RUR

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Poster from 1939

RUR - Rossum's Universal Robots (also WUR - Wstands Universal Robots , Czech Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti ) is a 1920 drama by the Czech writer Karel Čapek .

RUR, production around 1935

It is about the company RUR, which manufactures artificial humans ( androids in today's parlance ). These "robots" are used as cheap and unlawful workers. Their massive use in industry changes the entire world economy over time. In the further course of the play, however, the art people rebel and destroy humanity.

The name of the piece RUR stands for Rossum's Universal Robots , the company that creates the artificial people in the piece. The name "Rossum" is an ironic allusion by the author: the Czech word rozum means reason, understanding. In the German translation of 1922 by Otto Pick also translated accordingly as "Werstand" .

The word “ robot ” (or robot , in the original Czech form, see English) soon found its way into the everyday language of many countries from this play, but the originator of this word creation is Karel's brother Josef Čapek .

The drama echoes the medieval Jewish legend associated with Prague of the artificial man and servant golem . In 1977 Zdeněk Blažek (1905–1988) composed the opera RUR based on this model, with his own libretto , printed in 1988, premiered by Jan Jirásek in 2004.

expenditure

WUR, German first edition, Orbis, Prague-Leipzig 1922
  • Karel Čapek: RUR online (Czech).
  • Karel Čapek: WUR, Wstands universal Robots: Utopian collective drama in 3 acts (translated by Otto Pick). Orbis, Prague / Cnobloch, Leipzig 1922, DNB 572820771 .
  • Karel Čapek: Dramas. (The robber. RUR. The Makropulos affair. The white disease. The mother) (Edited by Manfred Jähnichen, translated by Gustav Just and Ilse Seehase). Structure, Berlin 1976, DNB 770240739 .
  • Karel Čapek; Heiner Schmidt, Susanne Uhlen (eds.): RUR - Rossums Universal Robots , speaker: Hans Peter Hallwachs. ( Audiobook . Audio CD | CD), DAV Audio Verlag, 2005, ISBN 978-3-89813-385-2 .
  • Karel Čapek: RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) , Dover, New York, NY 2001, ISBN 978-0-486-41926-8 (English).
  • Karel Čapek: Dramata: Loupežník - RUR - Věc Makropulos - Bílá nemoc - Matka . Dobrovský, Praha 2013, ISBN 978-80-7390-006-9 (Czech).
  • Karel Čapek: Die white disease / RUR (translated by Joachim Mols, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, ISBN 978-1-981177-37-0 )

Adaptations

radio play

Web links

Commons : RUR  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
  • University of Michigan: RUR (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ivan Margolius , 'The Robot of Prague', Newsletter, The Friends of Czech Heritage no.17, Autumn 2017, pp. 3 - 6. https://czechfriends.net/images/RobotsMargoliusJul2017.pdf