Rattle around Kasperl
Radau um Kasperl is a radio play by Walter Benjamin . It was broadcast for the first time on March 10, 1932 on Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk and a second time on September 9, 1932 on Westdeutscher Rundfunk's youth radio (Werag). Ernst Schoen gave Benjamin the opportunity to realize the radio play for which Schoen also wrote the music.
content
people
Kasperl; Mr. Maulschmidt, radio spokesman; The caterer; The carousel man; The stallholder; The shooting gallery man; The lion keeper; Puschi, Kasperl's wife
Also: Mr. Mittmann and Mr. Gericke from the radio; a station master; Lipsus lapsus, a ghost; the first and second shooters; Children and animals.
action
The radio play is divided into several scenes, which differ from each other mainly in the changing background noise. It begins with a meeting between Kasperl, who is on his way to the market to buy a fish for Puschi, and Mr. Maulschmidt. Because of the thick fog, they cannot see and do not recognize each other. Kasperl gives Mr. Maulschmidt his name to guess and after some back and forth, Mr. Maulschmidt recognizes him and is delighted to have met him. Mr Maulschmidt is the radio's spokesman and has long wanted Kasperl to speak with him on the show.
The two then go to the radio building and Kasperl is told what radio is. When he learns that he will be heard everywhere, he is very excited, because then his friend Seppl hears him too, whom he has long wanted to give his opinion to. In the following monologue by Kasperl, which is broadcast on the radio, he insults Seppl in the worst possible way. Mr. Maulschmidt and his radio employees are angry and want to hold Kasperl, but he flees.
Then a chase begins, which is decisive for the subsequent course of the play. She first leads Kasperl to the train station, where he takes the cap of a station master and lets the train that his pursuers are looking for him leave ten minutes before the time. After he has left his pursuers behind, he goes to a fair and first of all to a Chinese food house. But when the caterer refuses to accept any of his clothes as a deposit, Kasperl slaps him and next goes to a carousel. After a lengthy discussion with the carousel man about the price of a ride, since Kasperl wants to drive for an hour, Kasperl is annoyed with this man and slaps him in the face to clarify his argument.
As he continues through the fair, he comes across a stall owner who praises his omniscient spirit, Lipsuslapsus. Kasperl goes to Lipsuslapsus and asks him questions about his life and what to do with it. The ghost always replies as an echo to the question asked and Kasperl leaves the room again without having made any sense of it. Shortly before he can slap the owner of the booth in the face, his pursuers reappear on the radio and Kasperl hides as a shooting gallery figure in a shooting gallery and can just unmask himself shortly before he is shot. Since he realizes that he has lost his fish with the ghost Lipsuslapsus, he goes to the zoo to catch one there. But before he can even begin, children recognize him and tell them that he is studying animal language in the zoo. The children urge him to tell them what the animals are talking about. After he has talked to foxes, monkeys, elephants and lions, the children realize that he was only fooling them and scold him and chase him away.
In the lion keeper's monologue that follows , the listener learns that there is only a stuffed lion in one lion enclosure and that Kasperl is hiding in this enclosure when his pursuers reappear. He imitates the lion's roar and pretends to release the lion. Then Mr. Maulschmidt and the others run away.
The taxi that Kasperl takes on the way home has an accident and Kasperl wakes up in his bed at home. His wife shows him convalescence gifts that the children have brought and in the following, Kasperl thinks about how he can get back on Mr. Maulschmidt who gave him this whole chase. His rather brutal plans are interrupted when Mr. Maulschmidt comes in and hands him an envelope with his fee from the radio. It turns out that Mr. Maulschmidt recorded Kasperl's conversation with Puschi and had it played on the radio so that Kasperl could still speak on the radio. Kasperl is very astonished about the radio. The radio play ends with him and Puschi thanking them for the money and Mr. Maulschmidt hurrying off to his next show.
Location
Sounds and, above all, the dialects of the individual persons serve as clues for locating this radio play in a certain region. On the one hand, the piece could be placed in the Munich area, as Kasperl speaks a very strong Bavarian dialect and, with regard to Franz von Pocci , one would therefore establish a connection with the Munich Kasperl. On the other hand, the dialect of the zoo keeper points to Berlin and the headquarters of the radio also establish the connection to Berlin. Now you can hear ship sirens sounding in the first scene and in view of its Punch and Judy tradition the city of Hamburg with its port would be a suitable place. This ambiguity creates a construct of a fantastic “nowhere”.
intention
The aim of the radio play is to introduce children to the medium of radio and to introduce them to the technical possibilities of this medium. This is achieved because, on the one hand, Kasperl gets an explanation of how radio works from Mr Maulschmidt and, on the other hand, because Kasperl's lack of understanding of its use makes it clear to the children how not to use the radio and, conversely, of course, what the actual principle is of broadcasting is. Kasperl uses the radio for a very personal individual message, so to speak instead of a telephone and not for a general message to everyone.
The puppet figure
The representation of the Punch and Judy figure is based on traditional representations. Kasperl can curse, show aggressive behavior, but, unlike the carnival Kasperl, never becomes obscene . Although he distributes “ slap ” to almost everyone , that's enough brutality but not Adolf Glaßbrenner's Kasper should be hanged , a prime example of a brutal Kasperl. Kasperl's fixation on his physical well-being is also significantly softened. He demands "a light " from Mr. Maulschmidt on the radio and the Chinese caterer is also about food, but these are the only allusions to his physical well-being. Kasperl's relationship to his wife Puschi is portrayed by Benjamin as very loving, the strong sexual charge in the traditional Punch and Judy figure is completely absent. He's a typical child bully, wears brightly colored, patched clothes and a bell cap. His behavior towards children underscores his role as a kid's fool: he only allows himself to be taught by them, while the adults are slapped in the face.
The comedy of Punch and Judy arises from his deliberate failure to understand things and from situations in which he (intentionally) mishears himself and thus misunderstands the meaning of a speech. Meaningful names, such as "Maulschmidt", also create funny effects. An ontological exaggeration and the resulting paradox in Kasper's fog monologue at the beginning of the radio play can also be found to some extent in pieces by Franz von Pocci .
Broadcasts
Frankfurt, Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk
On March 10, 1932, the radio play "Radau um Kasperl" was broadcast on Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk in Frankfurt from 7.45pm to 8.45pm. It was designed as a guessing game in which the children were asked to guess what the individual bike scenes were about and send their solutions to the transmitter. However, the late broadcasting time is unusual for a radio play purely for children, so it seems reasonable to assume that the broadcaster wanted to expand the target group of this radio play to include adult listeners. The storyline of the show probably corresponded to a previously unpublished 7-page draft and differs in some scenes from the Cologne production. The Frankfurt production begins with a scene in the market and the scene in the fog is omitted. Kasperl and Mr. Maulschmidt seem to meet accordingly in the market, because this is followed by the scene in the broadcasting house, which then turns into Kasperl's escape and leads to a scene in the Hotel Bristol and only then to the train station. This is followed by a scene in the zoo and a scene on the street, followed by a taxi ride. This production also ends with a scene in Kasperl's hospital room. The strict separation of word and sound scenes was characteristic of this program. Benjamin himself was the production manager for this show.
Cologne, Werag
Half a year later, on September 9, 1932 at 4:20 pm - 5:00 pm, the radio play was broadcast on the youth radio of the West German Broadcasting Corporation (Werag) in Cologne. This program was 20 minutes shorter than the Frankfurt production and was no longer linked to the character of a guessing game for children. The noise elements that were still present in this program were no longer complete scenes, but background noises, which were partially superimposed by spoken text. The sequence of scenes corresponds to the detailed text document and thus also to the plot given above. Carl Heil was in charge of this production.
Lore
The radio play is preserved with a 28-page, hectographed typescript as the only text template. The sound inserts are marked with handwriting in the text, so it can be viewed as broadcast text. In the scene division, the roles and the duration of the broadcast, it corresponds to the Cologne broadcast. The scenes "Punch at the fair" and "Punch at the zoo" have been preserved as sound recordings from the Cologne production. They are in the German Broadcasting Archive on a CD with the title “What children like to hear; What Kasperl has to tell: Children's songs and radio plays from the German Broadcasting Archive recorded in the 1930s and 1950s ”.
Adaptation
The Theater an der Parkaue is performing a play based on the radio play entitled Radau! which was awarded the IKARUS Prize for the best production for children in 2011.
literature
- Text output
Puppet theater for adults. Ed. V. Norbert Miller et al. Karl Riha. Frankfurt a. M .: Insel Verlag 1978.
- Secondary literature
- Helmut G. Asper: Hanswurst . Studies in making fun on the professional stage in Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries. Emsdetten: Verlag Lechte 1980.
- Ingrit Ramm-Bonwitt: buffoons in the puppet theater . The traditions of comic theater characters. Vol. 2. Frankfurt a. M .: Nold 1999.
- Sabine Schiller-Lerg: Walter Benjamin and the radio . Program work between theory and Practice. Vol. 1. Munich, New York, London, Paris: Saur 1984.
- Georg Schott: The puppet shows of Count Pocci. Your sources and your style . Frankfurt a. M. 1911.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Noise! ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) 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. parkaue.de, accessed on August 7, 2012.
