Prometheus, Deucalion and his reviewers

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Prometheus, Deukalion and his reviewers is a satirical play in one act by Heinrich Leopold Wagner , in which he mocks the critics of Goethe's suffering of young Werther in an encrypted representation.

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Prometheus sends the Deucalion he created out into the world. You meet a parrot who is supposed to present Deukalion to his audience. The parrot tells everyone that Deucalion is a creature of Prometheus, although Prometheus asked that his name not be mentioned. The audience admires Deucalion and the parrot is proud as if it were its creator himself. Shortly afterwards, however, some appear who criticize Deucalion and get into a dispute about the reasons for their criticism: The critics are a goose, a donkey, an owl, a few frogs, a rider, a lion and a star.

But they all keep a respectful distance when first Mercury and then Iris take the stage. The conversation between Prometheus and Mercury alludes to a past conflict between the two. Deucalion is viewed more positively by Mercury and Iris than by the other critics, Mercury says: “Hey, look! look! I call that original! / Jupiter W *** doesn't even do that. "

The final critic is an orangutan who wants to improve Deukalion by putting a different head on it. Most animal critics praise this "improvement".

A buffoon , who has already introduced the play in a prologue , now condemns the behavior of the critics in an epilogue : They should talk less and think more in order not to have to wear the fool's costume like himself.

Decryption of the figures

The appearing figures represent real people who took part in the debate about Goethe's Werther. For the contemporary audience, they were easy to recognize due to many allusions:

  • Prometheus : Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who is equated not only because of his Prometheus hymn , but also as the "creator" of Werther with the man who created Prometheus.
  • Deucalion (son of Prometheus): Werther, as a creature of Goethe.
  • Parrot : Goethe's publisher Christian Friedrich Weygand, who, despite promises to the contrary, did not publish the novel anonymously but under Goethe's name.
  • Goose : Johann Conrad Deinet, editor of the Frankfurt learned advertisements .
  • Donkey : Johann Melchior Goeze , who condemned Werther for moral and religious reasons.
  • Night owls and frogs : Matthias Claudius and the magazine Der Wandsbecker Bothe published by him . The cover of the magazine had a vignette with these animals.
  • Reuter : Albrecht Wittenberg, editor of the Altonaer Reichs-Post-Reuter .
  • Lion : Hamburg correspondent , because of the lion in its title vignette.
  • Starmatz : A gentleman from Breidenbach or Breitenbach who published a correction to the story of young Werther in 1775 .
  • Merkur : The magazine Der Teutsche Merkur .
  • Jupiter W *** : The editor of the Teutscher Merkur, Christoph Martin Wieland . Prometheus' allusion to the “windows that I threw in” refers to Goethe's satirical farce Gods, Heroes and Wieland .
  • Iris : Iris. Quarterly magazine for women , edited by Johann Georg Jacobi .
  • Orang-Outang : Friedrich Nicolai , who parodied Goethe's Werther with his story Joys of the young Werther - shown here by putting the wrong head on Deukalion's body.

Publication history

Wagner's play is part of a larger public debate about Goethe's debut novel The Sorrows of Young Werther : While Sturm und Drang authors like Wagner defended Werther , others reacted with harsh criticism of the novel. Wagner published the play anonymously in February 1775. It was printed in Frankfurt am Main, but with various incorrect locations, such as Berlin, Göttingen or Weymar [sic]. Many readers believed that the work was Goethe's reaction to the critics, but Goethe wanted to avoid this impression, also because he wanted to establish good relations with Duke Carl August von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and therefore avoid a conflict with his councilor and former teacher Wieland. Therefore, on April 9, 1775, Goethe made the true author public and assured that he had not known anything about the creation of the work.

shape

The motto of the text is a quote from Matthew Prior , which expresses the author's freedom and his disregard for critics and censors. The piece itself is written in free Knittel verse and rich in allusions. In places, formulations from the mocked Werther reviews are taken over into the character speech. Instead of the names that otherwise herald the respective character speech in dramatic texts, there are small pictures of the respective being.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Heinrich Leopold Wagner: Prometheus, Deukalion and his reviewers. In: Comedies and satires of Sturm und Drang. Ed. V. Wolfgang Stellmacher. Leipzig: Reclam 1976, pp. 383–400, notes pp. 456–458.
  2. ↑ There are contradicting information on the spelling of the name and the first name, the font itself was published anonymously.
  3. ↑ Heinrich Hubert Houben : The police unlawful Goethe . Grote, Berlin 1932.