120. “Ein Frühlingsopfer”

Play in three acts by E. von Keyserling
Performance for the anniversary of the Freie Bühne, Berlin

The "Freie Bühne" in Berlin celebrated its tenth anniversary on November 12. When it was founded, it set itself the task of paving the way to the stage for playwrights who, despite being mature or matured artists, needed such support because the prevailing taste had passed them by. The performance on November 12 did little to refresh the memory of the laudable intentions of the Institute's founders. The "Spring Offering" is a bundle of concessions - nothing more. One concession to naturalism, the second to romanticism, the third to the prevailing taste in theater.

The illegitimate daughter of the drunkard Kappel, half child, half blossoming into a virgin, lives in her father's house. The woman who has married the lousy man is a good creature. She has taken the child, who is disregarded by the whole world, into her home. Here it is also mistreated by the father. The stepmother is dying; she has just received the priest's consolations. This is where the drama begins. The child of sin is faced with the prospect that the father will remarry after the death of his wife and chase the daughter out of the house. While the mother struggles with death, passionate love flares up in the maiden for the first time for a young farmer, who at first seems to reciprocate, but soon returns to his Madda. The girl has gone through all the sensations of a suddenly flaring affection in a few hours. She must soon also experience the pain of abandonment. She has glimpsed the world of happiness, and now that her lover has left her, she is doubly unhappy. Not only will she now be despised because of her mother's sin, but she will also be regarded as a creature who throws herself away on the next best thing. A naturalistic drama could have been created from these premises. The author adds a romantic leaven to this material. An old grandmother lives in the house. She tells the girl that there is a black chapel in the forest with a picture of the Virgin Mary. There, a woman once prayed for the recovery of a child and sacrificed her own life for it. Now the girl wants to do the same for her stepmother. She wants to die so that her benefactress may live. She goes there and receives an answer from the Mother of God. On the way back it happens to her that she falls in love. Now she does not want to die again. She regrets what she has done. But the course of providence continues. When the maiden returns home, she finds the sick woman on the road to recovery. Then she learns of her lover's infidelity. Now she wants to die again. However, she does not wait for the miracle of the Virgin Mary, but takes - again in a completely naturalistic way - poison in the form of the drops that the doctor has prescribed for the sick woman.

I know, of course, that everything in the play has its natural course, and that the romanticism of superstition only resides in the minds of the old grandmother and the girl. The mother recovers, not because the stepdaughter prayed, but because she took the drops the doctor gave her. But why does the girl poison herself? If she believes in the miracle, she could be quietly expecting her death, which seems certain to her. But this could not happen if the poet himself had not made the course of "providence" the driving motif of the drama. The girl's suicide is therefore not motivated by anything. It is a concession to theatrical machinations. There are many more of these in the play.

One would have to be sad about contemporary dramatic production if associations such as the "Freie Bühne" were unable to find better plays. But it will probably not be due to this production that we saw this mishmash of all possible styles parading before us on November 12.