Disease of youth
Illness of Youth is a play by the playwright Ferdinand Bruckner from 1926 . The focus of the piece is a group of students who, disillusioned and without hope for prospects, take refuge in sexual adventures, drug intoxication and crime. At the time it was written, the piece was controversial; today it is considered a modern classic.
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| Title: | Disease of youth |
| Genus: | play |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Ferdinand Bruckner |
| Publishing year: | 1926 |
| Premiere: | October 16, 1926 |
| Place of premiere: | Hamburger Kammerspiele |
| Place and time of the action: | Vienna, 1923 |
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action
The medical student Marie is preparing her room for the graduation ceremony. Her roommate Desiree tries to establish a tender relationship with her. Marie, who loves the poet Petrell and maintains him financially, rejects Desiree's rapprochement. The failed student Freder, a former lover of Desiree, seduces the maid Lucy, instigates her to theft and finally sends her to the streets. Marie's friend Petrell courted the ambitious student Irene, which Freder promptly brought Marie back. Marie is desperate and seeks consolation from Desiree. Just a few days later, the relationship between Marie and Desiree is in a serious crisis. Only when Desiree threatens to also go on the street do they reconcile. Desiree, however, has lost all life force; she takes her own life with veronal , which Freder has got for her. Marie no longer sees any prospects worth living in either. She provokes the drunk Freder to the extreme so that he murders her.
History of origin
The play was written in 1925. It was premiered on two consecutive days in 1926 at the Hamburger Kammerspiele, directed by Mirjam Ziegel-Horwitz and at the Lobe Theater in Breslau (directed by Paul Barney). In Breslau, the play was entitled Tragedy of the Young and was played with a softened ending that came from Bruckner himself. Instead of killing Marie, Freder forces her to be sober and opens up a future together for her, since they would be an “exemplary couple”: “We'll continue to live, one way or another. (...) Civilian at the right moment. With consciousness. "
The decisive breakthrough for the play came with the Berlin premiere on April 26, 1928 in the Renaissance Theater , directed by Gustav Hartung .
Bruckner suddenly became famous with Illness of Youth , his dramatic debut. At that time, however, nobody knew that the name of the author was the Berlin theater director Theodor Tagger. Tagger had founded the Renaissance theater in 1922 and played primarily contemporary authors - with the exception of the plays by his alter ego Ferdinand Bruckner. It wasn't until five years later that Tagger revealed the secret of his identity. In 1928, when the sickness of the youth came on the stage of the Renaissance theater, he had already given up management.
The recording of the piece was extremely controversial in the first few years. Kurt Pinthus praised the play in 1928: “The attempt has never been made to develop all the torment of our youth in so many variations, so urged, so deliberately from a single motif.” The theater critic Herbert Ihering, on the other hand, accused Bruckner of being interested only "the pathological exception", not the "typical" youth. The still expressionistically influenced portrayal of the lack of perspective among young people was also scandalized because of its open treatment of the subject of sexuality. Bruckner's piece was seen in the tradition of Wedekind's Spring Awakening : “The gender confusion introduced by Wedekind is brought here to the pace of Kurfürstendamm. The literary brothel is celebrating its stage triumph. "
Despite the criticism, Bruckner's piece undoubtedly struck a chord with the post-war youth, who were desperately looking for perspectives and often only found them in retreat into private life, in intoxication and cynicism. In contrast to Arnolt Bronnen's play Patermord (1922), Bruckner is no longer about a generation conflict . The generation of fathers and mothers no longer plays a role in the play and for the characters - neither as a benchmark nor as an enemy image from which one has to emancipate oneself.
In other respects, too, the ensemble of characters is completely isolated and referenced: the scene of the play, the Vienna student boarding house, is never left during the action. All other places referred to remain vague - or (as in the case of Lucy, who goes on the street) they mean total social decline. The characters have no point of reference outside of themselves - not to mention a social vision or even utopia. Diligence turns into self-anesthesia, goals in life turn into careerism, and clairvoyance turns into cynicism. The only way the figures can move is the “relationship carousel, which rotates forever and from which there is only one exit: death. The society that does not offer them a viable alternative to 'bourgeoisisation' literally no longer plays a role. "
After the Second World War , the author combined the play with Die Verbrecher (premiered in 1928) and Die Rassen (premiered in 1933) to form the youth cycle of two wars .
Important productions
- In 1968 Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Irm Hermann and Rudolf Waldemar Brem played the leading roles in the Action Theater, the predecessor of the legendary anti -theater that was founded a short time later . Directed by Jean-Marie Straub .
- In 1991 Konstanze Lauterbach moved the piece to a performance at the Leipziger Schauspiel in a poetic-surreal ambience and reflected the themes of being tired of life, longing for ideals and cynicism as a contemporary sense of time.
- The production by Tilmann Köhler , which appeared at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar in 2006 , was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2007 .
Cinematic implementation
A film adaptation of the eponymous material was made at the Vienna Film Academy in 2007 under the direction of Michael Haneke . The cinematic implementation of the material was shown for the first time on June 21, 2007 in the Wiener Gartenbaukino .
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Disease of youth |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2007 |
| length | 90 minutes |
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| Director | Dieter Berner |
| script | Hilde Berger |
| production | Film University Babelsberg |
| music | Daniel Dickmeis |
| camera | Dennis Pauls |
| cut | Robert Hentschel |
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At the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf , a 90-minute film adaptation of the eponymous material was made in 2009 under the direction of Dieter Berner , which was updated by the actors through improvisations and transferred into the present. Hilde Berger wrote the script according to the actors' specifications. Among others, Florens Schmidt , Matthias Weidenhöfer , Alina Levshin and Stella Hilb played the leading roles. The film premiered at the Hof Film Festival in October 2010. The TV premiere was on December 13, 2010 on ARTE.
literature
Expenses (selection)
- Ferdinand Bruckner: works, diaries, letters . Scientific Edition / Drama 1: 1920 or The Comedy of the Fall of the World . A cycle (Harry. Anette) / Illness of youth / The criminals . Edited by Joaquín Moreno and Hans G. Roloff. Weidler Buchverlag Berlin 2003. ISBN 3-896-93205-5
- Ferdinand Bruckner: Dramas . Edited by Hansjörg Schneider. Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-353-00651-6
Secondary literature (selection)
- Christiane Lehfeldt: The playwright Ferdinand Bruckner . Kümmerle, Göppingen 1975
- Doris Engelhardt: Ferdinand Bruckner as a critic of his time: Searching for an author's location . Aachen, Technical University, dissertation, 1984.
- Ingrid Reul: Topicality and Tradition: Studies on Ferdinand Bruckner's Work up to 1930 . Kovač, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-86064-966-3
- Günther Rühle (ed.): Theater for the Republic: 1917-1933 in the mirror of criticism . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1967.
Web links
- Official homepage of the film adaptation
- [1]
- [2]
- Selected discussions about the Vienna premiere in January 1927
Individual evidence
- ↑ quoted from: Ferdinand Bruckner: Dramen . Edited by Hansjörg Schneider. Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-353-00651-6 , p. 612
- ↑ quoted from: Ferdinand Bruckner: Dramen . Edited by Hansjörg Schneider. Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-353-00651-6 , p. 609
- ↑ quoted from: Harenberg Schauspielführer. Harenberg Dortmund 1997, ISBN 3-611-00541-X , p. 166
- ^ Ihering in the Berlin Börsen-Curier, October 24, 1928, quoted from: Herbert Ihering: From Reinhardt to Brecht. Four decades of theater and film . Aufbau-Verlag Berlin (East) 1959, Vol. II, p. 362
- ↑ he (initials), Deutsche Zeitung of April 28, 1928, quoted from: Ferdinand Bruckner: Dramen . Edited by Hansjörg Schneider. Verlag Volk und Welt Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-353-00651-6 , p. 610
- ↑ Dagmar Borrmann in: illness of youth . Program, Leipziger Schauspiel, 1991/92 season
- ↑ Ingeborg Pietzsch: The Lost - The Losers . In: Theater der Zeit, issue 1/1992, p. 39
- ^ Press release from the Association of Friends of the Vienna Film Academy.
- ↑ Sickness of Youth in the Internet Movie Database (English)