Wheat cantata

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Weizenkantate is a radio play fragment by Günter Eich , which was broadcast on May 11, 1936 by the Deutschlandsender Berlin under the direction of Gerd Fricke . Paul de Kruif's novel “Conqueror of Hunger” - in which the biography of Mark Alfred Carleton is also written - could have been one of the models for the radio play.

content

At home in Kansas , Elisabeth watches her husband Carleton prepare for a trip to Russia . From there, he wants to import a frost- and drought-resistant wheat variety to Kansas. Elisabeth indicates to the researcher that he should rather look after his wife and children than the people of Kansas. Carleton replies that family happiness has to be put aside. He has taken vacation and is going to Russia.

Carleton moves - looking for wheat - through the Russian steppe. In one single place - the summers are particularly hot and the winters frosty there - he finds hard ears.

Testimonials

  • On April 18, 1935, Günter Eich wrote to Ursula Kuhnert that with this poetic story of American prosperity he wanted to "finally consolidate his fame as a poet"
  • Gerhard Prager became interested in the radio play after the war . Günter Eich wrote to a friend on February 20, 1950: “Stuttgart brings a series of 'radio play classics' or something like that. You want my wheat cantata, which I unfortunately no longer have. "

shape

At the beginning, an announcer receives the floor once. He sums up the essentials of the audio piece in four sayings. Then actually only Elisabeth speaks. With one exception, Carleton replies to his wife curtly. The choir does the rest. The song is about Carleton's successful search for durum wheat .

fragment

In his comments, Karst mentions a scene from Günter Eich's manuscript, published in 1936 but not broadcast, in which Elisabeth tells of the circumstances of her husband's death. After that, he died on April 26, 1925 in Paita to malaria . Dismissed from office, he had left the family behind in the United States and taken on poorly paid work in Panama , Honduras and Peru .

reception

Reactions in the Nazi era

  • The radio play was included in the collection “This is radio play” published in 1938.
  • The "National Socialist Radio Correspondence" captured the author in May 1940: "His 'wheat cantata' is one of the permanent radio poems ..."

Comments after 1945

  • The radio play was discussed in the " Völkischer Beobachter ".
  • The author of the "History of the radio play 1933–1945" at "hoerspiel.com ... the German-language radio play" suspects that Günter Eich emphasized the use of the choir at the time "to be broadcast at all"
  • Vieregg quotes from a laudation to Gerd Fricke as evidence of Günter Eich's fame on Nazi radio. The senior director Fricke managed to bring in "the best German authors". The author of the “wheat cantata” Günter Eich is mentioned after authors such as Johst , Euringer and JM Bauer have been mentioned.
  • According to Cuomo, the choir orientates itself in the wheat cantata on the Nazi radio play. Cuomo scolds Carleton for the recklessness of being a blood-and-soil crusader after birth. Wessel's contrary view of the topic “blood and soil” must be mentioned in the context: Such “longing” would not be fulfilled in the wheat cantata. The audio piece would rather lead to resignation.
  • In a broadcast on December 13, 1976 on WDR 3, Frank Norris was seen as a role model.
  • In 1978, Würffel stated that the radio play was close to " ideologues of National Socialism".
  • Wessels and Philpotts deal with the audio piece.
  • Wagner counts the radio piece as one of Günter Eich's “spectacular, much-noticed and literarily convincing programs” and offers a wealth of details about the original program. For example: Christian Kayßler spoke to the Carleton and Maria Koppenhöfer to his wife Elisabeth.

literature

Used edition

  • Günter Eich: Wheat Cantata. Fragment. 1936. In: Günter Eich. Collected Works. Volume II: Karl Karst (Ed.): The radio plays 1st revised edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-518-40210-2 , pp. 121-126.

Secondary literature

  • Frank Norris : The Epic of Wheat. Part 1: the octopus. German publishing company, Stuttgart / Leipzig 1907.
  • Frank Norris: The golden cargo. California Wheat Novel. From the American by Hermann Stresau. S. Fischer, Berlin 1939. (Original: The Octopus. 1901)
  • Paul de Kruif : Conqueror of hunger. German by Curt Thesing . Grethlein & Co., Leipzig 1929.
  • Wolfram Wessels: Radio plays in the Third Reich. On the history of institutions, theory and literature. Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-416-01926-1 . (Treatises on art, music and literary studies, Volume 366)
  • Glenn Raymond Cuomo: Career At The Cost Of Compromise: Günter Eich's Life And Work In The Years 1933-1945. Rodopi Publishing House, Amsterdam 1989, ISBN 90-5183-080-7 .
  • Axel Vieregg (Ed.): Our sins are moles. The Günter Eich debate . Rodopi Publishing House, Amsterdam 1995, ISBN 90-5183-927-8 .
  • Hans-Ulrich Wagner: Günter Eich and the radio. Essay and documentation. Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, Potsdam 1999, ISBN 3-932981-46-4 (publications of the German Broadcasting Archive ; Vol. 27)
  • Hans-Ulrich Wagner: "To continue the campaign against the radio". Günter Eich and the radio 1928–1940. In: Peter Walther (Ed.): Günter Eich 1907–1972. After the end of the biography. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-931836-40-1 , pp. 49-59.
  • Peter Walther (Ed.): Günter Eich 1907–1972. After the end of the biography. Lukas Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-931836-40-1 .
  • Sabine Buchheit: Forms and functions of literary communication in Günter Eich's work. Röhrig University Publishing House , St. Ingbert 2003, ISBN 3-86110-334-6 .
  • Matthew Philpotts: The Margins of Dictatorship. Assent and Dissent in the Work of Guenter Eich and Bertolt Brecht. British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature Volume 34 . Peter Lang, Bern 2003, ISBN 3-03910-022-X .
  • Johannes Schwamberger: The history of the development of the radio play. Diploma thesis GRIN Verlag, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-638-71373-3 .

annotation

  1. ↑ The American Germanist Cuomo did his doctorate on Günter Eich in 1982 at the Ohio State University (Wessels, p. 543, 4th entry from; see also Buchheit, p. 197, first paragraph).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walther, p. 106, entry 1936.
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 790, middle
  3. ↑ Cuomo, p. 97, 17. Zvu
  4. ↑ Günter Eich quoted in Karst, p. 790, 20. Zvo
  5. ↑ Hans-Ulrich Wagner ( 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 notice. : "A veritable flood of Eich radio plays showered us from all sides" (PDF 223KB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lmz-bw.de
  6. ↑ Karst, p. 790, 5th Zvu- p. 791.
  7. ↑ Karst, p. 791, 6. Zvo and 2. Zvu
  8. ↑ Karst, p. 790, 3rd Zvu
  9. ↑ Wessels, p. 517, entry " Institute for Contemporary History Munich"
  10. ^ "National Socialist Radio Correspondence", quoted in Wessels, p. 447, 14. Zvo and also in Schwamberger, p. 57, 5. Zvo
  11. ↑ Reinhard Döhl : "About Wolfgang Weyrauch's radio plays"
  12. ↑ hoerspiel.com  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.hoerspiel.com  
  13. ^ Vieregg, Introduction, pp. Iii, 22. Zvo
  14. ^ Vieregg quotes a laudation for Gerd Fricke
  15. ↑ from Cuomo's book, quoted by Hans-Ulrich Wagner in Vieregg (ed.), P. 81, 2. Zvo
  16. ↑ Glenn R. Cuomo  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 118 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.mediaculture-online.de  
  17. ↑ Wessels, p. 450 below
  18. ↑ Wessels, p. 451, 3. Zvo
  19. ↑ Reinhard Döhl : On Günter Eich's radio play
  20. ↑ Cube  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 317 kB), quoted in Vieregg, p. 25, footnote 30@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.mediaculture-online.de  
  21. ↑ Wessels, p. 451, 9. Zvo
  22. ↑ Philpotts, pp. 235-237.
  23. ^ Wagner in Walther (Ed.), P. 57, 11th Zvu
  24. ↑ Wagner anno 1999, p. 165, right column, 4th Zvu