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Dionysus in Deutschland: Nietzsche, Grüber, and The Bacchae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Ralf Erik Remshardt
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Extract

In 1974, the maverick German director Klaus-Michael Grüber created a remarkable (and much remarked-upon) production of Die Bakchen (The Bacchae) at Berlin's Schaubühne theatre. It was then, and remains to date, the most significant German-language production of, and indeed one of the very few attempts to stage, Euripides' final play in Germany. This essay will attempt to trace the history of German abstention fromthe play and analyze how Grüber's Bacchae responded to that history of ambivalence and neglect, for what was played out in Grüber's mise-en-scène was not only the conflict between Pentheus and Dionysus for the soul of Thebes, but indeed, upon the rapidly shifting cultural and political ground of West Germany, a deeper conflict between mimesis and authenticity, presence and representation, and the soul of the theatre. The first volley in this conflict had been fired more than one hundred years before by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 31 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1999

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References

1. My particular thanks for help extended in the preparation of this article go to Helga Kneidl for permission to reprint production photographs, and Sabine Ganz and the staff at the dramaturgy office of the Schaubühne for making rehearsal transcripts, dramaturgical protocols, and other primary materials available.

2. Flashar, Hellmuth, Inszenierung der Antike: Das griechische Drama auf der Bühne der Neuzeit (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1991) notes no German productions prior to the twentieth century. If any were attempted, they are likely thoroughly obscureGoogle Scholar.

3. Petersen, Uwe, Goethe und Euripides: Untersuchungen zur Euripides-Rezeption in der Goethezeit (Heidelberg: Winter, 1974), 198Google Scholar.

4. See Bōschenstein, Bernhard, “Die Bakchen des Euripides in der Umgestaltung Hōlderlins und Kleists,” in Aspekte der Goethezeit, ed. Corngold, Stanley et al. (Gōttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), 240–254Google Scholar.

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7. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Vintage, 1967), 88fGoogle Scholar.

8. Nietzsche, 109,112.

9. Nietzsche, 77.

10. Nietzsche, 84, 81.

11. Nietzsche, 73.

12. Nietzsche, 82.

13. Nietzsche, 75f.

14. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich, Die griechische Literatur des Altertums (1912; reprint, Stuttgart: Teubner, 1995), 78Google Scholar.

15. Technically, the Schaubühne had existed since 1962 as a legal entity, but most German theatre historians date the founding of the “real” Schaubūhne to 1 August 1970, when it was reconstituted with a new democratic constitution and a directoriate consisting of Claus Peymann, Peter Stein, and Dieter Sturm.

16. I am paraphrasing discussions documented in the dramatugical protocols and dated 30 June and 1 July 1973.

17. Antikenprojekt program (Berlin: Schaubühne, 1974), 3Google Scholar. See also Iden, Peter, Die Schaubūhne am Halleschen Ufer, 1970–1979 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1982), 180Google Scholar.

18. Antikenprojekt program, 3 (my italics).

19. Nietzsche, 48.

20. Benjamin Henrichs, “Reise in die Mysterien: Die Berliner Schaubühne zeigt ihr ‘Antikenprojekt’,” Die Zeit, 15 February 1974.

21. Rühle, Günther, Anarchie in der Regie? (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), 120Google Scholar.

22. Carstensen, Uwe B., Klaus Michael Grüber (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1988), 66Google Scholar.

23. For more on this doubleness of theatre, see the work of Bert States, especially Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar. Of course, the phenomenal quality remained an illusion: what was dug up was not really the dirt beneath the theatre, but it seemed so.

24. Girard, René, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Gregory, Patrick (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 160Google Scholar.

25. Henrichs, “Reise in die Mysterien.”

26. Apart from sources mentioned elsewhere in the notes, this brief narrative reconstruction owes much to the video tape of the production (NDR-TV, 1974) and the review by Jäger, Gerd, “‘…wie sich alles für mich verändert hat’,” Theater Heute 15.2 (1974): 12–20Google Scholar.

27. Hensel, Georg, Das Theater der siebziger Jahre: Kommentar, Kritik, Polemik (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1980), 128Google Scholar.

28. Iden, Schaubühne, 178.

29. Rühle, Günther, “Keine Liebe in Theben,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 February 1974Google Scholar.

30. Henrichs, “Reise in die Mysterien.”

31. Baumgart, Reinhard, “An den Grenzen des Theaters,” Süddeutsche Zeitung 16/17 February 1974Google Scholar.

32. Kaiser, Joachim, “Werktreue—warum und wie?” Theater 1974: Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Theater Heute (1975), 14Google Scholar.

33. The (unpublished) text is in the Schaubühne archive. Changes in translation (Hölderlin, Schadewald, Hartung, etc.) are indicated after each line.

34. Brock, Bazon, “Für dieses leere Spiel mit Worten sollt Ihr Buße tun!” Theater 1974: Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Theater Heute (1975), 41Google Scholar.

35. Iden, Schaubühne, 181.

36. Iden, Peter, “Mit den Griechen an die Grenzen,” Frankfurter Rundschau, 8 February 1974Google Scholar.

37. Iden, “Mit den Griechen an die Grenzen.”

38. Henrichs, “Reise in die Mysterien.”

39. Jencks, Charles, “The Emergent Rules,” in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Docherty, Thomas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 282. Jencks is using an idea first articulated by architect Robert VenturiGoogle Scholar.

40. Canaris, Volker, “Zeit für Klassiker?” Theater 1974: Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Theater Heute (1915), 34Google Scholar.

41. It is probably not coincidental that the first volume of the theatre texts of Heiner Müller, that quintessential German post-Brechtian playwright, was published in West Germany in 1974.

42. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, “Berliner Antikenprojekte,” in Berliner Theater im 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Fischer-Lichte, Erika et al. (Berlin: Fannei & Walz, 1998), 88f. See also her essay in this issue of Theatre SurveyGoogle Scholar.

43. Nietzsche, 40.