''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' (german: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels) was the
postdoctoral
A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...
major academic work (
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
) submitted by
Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist.
An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
to the
University of Frankfurt in 1925, and not published until 1928.
[''Introducing Walter Benjamin'', Howard Cargill, Alex Coles, Andrey Klimowski, 1998, p. 112] The book is a study of German drama during the
baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
period and was meant to earn Benjamin the qualification of university instructor. The academic community rejected the work, and Benjamin withdrew it from consideration.
[Jane O. Newman, ''Benjamin's Library: Modernity, Nation, and the Baroque'', Cornell University Press, 2011, p. 28: "... university officials in Frankfurt recommended that Benjamin withdraw the work from consideration as his Habilitation."] In spite of this early rejection, the book was rediscovered in the second half of the 20th century and has come to be considered a highly influential piece of philosophical and literary criticism.
History
Benjamin compiled the source material for the work that would become ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'', some 600 quotations from German baroque dramas, in the Berlin State Library in 1923. In the spring of 1924, he flew to Capri and began composing what he hoped would be his
habilitation
Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...
, the qualification that would allow him to become a university lecturer in Germany.
He finished and submitted the work for approval to the Philosophical Faculty at the
University of Frankfurt in 1925.
The faculty, which included established academics like
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...
, found the work impenetrable and urged Benjamin to withdraw it from consideration.
Summary
Instead of focusing on the more famous examples of baroque drama from around the world, such as
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
Pedro Calderón de la Barca y Barreda González de Henao Ruiz de Blasco y Riaño (, ; ; 17 January 160025 May 1681) was a Spanish dramatist, poet, writer and knight of the Order of Santiago. He is known as one of the most distinguished Baroque w ...
and
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
, Benjamin chose to write about the minor German dramatists of the 16th and 17th century:
Martin Opitz
Martin Opitz von Boberfeld (23 December 1597 – 20 August 1639) was a German poet, regarded as the greatest of that nation during his lifetime.
Biography
Opitz was born in Bunzlau (Bolesławiec) in Lower Silesia, in the Principality of ...
,
Andreas Gryphius
Andreas Gryphius (german: Andreas Greif; 2 October 161616 July 1664) was a German poet and playwright. With his eloquent sonnets, which contains "The Suffering, Frailty of Life and the World", he is considered one of the most important Baroque ...
, Johann Christian Hallmann,
Daniel Caspar von Lohenstein
Daniel Casper (25 January 1635 in Nimptsch, Niederschlesien – 28 April 1683 in Breslau, Niederschlesien), also spelled Daniel Caspar, and referred to from 1670 as Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, was a Baroque Silesian playwright, lawyer, diplom ...
, and August Adolf von Haugwitz. For him, these playwrights – who were seen as too crude, dogmatic, and violent by earlier critics to be considered true artists – best reflected the unique cultural and historical climate of their time. Benjamin singles out the theme of "sovereign violence" as the most important unifying feature of the German "trauerspiel" or "mourning play". In their obsessive focus on courtly intrigue and princely bloodlust, these playwrights break with the mythic tradition of classical
tragedy
Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...
and create a new aesthetic based on the tense interplay between
Christian eschatology
Christian eschatology, a major branch of study within Christian theology, deals with "last things". Such eschatology – the word derives from two Greek roots meaning "last" () and "study" (-) – involves the study of "end things", whether of ...
and human history. Foreshadowing his later interest in the concept of history, Benjamin concludes that, in these plays, history "loses the eschatological certainty of its redemptive conclusion, and becomes secularized into a mere natural setting for the profane struggle over political power."
See also
*
Marxist hermeneutics
Hermeneutics () is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretative principles or methods used when immediate c ...
References
1928 non-fiction books
German literary criticism
Works by Walter Benjamin
Contemporary philosophical literature
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