Mine-haha
The unfinished story Mine-Haha or On the Physical Education of Young Girls by Frank Wedekind was published in 1903 by Albert Langen's publishing house in Munich. Mine-Haha shows a linguistic scarcity and a parabolic escalation in the thematic. At the end, Frank Wedekind explains that “Mine-Haha” is Indian and means “laughing water”. It probably refers to the epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855), which tells of the life of the Ojibwa chief Hiawatha and his bride Minnehaha. Longfellow's work also inspired Antonín Dvořák for the 3rd movement of his 9th Symphony From the New World .
Lucile Hadzihalilovic filmed the story in 2004 under the title Innocence , John Irvin under the title The Fine Art of Love: Mine-haha in 2005.
action
The retired teacher Helene Engel hands the author a manuscript just before she commits suicide. It is an autobiography about her bizarre upbringing of the young girl Hidalla.
Hidalla grows up in a house where the older children look after the younger ones. At the age of 7, she is taken to a locked park in a box, where she spends the next 7 years with other girls. The only adult women are two teachers and old servants. In the park the girls only learn gymnastics, dance and music. A theater is attached to the park where selected girls perform plays at night. At the end of their 7 years, the oldest girls take a train out of the park and are brought together with boys of the same age.
criticism
According to critic Elizabeth Boa, the piece can be interpreted in three ways. In the first, the children live in a utopian world in which a purely physical education opposes the mind as a source of illusion. The second interpretation is a dystopia of tight controls that the children themselves enforce. Finally, the piece can also be understood as a grotesque satire.
literature
- Klaus Johann: Limit and stop. The individual in the "House of Rules". To German-language boarding school literature. (= Contributions to recent literary history . 201.) Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-8253-1599-1 .
Web links
- E-book of the story (PDF file; 726 kB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Elizabeth Boa: The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theater of Subversion . 1987, ISBN 0-631-14234-7 .