Gonçalves da Silva studies a range of expressionist playwrights who transformed German drama in the twentieth century: from Frank Wedekind, who grew up in a Swiss castle, became an actor and was imprisoned for satirical poetry, to Bertholt Brecht, who passed from Weimar Germany to exile and then establishment in East Germany.
This book, originally published in paperback in 1985 under the ISBN 978-0-947623-00-5, was made Open Access in 2024 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.
Contents:
i-xi, 1-146
Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva Complete volume as single PDF
Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht: front matter M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva doi:10.59860/td.c48f151
Frank Wedekind. A radical critique of the middle class. Instincts and bourgeois morality. A double profile of the outsider, as an enlarged reflection of bourgeois vice and as the means of unmasking it. Frühlingserwachen: Innocence in conflict with sexual taboo through a poetical representation of the adolescent's sensual awakening and a caricature of the Wilhelmine middle-class adult. Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora: Lulu, symbol of natural libido. The sub-criminal world as a bizarre model of bourgeois society. Lulu's irrevocable downfall. Der Marquis von Keith: Bourgeois behaviour and tactics defined through social resistance to the outsider (Keith and Scholz). Keith and Scholz together as the formula for the 'perfect' bourgeois. Der Kammersänger: a caricature of the bourgeois artist.
Carl Sternheim. A nostalgic view of the late bourgeois. A comedy of masks. The bourgeois type revitalized and vindicated in his social drives with consequent softening of caricature. The bourgeois as a foil to other social types. Sternheim's ambivalence and the historical limitations of his standpoint. Die Hose: The petit bourgeois triumphs in his domestic environment through conformism. Der Snob: The bourgeois outdoes the aristocrat through wealth and style. 1913: Sternheim's mistrust of the monopolist power of the bourgeoisie in the years before the war. Carica- ture of the revolutionary. Bürger Schippel: Schippel, the caricature of the worker with the ambition to become middle-class. Escape into nineteenth-century provincial Bürgertum. Tabula Rasa: The worker fulfils his bourgeois aspirations by being simultaneously sentimental and brutal. The materialistic justification of the mask.
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55-103
Chapter III: Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva doi:10.59860/td.c6b053c
Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller. War, mass-society and the impossibility of a radical change. The ideal of the 'New Man'. Ill (A): Georg Kaiser. From the failure of the individual to fulfil himself, and the dehumanization of the masses, to the Utopia of the 'New Man'. The prophetic quality of Kaiser's vision and his despair. Von morgens bis mitternachts: The dramatic break- through to freedom of the petit bourgeois. His disappointing search to discover the value of money. The failure of religion to sustain him. Death as the ultimate solution. The Gas Trilogy: Die Koralle: The conflict of generations projected on a sociological level and with stylized representative characters: the advent of socialism (the son) and the downfall of capitalism (the father). Gas I: A stylized model of a socialist system of produc- tion. The reification of man. The growing risk of industrial disaster. The abstract ideals of the 'natu- ral community' and of the 'New Man'. The workers' refusal to resist the stimulus of money. Gas II: A concise model of a country at war. Its consequ- ences: further dehumanization of the masses; increase in the production of war industry (poiso- nous gas); the desire for further destruction through defeat. Kaiser's nihilism, represented in formal sim- plifications Ernst Toller. Abstraction and symbolism as means to portray the struggle for a humanist socialism. The problem of means and ends in a revolution. The opposition between Masse and Mensch. The symbo- lic figure of the leader. His death. Die Wandlung: From ontological despair to social com- mitment. The birth of the 'New Man', as an abstract conception, from the ashes of the war. Masse-Mensch: The leader in moral conflict after having led the masses to violent rebellion. His adoption of pacifism. Die Maschinenstürmer: Historical parable. The quick response of the masses to the pseudo-leader who advocates violence. The sacrificial death of the 'New Man'. Hinkemann: Hinkemann, the symbol of working-class failure in war-torn Germany. Toller's loss of faith in the possibility of a radical transformation of society.
Bertolt Brecht. A new formula for a humanist political theatre. A theatre of parables that illustrate a new phase of a dialectical relationship between man and society, and restore faith in the individual through the Marxist conception of history. Characters as images of social contradictions presented both as individualized and as representative parable figures. Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder: Anna Fierling, para- doxical image of the little people who join the war for profit and instead lose everything. Brecht's plea for pacifism. Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan: A parable illustrating the impossibility of being moral and well off in a society divided into classes. Shen Te's personal dilemma representative of the conflict between Christian morality and capitalist economy. Leben des Galilei: The scientist's responsibility to act politically in the interest of the masses. Brecht's dialectical presentation of individual and social ele- ments (Galileo's political naivety and the power of the Catholic Church and the interests of the rising middle class).
In this study, we have traced a clear line of technical development in dramatic character presentation during a particularly turbulent period of German history and culture. An analysis of five major playwrights Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht - has shown how character, after appearing as a stylized image of modern man at the mercy of social forces, re-emerges as something specifically individual in a type of theatre that is clearly ideological.
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133-46
Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht: end matter M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva doi:10.59860/td.c054b2d
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Bibliography entry:
Silva, M. Helena Gonçalves da, Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 21 (MHRA, 1985)
First footnote reference:35 M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva, Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 21 (MHRA, 1985), p. 21.
Silva, M. Helena Gonçalves da. 1985. Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 21 (MHRA)
Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Silva 1985: 21).
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