97. “Das Erbe”

Play in four acts by Felix Philippi
Performance at the Berliner Theater, Berlin

The House of Larun owns a large gun factory. When this "factory" was founded, old Larun was assisted by Heinrich Sartorius as his spiritual sidekick. At the moment the curtain rises, 35 years have passed since the factory was founded. An anniversary celebration is held. The old Larun is dead. His son, Baron Karl von Larun, has taken up the "inheritance". The spiritual creator, Privy Councillor of Commerce Sartorius, manages the factory with energy and dedication. He has grown completely attached to "his work". A seditious brochure is published in which the young Larun is called "wax in the hands of the old man". It is the first hint that the old man, who has earned the gratitude of the House of Larun and is idolized by the entire factory staff, is to be lifted out of the saddle. A second hint with an even thicker stake is the stencil-like theater intriguer who appears in the person of the department head van der Matthiesen. He has a daughter who does the scheming in the service of her father and the flirtation on her own account. The state has withdrawn a large order that it had placed with the Larun factory because it can obtain the same goods cheaper and just as well from an English company. The factory secret has been betrayed. After hearing this, everything is clear to the audience, and if the characters in the play didn't have to have that degree of stupidity that bad playwrights need to carry on their plot, old Sartorius would say to the young Baron: dear friend, throw this fellow, van der Matthiesen, out as quickly as possible. Of course he has committed treason. But it can't be done that way. Mr. Felix Philippi would have to dismiss his audience after half an hour. And he has to fill a theater evening. The fact that old Sartorius first needs an accomplice to get to the bottom of the matter, the scoundrel Lorinser, who first helped Matthiesen to betray the factory secret and who now betrays the spiritual leader again for 20,000 marks, is boring and annoying for the audience. The fact that the young Larun does not see through the truth for a long time is at least motivated by the art of scenery. He falls in love with Matthiessen's flirtatious daughter. And love, of course, is blind. The young heir forgets what he owes to his father's tried and tested advisor. As the old man begins his campaign against the man who has damaged the work, a fierce confrontation ensues between the faithful servant and the new master. The tried and tested head of the factory is given his leave. In order to drag the completely uninteresting plot along, the playwright tries everything at his disposal. Of the means used, the most disgusting is the cheeky attack on the tear ducts. The fact that the press has attempted to see in the plot an allusion to one of the most important political events in the German Reich is merely a symptom of the tastelessness of some of our newspaper criticism.