The story of man
The Story of Man is a drama in a prelude and five acts written by Bertold Lasker and his brother Emanuel Lasker . It appeared in print in 1925 .
Emergence
The Lasker brothers worked on the piece for several years. Emanuel, who had already appeared with the philosophical works Kampf (1907), The Understanding of the World (1913) and The Philosophy of the Unfinished (1919), was primarily responsible for the conception of the content, while Bertold was responsible for the linguistic design . A first version, completed in 1919, was entitled Woe to the winner! . Emanuel Lasker asked the Berlin theater director Felix Hollaender in several letters to have the play performed, but this was unsuccessful. A revised version with the final title appeared in 1925 with an edition of 500 copies. During the chess tournament in Moscow in 1925, Emanuel received a telegram from his brother that a stage performance could be expected. In his excitement he lost a game against Carlos Torre Repetto that is still very popular today . But this time too, hopes were not fulfilled. There was only a public reading on January 30, 1927 in Berlin with the actors Fränze Roloff and Kurt Gerron .
action
It is about a station drama that chronologically encompasses the entire history of mankind from prehistoric times to antiquity, the Middle Ages and modern times to the future. Stylistically it can be assigned to late Expressionism . The theme of the play is the search for an ethos and the constant conflict between useful and moral action. The Dramatis personae embody certain principles: the wanderer stands for searching humanity, Aja for the feminine, the fool for reason, Ariwast for unscrupulous striving for power, Wido for rhetoric serving power and the blacksmith for the revolution. Furthermore occur Ensign Father (God) and The Earth Mother on. The play shows in loosely connected scenes the process of civilization in which progress must be fought for. In the end, the blacksmith dies by sacrificing himself for the fool. Ariwast is also killed, and the peoples of the earth are called to a peaceful coexistence in an optimistic finale.
reception
The piece received favorable, but not enthusiastic, reviews in the contemporary daily press. Emanuel Lasker was primarily known as a former world chess champion and as a playwright and philosopher was not taken as seriously as he himself wished. Although the “heavy thought” of the work was praised, however, in view of the “chess-like” people acting, a “plastic fullness of life” was missing. The piece also did not correspond to the zeitgeist of the Roaring Twenties and was quickly forgotten.
It was not until the new interest in the person of Emanuel Lasker, which led to the founding of the Lasker Society in 2001 , that the work was rediscovered and a new edition was published in 2008.
literature
- Bertold and Emanuel Lasker: The story of man . Edited by Tim Hagemann. Promos-Verlag, Tübingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-88502-033-2
- Tim Hagemann: It's the gate to heaven and hell. Emanuel Lasker as a playwright. In: Michael Dreyer (Ed.): Emanuel Lasker. Chess, philosophy, science . Philo-Verlag, Berlin 2001. ISBN 3-8257-0216-2 . Pp. 114-126
- Tim Hagemann: Emanuel Lasker's theatrical broadcast. In: Elke-Vera Kotowski (Ed.): Emanuel Lasker. Homo ludens, homo politicus. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 2003, ISBN 3-935035-15-2 , pp. 89-94.
- Susanna Poldauf: Lasker as a playwright. In: Richard Forster (ed.): Emanuel Lasker. Thinker, world citizen, world chess champion . Exzelsior-Verlag, Berlin 2009. ISBN 978-3-935800-05-1 . Pp. 204-206