Dear all,
With apologies for cross-posting, I'm delighted to invite you to our second University of Edinburgh German Research Seminar of the semester at 4.30pm this Friday (2 November), to be given by Dr Robert Gillett (QMUL) in G.02, 50 George Square:
Racing Back to the Future: Rosmer/Bernstein’s Neo-Classical Tragedies
At the end of the 19th century, one could be forgiven for thinking that Realism was where the future of the theatre lay. Plays by Henrik Ibsen, set in recognizable bourgeois surroundings and concerned with topics of burning concern to the middle classes, gradually came to dominate the stages of Europe, and Germany was no exception. The influence of Ibsen – alongside that of Zola and Hippolyte Taine – can be traced unmistakeably in the plays of Gerhart Hauptmann, who has come to stand as the German representative of this kind of theatre. That the plays of Elsa Bernstein, who wrote under the defiantly Ibsenian pseudonym of Ernst Rosmer, were written in explicit dialogue with Hauptmann can be deduced from the title of her play ‘Dämmerung’ – which clearly varies that of Hauptmann’s ‘Vor Sonnenaufgang’. As a result of this, critics, who are of course especially lazy when it comes to passing judgment on women – have got into the habit of treating Bernstein as a mere epigone of Hauptmann. However, when it comes to the realization that, far from being the future, realism is almost by definition always already dated, Bernstein seems to have been streaks ahead of her more famous counterpart. For not only is her ‘Märchendrama’ ‘Königskinder’ demonstrably superior to anything Hauptmann wrote in the genre, her neo-classical tragedies, ‘Themistokles’, ‘Nausikaa’ and ‘Achill’ all pre-date Hauptmann’s own attempts at the genre, and are able to draw on a specifically feminist tradition of re-writing to which Hauptmann had no access. The purpose of my paper is to take a careful look at these three plays, to try and rescue them not only from the oblivion into which they have so nearly fallen, but also from some of the bizarre judgments to which they have been subject and to show that, with them, Rosmer/Bernstein found a vehicle for treating vitally important contemporary themes that was not subject to the rusting of realism.
All are welcome, and we'll look forward to seeing some of you there.
All the best,
Michael