The Genoveva and Nibelungen dramas of Ernst Raupach and Friedrich Hebbel - A comparative study, with special reference to the treatment of material and to the reception of these dramas by the contemporary public

Abstract

I have set out in this thesis to compare the works which each of the German dramatists, Ernst Raupach and Friedrich Hebbel, wrote on the Genoveva and Nibelungen legends. These legends enjoyed great popularity in the nineteenth century, and were made the subjects of tragedies by many dramatists, both major and minor. Of them all, the adaptions of Hebbel were possibly the most successful,and of greater artistic worth than the majority, while Raupach provides a good example of a dramatist much praised in his time, who has since sunk into oblivion. The first part of the thesis contains an appreciation of the four dramas in question, and a discussion of the merits or demerits of plot, construction, characterisation and theme. I have then gone on to examine the relationship of each drama to its source, touching also on other attempts by well-known poets to treat the same material. I have also given an account of the first performance of the dramas in Berlin and Vienna (these being the most important German-speaking cities and those in which Raupach had most success), and, in Hebbel*s case, of the first performances in Weimar, since these are of some importance in the history of Hebbel's works on the stage. My aim in these chapters, as in the following chapter on the criticism in the contemporary press, was to show what were the opinions of the time of the dramatists and dramas concerned. The final chapter deals with the relationship of Hebbel's dramas to Raupach's and draws a comparison between them. The Appendix shows how the four tragedies fit into the rest of the poets' work and indicates the relative success which all their works had on their first performance.