Nikolai Robertowitsch Erdman

Nikolai Robertowitsch Erdman ( Russian: Николай Робертович Эрдман ; * 3 November ^July / 16 November  1900 ^greg. In Moscow ; † 10 August 1970 ibid) was a Soviet playwright and text author of Baltic German descent.

Erdman published his first poems around 1920 and began writing for the theater in the early 1920s. His first play The Mandate had its successful premiere in Moscow in 1925, directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold . In 1930 a performance ban followed. The play was only allowed to be shown again in the Soviet Union after Stalin's death in 1956.

His second play, the satirical comedy Der Suicide , was created in the early Stalin era in 1928 . The theater reformer Konstantin Sergejewitsch Stanislavski had campaigned for a performance permit. Even so, the play was only performed in the USSR after Erdman's death in 1982. It premiered in 1969 at the Gothenburg City Theater in a Swedish-language version. The German-language premiere took place in 1970 in the Zurich Schauspielhaus under the direction of Max Amann . In Germany, the play was shown in Krefeld in March of the same year . The piece forms a literary-historical link between the satirical dramas by Gogol (" The Revisor ") and the " Theater of the Absurd " after the Second World War .

Erdman was banished for decades under Stalin in 1934 and presumably interned until after Stalin's death. During this time he was assigned to an entertainment ensemble for which he wrote several operettas and revue libretti . Erdman was rehabilitated in the course of de-Stalinization , but could no longer assert himself as an author during his lifetime. Until his death he lived secluded in Moscow ; for a long time it was thought to be lost.

Works

• 1925: the mandate
• 1928: The suicide

literature

• Julia Listengarten: Russian Tragifarce: Its Cultural and Political Roots . Susquehanna University Press, Selinsgrove 2000, ISBN 1-57591-033-0 .
• John Freedman (Ed.): The Major Plays of Nikolai Erdman. “The warrant” and “The suicide” . Russian theater archive, Volume 1, ISSN  1068-8161 . Harwood Academic, Luxembourg (et al.) 1995, ISBN 3-7186-5582-9 .
• John Edward Freedman: The dramaturgy of Nikolaj Èrdman. An artistic and cultural analysis. A thesis. Harvard University, Cambridge (Mass.) 1990.
• Nikolai Erdman: Пьесы. Интермедии. Письма. Документы. Воспоминания современников. Moscow 1990.
• Eva Szeiler (nee Kocevar): Nikolaj Ėrdman and his dramatic work . Dissertation. University of Vienna, Vienna 1989.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nikolai Erdman. (No longer available online.) Www.staatsschauspiel-dresden.de, archived from the original on September 5, 2014 ; Retrieved September 17, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ -, Ingeborg Gampert (trans.): The suicide . Bärenreiter-Schauspiel, ZDB -ID 564629-7 . Bärenreiter, Kassel 1987.
3. ^ Margret Dietrich : The modern drama. Flows, shapes, motifs (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 220). 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1974, ISBN 3-520-22003-2 , p. 431.
4. ↑ Svetlana Lukanitschewa: Ostracized authors. Works by Marina Cvetaeva , Michail Bulgakov , Aleksandr Vvedenskij and Daniil Charms on the German stages of the 90s . Theatron, Volume 40, ISSN  0934-6252 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-484-66040-6 , p. 5.
5. ↑ After he was long considered lost: Nikolai Erdman died . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna August 13, 1970, p. 8 , bottom middle ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized).

Web links

• Literature by and about Nikolai Robertowitsch Erdman in the catalog of the German National Library
• Fritz Walden : Erdmann's “The Suicide” in the Akademietheater: Whisper freedom of a dead soul . In: Arbeiter-Zeitung . Vienna June 9, 1970, p. 8 ( berufer-zeitung.at - the open online archive - digitized). (Austrian premiere on June 6, 1970, Vienna Academy Theater ).