Grabbe

[This page by Katy Heady]

Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836)

Christian Dietrich Grabbe was one of the most idiosyncratic and original German dramatists of the nineteenth century. Described as a ‘drunken Shakespeare’ by Heine, Grabbe wrote plays that both drove forward German realism and anticipated the grotesque and absurdist tendencies within modernism.

Grabbe was born into modest circumstances Detmold in 1801; his family lived in the Detmold city prison, where his father was warden. Grabbe began work on his first play, the tragedy Herzog Theodor von Gothland (written 1818-22; first publ. 1827) while still at the Gymnasium in Detmold, and continued to write dramas during his time studying law at the universities of Leipzig and Berlin. After graduating, he made a brief and unsuccessful attempt to find employment within the theatre, but financial constraints compelled him to return to his home town in 1823. In Detmold, Grabbe found work as a lawyer, but resumed writing after an old university friend offered to publish a volume of his works in 1827. In 1834, Grabbe resigned from his job and moved to Düsseldorf, where he devoted himself solely to writing until early 1836, when a lack of money forced him to return – once again – to Detmold. Grabbe was an alcoholic who suffered from bouts of depression and – from 1831 onwards – poor physical health. He married Louise Cristina Clostermeyer in 1833, but their relationship was unhappy and they divorced in 1836. Later that year, Grabbe died of tuberculosis.

Grabbe’s best-known drama is probably Scherz, Satire, Ironie und Tiefere Bedeutung; Jokes, Satire, Irony and Deeper Meaning (written 1822; first publ. 1827; first performed 1907) which is widely regarded as one of the funniest German language comedies ever written. The play tells the story of a visit by the Devil to an unnamed German village, where he hatches a plan to purchase the daughter of a local nobleman from her fiancé and sell her on to another admirer. However, this central plot does not form the main source of interest for much of the play; instead it provides the framework for a number of absurd and fantastical comic episodes that include much literary and social satire.

Although the general mood of Scherz, Satire is exuberant, the drama also contains dark undercurrents. The callous killing of twelve tailors is one example of this. Another is the vision of reality as mediocre and meaningless, which recurs throughout the play. The most memorable articulation of this idea comes from the Devil himself, during a conversation with the poet Rattengift:

So will ich Ihnen denn sagen, daß dieser Inbegriff des Alls, den Sie mit dem Namen Welt beehren, weiter nichts ist, als ein mittelmäßiges Lustspiel, welches ein unbärtiger, gelbschnabeliger Engel, der in der ordentlichen, dem Menschen unbegreiflichen Welt lebt, und wenn ich nicht irre, noch in Prima sitzt, während seiner Schulferien zusammengeschmiert hat. Das Exemplar, in dem wir uns befinden, steht, glaube ich, in der Leihbibliothek zu X, und eben jetzt wird es von einer hübschen Dame gelesen, welche den Verfasser kennt...

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/grabbe/ironie/chap02.html

I’d like to tell you that this epitome of the universe, which you honour with the name world, is nothing more than a mediocre comedy, cobbled together in the holidays by a unbearded whippersnapper of an angel who, if I’m not mistaken, is still at school in the real world, beyond human perception. The copy we’re in is kept at the public library in X, and is being read by a pretty lady who knows the author...

Grabbe is also renowned for his innovative historical dramas, the most famous of which are Napoleon oder die hundert Tage; Napoleon or the Hundred Days (1831); Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa (1829) and its sequel Kaiser Heinrich der Sechste (1830). The originality of these plays lies partly in the model of history they advanced, which can be seen as a natural continuation of the ‘mediocre reality’ theme of Scherz, Satire. Rather than depicting human history as a process of continual improvement (as did most contemporaries) or portraying it as a battle between competing ideals (like the German classicists), Grabbe’s historical dramas presented a conception of human history in which historical processes were free from a higher plan or deeper meaning. Instead they are shown to be determined solely by complex interactions between a multiplicity of social, economic, psychological and political factors.

The ambitious form of Grabbe’s historical plays reflects this model of human history. Rather than giving prominence to episodes which move the central plot forward, Grabbe concentrates on showing the ways in which a broad spectrum of social and political groups were involved in historical developments. As a result, these plays offer detailed and panoramic depictions of various historical events, and employ a range of techniques – such as large-scale crowd scenes and frequent switches between far-flung locations – which stretch the technical possibilities of the stage to their limits and anticipated later cinematic effects. These techniques enabled the plays to achieve a degree of realism that was highly unusual at the time. On the other hand, they also meant that the dramas were extremely difficult to stage, and none of Grabbe’s historical plays were performed during his lifetime.