DER RAUB DER SABINERINNEN

Der Raub der Sabinerinnen: translation

(The Rape of the Sabine Women) by Franz and Paul von Schönthan. Premiered 1885. The sturdiest of all the great German SchwänAe—farce-comedies—popular in the Wilhelmine period. It is actually a parody on the theater itself. Its title derives from a pathetic play that a provincial schoolmaster has written in hopes of fame and fortune as a playwright. When Immanuel Striese (the bedraggled director of a touring troupe) offers to produce it, the schoolteacher temporarily loses his hard-won middle-class respectability and agrees to let Striese proceed. Audiences never witness the production in performance, but the director comes on periodically in costume to report the continuing catastrophe that is opening night. Brothers Paul and Franz von Schönthan parody the comic genre of which Rape is a prime example, featuring utterly coincidental occurrences, chance encounters, two-dimensional characterizations, stereotypical love interests, formulaic reconciliations, and a ridiculously unpredictable ending. All of these components add up to a whole far greater than the sum of its parts. It is little wonder that it has been produced thousands of times since its premiere and indeed was the first German play produced after the collapse of Berlin in 1945.