Frank Wedekind

Benjamin Franklin Wedekind (Hannover July 24, 1864 – Munich March 9, 1918), usually known as Frank Wedekind was a German playwright. His work, which often criticizes bourgeois attitudes (particularly towards sex), is considered to anticipate expressionism, and he was a major influence on the development of epic theatre.

Life and work

Wedekind lived most of his adult life in Munich, though he had a brief period working in advertising, for the 'Maggi' soup firm, in Switzerland in 1886. He had an affair with Frida Uhl who bore him a child. Having initially worked in business and the circus, Wedekind went on to become an actor and singer. In this capacity he received wide acclaim as the principal star of the satirical cabaret Die elf Scharfrichter (The Eleven Executioners), launched in 1901. It was thanks to Wedekind's success that the tradition of German satirical writing was established in the theatre, producing the cabaret-song satirists Kurt Tucholsky, Walter Mehring, Joachim Ringelnatz and Erich Kästner among others, who invigorated the culture of the Weimar Republic; "all bitter social critics who used direct, stinging satire as the best means of attack and wrote a large part of their always intelligible light verse to be declaimed or sung." At the age of 34, after serving a nine-month prison sentence for "lèse-majesté" (thanks to the publication in Simplizissimus of some of his satirical poems), Wedekind became a dramaturg (a play-reader and adapter) at the Munich Schauspielhaus.

Wedekind's first major play, Frühlingserwachen (Spring Awakening, 1891), which concerns sexuality and puberty among some young German students, caused a scandal, as it contained scenes of masturbation, homoeroticism, and suicide, as well as references to abortion. In 2006, it was adapted into a successful Broadway musical, Spring Awakening. In 2008 the audio book of the play is due to be released from fantom films available for download and on CD, visit http://www.fantomfilms.co.uk/audiobooks/spring_awakening.htm for details.

The "Lulu" plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904) are probably his best known works. Originally conceived as a single play, the two pieces tell a continuous story of a sexually-enticing young dancer who rises in German society through her relationships with wealthy men, but who later falls into poverty and prostitution. The frank depiction of sexuality and violence in these plays, including lesbianism and an encounter with Jack the Ripper (a role which Wedekind played himself in the original production), pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable on the stage at the time. The plays formed the basis for G W Pabst's acclaimed silent film Pandora's Box (1929), starring Louise Brooks as Lulu, and Alban Berg's uncompleted opera Lulu (1937), which is considered to be one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century opera.

Der Kammersänger (The Court-Singer, 1899) is a one-act character study of a famous opera singer who receives a series of unwelcome guests at his hotel suite. In Franziska (1910), the title character, a young girl, initiates a Faustian pact with the Devil, selling her soul for the knowledge of what it is like to live life as a man (reasoning that men seem to have all the advantages). Wedekind's symbolist novella Mine-Haha: The Corporal Education Of Young Girls (1888) was the basis for the film Innocence (2004) by Lucile Hadzihalilovic.

Quotations

• "Search fearlessly for every sin, for out of sin comes joy."

Major works

• Mine-Haha: The Corporal Education Of Young Girls (1888) [novella]
• Frühlingserwachen (Spring Awakening / Spring's Awakening, 1891)
• Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895)
• Die Kammersänger (The Court-Singer or The Tenorist, 1899) [one-act play]
• Der Marquis von Keith (The Marquis of Keith, 1901)
• König Nicolo oder So ist das Leben (King Nicolo, or Such is Life, 1902)
• Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904)
• Musik (Music, 1906)
• Totentanz (The Dance of Death, 1908)
• Schloss Wetterstein (Castle Wetterstein, 1910)
• Franziska (1910)
• Bismarck (1916)
• Herakles (Heracles, 1917)

Works cited

• Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. "Wedekind, Frank." In The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521434378. p.1189-1190.
• Boa, Elizabeth. 1987. The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell. ISBN 0631142347.
• Brecht, Bertolt. 1965. The Messingkauf Dialogues. Trans. John Willett. Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry, Prose Ser. London: Methuen, 1985. ISBN 0413388905.
• Mueller, Carl R. 2000. Introduction to Frank Wedekind: Four Major Plays, Vol 1. Lyme, NH: Smith and Kraus.
• Willett, John. 1967. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. Third rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1977. ISBN 041334360X.

References