Radium (Günter Eich)

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Radium is a radio play by Günter Eich , which was broadcast on September 22, 1937 by the Reichsender Berlin under the direction of Gerd Fricke .

content

Marie Curie , the discoverer of radium , asked about the mysterious new chemical element by a progressive reporter, articulates her most secret fears of the unknown demon that might have angered her.

Chabanais, a starving poet, is no longer printed, but his editor wants to bring a hymn to the radium in the next morning paper. Elisa, the poet's wife, suffers from throat cancer . Chabanais comes to the ears, radiation with radium can bring healing. The price of treatment in the private clinic turns out to be prohibitive.

The copper mining in the Congo made the Belgian banker Pierre Cynac rich. Only slowly penetrates his head - with pitchblende , from which radium is extracted, he can become even richer.

The young London medic George Purvis, assistant at the Royal Hospital Chelsea , inherits a fortune. He uses the million immediately for two purchases; four grams of radium and a clinic.

Chabanais made a name for himself with his hymn to radium and is hired by the banker Cynac as a copywriter. The clinical use of radium is celebrated. Chabanais has money. Elisa dies shortly before he wants to take her to the private clinic mentioned above.

Seventeen young women workers die in Brussels after applying radium-containing luminous material to the dials of clocks, putting a brush in their mouth and sharpening their lips. Chabanais seals the seventeen corpses with lights in the grave over the millennia. Such verses go against the grain of Cynac. Dr. Purvis is moving away from radium as a cure and wants to tackle cancer with newly developed X-ray equipment. Cynac cannot tolerate competition in the radium business.

Purvis is killed in an explosion in his X-ray test laboratory. Radium is again unrivaled as a panacea.

reception

Reactions in the Nazi era

  • The radio play was included in the collection “This is radio play” published in 1938.
  • On October 10, 1937, a certain reviewer CH praised the poetic element in “Die Sendung” that the author had brought in through the figure of the selling poet Chabanais.

Comments after 1945

  • Vieregg accuses Günter Eich of “consciously opting for the National Socialist state”.
  • “Radium” is “a harsh criticism of civilization and progress”.
  • Wagner draws a parallel between Chabanais and Günter Eich's behavior as a radio writer during the Nazi era. Cuomo sees Chabanais "as a cynical self-portrait of Eich's situation"

Productions

First broadcast in the Reichssender Berlin 1937 (Director: Gerd Fricke, Music: Friedel Heinz Heddenhausen )

Productions after 1945

literature

Used edition

  • Günter Eich: Radium. Based on motifs from the novel by Rudolf Brunngraber. (1937/1951). In: Günter Eich. Collected Works. Volume II: Karl Karst (Ed.): The radio plays 1st revised edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-40210-2 , pp. 157-194.

Secondary literature

  • Rudolf Brunngraber : Radium. Novel of an element. Rowohlt, Berlin 1936.
  • Wolfram Wessels: Radio plays in the Third Reich. On the history of institutions, theory and literature. Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-416-01926-1 . (Treatises on art, music and literary studies, Volume 366)
  • Glenn R. Cuomo: Career At The Cost Of Compromise: Günter Eich's Life And Work In The Years 1933-1945. Rodopi Verlag, Amsterdam 1989, ISBN 90-5183-080-7 , p. 95.
  • Axel Vieregg (Ed.): Our sins are moles. The Günter Eich debate . Rodopi Publishing House, Amsterdam 1995, ISBN 90-5183-927-8 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Wagner: Günter Eich and the radio. Essay and documentation. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1999, ISBN 3-932981-46-4 . (Publications of the German Broadcasting Archive ; Vol. 27)
  • Hans-Ulrich Wagner: "To continue the campaign against the radio". Günter Eich and the radio 1928–1940. In: Peter Walther (Ed.): Günter Eich 1907–1972. After the end of the biography. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-931836-40-1 , pp. 49-59.

annotation

  1. ↑ Le Chabanais was also a Parisian brothel. It could be that Günter Eich thought of “prostituting oneself” when giving the name. ( Markus Bundi on Günter Eich's 100th birthday on January 26, 2007 in the " Wiener Zeitung ")

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edition used, p. 793, 9. Zvo
  2. ↑ Wessels, p. 517, entry " Institute for Contemporary History Munich"
  3. ↑ Wagner anno 1999, p. 181, left column, 24th Zvu
  4. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wagner: Axel Vieregg: Encountering one's own fallibility (PDF; 118 kB) p. 2, 11. Zvu
  5. ^ Vieregg, quoted by Hans-Ulrich Wagner in Vieregg (Ed.), P. 78, 11. Zvo
  6. ↑ Wessels, p. 451, 4th Zvu
  7. ^ Wagner in Walther (Ed.), P. 58, 5th Zvu to p. 59, 16 Zvo
  8. ↑ Vieregg, p. 81, 13. Zvo
  9. ↑ Heddenhausen in the IMDb
  10. ↑ Wagner anno 1999, p. 179, right column, 13th Zvu
  11. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wagner ( Memento of the original from September 8, 2014 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. : "A real flood of Eich radio plays showered us from all sides" @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lmz-bw.de
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 793.