Knight spectacles Kiefersfelden

Stage building (left), auditorium (top right)

The knight plays of the theater company Kiefersfelden in the Comedihütte (village theater) in Kiefersfelden are the only remaining theater of this genre. After the dissolution of many similar gambling groups in the Bavarian - Tyrolean Inn Valley after 1900, the performances on the historical hinged folding stage with the participation of the Kiefersfelden music band are unique worldwide: every summer amateur actors play around ten performances of a drama from the theater's own archive with numerous manuscripts and 19th century role books , most of which can still be explored. The form of performance and style have largely been preserved in play and decorations - in the insistence on the unique tradition and a theatrical practice dictated by the historical stage . The Kiefersfelden knight plays are therefore an attractive feature in the setting of the Erl and Thiersee Passion Plays , the Flintsbach Volkstheater and the Saints plays of the Bad Endorf Volkstheater . Due to the exceptional character of the aesthetics and the association structure of the theater society, it has not yet been properly researched.

history

Passions and sacred plays (before 1833)

In Kiefersfelden, pre-Christmas parlor games in verse form with the simplest of costumes, as well as texts, tailored to simple stage equipment, have been handed down as early as the 16th century. Since the workers of the Tyrolean hammer mill, which moved from Fügen to Kiefersfelden in the 17th century, have demonstrably had the largest share in the maintenance of games since time immemorial, local writer Pastor Gierl dated the beginning of theater actors without historical legitimacy to the year 1618, elsewhere 1596. Troops of charcoal burners immigrated from the Zillertal at the beginning of the 17th century. According to oral tradition, the game was played on the arbor of the Veitnbauern (a farm); the spectators sat on the slope below the old parish church.

With the founding of the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross in 1721, clergy and laypeople take over the game management. Such as In Oberammergau , for example , the Kiefersfeldener Spielgemeinschaft tried to legitimize their performances with a vow : They vowed performances in 1742 as thanks for the rescue in the event of an incursion by Austrian troops. Kiefersfelden was also affected by the 1770 prohibition of the Passion Play and 1784 of all spiritual games (including the Johannesspiele). The fierce disputes with local, church and state authorities lasted until 1868 , and folklorist Ludwig Steub was instrumental in obtaining the final, permanent license to play .

Between 1813 and 1833, in addition to the sacred dramas, knight plays were performed more and more frequently, in which the basic spiritual attitude of Jesuit theater was preserved in a secular context. The gambling community believed in a temporary ban on passion play, as evidenced by the construction of the “Theaterschupfe” in 1801 on the site of today's village theater. But only Oberammergau and Thiersee received the extraordinary permits in 1812, which is why the last performance of a passion play took place in Kiefersfelden in 1813 . As a result, spiritual dramas were played with extensive secular subplots, which already contained many plot and language patterns of the later preferred drama type knight drama. The defining personality of the theater during these years was the toll supervisor and customs office servant Johann Wolfgang Schwarz .

Knight Drama (since 1833)

The decisive change to the style-defining drama type of secular knight drama took place in 1833 parallel to the commissioning of the larger new theater building. The decorations of the extended revolving stage (succession stage) based on earlier models are still being renewed today in the style of 19th century genre painting .

Since 1833, the Tyrolean coal burner Josef Georg Schmalz , a dramatist and play director sought after in the Inn Valley , has been responsible for the renewal of the repertoire . Of his 23 documented knight plays, twelve manuscripts are in the possession of the theater company and have since been part of the core repertoire.

When the Regional Court of Rosenheim and the Kingdom of Bavaria received the permanent right to play in 1868, the Kiefersfelden knight shows quickly achieved national fame thanks to essays by Ludwig Steub and travel reports. In addition to the regular audience from neighboring communities, tourists and citizens from Munich and Rosenheim increasingly attended the performances. Before 1900, the shoemaker and music master Sylvester Greiderer set up several older knight plays according to the typology that has not changed since then, his musical interludes and arrangements are still played today.

Due to the effects of the First and Second World Wars in the years 1914 to 1919 and 1940 to 1946, all knight play performances were canceled. As a result, the theater society survived all internal and external crises. During National Socialism , no ideological accentuation in the sense of German-national groups was achieved, although the morality of the knight spectacles established in the dramatic forerunners of the late 18th century worked across religious and racial boundaries and was thus in stark contrast to fascist ideology. In 1935, the theater company successfully fought against the attempt by the NSDAP to carry out events other than the knight plays in the comedy hut.

Since 1956, members of the theater company have elected or confirmed the three-person board and a director every three years. In several construction phases in the post-war period, the number of spectator seats was increased to around 500, the stage was renovated in 1970/71 and the Comedihütte was adapted to meet increased comfort requirements. In 1991 the Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden together with the Volkstheater Bad Endorf and the Volkstheater Flintsbach received the cultural award of the district of Rosenheim . In 2005, the Kiefersfelden Förderverein der Ritterschauspiele was founded, and its first initiative was to renew the seating in the Comedihütte.

The first guest performance of the Kiefersfelden Ritterschauspiele took place in 2007 in the historic Rococo theater at Weitra Castle in Lower Austria with a performance by Siegfried and Ludmilla . In 2008, Richardus, King of England, celebrated the “175 Years Comedihütte” anniversary. For the first time in the 2009 play year, the theater company demonstrated its historical ties to other traditional theater locations in the region as well as the Free State of Bavaria and the state of Tyrol by means of a flag path to the theater .

Preparations for the anniversary "400 years of the Kiefersfelden village theater" began in 2010. In 2011, the Kiefersfelden Knight Drama received the cultural award from the Economic Association of the City and the District of Rosenheim .

The renaissance of traditional customs and cultures as an alternative to event culture is also having a positive effect on the Kiefersfelden Ritterschauspiele, which are increasingly regaining their earlier popularity.

The historic rotating stage in the Comedihütte

The Comedihütte (theater house) in its current form was built in 1833 on the site of the old "Theaterschupfe". The building on the slope of the Buchberg has two floors and an attic, the baroque stage and the auditorium on the mountain side are on the upper one. For an extensive total renovation in 1970/1971 by the municipality of Kiefersfelden , the stage was removed and reinstalled.

“The stage frame on a wooden floor with a recess at the end of the rear center stage (a symbol for the entrance to hell) has existed since it was installed in 1833.

The Kiefersfelden stage (probably based on the model of the Rosenheim stage from 1734) corresponds to the derived type of the rural three-part succession stage of the 18th and 19th centuries in a completeness that was not achieved by any of the surviving and only a few earlier stages, including the Main stages of the Passion Play Theater. As a document of the history of theater, it is important because, in addition to the prototype of the rural backdrop stage , it also represents the most important properties of the baroque backdrop stage. All the mobile parts of this stage are moved by hand by the 'arrangers' (stage workers).

All curtains run on rollers and are rolled up and down using a cable, there is only one vertical curtain movement. The stage has a total of six curtains: the main curtain (1914) with a view of Kiefersfelden from the imaginary vantage point of a castle terrace, three curtains behind the first, second and third pairs of scenes, a lattice curtain (dungeon curtain) also behind the third pair of scenes and another in front of the prospectus Curtain. Behind the last pair of scenery, four sliding brochures run in grooves, which can be made of two halves or pushed together and pulled apart separately. The existing brochures are attached to the rear stage, i.e. behind the sliding brochure.

A wooden festoon hangs over each lane, and another in front of the sliding brochure. You are not agile. The lighting system with rows of lightbulbs is deliberately kept simple so as not to perfect the simplicity of the earlier gas and candle lighting with today's technical means through inappropriate lighting effects: It consists of depth, vertical and diagonal lighting. The ramp lighting on both sides of the prompter's box consists of five three-colored rows of bulbs, the festoon lighting consists of a total of five rows of lights, each with four rows of bulbs, and the diagonal lighting consists of a multi-colored light source behind the fourth right backdrop. "

The backdrops and brochures have been painted, renewed and restored by members of the Hahn family since 1926.

The knight spectacles - style, language, fabrics

In terms of content, the knight spectacles performed in Kiefersfelden contain artistic means such as the “scrap dramaturgy” of the Sturm und Drang drama as well as chance and surprise moments as in the romantic tragedy of fate . The linguistic style of the pieces with their sharp antitheticals, pathetic generalizations and point-safe replicas of the Hanswurst figures are similar to the means of the Viennese magic posse with music.

Dramatic form and the possibilities of the Kiefersfelden rotating scenery stage worked together strongly. It cannot be reconstructed whether the stage with the possibilities of “small” and “large” transformations influenced Josef Georg Schmalz and an unknown author who wrote for the gambling community in the scenic construction of their knight plays.

The plays by Josef Georg Schmalz and the other authors are more varied in content than Hans Moser describes in his writings on alpine folk theater. In no way can all be traced back exclusively to the original material of the Genoveva saga, even if the plot and role patterns of the pieces in the individual dramas are similar to one another. Thus, Rudolf von Westerburg or The weever the ghost novel The weever by Christian Heinrich Spiess and Wendelin von Höllenstein the novel of the same name Joseph Alois DC as a literary source.

There is roughly the following typology of action: A young woman, whose husband or lover cannot protect her, is captured and misery by a villain driven by hatred, envy and greed. The villain defames the innocent noblewoman as unfaithful or adulterous. Only in the next generation will poetic or Christian justice prevail. This basic pattern is overlaid by other plot constructs and is therefore only one of several dramatic threads. Often times, the villain has a relative of the positive hero as an accomplice. Either or both of them, towards the end of the dramas, show repentance and receive punishment or forgiveness. Seductresses and schemers appear far less often than in the literature and drama of the time it was written, the late literary romanticism.

The positive hero and his lover are always the positive, constant characters, sometimes they find a helper in an exposed supporting role. All aristocratic figures show an unchangeable, consistent character contour: as in the fairy tale collections of the 19th century, they face each other in polarizing black and white painting. Intriguers and villains purge each other without giving any further reasons for their bad conscience. In the end, like in many Geheimbund- and development novels of Goethe's time produced or in the mass and popular romances hidden, destroying family ties apparently.

On a crusade, the positive hero is regularly captured by Muslim opponents. Sultans and emirs are noble characters, the batches of these mighty figures often show a murderous cruelty against the hated Christians in the Holy Land. A Muslim noblewoman sometimes becomes a Christian helper.

In addition to the aristocrats, there are always other social groups: robbers with a forceful language level, country folk and, with particular preference, blacksmiths and charcoal burners . The latter professional groups were of particular importance for the local public and as a profession of the author thanks to the Kiefersfeldener Eisenwerk .

The character of the Hanswurst (mostly a squire in the field of tension between positive hero and opponent) has a special position , who with his harlequin costume falls outside the framework of the stage and costume set. In contrast to William Shakespeare's literary theater , the buffoon speaks verse and always dialect ( Zillertal language idiom) in some of the dramas in contrast to the High German prose with regional vowel coloring of the other characters.

The factual conveyance of content in the dialogues culminates in the imitation of baroque and theological rhetoric, often with pathetic sentence structures in moral sentences or curses that are particularly effective for the public.

There are numerous musical interludes between the dialogues. The Kiefersfelden band plays traditional marches and dances in front of the individual lifts. V. a. the roles of charcoal burners, farmers , blacksmiths and robbers are given polyphonic chants (with harp and / or wind accompaniment) by Sylvester Greiderer or by unknown composers. Apparitions of ghosts and geniuses are often accompanied by instruments, a "sound dramaturgy" with thunder sheet, wind machine, percussion, etc. a. accompanies exciting moments of nature and action.

Josef Georg Schmalz found his material in cheap editions of the German folk books and the novels of chivalry v. a. by Joseph Alois Gleich and Christian Heinrich Spieß . He bought these at fairs in Oberaudorf , Kufstein and Rosenheim or from traveling dealers. Often he translated direct and indirect speeches from the source texts literally into dialogues, narrative sections into director's notes.

His dramatic design shows an extremely confident instinct for situations and dialogue. To what extent he was familiar with new literary productions of his time is unclear. Obviously, similar dramaturgical techniques can be found in his knight plays as in the dramas and prose by Ernst Raupach , Christoph von Schmid , Helmine von Chezy and Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué .

Examples of essential motifs in knight plays by Josef Georg Schmalz are:

• Devil's pact and polygamy motif with moral purification of the title character: Rudolf von Westerburg , Wendelin von Höllenstein
• A young woman fleeing from her incestuous father, becomes unhappy as wife and mother, but receives her deserved rights after many years of misery: Helena, daughter of the powerful emperor Antonius of Greece
• Innocent women plunged into ruin: Floribella , Ulricka (unhappy end!)
• Woman in men's clothes tries to free her lover: Siegfried and Ludmilla (authorship unclear)
• The protagonist becomes the villain through excessive ambition and prestige: Ezzelin the cruel

effect

A first literary reflex on the knight spectacles of the Inn Valley can possibly be found in Wilhelm Busch . The humorist was a guest of the artist community Brannenburg im Inntal in 1858 and then wrote the knight play parody Love and Cruelty . The Kiefersfelden Ritterschauspiele became known to a supraregional audience through writings by Ludwig Steub for the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung and novellist texts, e.g. B. “In the Bauerntheater” by Arthur Achleitner (1888).

Around 1920, the Kiefersfelden knight plays attracted the interest of theater studies: the literary scholar Artur Kutscher attended several performances with students from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . A wooden model of the Comedihütte (dated 1928) is on permanent loan from the Theater Museum in Cologne in the Blaahaus local history museum in the Kiefersfelden community. At the interface between folklore and theater studies, Hans Moser has dealt with the knight drama Kiefersfelden in numerous writings on folk drama in Bavaria and Tyrol. The loss of the almost completed manuscript of his two-part dissertation in World War II is still an irreplaceable loss for the development of historical and artistic facts. The book Der Bauernshakespeare by the Bavarian home keeper Paul Ernst Rattelmüller offers many details without giving the sources. In his dissertation, Frido Will mainly dealt with game form and rehearsal methods.

The current audience comes mainly from the Inn Valley region and the neighboring districts. There is a group of regular national visitors. Abroad, the Ritterschauspiele are known for their unique form and as an original part of the Bavarian cultural canon.

The historical stage equipment is registered as a monument in the Bavarian list of monuments.

meaning

In the German-speaking area, the Kiefersfelden Ritterschauspiele are today the only theater with a repertoire of secular pieces from the 19th century, which are performed by laypeople in an ancient form with a serious attitude. This uniqueness is based on the use of baroque rotation setting stage in the Comedihütte as well as on the fact that amateur theater with a similar origin has long since other forms of play and types of drama maintain (the Passion Play Theater Thiersee and the people Theater Endorf spiritual games that Pradler Ritterspiele parodies of the original serious genres, other historical gaming communities - e.g. Oberaudorf - no longer exist or have fundamentally changed their concept). The knight shows in Kiefersfelden have just as little in common with performances of Kleist's Das Käthchen von Heilbronn or Grillparzer's Die Ahnfrau at professional theaters and natural stages as they do with medieval tournaments and fairground attractions (e.g. Kaltenberg knight tournament ).

Due to the seriousness of the organizers and players, the Kiefersfelden Ritterschauspiele are a piece of living customs of the Bavarian-Tyrolean cultural landscape - they belong to the categories of folk culture, sunken cultural assets, profane religious manifesto and traditional amateur play.

As an adaptation of widespread fairy tale and literary motifs as well as a theater genre derived from spiritual games, the knight plays performed by the Kiefersfelden theater company are an untapped source collection for religious studies , theater studies , folklore , cultural sociology , German studies and comparative studies . The basic democratic association statutes and the flat hierarchy of the ensemble have an impact on community life. This basic attitude is also made possible by the fact that the names of the actors do not appear on the introduction slip or in other publications and there are no individual curtains. In this respect, the Kiefersfelden Ritterschauspiele have a social significance in addition to their uniqueness as a cultural phenomenon.

Like the Drottningholm or Bad Lauchstädt Castle Theaters, which are performed by professional ensembles, the Kiefersfelden historical stage is a first-class theater-historical monument.

literature

• Paul Ernst Rattelmüller: The peasant shakespeare. The Kiefersfeldener Volkstheater and its knight plays; Munich 1973 (contains the pieces Der Kaiser Ocktavianus by Josef Georg Schmalz and Ubald von Sternenburg )
• Frido Will: The Volkstheater Kiefersfelden - Dissertation; Munich 1977 (Munich University Writings / Munich Contributions to Theater Studies - commission publisher J. Kitzinger)
• Hans Moser: Chronicle of Kiefersfelden (sources and representations on the history of the city and the district of Rosenheim, ed. Von Albert Aschl, Bd. 3); Rosenheim 1959
• Hans Moser: People's play in the mirror of archival materials. A contribution to the cultural history of old Bavaria (Bavarian writings on folklore, published by the Commission for Bavarian State History / Bavarian Academy of Sciences / Institute for Folklore); Munich 1991
• 375 years of the Volkstheater Ritterspiele Kiefersfelden / 200 years of Josef Schmalz; Published on the occasion of the 375th anniversary of the Volkstheater Kiefersfelden; Kiefersfelden 1993 (texts by Martin Hainzl jun. And Hans Stimpfl)
• Ekkehard Schönwiese: Kiefersfelden and his knight games (sic); Oberaudorf o. J. (Print: Helmut Meißner, approx. 2000)
• Martin Hainzl: Kiefersfelden and his knight spectacles - episode 5 in Kieferer Nachrichten No. 21 / August 1991 (municipality newspaper of the municipality of Kiefersfelden)
• Festschrift of the knight shows Kiefersfelden 2007: Siegfried and Ludmilla (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift der Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2008: Richardus, King of England (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift der Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2009: Adellin and Ludmilla or The Six Brothers von Perlenstein (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift der Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2010: Wendelin von Aggstein (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift der Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2011: Ezzelin the Cruel or The Shepherd's Flute (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift der Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2012: Helena, daughter of the mighty Emperor Antonius of Greece (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift of the knight shows Kiefersfelden 2013: Rudolf von Westerburg or Das Pettermännchen, freely based on Christian Heinrich Spieß (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift of the knight drama Kiefersfelden 2014: Valentinus and Ursinus (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift of the Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2015: Weinhard and Adelise, designed by Andreas Grottner (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Festschrift der Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden 2016: Saint Sebastian or: From the general to the martyr (Theatergesellschaft Kiefersfelden - texts by Roland Dippel)
• Roland H. Dippel: Fantastic anniversary and historical gaps: Kiefersfeldens Ritterschauspiele, an undeveloped sacral play substitute in Schönere Heimat, 105th year, 2016, issue 3, pp. 201–210 (publisher: Bayerischer Landesverein für Heimatpflege eV, Munich, ISSN 0177-4492)

Web links

Commons : Ritterschauspiele Kiefersfelden  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website
• The theater in Kiefersfelden in: Johann Friedrich von Cotta: Supplement to the Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 193 of July 12, 1867, part 1 , part 2
• Roland Dippel: Knight Drama Kiefersfelden. Custom wiki (accessed November 24, 2016)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Frido Will: The Volkstheater Kiefersfelden. Dissertation. Munich University Writings / Munich Contributions to Theater Studies - Kommissionsverlag J. Kitzinger, Munich 1977.
2. ↑ Bayernviewer-denkmal ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Coordinates: 47 ° 36 '34 "  N , 12 ° 10' 58"  E