Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

Archive

Volume 7 Number 3, December 2006

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Piedmont, Ferdinand: Aktuelles Theater mit Schiller, Frankfurt, Peter Lang Verlag, 2005, 168p., 3-631-53034-X, 34 €

Review by 

Angela Holzer

Princeton University

Ferdinand Piedmont’s book deals with various performances of five plays by Schiller on German stages after World War II.  The book contains revised versions of essays that were partly published separately (except for the one on Don Carlos) and builds on the author’s research on Schiller performances contained in his magisterial collection of reviews Schiller spielen. Stimmen der Theaterkritik 1946-1985 (1990), while at the same time complementing this major work. The performances analyzed in Aktuelles Theater mit Schiller span the period from 1950 to 2002. In general, there is a development from work-oriented to actualizing tendencies in the adaptations, turning the plays increasingly into contemporary social and political commentaries.  

            Piedmont proceeds chronologically in each of the five chapters and presents the major performances and their reception in detail in order to focus on the changing aesthetics and emphases of the adaptations. His concern lies, however, also with the exploration of the way in which German contemporary politics are reflected in the performances of Schiller’s plays.

Thus, his decision to focus on Die Räuber, Kabale und Liebe, Don Carlos, Wallenstein and Wilhelm Tell is partly due to their proneness to such inquiry, partly due to the fact that these plays were performed most frequently. However, the selection might also be considered arbitrary, since it operates on the exclusion of other plays that could be interpreted politically (like Maria Stuart), and neglects plays that are rarely performed, but whose adaptations are nonetheless of special interest to literary and theatre historians (Die Braut von Messina). For reviews of these plays, the interested reader has to turn to Stimmen der Theaterkritik.

            In regard to the correlation of the performances with German politics, the productions that coincide with historical events are most interesting, e.g. the staging of Wilhelm Tell, traditionally understood as a play about the fight for national liberty, in 1989, the year of the German reunification. The staging of Tell in 1989 is a historical coincidence itself. Performed in March to commemorate the French Revolution of 1789, the sense of the political importance of the play in the contemporary German situation almost took on a life of its own. The dramatization anticipated the events in the fall. One performance took place in Vienna, the other in Schwerin, which was then located in the GDR. Both emphasized the urge to freedom of the Swiss people, but they also deemphasized Schiller's "utopian" (134) ending. Peymann in Vienna explicitly treated the Swiss fight for liberty more sceptically in order to show the tendencies of fossilization apparent to him in Western democracies; the wall, then, also seemed to be insuperable. The political acidity lacking in Peymann's production, however, was astonishingly present in the Schwerin production by Christoph Schroth, who used the scenography to make associations to the GDR reality. Political inspiration and "macabre actuality" (139) incited the public, and did so even more when the play was shown in East Berlin in October 1989. The relationship between the leadership and the people was a focal point in this adaptation, which, understood as comment on the contemporary situation, also led to harsh criticism by leading theatre critics of the GDR.

            In general, the book is a good source for both literary and theatre historians, as well as for Schiller critics, who are interested not only in the historical diversity of and the changing character of Schiller plays on German stages, but also in the way directors have been in dialogue with Schiller to bring him and the spirit of his plays to life— in order to comment on or criticize the contemporary social and political situations. We are looking forward to the production of Wallenstein by Andrea Breth in 2007, who is one of the finest directors active today, and keep in mind what Ferdinand Piedmont elaborated on earlier Wallenstein adaptations. The publishing house, Peter Lang, however, could have spent a little more time on correcting printing errors and ensuring grammatical uniformity.