Strindbergs dramatik på tyskspråkiga scener

Abstract

Strindberg’s Dramas on German Stages

This article provides an overview of stage productions of Strindberg’s plays on German stages from 1890 to 2011, and discusses their importance for German directors. The first Strindberg performance to be staged in Germany was Otto Brahm’s The Father produced by the Freie Bühne in Berlin in 1890. The most suitable authors for the naturalistic aesthetic ideals of the Freie Bühne, however, were Hauptmann, Ibsen and Tolstoy. Strindberg was involved in several lawsuits during the 1890’s, making him a controversial figure. However, by the first decade of the 20th century, about twenty-five of his plays were being performed in Germany.

In 1912 the so-called “Strindberg Boom” began; fifty Strindberg dramas were put on stage and the German expressionists even compared Strindberg to Shakespeare. Two theatres were of greater significance than the others. At the Deutsches Theater and the Kammerspiele Max Reinhardt – the first director able to fulfill Strindberg’s dramatic intentions in his late plays – made five legendary productions, beginning with The Dance of Death in 1912. At the Theater in Königgrätzer Straße in 1916, Rudolf Bernauer produced A Dream Play in a more idyllic and less experimental fashion than his contemporary, Reinhardt. By contrast, Reinhardt’s productions utilized lighting, sound effects and a gloomy milieu in order to emphasize the metaphysical anxiety of human beings in a world beyond their comprehension. The importance of the expressionists – and, eventually, of Strindberg himself – decreased after World War I. Given the Nazi party’s dislike of his work,  Strindberg’s plays were not performed in Germany at all after 1933.

The first important Strindberg production staged after World War II was Fritz Kortner’s The Father, first performed in Munich in 1949. In the 1950’s the influence of Kafka and Existentialism had revised Strindberg’s image. About ten of his plays had survived, and today, the most frequently performed of these is Miss Julie. During the 1960’s, when the German stage was dominated by political theatre, Strindberg was hardly performed at all. However, in the early 1970’s stage productions of The Dance of Death by Rudolf Noelte and The Ghost Sonata by Hans Neuenfels were the peaks of a new, ephemeral wave of interest in Strindberg.

To this day, the final important German stage director possessed of a pronounced interest in Strindberg was Ernst Wendt. Wendt was, however, strongly criticized by literary scholars and translators for placing emphasis upon the destructive and depressive aspects of Strindberg’s work, and overlooking Strindberg’s role as a radical critic and an inquisitive inventor.