Old Heidelberg (play)
Old Heidelberg is a play by Wilhelm Meyer- Förster, which was performed at the Berlin theater for the first time on 22 November 1901. The title goes to Joseph Victor von Scheffel's poem Old Heidelberg, you fine back. Meyer- Förster dramatized so that his narrative Karl- Heinrich ( 1898).
Action
Old Heidelberg is the story of the Heidelberg student life of the Crown Prince Karl Heinrich from the fictional Saxony- Karlburg (derived from Saxe-Coburg ). Karl -Heinrich immersed in the student connection beings and falls in love with the innkeeper's daughter Käthie. But after four months, the reason of state calls him back into the home to a socially unacceptable marriage. He left Heidelberg and Käthie to follow in the footsteps of his father. The increase to the tearful farewell of the lovers was a pleasure for the audience.
Karl Heinrich. We reserve the right Käthie. I do not forget you and you love me. We do not see each other again, but we do not forget. My longing for Heidelberg was longing for you - and love you again I found. ( Kisses her long. ) Farewell, Käthie. ( He leaves. ) Käthie ( stands with drooping arms, looks after him ). Karl Heinrich ( used once ). I 've only had love you, Käthie, of all people only you. ( Kisses she goes. ) Käthie ( is silent, staring after him for a few seconds. Then she beats her hands before her face and sobbing bitterly ).
Reception
Old Heidelberg is one of the most performed German plays in the first half of the 20th century, even if it is called a Bertolt Brecht " Saustück " Alfred Doblin a " hurdy-gurdy " and Kurt Tucholsky an "old -jerker ".
The piece made the name Heidelberg popular worldwide and has been in Japan during the Meiji period required reading Japanese German students.
Bertolt Brecht presented the episode between the young prince and his submissive old servant as the epitome of obsolete social boundaries, of his lack of understanding after the First World War still clapped the audience applause. But the knowledge that such contradictions were overcome in the real world, the public success but still conveyed.
The spectacle was a model for the highly successful Broadway operetta The Student Prince by Sigmund Romberg (1924 ), in which a choir of students under the action painted in stripes (one of the few successful on Broadway Männerchöre ) with student songs. The piece is still listed at the Heidelberg Castle Festival among others in English with American Schauspierern.
The operetta was filmed several times: as a silent film, 1915, directed by John Emerson and 1927 by Ernst Lubitsch under the title Old Heidelberg, and in 1954 as a music film by Richard Thorpe. The spectacle there in the film version of Old Heidelberg in 1959 by Ernst Marischka with Christian Wolff in the role of Karl -Heinrich and Gert Frobe as Dr. Jüttner.