Frankenburger Würfelspiel
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The ''Frankenburger Würfelspiel'' ( Frankenburg Dice Game) is a Thingspiel (a Nazi-era multi-disciplinary open-air drama) by
Eberhard Wolfgang Möller Eberhard Wolfgang Möller (6 January 1906 – 1 January 1972) was a German dramatist and poet. Biography Möller was born on 6 January 1906 in Berlin. His first two published works appeared in 1929, the First World War drama ''Douaumont'', and ''K ...
based on the historical event of the same name in
Frankenburg am Hausruck Frankenburg am Hausruck (Central Bavarian: ''Fraungabuag'') is a municipality in the district of Vöcklabruck (district), Vöcklabruck in the Austrian state of Upper Austria. History Frankenburg was part of the Roman province Noricum since the yea ...
,
Upper Austria Upper Austria ( ; ; ) is one of the nine States of Austria, states of Austria. Its capital is Linz. Upper Austria borders Germany and the Czech Republic, as well as the other Austrian states of Lower Austria, Styria, and Salzburg (state), Salzbur ...
. It received its première in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
in association with the
1936 Summer Olympics The 1936 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad () and officially branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, then capital of Nazi Germany. Berlin won the bid to ...
and the inauguration of the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne, the Berlin ''Thingstätte'' which is now the
Waldbühne The Waldbühne (''Woodland Stage'' or ''Forest Stage'') is an amphitheatre at Olympiapark Berlin in Berlin, Germany. It was designed by German architect Werner March in emulation of a Greek theatre and built between 1934 and 1936 as the Dietrich ...
(Forest Stage), and was the most successful Thingspiel. This Thingspiel has nothing in common with the Frankenburg play and re-enactement started in 1925, and still running, of the dramatic event that counts with more than 400 amateur actors - among them numerous descendants of those convicted at the time, which has become one of the cultural and touristic attraction of Frankenburg am Hausruck market town.


Background

In May 1625, during the
Counter-Reformation The Counter-Reformation (), also sometimes called the Catholic Revival, was the period of Catholic resurgence that was initiated in response to, and as an alternative to or from similar insights as, the Protestant Reformations at the time. It w ...
, Baron von Herberstorff, Governor of Upper Austria and acting on behalf of the
Holy Roman Emperor The Holy Roman Emperor, originally and officially the Emperor of the Romans (disambiguation), Emperor of the Romans (; ) during the Middle Ages, and also known as the Roman-German Emperor since the early modern period (; ), was the ruler and h ...
Ferdinand II, tried to forcibly reintroduce
Catholicism The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
in Frankenburg. The
Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...
peasants resisted, so he made 36 men roll dice against each other in pairs for their lives; the losers were hanged. The incident touched off a peasants' revolt in Upper Austria, the last Peasants' War.Karl-Heinz Schoeps, ''Literature and Film in the Third Reich'', tr. Kathleen M. Dell'Orto, Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture, Rochester, New York / Woodbridge, Suffolk: Camden House/Boydell & Brewer, 2004,
p. 157
Möller's work based on the event was the only drama of the
Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...
which was written as a ministerial commission; Möller, who was a theorist of the Thingspiel movement, was asked by the Olympic Committee to write a play for the inauguration of the Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne (the Berlin ''Thingstätte'' named for
Dietrich Eckart Dietrich Eckart (; 23 March 1868 – 26 December 1923) was a German '' völkisch'' poet, playwright, journalist, publicist, and political activist who was one of the founders of the German Workers' Party, the precursor of the Nazi Party. Eckart ...
) at the upcoming Berlin Olympics, and from the ideas he submitted, Propaganda Minister
Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and philologist who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief Propaganda in Nazi Germany, propagandist for the Nazi Party, and ...
chose the Frankenburg story.Glen W. Gadberry, "Eberhard Wolfgang Möller's Thingspiel Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel", in Henning Eichberg, Michael Dultz, Glen Gadberry, and
Günther Rühle Günther Rühle (3 June 1924 – 10 December 2021) was a German theatre critic, book author and theatre manager. He directed the ''feuilleton'' (editorial/entertainment) sections of major newspapers and was regarded as an influential theatre cri ...
, ''Massenspiele: NS-Thingspiel, Arbeiterweihespiel und olympisches Zeremoniell'', Problemata 58, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1977, , pp. 235–48, p. 238.
Möller said that "he felt he Frankenburg eventcalled from beyond the grave for udgement" and that in writing the drama about it he used as models: "in addition to Orestes, Ludus de Antichristo, and a few mystery plays, George Kaiser's expressionist play ''Die Bürger von Calais'' (The Citizens of Calais) and
Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of ...
's ''Ödipus Rex'' (Oedipus Rex)."Quoted in Schoeps, Dell'Orto translation
p. 157


Plot, staging and message

The ''Frankenburger Würfelspiel'' consists of ten scenes with a prologue and an epilogue and constitutes a trial—as in the ancient Germanic
Thing Thing or The Thing may refer to: Philosophy * An object * Broadly, an entity * Thing-in-itself (or ''noumenon''), the reality that underlies perceptions, a term coined by Immanuel Kant * Thing theory, a branch of critical theory that focuses ...
—of Baron von Hebersdorf, Emperor Ferdinand II, Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, the Catholic clerics who advised them, and their subordinates for the devastation of the
Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War, fought primarily in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648, was one of the most destructive conflicts in History of Europe, European history. An estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died from battle, famine ...
and the harm done to the people, including the murders at Frankenburg.Gadberry, p. 240.Schoeps
p. 154
It takes place on a three-level stage, with seven judges on the uppermost tier, the emperor and his advisors in the middle, and von Hebersdorf and the peasants on the lowest level. A chorus illuminates the significance of events and is told to "sing . . . after the manner of choruses in oratorios."Schoeps
p. 155
(The work also uses a peasant chorus and some choral responses by the characters.)Gadberry, p. 243. The music is to be "functional" and to include fanfares and alarm bells. Processions of people and riders "underscore the popular character" of the work. The prologue, spoken by a narrator on the middle level, presents the play as "a parable that obligates"; the audience is the ultimate judge. When von Herbersdorf orders the peasants to appear and has the selected 36 roll the dice to determine whether they live or die, they declare that they will be martyrs: "We will be flags that never rend . . . The future will one day catch fire from us." But the crowd demands them back, becomes one people (''
Volk The German noun ''Volk'' () translates to :wikt:people, people, both uncountable in the sense of ''people'' as in a crowd, and countable (plural ''Völker'') in the sense of ''People, a people'' as in an ethnic group or nation (compare the E ...
'') and frees itself from the tyrants' yoke.
Hitler Youth The Hitler Youth ( , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth wing of the German Nazi Party. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. From 1936 until 1945, it was th ...
columns with flags waving appeared as the play became an allegorical "consecration" of Hitler's seizure of power. Von Hebersdorf tries to use force, but is stopped by the appearance of a knight in black armour, who takes the dice and forces all the rulers to roll them; against them on behalf of justice, he throws infinity,Gadberry, p. 239. and the judges condemn them as "disloyal and ishonourableservants of the people." Ferdinand is sentenced to eternal damnation, Maximilian cursed, the clerics expelled without possibility of pardon from the world and from God's grace, and von Herbersdorf, who betrayed the trust of the Volk, is to be buried in the knacker's yard. The play expresses Möller's concept of justice as wielded by God; for him, "the spirit and the essence of the Thingspiel" was the chorale praising God, "O Gott, wie bist du wunderbar", and the message of the work is moral and Christian: "Act justly, for one day you will be judged!" It is also a Nazi work. The epilogue clearly relates the events to the new Germany: "Look: across the land and the bloody fields a new race is greening, invincible and great". The Prologue states that the play is intended for performance "Zum hohen Ruhme Gottes und im Namen des Volkes der Deutschen" (to the great glory of God and in the name of the Volk of the Germans). Möller wrote the play with "elementary simplicity in language, haracterisationand action" appropriate to its essence as a
morality play The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...
and also to the huge venue for which it was written.Gadberry, p. 241. He hoped it would be the first complete Thingspiel, in which the various dramatic resources of the medium were successfully synthesised.


Première

The play received its première on August 2, 1936, the day after the opening of the Olympics, at the nearby Dietrich-Eckart-Bühne; it was the inaugural performance for the facility. The audience was 20,000 people; the performance was directed by Werner Pleister and
Mathias Wieman Mathias Wieman (Birth name, née Carl Heinrich Franz Mathias Wieman; 23 June 1902 – 3 December 1969) was a German stage-performer, silent-and-sound motion picture actor. Life and career Early life Wieman was born in Osnabrück, the only son ...
(who also played the Black Knight). The
Reich Labour Service The Reich Labour Service (''Reichsarbeitsdienst''; RAD) was a major paramilitary organization established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate ...
supplied 1,200 extras. Möller had originally intended
Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
himself to be the highest judge at this first performance of the play, a spotlight picking him out after the peasants asked, "Is there no righteous man ho. . . will put an end to this violent charade?", but he was otherwise engaged; "reality had overtaken the heatre. In his 2007 book on Nazi drama, Gerwin Strobl points out that he had in fact started to walk from the Olympic Stadium to attend the performance, but turned around halfway and got into his car; in Strobl's opinion, because of the inflammatory political implications of the play in light of the Nazi attempted coup in Austria two years before, in which Chancellor Dollfuss had been assassinated.


Reception

The Nazi ''
Der Angriff ''Der Angriff'' (in English "The Attack") was the official newspaper of the Berlin ''Gau'' of the Nazi Party. Founded in 1927, the last edition of the newspaper was published on 24 April 1945. History The newspaper was set up by Joseph Goebb ...
'' praised the performance as a "miraculous hour in the history of the heatre, and the ''
Völkischer Beobachter The ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (; "'' Völkisch'' Observer") was the newspaper of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 25 December 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from 8 February 1923. For twenty-four years it formed part of the official pub ...
'' also praised it and the playwright: "Eberhard Wolfgang Möller, the boldest champion of the coming form among the creative spirits of the young generation, has mastered an unprecedented task." Ferdinand Junghans-Busch, in comments printed in the 1937 edition of the play, wrote that the action on the highest stage level, that of the judges and the Black Knight, truly exemplified "judicial strength, the voice of the people and the expression that we Germans conceive as Führer." However, the
Amt Rosenberg Amt Rosenberg (ARo, Rosenberg Office) was an official body for cultural policy and surveillance within the Nazi party, headed by Alfred Rosenberg. It was established in 1934 under the name of ''Dienststelle Rosenberg'' (''DRbg'', Rosenberg Depar ...
considered it too Christian, and the Catholic ''Germania'' regarded it as anti-Catholic. The work was performed at many other ''Thingstätten'' and in theatres. It was the high point of the ''Thingspiel'' movement. In his overview of National Socialist literature and film, Karl-Heinz Schoeps calls it "the high point, and at the same time the endpoint". Glen W. Gadberry, evaluating the work in 1977, urged that it be re-examined because of its valid message that we will all be judged—as the Nazis were at the
Nuremberg trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...
—and quotes a review of the première which makes that point: the ''Frankenburger Würfelspiel'' "gives us all, epeople who today sit in judgement of the past, the warning that at some point a later time will judge our deeds". Strobl, however, while recognising Möller's "cultural ambitions", sees this as "ill-disguised propaganda" against Austria, with the role of Bavaria downplayed and the behind-the-scenes influence of the Pope standing for
Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his overthrow in 194 ...
's siding with Dollfuss against Nazi influence in Austria. He points out that the subsequent performances included explicitly propagandistic uses; for example in 1937, the mayor of
Passau Passau (; ) is a city in Lower Bavaria, Germany. It is also known as the ("City of Three Rivers"), as the river Danube is joined by the Inn (river), Inn from the south and the Ilz from the north. Passau's population is about 50,000, of whom ...
ordered a performance "as a treat for our ethnic kin beyond the border
n Austria N, or n, is the fourteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages, and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''. History ...
.Strobl, p. 69.


References


Further reading

* Glen Wayne Gadberry. "E. W. Möller and the National Drama of Nazi Germany: A Study of the Thingspiel and of Möller's ''Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel''". Master's thesis,
University of Wisconsin, Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...
, 1972. * Glen W. Gadberry. "The Thingspiel and ''Das Frankenburger Würfelspiel''". ''Drama Review'' 24 (1980) 103–14. {{DEFAULTSORT:Frankenburger Wuerfelspiel German plays