Wassa Schelesnowa

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Wassa Schelesnowa, Burgtheater 2015

Wassa Schelesnowa ( Russian Васса Железнова ) is a drama by the Russian writer Maxim Gorky .

history

Gorky wrote the play in 1910. When the Moscow Art Theater finally wanted to bring it to the stage in 1935, he stopped the production and rewrote the Wassa . At the bottom of the article only the second version from 1936 is mentioned.

The text appeared in the 1936 almanac “The year nineteen. Ninth Almanac ”in Moscow . The play premiered on July 5, 1936 in Leningrad . On October 25, 1936, Serafima Birman played the title role in Moscow.

The German-language premiere took place in 1947 in Zurich at the theater there. Therese Giehse played Wassa.

The stage manuscript, translated into German by Ilse Behrend-Groa (Fogarasi), was published by Henschel in Berlin in 1948 . Structure brought the piece into book form in 1962. On December 23, 1949 played Therese Giehse the Berliner Ensemble and on July 2, 1964 Christa Lehmann in the National Theater in Weimar , the Wassa . Before that, German premieres took place on November 7th to 9th, 1948 in Dresden , Potsdam , Schwerin , Leipzig , Güstrow and Altenburg . In 1967 Wassa came on the stage of the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin .

In 1984 Inge Meysel and in 1992 Nicole Heesters played the title role.

In 1988 the original version from 1910 was played in the Theater im Palast (TiP) in Berlin, directed by Barbara Abend, with Walfriede Schmitt in the title role.

The play is kept alive in German-speaking theater . In 2014 Stephan Kimmig directed it for the Deutsches Theater Berlin (title role: Corinna Harfouch ), Dieter Giesing for the Deutsche Schauspielhaus Hamburg (title role: Maria Schrader ) and in 2015 Andreas Kriegenburg for the Vienna Burgtheater .

Translated into other languages: English , Polish by Ola Watowa and Aleksander Wat (1950), French by Génia Cannac and Arthur Adamov (1964), Slovenian by Mile Klopčič (1982) and Hebrew (1983).

content

prehistory

At sixteen Wassa had married Captain Shelesnow out of love. She had given birth to nine children. Six of them were less than eight years old.

action

The 42-year-old but younger looking Wassa is for fifteen years been a successful Reederin in the Volga area between Rybinsk and Kazan . The work grows over her head. She has no help from her husband, 60-year-old Sergei Shelesnow. He just worries her. The public prosecutor wants to bring charges against him for molesting children . This crime is subject to forced labor .

Wassa's attempts at bribery ultimately fail in the judiciary. She would like to spare her three children the shame. Two daughters are to be married. Her oldest - Fyodor - is said to inherit the company one day. How could it go on?

Wassa pleads with her husband to kill himself. He already has a corresponding powdered “medicine”. If he takes it, the heart will stop. Shelesnow is reluctant. He envisions continuing to live as something like a monk or hermit.

Months later: Shelesnow died "suddenly". He hadn't been sick before. People say he was poisoned. Some even say that members of the Shelesnow family helped "so as not to experience disgrace in court."

Wassa's daughter-in-law Rachel comes from abroad and wants to take her five-year-old son Kolja with her to Lausanne . Wassa does not give up the boy because the police are looking for the daughter-in-law as a fugitive revolutionary. In addition, the illegally entered Rachel had brought bad news. The doctors only give her seriously ill husband Fyodor, Wassa's son, who lives abroad, a few more months. Therefore, Kolja should remain in Russia as the heir of the shipping company.

Wassa instructs her secretary and confidante to betray her daughter-in-law to a Russian colonel. He had "arrested" the revolutionary many times. The viewer does not find out whether this betrayal will occur. The apparently exhausted entrepreneur Wassa dies as suddenly as her husband. The relatives, more precisely, Wassa's 57-year-old brother Prochor, quickly appropriated some assets.

Revolution piece

Of course Rachel was operating in the run-up to the October Revolution of 1917. The revolutionary made no secret of her hatred of “capitalism” when she said to her mother-in-law Wassa: “But those like you, your whole class, the gentlemen's class, won't be closed for long Life. Another gentleman is growing up, a tremendous force that will crush you. ”Wassa wants to pull the mother of her only grandson to her side. Rachel rejects such a suggestion in an incorruptible and heroic way: "There is something incomparably higher than our personal ties and affections."

When Prochor wants to usurp parts of the property of the deceased sister - see above under "plot" - Rachel questions the claim of ownership of the parasite Prochor: "What is yours?"

Film adaptations

The play was filmed in the Soviet Union in 1953, 1972 and 1983 .

reception

German-language editions

Used edition

  • Wassa Schelesnowa. Second version. German by Günter Jäniche. With an afterword and comments by Ilse Stauche. P. 467-516 in: Maxim Gorki: Dramen II. 557 pages. Vol. 22 from: Eva Kosing (ed.), Edel Mirowa-Florin (ed.): Maxim Gorki: Collected works in individual volumes. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1974

literature

  • Nadeshda Ludwig: Maxim Gorki. Life and work. Series of Contemporary Writers. People and Knowledge, Berlin 1984.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Russian Бирман, Серафима Германовна
  2. ↑ Monika Sperr: "Therese Giehse -I have nothing to say" . Bertelsmann GmbH publishing group, Munich, Gütersloh, Vienna 1973, ISBN 3-570-08405-1 , p. 83 .
  3. ↑ Fogarasi Béláné, Ilse (1885–1972)
  4. ↑ Stauche in the edition used, pp. 555–556
  5. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of January 21, 1988, p. 7
  6. ↑ see Marcel Kohler # stage roles and deutschestheater.de
  7. ↑ Hamburg October 2014
  8. ↑ slow. Mile Klopčič
  9. ↑ Edition used, p. 494, 20. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 499, 2nd Zvu
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 499, 2nd Zvu
  12. ↑ taken from Wassa Schelesnowa (Russian)
  13. ↑ Ludwig, p. 276 below