flirtation

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Theater ticket for the premiere of Liebelei in the Burgtheater Vienna on October 9, 1895
Data
Title: flirtation
Genus: Play in three acts
Original language: German
Author: Arthur Schnitzler
Publishing year: 1894
Premiere: October 9, 1895
Place of premiere: Burgtheater , Vienna
Place and time of the action: Vienna, present [1895]
people
  • Hans Weiring , violin player at the Josefstädter Theater
  • Christine , his daughter
  • Mizi Schlager , milliner
  • Katharina Binder , wife of a stocking knitter
  • Lina , her nine year old daughter
  • Young people:
    • Fritz Lobheimer
    • Theodor Kaiser
  • A gentleman

Liebelei is a play by Arthur Schnitzler (1862–1931) from 1894. It was premiered on October 9, 1895 in the Burgtheater in Vienna.

content

1st act

Location: Fritz's apartment.
Theodor has invited two young women, Mitzi and Christine, to dinner in his friend Fritz's apartment. Theodor hopes to distract his friend from a love affair with a married woman through the "sweet girl" Christine. The mood is exuberant, but while Mitzi doesn't take her relationship with Theodor very seriously, Christine sees Fritz as a great love. During dinner, the husband of his affair arrives at Fritz's house with the collected love letters and challenges Fritz to a duel. After the gentleman leaves, Fritz tells Theodor, shocked, about the incident. He wants to calm him down and says that such duels almost always end well. Then Theodor and the two young women leave Fritz's apartment.

2nd act

Location: Christine's room.
Christine is just getting ready to leave when the neighbor Katharina Binder enters. She invites Christine to visit a garden bar with music with her. A young man from her family who is very interested in Christine will also be there. Christine refuses and leaves the apartment shortly after Weiring, her father, a violin player at the Josefstädter Theater, has returned from rehearsal. Weiring and Katharina stay behind and talk about Christine's prospects and the lives of young women in general. Katharina says that Christine shouldn't bother with Mizi and should better marry her relatives. Weiring, on the other hand, is of the opinion that the girl should enjoy her youth. Mizi enters, Christine comes back too. Katharina and Weiring leave the apartment. Christine now tells that Fritz, whom she should have met, did not come to the meeting point. Finally Fritz comes into the apartment. Christine is very happy, he is also happy and it seems as if he has finally overcome the passion for his affair. After Theodor arrives, the two say goodbye and say they are going away for a few days - supposedly to go to Fritz's family's estate, in fact because of the duel .

3rd act

Location: Christine's room, a few days later.
Christine suffers greatly from Fritz's absence. After confessing her love for Fritz to her father, she learns from her father, Theodor and Mitzi that Fritz was killed in a duel. She is heartbroken that he died for another woman and rushes out of the apartment. Whether she'll end up killing herself remains to be seen.

Emergence

As a 19-year-old Schnitzler noted in his diary in 1881 the idea for a drama that later developed into a love affair . A first sketch of the plot, which has survived to this day, was probably drawn up ten years later, in 1891: At that time, Schnitzler planned to create the material under the title The poor girl as a “folk piece”. In the fall of 1893, Schnitzler worked out the first act of the planned piece: He played in a suburban dance school; The fact that Fritz and Christine (at that time still called Marie) got to know each other, which was no longer explicit in the published piece, is shown in it. After criticism from his writer friends Richard Beer-Hofmann , Hugo von Hofmannsthal , Felix Salten and Gustav Schwarzkopf , however, he rejected this act and began to work on the material three times in the following months. In the fifth approach, he finally designed the three-act form of the final version at the beginning of September 1894 and began working on it on September 13, 1894; In this phase the title Liebelei also appears for the first time . The version was ready in mid-October.

premiere

At the end of October 1894, shortly after completion, Schnitzler submitted Liebelei to the Burgtheater , and it was accepted for performance in the following January. The first performance took place a year after completion, on October 9, 1895, u. a. with Schnitzler's lover Adele Sandrock in the role of Christine. The Liebelei waltz composed by Schnitzler was also performed.

interpretation

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
The following paragraph is not supported by the individual references given in the article.

In Liebelei , his first major stage success, Schnitzler deals with a social topic: the problem of extramarital love. In the course of the play there is a kind of class division when Theodor describes the two types of women. The "interesting women", after Theodor married women from the upper class, bring "dangers", "tragedy" and "big scenes". In the "love affair" with a poor girl from the suburbs one finds "relaxation", "tenderness" and "gentle emotion". In addition, there are connections to civil tragedy in the play, as the second act is also about maintaining Christine's good reputation.

The duel between the Lord and Fritz only arises out of social norms and not out of love. The affair must remain undetected, otherwise it would be sanctioned in society. The reasons for the man to call for this duel indirectly - he does not express this in words - look different. His personal honor was hurt because his wife cheated on him and Fritz refused to hand over her love letters on top of that, so he has to demand satisfaction. He has to save his social standing. The code of honor still valid at the time required a duel in such cases, and Fritz and the gentleman knew this rule.

Another theme in this play is the exposure of class differences. The “Lady in Black” comes from Fritz's shift, Christine belongs to the petty bourgeoisie. The women of this class had to hope to find a well-off husband who could endure them. When Fritz visits Christine at her house for the first time shortly before he goes to a duel, he crossed the boundaries of class. It seems as if he had more feelings for Christine, since the superficiality of his class - the gentleman z. B. only thinks of saving his honor when he demands a duel - becomes aware. But he cannot agree to Christine's ideal of love, namely a love for eternity, he lives only for the moment, and an eternity claim is only valid in the moment (admittedly only as an illusion). There are “moments”, it is once said, “which spray a scent from eternity around them”. But in reality, Fritz is only too attached to the views of his class, because it is clearly noticeable that he misses the openness in his relationship with the "lady" that he clearly feels in his relationship with Christine. This would spread her whole life and thinking before him, if he only let her. In fact, he forbids her to want to know anything about him and does not reveal anything about his life. Actually, Fritz is a man in need who is very much looking for love and loyalty, but is forced to behave differently due to the circumstances of his class and his way of life.

In contrast to him, Theodor and Mizi are absorbed in this system; they are both frivolous and light-hearted and have nothing to say to one another beyond the moment. Theodor only sees women as a pastime, and Mizi says you shouldn't fall in love unnecessarily, this would only cause problems. Theodor is only looking for amusement and wants to avoid any kind of complication. He is the seedless person designed by Schnitzler in his aphorisms.

Christine, who always assumed she would find a man for life, fell in love with Fritz and therefore does not enter into a relationship with Franz, who would, however, offer her financial security. She tries rather to give her Fritz freedom and hopes that he will decide for her after all. The fact that in the end, before she runs away, she at least suggests her suicide ("I don't want to pray there ... no ...") has to do with the insight that for Fritz it was just a pastime, a love affair is. For them, however, Fritz was their “everything”. It cannot come to terms with the principle of the “repeatability of the unrepeatable” (Richard Alewyn), which already rules Schnitzler's Anatol cycle. Your life is built on the romantic, sensitive ideal of love of one, true and holy love. Liebelei can be seen as the “drama of the downfall of the Viennese girl in the world of pleasure in the fin-de-siècle society” , but also as a tragedy of the self-image of loving people: Fritz's concept of love leads to arbitrariness, and Christine's concept of love is, so to speak, an antique without Significance for the present.

Film adaptations

Text output

literature

  • Daviau, Donald G .: Arthur Schnitzler's “Liebelei” and Max Ophuls's film adaptation. In: Foster, Ian / Krobb, Florian (Ed.): Arthur Schnitzler. Contemporaries. Contemporaneities. Bern 2002, 329–347.
  • Ehrhart, Claus: Remarques on the problem of l'identité in Per Gynt de Henrik Ibsen et Liebelei d'Arthur Schnitzler. In: Cahiers d'études germaniques 32 (1997), H. 1, 39-51.
  • Fritz, Axel: Daughters die before their fathers. Arthur Schnitzler's play "Liebelei" and the tradition of the bourgeois tragedy. In: Christiane Pankow (Hrsg.): Articles about language and literature. Umeå 1992, 63-80.
  • Hammer, Stephanie B .: Fear and attraction. “Anatol” and “Liebelei” productions in the United States. In: Modern Austrian literature 19 (1986), H. 3/4, 63-74.
  • Janz, Rolf-Peter / Laermann, Klaus: Arthur Schnitzler. On the diagnosis of the Viennese middle class in the fin de siècle. Stuttgart 1977.
  • LeBerre, Annie: L'apologie du cynisme dans "Liebelei". In: Littérature et civilization à l'agrégation d'allemand 1995, 15–28.
  • Martin, Dieter: love affair. The failure of an arranged life. In: Hee-Ju Kim / Günter Saße (ed.): Arthur Schnitzler. Dramas and Stories, Stuttgart 2007, 46–55.
  • Möhrmann, Renate: Schnitzler's women and girls. Between objectivity and sentimentality. In discussion Deutsch 13 (1982), 507-517.
  • Morse, Margret: Decadence and Social Change. In: Modern Austrian Literature 10 (1977), H. 2, 37-52.
  • Ossar, Michael: Individual and type in Arthur Schnitzler`s "Liebelei". In: Modern Austrian Literature 30 (1997), H. 2, 19-34.
  • Scheible, Hartmut: Arthur Schnitzler in self-testimonies and image documents. Reinbek 1976, 57-64.
  • Spencer, Catherine: Translating Schnitzler for the Stage losing "Liebelei"? In: Foster, Ian / Krobb, Florian: Arthur Schnitzler. Contemporaries. Contemporaneities. Bern 2002, 373-390.
  • Swales, Martin: Arthur Schnitzler. A critical study. Oxford 1971.
  • Urbach, Reinhard: Schnitzler commentary on the narrative writings and dramatic works. Munich 1974.
  • Wardy, Rania el: love playing-playing love. Arthur Schnitzler and his metamorphosis of love for the game. Marburg 2008.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Theater ticket for the premiere in the Vienna Burgtheater. In:  Theatericket (Opera and Burgtheater in Vienna) , October 9, 1895, p. 1 (online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / wtz
  2. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Diary 1879-1892. Edited by Commission for literary forms of use of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, chairman: Werner Welzig . Vienna 1987, p. 116.
  3. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition. Edited by Peter Michael Braunwarth, Gerhard Hubmann and Isabella Schwentner. De Gruyter, Berlin, Boston 2014, p. 1.
  4. ↑ a b c Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition. 2014, p. 2.
  5. ↑ a b Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition. 2014, pp. 34–197.
  6. ↑ anno.onb.ac.at
  7. ↑ anno.onb.ac.at
  8. ↑ Arthur Schnitzler: Liebelei. Historical-critical edition. P. 3.
  9. ↑ Christa Melchinger: Illusion and Reality in Arthur Schnitzler's Dramatic Work. Heidelberg 1968.

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