Dreams (Günter Eich)

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Dreams is a radio play cycle by Günter Eich , which was first broadcast on April 19, 1951 by the NWDR . During and after the broadcast there were massive audience protests, which were mainly directed against the content of the second dream , which was perceived as too cynical and cruel . The cycle first appeared in print in 1953 by Suhrkamp .

content

The episodic audio piece connects five nightmares with each other, which can be understood as “the birth of the eschatological fear in which we live today” ( Heinz Schwitzke ).

The first dream

An "ancient" and an "ancient" were arrested 40 years earlier by uniformed men and locked in a windowless freight car. There they now sit, now and then get some moldy bread from strangers through a flap and roll towards an unknown destination. They are accompanied by their grandson, his wife and a toddler. All three were obviously born during the journey and therefore never got to know the world outside the train, so that they do not want to believe the old people's memories of their earlier, supposedly better life, especially since they are not familiar with the associated words and therefore their stories can hardly understand. When suddenly a faint ray of light falls through a crack in the wall of the car and the passing landscape becomes visible through a small hole, the grandson, who risks a glimpse outside, cannot bear the reality. And it also frightens the elderly, as they have to discover that everything has changed and has become “much bigger”. So you decide to quickly close the hole again. As soon as it is dark in the car again, its occupants feel with horror how the train is slowly but steadily getting faster and faster. In panic they begin to scream for help, but their calls are drowned out by the thundering swell of the train noise.

The second dream

A “man” and a “woman” sell their six-year-old son to a rich Chinese “lady” who slaughtered and disemboweled the child in order to save the life of her seriously ill husband (“master”) with his blood, heart and liver. During the sales pitch it turns out that the man and woman father a new child every year and are proud of the fact that they have so far only delivered "healthy children of first-class breeding". And it is not the first time that the lady has given her chronically debilitated patient such a cannibalic “fresh cell treatment”.

The third dream

“Der Feind”, an inconspicuous blind man, terrifies a small Australian town. A happy family, whose home he approaches with thunderous steps, before he slams the door down to take possession of their property, can flee to the neighboring house at the last moment. However, when it turns out that the little daughter, contrary to an alleged order, has taken her doll with her, "because she loves her" and wants to save her from the enemy, the fellow citizens have no pity. They refuse any further help to the family because they fear that they might otherwise direct the wrath of the enemy upon themselves. The homeless are leaving the city aimless and hopeless.

The fourth dream

Two Russian researchers on an expedition to Africa are served a mysterious vegetable soup by the local cook of their carrier group, after which the two quickly lose their memory. Irritated by the constant drum news of the natives, whose messages they cannot decipher, they soon no longer know where they are from and where they are going. Suddenly the drums fall silent, all the helpers have run away and the two whites left in the jungle alone. They can no longer remember their own names and suddenly believe that the original goal of their expedition was the search for happiness. In the end, each of the two hopes to find this in their own way: one storms away and gets lost in the jungle, the other lies down and falls asleep while the drumming of the natives slowly swells up again.

The fifth dream

A mother visits her supposedly happily married daughter in New York, but is confronted by her with the fact that she herself, like everyone else, yes, the whole city and the whole continent, is hollowed out by termites and all life is quiet Shock will crumble into dust. When the young husband comes home from work "dead tired", his mother-in-law is already dead. His wife tries to persuade him to flee in order to save their common happiness and survival. But her husband has already given up. A thunderstorm is approaching, and with the first powerful clap of thunder, the catastrophe takes its threatened course.

shape

The following dream times, dreamers and dream locations are assigned to the individual episodes:

  1. 1st – 2nd August 1948, master locksmith Wilhelm Schulz, Rügenwalde, Western Pomerania (Europe)
  2. November 5, 1949, daughter of the rice trader Li-Ven-Tshu in Tianzien (Asia)
  3. April 27, 1950, Lewis Stone auto mechanic, Freetown, Queensland (Australia)
  4. December 29, 1947, cartographer Iwan Iwanowitsch Borislavski, Moscow (Africa)
  5. August 31, 1950, Lucy Harrison, New York (America)

So each of the five dreamers is a harmless average person ( presumably the pleasant dreams of this world are dreamed by the villains ) and each symbolizes one of the five continents. They are introduced and exited by the author's lyrical prologues and epilogues who, in view of the catastrophic experiences of the Second World War, speak out against naive dreaming ( everything that happens concerns you ) and admonish vigilance against newly emerging dangers : Be uncomfortable, be sand, not oil, in the gears of the world , so the closing verses of the cycle.

Circumstances of the first broadcast and listener reactions

The radio play editors of the NWDR described Eich's dreams as an artistic experiment. The original broadcast on April 19, 1951 began at 8:50 p.m., later than the usual radio play date. Der Spiegel had previously reported that the radio play was not suitable for children's ears. The fact that the new artistic paths that Eich took here did not go down well with the audience at the beginning of the 1950s is documented by violent telephone reactions during and after the broadcast. They ranged from outrage about the demand to stop the entire radio play production to the request whether the author in charge could "not be locked up". - The version was not broadcast for 15 years, although it featured prominently Erich Schellow , Eduard Marks and Inge Meysel .

The sixth dream

Eich later published a sixth dream , through which later realizations of the radio play sometimes replaced the second dream, as this one, dealing with child murder, was particularly controversial. In addition to the NWDR production, a version of the HR was also created in 1951, one of the BR in 1964 and one of the NDR in 2007. The radio of the GDR produced the piece in 1981 in its own version.

The roles and their actors in the production of the NWDR

1st dream:

2nd dream:

3rd dream:

4th dream:

5th dream:

Music: Siegfried Franz Director: Fritz Schröder-Jahn

Significance for Eich's work

According to literary scholarship, the short poems between the dreams contain a first formulation of the leitmotif “Everything that happens, concerns you!” Of all of Eich's subsequent poetic work. In 1966 the piece was included in the Eich collection of 15 radio plays , which, like the first copy, were published by Suhrkamp-Verlag.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ NDR: 75 years of the end of the war: dreams. Retrieved May 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Klippert, Werner / Reclam-Verlag, / Schwitzke, Heinz: Reclams Hörspielführer ( online version at mediaculture-online.de ( 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 note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lmz-bw.de
  3. ↑ Murderous Business . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1951, p. 32 ( online April 18, 1951).
  4. ^ NDR: Dreams: Discussion and calls from the listeners about the original broadcast in 1951. Accessed on May 13, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Hello hello here radio! 60 years of broadcasting in the north . NDR Werbefernsehen and Werbefunk GmbH, no year, p. 3
  6. ↑ Klippert, Werner / Reclam-Verlag, / Schwitzke, Heinz: Reclams Hörspielführer ( online version at mediaculture-online.de ( 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 note. ) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lmz-bw.de