‘Scott of the Antarctic’ on the German Stage: Reinhard Goering's Die Südpolexpedition des Kapitäns Scott

Abstract

Reinhard Goering's play Die Südpolexpedition des Kapitäns Scott (1929) tells the story of the famously tragic British polar expedition led by Robert F. Scott in 1911–12. As the first public staging of the story, the play created considerable controversy in Britain when it premiered in Berlin in 1930. A late Expressionist drama, it offered perspectives on the expedition quite different to those coming out of Scott's homeland. In this article, Hanne Nielsen and Elizabeth Leane contextualize the play within Goering's own career; outline its performance history; examine its reception in both Germany and Britain; and analyze the play text in terms of its innovative treatment of Scott's story. Hanne Nielsen is a postgraduate student at Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury. Her background is in Antarctic Studies and German literature and she is currently undertaking a study of representations of Antarctica on stage. Elizabeth Leane is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Tasmania, where she holds a research position split between the School of Humanities and the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies. She has written and edited several books, most recently Antarctica in Fiction (Cambridge University Press).