From morning to midnight

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From morning to midnight is an expressionist stage play by Georg Kaiser . It was made in 1912 and premiered on April 28, 1917 in Munich .

content

A lady walks into a bank in a small town to withdraw money, but is denied the withdrawal. A fleeting touch by the lady causes the cashier to embezzle a payment of 60,000 marks that has just been received. He visits the lady in the hotel to flee abroad with her. This refuses in horror and the cashier no longer knows what to do with the money. In a cemetery, he has a short conversation with a skeleton . He goes home, but the dreariness of everyday life depresses him so much that he drives to a big city (probably Berlin). He attends the six-day race in the Berlin Sportpalast and offers such a high prize that the ranks become a raging mob . Only the appearance of the "Kaiser" brings people to rest. A young girl asks the cashier if he would like to buy the "war cry". He insults her. Bored by the audience, he leaves the sports palace and spends the evening in a ballroom. He leaves the bar, goes to a meeting room of the Salvation Army and admits that he was embezzling the money. He is overheard by the girl he insulted and betrayed to the police. When the police try to arrest him, he shoots himself.

Structure of the drama

From morning to midnight has the dramatic form of a station drama . The piece is divided into two parts. Within these two parts, different, self-contained scenes follow one another. This corresponds to the definition of a station drama, which is a loose sequence of individual images that can be exchanged with one another (cf. scene Sports Palace and Ballhaus). The piece therefore has no exposure . Rather, the viewer gets more and more insight into the nature of the protagonist in the course of the action . The secondary characters remain anonymous, they are reduced to their function for the progression and intensification of the plot.

The piece is not, however, a typical example of the station drama insofar as certain images are in a linear context. The cashier's suicide must happen at the end of the act, as must the theft of the money at the beginning. The local conditions presuppose that there are two event locations. With these two venues, Kaiser breaks with the Aristotelian unity of the place, but the author remains with the unity of time, all incidents take place within a day, as the title suggests. Another break with the Aristotelian conception is the play's open structure, as the Weimar scenes form a three-act structure, the scenes in the bank describe the cashier's everyday life and serve as an exposition. The Berlin scenes, on the other hand, are a series of stations that explain the cashier's motivation for his suicide.

Core and joint points

Due to the form of the station drama, it is not possible to determine a core point. One after the other, the images give the viewer more and more insight into the cashier's train of thought. However, there are essential personal developments for the protagonist that function as joints. At the beginning of the action, the cashier breaks out of the everyday situation in which he embezzles the money and thus determines his fate on his own responsibility. Another joint is the monologue with the skeleton, in which the end is pointed out ahead of time. The motivation of the cashier for his actions can be found in this scene, because he is looking for happiness. The cashier equates personal happiness with wealth. Therefore, the further pictures are important to make the suicide understandable. The viewer learns that the cashier does not find happiness despite being rich because he does not belong in this society. He is now sitting between two chairs: There is no going back to his working class because he has lost his sovereignty, but he does not have the necessary arrogance for the upper class. Reality cannot be reconciled with his dream. Seeing his mistake, he wants to wash himself clean with confession, but is betrayed and sees the only way out in suicide.

Radio plays

filming

Portfolio

Bernhard Kretzschmar (1889–1972): Eight lithographs for From morning to midnight . Rudolf Kämmerer Verlag, Dresden 1920 (Gudrun Schmidt, catalog raisonné of the graphic arts Bernhard Kretzschmar 1914 to 1969, Berlin 1980, L 21-29)

literature

  • From morning to midnight . Reclam publishing house, Stuttgart.
  • Kindler's New Literature Lexicon . Volume 9, Kindler Verlag, 1996
  • German literature . German paperback publisher, 2001