64. Gebrüder Währpfennig”

Four-act comedy by Benno Jacobson. Music by Gustav Steffens
Performance at the Goethe Theater, Berlin

On November 20, I had the choice of either going to the Residenztheater to see the play "Dorina" by Rovetta or enjoying the "Gebrüder Währenpfennig" at the Goethe-Theater. As a member of the German Goethe Society and a former employee of the Goethe Archive in Weimar, I naturally decided to go to the Goethe Theater. One always likes to see a healthy farce; and the Goethe Theater will only bring the very best in the field of farce, I thought to myself. But that's where I got off to a good start - this prejudice against the name Goethe made for an extremely boring evening. The "idea" of the "Währenpfennig brothers" would still work. The one miserly brother, who wears old-fashioned clothes and only drinks wheat beer, and the other, who swims in champagne and is a cheerful bon vivant of the latest style in every other respect, are not at all bad contrasting figures. I can understand why two such different natures should clash. But the stale jokes that appear within this framework, the witless allusions to all sorts of contemporary things are tiresome, even soporific, because of their blandness. And the ending is the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen in the theater. The older brother has sworn enmity against the younger brother because the latter has called him a simple merchant. So the older brother says: the simple merchant will never speak a word to you again. But the brothers must be reconciled. So the older brother becomes a councillor of commerce. Now he is no longer a simple merchant. It's not against his oath if he talks to his brother again. There is a Kalau after all.