Johann Nestroy Research Articles

Stanovsko gledališče v Ljubljani v sezoni 1838/39

This paper analyses the 1838/39 season of the German Theatre of the Carniolan Provincial Estates (Ständisches Theater) in Ljubljana, focusing on its artistic output. The introductory section describes the archival material on the basis of which the theatre’s repertoire was reconstructed and then discusses the role of the theatre’s impresario, Ferdinand Funk, and the most important plays which were performed there. In addition to the works of the Austrian playwrights Ferdinand Raimund, Johann Nestroy, Carl Meisl, and Friederich Halm, those of Eugène Scribe and Shakespeare in German translation featured prominently; women playwrights were also noticeably represented in the theatre’s repertoire. Before the 1848 revolutions the Slovene intelligentsia also patronised the Theatre of the Carniolan Provincial Estates, which was the only theatre in Ljubljana at the time, and refined their taste for dramatic art there.

Human and machine translation of occasionalisms in literary texts

Abstract Literary occasionalisms, new words coined by writers with a particular poetic aim in view, often pose a great challenge for translators. Given recent advances in machine translation (MT), could literary translators benefit from MT when it comes to the translation of occasionalisms? We address this question by considering the work of Austria’s most important nineteenth-century comedy writer, Johann Nestroy (1801–1862). We compare how human translators and two generic neural MT systems (Google Translate, DeepL) translated occasionalisms (compounds, derivations, and blends) in Nestroy’s play Der Talisman into English. While human translators largely refrained from creating new target expressions, the two MT systems generated a number of viable new coinages, most of them by literal translation procedures. In an interactive human-computer environment, using MT output as a repository from which to retrieve novel target solutions or derive inspiration might open up new avenues in the practice of literary translation.

Obituary: W. E. (Gar) Yates 1938–2021

Austrian Studies 29 (2021), 161–65© Modern Humanities Research Association 2021 Obituary: W. E. (Gar) Yates 1938–2021 William Edgar (Gar) Yates, whose death on 10 March 2021 added grief to the heartache of his family during his illness in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown, is mourned by friends, former students and academic colleagues around the world, particularly in Austrian Studies. As Chair of German at the University of Exeter from 1972 to 2001, he played a decisive role in faculty and university governance, defending academic freedom and the humanities at times of pressure from central government since the Margaret Thatcher years. In the UK he was a trustee of the Modern Humanities Research Association from 1980 to 2015, recipient of the J. G. Robertson Prize for distinguished work in German Studies in 1973, and (since 2002) a Fellow of the British Academy. Universally renowned as a formidable scholar, with over 150 publications, he was also a leading member of the Internationale Nestroy-Gesellschaft and a regular contributor to the annual Nestroy conferences in Schwechat, Austria. In 1995, he was elected by the Austrian Academy of Sciences as Corresponding Member of the Division of Humanities and the Social Sciences Abroad and was awarded the Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst (I. Klasse) [Austrian Decoration for Science and Art, First Class] in 2001. Gar was born on 30 April 1938 in Hove, Sussex, the son of Douglas William Yates, Professor of German at the University of Aberdeen. He attended Fettes College in Edinburgh as a Foundation Scholar in the early 1950s and Emmanuel College Cambridge from 1958 to 1963 with a Minor Open Scholarship, taking the Modern and Medieval Languages Tripos in 1961 (MA 1965). Under the supervision of F. J. Stopp, he pursued doctoral research with support from the Tiarks German Scholarship fund, completing his PhD, ‘The Development of Popular Viennese Comedy from 1823 to 1923’, in 1965. Gar had already been appointed as Lecturer in German at the University of Durham in 1963, and in that year he married Barbara, herself a Modern Languages teacher, who shared his literary tastes. She read with him much French and Spanish source material for Grillparzer’s and Nestroy’s plays, and collaborated on some volumes of the Historical-Critical Nestroy edition for which Gar was responsible. One early by-product of Gar’s teaching was his richly contextualized student edition of Hofmannsthal’s Der Schwierige (Cambridge University Press, 1966), which was followed in 1968 by his edition of Grillparzer’s Der Traum ein Leben. He capped his father Douglas Yates’s Franz Grillparzer: A Critical Biography (1946) with Grillparzer: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1972), an exemplary sequence of close readings of the major Obituary: W. E. Yates 162 plays that demonstrated not only Grillparzer’s sensitive characterization and ‘theatrical sense’, but also Gar’s own profound knowledge of European literary and theatrical traditions and poetics, and philological precision in unravelling a work’s gestation. He later returned to both authors (for example, in Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler and the Austrian Theatre, Yale University Press, 1992), but by far the most significant lifelong focus of his work was Johann Nestroy and the Wiener Volkstheater. Nestroy: Satire and Parody in Viennese Popular Comedy (Cambridge University Press, 1972) was greeted as the first introduction to the author in English, whereas Nestroy and the Critics (Camden House, 1994) was hailed as the first comprehensive study of Nestroy reception in any language. Gar swiftly followed this with Theatre in Vienna: A Critical History, 1776–1995 (Cambridge University Press, 1996), which was not only the first comprehensive survey in English, but one, moreover, that did not indulge in the sentimental myth of Vienna as city of theatre. The culmination of Gar’s scholarly achievement was his central involvement in the Historical-Critical Edition of Nestroy’s complete plays. He advised on forty-three volumes of fifty-seven from 1977 to 2010, acted as editor or co-editor of ten volumes between 1981 and 2006, and as general or ‘co-ordinating’ editor from 1992 to 2012. Gar was one of a generation of scholars who were decisively influenced by Karl Kraus’s Nestroy Renaissance and its recognition...

“Von Nun an ist der Staat zugleich die höchste Poesie.” Satirizing the Viennese Märzrevolution

This article explores the way in which two dramatic satires criticized the shortcomings of the Viennese Märzrevolution. As opposed to the typically “partisan” nature of a satire that attacks either revolutionaries or reactionaries, Johann Nestroy’s Freiheit in Krähwinkel (1848) and Eduard von Bauernfeld’s Die Republik der Thiere (1848) both turn their satiric barbs against all political positions. To accomplish this, they use satiric popular culture to create a lowbrow version of “aesthetic education,” attacking the political naiveté of liberal revolutionaries and the insidious scheming of reactionaries. Bauernfeld’s drama uses an “aesthetic state” run by animals to highlight the general political ignorance of the revolutionary period, while Nestroy utilizes the intrigues of a wily newspaper agent to lambast both reaction and revolution. Ultimately, these two dramas showcase the power of satire to clear the discursive ground as a propaedeutic for a more reasoned future, acting thusly in the vein of idealist aesthetics even as they attack political idealism for its real failures.

Freedom and its Boundaries: Johann Nestroy as Political Thinker

During the revolutionary years 1848 and 1849, Johann Nestroy wrote several plays dealing explicitly with political themes. Because these plays sometimes appear to adopt different perspectives toward the Viennese Revolution, many have charged Nestroy with being an Umsattler , that is, someone who changed his stance as the revolutionary tide shifted. I argue that a careful reading of the plays, especially Der alte Mann mit der jungen Frau , reveals a consistent political perspective. Central to that perspective is an insight into the ambiguous nature of freedom as at once valuable and dangerous, challenging established boundaries while also requiring them as its horizon.

Wittgenstein's Slapstick

In “Performance Philosophy — Staging a New Field,” Laura Cull approaches performance as a source of philosophical insight and philosophy as a species of performance (Cull 2014, 15). This calls for a radical transformation of philosophy and its practices. What form might this take? Wittgenstein’s later philosophy provides one example. The language games presented in the opening remarks of the Philosophical Investigations (PI, [1953] 2001) are meant to be played out. They involve improvisation based on general scenes, stock characters, and linguistic play. When enacted, they are slapstick. As such, they offer a method of philosophical investigation in which clarity and insight are inherent in the performance itself. Wittgenstein’s language games were directly influenced by the subversive practices of Austrian commedia dell’arte and slapstick (through the works of Johann Nestroy and Karl Kraus). By their very nature, they challenge the pretensions of philosophical explanation and theory. Unlike attempts to compare Wittgenstein’s philosophy to theatre, enacting language games is a form of philosophical performance. Andrew Lugg notes that recent attempts to compare Wittgenstein’s philosophy to theatre problematize the opening remarks of the Investigations. However, enacting language games as a form of philosophical performance makes what is hidden, in all of its simplicity and familiarity, obvious, striking, and engaging.

Ferdinand Raimund by Ian Roe (review)

Reviewed by: Ferdinand Raimund by Ian Roe Arne Koch Ian Roe, Ferdinand Raimund. Meteore 5. Hanover: Wehrhahn, 2010. 132 pp. Even the most generous assessment of the book market in German-speaking Europe would have to concede that the ever-increasing number of literary biographies leaves but a small, overcrowded space for publishers to put forth conceptually innovative works. It is therefore a pleasant surprise that [End Page 121] the Wehrhahn Verlag’s new Meteore series has envisioned an innovative way to enrich the genre. With its critical biographies on writers designated as less noteworthy by literary posterity, this series offers portraits of writers as dissimilar as Wolfgang Hilbig, Johann Karl Wezel, Hedwig Dohm, and others whose often meteoric but fleeting impact deserve closer attention. Following an established series model that includes careful introductions to key works, a number of high-quality illustrations and a short but informative bibliography of primary and secondary readings, Ian Roe accomplishes in his biography of Ferdinand Raimund (1790–1836) far more than one might initially expect from a monograph of 132 pages. Most significantly, Roe does not give into the temptation of positioning one of the pillars of the Viennese Volkstheater in predictable ways. Whereas earlier scholars, including the leading Raimund expert Jürgen Hein (1970), attempted to establish the writer as a nationally celebrated Austrian figure alongside his contemporaries Franz Grillparzer and Johann Nestroy (117), Roe instead simply continues to make a strong case for a renewed research interest in Raimund, as he has previously done in a number of articles. Even though Roe’s monograph never fully answers his own call to design “ein neues Raimund-Bild” (9), this biography does conscientiously reintroduce Raimund‘s entire dramatic and poetic works. Moreover, this study effectively intersects valuable insights about the many idiosyncrasies that shaped Raimund’s long reception history with the ups and downs of the disturbing professional and private lives of this actor, dramatist, and director. In six succinct, chronologically structured chapters, Roe thus traces Raimund’s rise from his early acclaim as an actor in the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1814 through a period of great triumphs kicked off by his best-known romantic comedy Der Alpenkönig und der Menschenfeind (1828) to his attempted suicide and death at the conclusion of a European tour following guest appearances in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, and Prague. What makes this biography worthwhile for Raimund scholars and students alike is Roe’s capacity to situate Raimund’s development as an unusual Volkstheater author within the social-historical backdrop of Biedermeier Vienna but also within a captivating life story. As Roe repeatedly suggests, Raimund’s oeuvre evolved over the years from the all-too-familiar patterns of the Biedermeier Besserungsstück (123) made popular by Karl Meisl and others into the psychologically acute dramas that playfully ameliorated the characteristic simplicity of the Lokalstück with bursts of intertextual referentiality and theatrical experimentation. In particular, Roe’s introductions to and interpretations of the plays Der Bauer als Millionär (1826), Der Alpenkönig, and Der Verschwender (1834) underscore [End Page 122] this often simultaneous presence of innovation and tradition that sets Raimund’s plays apart from those of his contemporaries. In an insightful chapter on Raimund’s early accomplishments, for example, Roe describes perfectly the extent to which Raimund’s first successfully received piece, Der Bauer als Millionär, so closely followed the “Volkstheater-tradition” as it concurrently introduced another level of narrative complexity (45). However, that Raimund’s theatrical experimentations remained mostly within the realms of literature and dramaturgy, as Roe suggests, cannot serve as true evidence of the Volkstheater’s inability to stage issues of contemporary relevance. Rather, it must be read as a common and somewhat paradoxical sign of the outward distance to the social-political realities of Biedermeier Vienna. Whether some of Raimund’s implicit politics could then in fact have been a distinctive way of reacting to and engaging with the restrictive reality he and his contemporaries faced, perhaps in the ways that Gordon Craig once outlined in his still-influential study The Politics of the Unpolitical (1995), is a topic Roe skirts a bit too frequently. Explicit political commentary was...

The Revolution of 1848 in the “political comedies” of Johann Nestroy

Les « comedies politiques » de Johann Nestroy, ecrites en 1848-50, representent la Revolution viennoise de 1848, sa repression et les consequences de la reaction. Loin de manifester un « changement de cap » de l’auteur apres 1848, elles revelent la continuite de sa position : tout en saluant les acquis revolutionnaires, Nestroy doute du succes de la Revolution et critique par la satire et la parodie les faiblesses politiques et « humaines » des deux camps, qui empechent la realisation des ideaux. Par son intention critique et didactique, il annonce la « comedie politique » de B. Brecht ou de F. Durrenmatt.

Nestroy's Dickensian Realism

Although realist fiction developed mainly on the periphery of the Habsburg Monarchy, in drama a qualified realism can be found at the centre in the work of the Viennese popular dramatist Johann Nestroy. Contemporaries compared Nestroy and Dickens; Nestroy adapted a Dickens novel for the stage. A sustained comparison first shows a detailed realist presentation of contemporary life, illustrated by the representation of modern transport. Nestroy also practises a reductive, cynical realism which contrasts with Dickens's tendency to sentimentality and to the idealization of domestic life. But both converge again in their harsh portrayal of social problems and class conflict from the 1840s onwards. Finally, Nestroy's realism can be compared favourably with that of the German 'programmatic realists' illustrated by Freytag's Soll und Haben.

From the Dreamwork of Secession to Orgies Mysteries Theatre

“To the Age Its Art, to Art Its Freedom.” That abbreviated manifesto of the Viennese Secession, releasing the visual and plastic arts from an imprisoning aesthetic, would presumably carry over to all aspects of cultural performance – which, however, at the turn of the century, had nothing like the performative insolence of the long-neglected Johann Nestroy. Nor did Austrian theatre and culture escape the dynastic censorship that continued through modern history, from Schnitzler to Handke to Bernhard, who found the theatre “disgusting,” the censor still in the wings, and wrote more recently for it with a venomous critique. The critique was there, too, among the rebellious painters who became the Viennese Actionists, only too ready for scandal in a repressed culture that sent several of them to jail, though one of them now, Hermann Nitsch, has become a much-respected iconic figure. The atmosphere of Viennese culture, before and after the Secession, has been characterized by Freud and the alternative to Freud, Weininger, who performed his own suicide, and by the magisterial Karl Kraus, in his encyclopaedic drama, The Last Days of Mankind.

Enzymatic hydroxylation of 6′-deoxychalcones with protein preparations from petals of Dahlia variabilis

Yellow colouration of Dahlia variabilis flowers is mainly based on isoliquiritigenin and butein 4′-malonylglucosides. Microsomal preparations from petals of the yellow strain ‘Johann Nestroy’ catalyse the enzymatic 3-hydroxylation of isoliquiritigenin to butein in the presence of NADPH. The reaction showed a pH optimum of 7.5, and was inhibited by p-hydroxymercuribenzoate and a number of cytochrome P450 specific inhibitors. These and further properties suggest that the 3-hydroxylation of isoliquiritigenin is mediated by a cytochrome P450-dependent monooxygenase. The apparent K m value for isoliquiritigenin was 50 μM.

Enzymatic hydroxylation of 6′-deoxychalcones with protein preparations from petals of dahlia variabilis

Yellow colouration of Dahlia variabilis flowers is mainly based on isoliquiritigenin and butein 4′-malonylglucosides. Microsomal preparations from petals of the yellow strain ‘Johann Nestroy’ catalyse the enzymatic 3-hydroxylation of isoliquiritigenin to butein in the presence of NADPH. The reaction showed a pH optimum of 7.5, and was inhibited by p-hydroxymercuribenzoate and a number of cytochrome P450 specific inhibitors. These and further properties suggest that the 3-hydroxylation of isoliquiritigenin is mediated by a cytochrome P450-dependent monooxygenase. The apparent Km value for isoliquiritigenin was 50 μM.

Progress, Values, and Responsibility

"In any case, progress implies that it looks much greater than it really is." This statement by the Austrian poet Johann Nestroy became famous when Ludwig Wittgenstein chose it as a text for the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations. Is it true, however? It seems to be true for the problems, methods, and methodologies of philosophy itself—for Wittgenstein's own investigations, which depend on Georg Lichtenberg, Arthur Schopenhauer, Fritz Mauthner, and other forerunners. But it does not seem to be true for technical or technological progress. Instead, we might say that, "Technical progress is much greater than seems to be the case."

The Conflict between Dignity and Hope in the Works of Johann Nestroy

The Conflict between Dignity and Hope in the Works of Johann Nestroy

Johann Nestroy. Komödien.

German Life and LettersVolume 27, Issue 2 p. 157-157 Johann Nestroy. Komödien. Peter Branscombe, Peter BranscombeSearch for more papers by this author Peter Branscombe, Peter BranscombeSearch for more papers by this author First published: January 1974 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0483.1974.tb01598.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume27, Issue2January 1974Pages 157-157 RelatedInformation

Committed Opera: Gottfried von Einem's ‘The Visit of the Old Lady’

The visit of the old lady, after the play of the same name by the Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt (who also wrote the libretto), is Gottfried von Einem's fourth opera. It was performed for the first time in 1971 at the Vienna State Opera, and after being mounted on several German stages in quick succession, it was given its American première in San Francisco last year. Von Einem's first opera, Dantons Tod (after Georg Büchner), won much praise as the major novelty of the 1947 Salzburg Festival. Six years later, also in Salzburg, came Der Prozess (after Franz Kafka); after which there was another pause, of almost ten years, before the next opera, Der Zerrissene (after Johann Nestroy), had its première in Hamburg. Von Einem had up to that time also written five large ballets, a quantity of instrumental music (including several pieces commissioned by leading European and American orchestras) and some vocal music: all in all, therefore, a respectably sizable body of work, especially when one takes into account that self-critical reserve to which his somewhat slow rate of production can be attributed. His consistency, at least in those works that have been repeatedly tried and tested, must perhaps today be counted as one of his most outstanding characteristics.

Three Comedies by Johann Nestroy

Three Comedies by Johann Nestroy

The Limits of Post-War Planning

Ideologically, this war could be termed “post-war war.” When it began, political thought was still concerned with the problems which we inherited from the other catastrophe. After the beginning of hostilities the political intellectuals began to busy themselves almost exclusively with the problems of the coming peace, alas, so far away. According to the peace-planners nothing is more important than the formation of post-war blue-prints. Some people even go so far as to assert that the very outcome of this struggle depends largely upon the proclamation of attractive peace aims (or war aims). That side is going to win, it is held, which offers the most seductive plan for a brave new world, formulated so as to be comprehensible to the simplest minds. The most curious part of all this is that nobody has been able hitherto to formulate the ideal war aims. Those war aims which have been proclaimed so far could not even arouse the enthusiasm of their own sponsors. They all taste like brackish water and all of them can be traced back at least to the time of the Enlightenment. The most rabid among the peace-planners now begin to realize that those aims or slogans, which up to a short time ago still made an impression upon the masses, have lost their appeal. This is a difficulty which Mr. Laski wants to overcome by finding “another word”. Without denying that the fertile minds of people like Laski certainly can find other words, it can be doubted whether they will be able to find a more convincing formula than Johann Nestroy's: “It is much better to be wealthy and happy than to be poor and sick”.