"Der umfunktionierte hofmeister": a study of the drama of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and Bertolt Brecht and of their dramatic theories

Abstract

The picture most people have of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz is too often derived from rather sketchy information found in most histories of German literature or books on the Sturm und Drang period. The half crazed genius we read about here, who never fulfilled his promise and who lived the last fifteen years of his life under the cloud of insanity, seems far removed from the shrewd common sense of Bertolt Brecht. Closer examination reveals, nevertheless, that they had many similar features, allowing for the difference of time and personality. Both lived in periods which saw important changes taking place in European society, and both found in these social upheavals stimulus for their dramatic work. Lenz's dramas reflected the struggle between the aristocracy and the rising bourgeoisie, which was a significant feature of Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century. Brecht took as his subject the struggle of the proletariat to assert their rights against the more affluent sections of society.