Weininger's night

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Data
Title: Weininger's night
Original title: Soul of a Jew
Genus: play
Original language: Hebrew
Author: Joshua Sobol
Publishing year: 1982
Premiere: October 1982
Place of premiere: Haifa Municipal Theater
people
  • Otto Weininger , 23 years old
  • Leopold , his father, 49 years old
  • Adelaide, his mother, 46 years old
  • Tietz, his teacher, a bon vivant, between 30 and 40
  • Clara, his girlfriend, 22 years old
  • Berger, his friend, 23 years old
  • Sigmund Freud , 47 years old
  • Adele, caretaker, mid-20s
  • Karl Lueger , Mayor of Vienna
  • The doppelganger played by a woman
  • Larvae and lemurs

Weininger's Night is a play by the Israeli writer Joshua Sobol about the Austrian philosopher and misogynist Otto Weininger (1880–1903).

content

The play deals with the life of the Austrian Jewish philosopher Otto Weininger , who became famous for his work Gender and Character as well as for his suicide , which the only twenty-three-year-old committed in Beethoven's house in Vienna. It takes place on October 4, 1903, on Weininger's last night in Vienna's Schwarzspanierstrasse.

The scenes sketch Weininger's life in retrospect of the last seconds of complete loneliness, at the moment of the shot, in the moment between life and death: the characters of childhood, father Leopold and mother Adelheid, the companions of the student days, friends, teachers and appear before Weininger's eyes Beloved and the idols and competitors of the spiritual world, Sigmund Freud , August Strindberg and the critic Möbius , in order to drive him into death in a murderous dance. The master of ceremonies for this spectacular chase is Weininger's doppelganger (played by a woman), who confronts his alter ego with the unsolvable problem of self-discovery and ultimately goes down with him.

Impact history

Joshua Sobol's international career as a playwright began in 1983 with “The Soul of a Jew” (“Weininger's Night”) . The world premiere at the theater in Haifa in October 1982 with Doron Tavori in the title role was invited to the opening of the Edinburgh Festival in 1983 and was awarded the Critics' Prize there. The German premiere took place in 1985 at the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus (with Ulrich Matthes ) under the direction of Kitty Buchhammer ; Karl Welunschek staged the Austrian premiere in 1986 at the Wiener Künstlerhaus for the Wiener Festwochen with Bernhard Schir , Vera Borek , Julia Stemberger and Toni Böhm . Peter Zadek brought the play to the Hamburger Schauspielhaus in 1986 (director: Jaroslav Chundela, stage: Johannes Grützke , with Paulus Manker as Weininger), a Viennese version came in 1988 directed by Paulus Manker with Manker (Otto), Hilde Sochor (mother / caretaker ), Andrea Eckert (Clara), Josefin Platt (doppelganger), Sieghardt Rupp (father / Freud), Hermann Schmid (August Strindberg) at the Vienna Volkstheater . This performance was filmed in 1988.

Press reviews:

  • After more than three hours of big, blatant, jam-packed psychoanalysis review, the audience went wild with enthusiasm. ( Die Presse , Vienna)
  • The theater city of Vienna has nothing more exciting to offer this autumn. That is the unbelievable truth about Joshua Sobol's "Weininger Nacht" at the Vienna Volkstheater. Actors like Paulus Manker are rare: perfection and self-renunciation, passion and irony, linguistic brilliance and physical commitment to the limits of self-mutilation. What is happening around Manker is also of the highest order: Josefin Platt as a second, female self; Sieghardt Rupp as Sigmund Freud; Hermann Schmid with a brilliant metamorphosis number; Hilde Sochor, Manker's mother in life and on stage; plus Andrea Eckert, Peter Faerber and Werner Prinz . The audience raced for fifteen minutes. ( Kronenzeitung , Vienna)
  • An idea that is excessive, maybe even exhibitionistic . The Viennese stage appearance of an actor who from this evening on can certainly be counted among the great theater personalities of the Viennese scene. Paulus Manker gave nothing to himself or his partners in the performance. He demanded everything from himself and his partners in terms of physical effort, language intensity and self-renunciation. From Josefin Platt, Hilde Sochor, Hermann Schmid, Sieghardt Rupp, from artists who surpassed themselves on this evening. ( Karl Löbl , ORF )
  • You rarely come across a similarly sensual and intellectually exciting, enlightening, fantastic film (Simone Mahrenholz, Der Tagesspiegel , Berlin)
  • The director, who also plays the leading role, uses the narrow stage space with extreme camera positions and effective close-ups for a dance of death by a neurotic scientist who exposes the misogynist and misanthropic zeitgeist that became the breeding ground for fascism (filmlexikon.de)

The author about the work

“If you look at Weininger's case, including the historical one, then you understand that there is no hatred without a strong element of self-hatred . And that leads to self-destruction . - I think that if the Germans understand what happened to them during the Nazi era, then they should realize that they were also destroying themselves through the persecution of the Jews . " (Author Joshua Sobol on the play)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weiningers Nacht (1990) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ DNB 4574729-5