Social drama

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Social drama (also: social drama) are called dramas whose plot and characters are characterized by their social circumstances. Usually, the dramatist's intention is to try to point out certain social grievances, to express a social criticism . This is how the problems of social groups - such as the lower social class - are presented. Often people's language is an expression of their social status ( sociolect ). Elise Dosenheimer defined it as follows in her work published in 1949:

"By social drama we mean a drama whose specific social background is the prerequisite for substance and content, whose characters and action necessarily emerge from this social underground."

Social criticism in drama was already voiced in the 18th century. The early forms of comedy and tragedy there are partly concerned with the lower social class .

However, many social dramas did not emerge until the 19th century in the context of industrialization and address the social circumstances of life in the lower social class, the “ social question ”. In particular, the compassionate drama of naturalism is characteristic of social drama. The social drama is therefore often reduced to the works of the 19th century.

Development from the 19th century

In 1828 Heinrich Heine speaks of the end of the “Goethean Art Period”, of idealism , he praises the writers of Young Germany , “who do not want to make a distinction between life and writing, who never separate politics from science, art and religion, all at the same time Artists, tribunes and apostles are ”.

There follows a period of integration of questions of time into literature . Karl Gutzkow calls for people to take sides in intellectual and political disputes. The forerunner of the new, realistic poetry (1848–1890) is Georg Büchner's Woyzeck (1836). The poets of the incipient realism ( Friedrich Hebbel , Gottfried Keller , Theodor Storm , Theodor Fontane ) recognize the "exploitation of the lowest class" and want to present reality unadorned. This is followed by naturalism with Arno Holz and Gerhart Hauptmann's Before Sunrise (1889) and Die Weber (1892). The naturalists prefer the ugly and the low. They show the sick as well as the mentally disturbed or alcoholics. With the naturalists, the characters in the drama are ultimately reduced entirely to their quality as a product of social conditions. Hauptmann's Die Weber and Before Sunrise are the only works that explicitly have the subtitle "Social Drama".

After the turn of the century, social drama merged with socialist drama .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Elise Dosenheimer: The German social drama from Lessing to Sternheim. Konstanz 1949, p. 5.
  2. ↑ a b c d DUDEN / PAETEC basic knowledge school
  3. ↑ Heinrich Heine: The romantic school. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1836, p. 259 ( GBS ).

literature

  • Elise Dosenheimer: The German social drama from Lessing to Sternheim. Constance 1949.