crampton turned out strange. With the tragic comedy Peter Brauer in 1910, the author decided to paint again.
  • 1998: Sprengel cites comedy and naturalism as a "school example" of a tricky, difficult to overcome dramaturgical balancing act.

literature

expenditure

  • Colleague Crampton. Comedy. P. 371–440 in Gerhart Hauptmann: Selected dramas in four volumes. Vol. 1. With an introduction to the dramatic work of Gerhart Hauptmann by Hans Mayer . 692 pages. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1952 (edition used)

Secondary literature

  • Gerhard Stenzel (Ed.): Gerhart Hauptmann's works in two volumes. Volume II. 1072 pages. Verlag Das Bergland-Buch, Salzburg 1956 (thin print), p. 1046 table of contents
  • Joachim Seyppel : Gerhart Hauptmann (heads of the 20th century; 121). Revised new edition. Morgenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-371-00378-7
  • Wolfgang Leppmann : Gerhart Hauptmann. A biography. Ullstein, Berlin 1996 (Ullstein-Buch 35608), 415 pages, ISBN 3-548-35608-7 (identical text with ISBN 3-549-05469-6 , Propylaen, Berlin 1995, subtitled with Die Biographie )
  • Colleague Crampton , pp. 65–68 in: Friedhelm Marx : Gerhart Hauptmann . Reclam, Stuttgart 1998 (RUB 17608, Literature Studies series). 403 pages, ISBN 3-15-017608-5
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1870–1900. From the founding of the empire to the turn of the century. Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-44104-1
  • Peter Sprengel: Gerhart Hauptmann. Bourgeoisie and big dream. A biography. 848 pages. CH Beck, Munich 2012 (1st edition), ISBN 978-3-406-64045-2

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ The Briton James Marshall (1838–1902) worked in Weimar , Dresden , Breslau and Leipzig ( James Marshall on the work).
  2. ↑ For example, Crampton says to his professor colleagues from the academy: “Strähler is my private student. In my private studio I am my own boss. "(Edition used, p. 394, center)
  3. ↑ As recently as 2012, Sprengel admits that the comedy “written for daily and stage needs” (Sprengel anno 2012, p. 220, 5th Zvu) was “extremely successful” (Sprengel anno 2012, p. 55, 9th Zvu )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reference to UA at felix-bloch-orben.de
  2. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 211, 3rd Zvu
  3. ^ Georg Engels entry in the DB
  4. ↑ Entry at gerhart-hauptmann-gesellschaft.de
  5. ↑ Mayer in the edition used, p. 39
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 388, 14. Zvo and 23. Zvo
  7. ↑ Sprengel anno 2012, p. 212 middle
  8. ↑ Marx, p. 67
  9. ↑ Entry in the IMDb
  10. ↑ Krause, quoted in Marx, p. 67, 11. Zvu
  11. ↑ Marx, p. 68 below
  12. ↑ Mayer in the edition used, p. 40, 6. Zvo
  13. ↑ Seyppel, p. 26, 7th Zvu
  14. ↑ Leppmann, p. 138 below
  15. ↑ Leppmann, p. 142
  16. ↑ Leppmann, p. 285
  17. ↑ Sprengel anno 1998, p. 505, 3. Zvo