Der Hofmeister [antikvár]

PREFACE Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's tragicomedy, Der Hofmeister oder Vortheile der Privaterziehung, was adapted by Bertolt Brecht in 1949/1950 for the Berliner Ensemble. No detailed comparison of the adaptation with its model has been published to date.' The purpose of this study is to fill this notable gap in Brecht scholarship with the help of unpublished materials from the writer's Nachlaß. These papers, available only in the East Berlin Bertolt Brecht-Archiv,- and supplemented by related documents in the Berliner Ensemble Archiv,^ provide the basis for tracing the genesis of the Hofmeister adaptation. The collection of Hofmeister papers of the BBA and the BEA is classified and evaluated here for the first time. Brecht's posthumous papers are also of signal importance in my assessment of the relationship which the Bearbeitung bears to Lenz's drama. The documents in both archives prove particularly valuable in the attempt to establish the interpretation of character, situation and didactic intent, as conceived by Brecht and his troupe. The gradual development of various polemic thrusts in the adaptation can be observed accurately from one leveH of the manuscripts to the next. This affords the literary historian a unique insight into the creative process in which director, actors and spectators shared during rehearsals in the Berliner Ensemble. 1 This work represents a revised version of my doctoral dissertation bearing the same title and written for Indiana University in 1973. A few short studies on the relationship of Brecht's adaptation to its model have been published in several books and learned journals. The two dramas have also been the subject of various East German Staatsexamensarbeiten unavailable outside of the German Democratic Republic. See the "SOURCES CONSULTED" under the heading "Works about Brecht and Lenz." The text of Lenz's Hofmeister used in my comparison is that of Richard Dau-nicht's /. M. R. Lenz — Gesammelte Werke (München; Fink, 1967), vol. I, pp. 39—121. Daunicht's is the most reliable edition and faithfully reproduces the first printing of Lenz's Hofmeister as published in 1774 by Weygand in Leipzig. Cf. Daunicht, pp. 389—391 for the history of the text. Reinhold Grimm reviews Daunicht's edition in Monatshefte, LXI (1969), 181. - The Bertolt Brecht-Archiv will subsequently be referred to as BBA. This abbreviation also precedes all file numbers of the catalogued materials in the archive; following the file or Mappe number is a slash, after which are given the page numbers, as for example: BBA 1561 1-103. Where 1 refer to the text of a complete file, only its number is given. The Houghton Library at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts possesses a fairly complete microfilm collection of Brecht's Nachlaß. Loaned to this library by their owner, Stefan Brecht, the films my be read only with his permission. 3 Subsequently, the Berliner Ensemble Archiv will be abbreviated as BEA. ^ The term "level" is used consistently throughout the investigation to denote any of the five versions or strata of the adaptation, i.e., Level A, Level B, and so